Concerting Alone.

June 20, 2024

*In honor of going to the Lana Del Rey Concert tonight (AHHHHH!!!!!), here is a excerpt from a prior concert writing.

Going to a concert alone is a daunting task. Waiting in line (by yourself), pushing your way through the crowd (by yourself), waiting for the opener anxiously in the most claustrophobic tangle of college students (by yourself), feeling the crushing anticipation after the opener (by yourself), etcetera (by yourself), is simultaneously exciting and intimidating. It’s not common in this day and age to venture out in any manner to any social event by oneself, especially not a concert, which, in many ways, is an event made to experience with others. 

But I wanted to go to the flipturn concert. And not a single friend of mine in Boston listens to flipturn. Apparently they are reserved for my artsy friends back home and my crunchy granola friends out west. 

I grew up as an only child, which gave me the unique gift of thinking I can do things alone without being bothered by the fact that I am alone. The coolest part of this gift is that I secretly am bothered when the time comes to do said things alone (overconfidence in my ability to be with my own thoughts, maybe?). For example, I find that walking around the city by myself renders the “aloneness” inconsequential. When you are in a big city, surrounded by people, you are never truly alone. The array of strangers are your friends, your buddies, your silent confidants. Walking down a busy street, I do not feel alone. That is, until I see all the gaggles of gossiping girl friends with their shopping bags and the couples holding hands on the sidewalks and the groups of middle-schoolers scuttling along with their frappuccinos (am I really at the point in my life where I am jealous of middle schoolers?). It's not a feeling I hate, per say, but it is one of quiet and regretful envy. Being used to being alone and actually being alone are two very different things. But I try to push that thought out of my head, for the most part. 

Alas, there I was, Friday at the office, wondering if I should go to my concert that night, because, well, I would be there… alone. I remember my friend, Elizabeth, once telling me that she went to a Suki Waterhouse concert alone in highschool. She was planning to go with her best friend at the time, but they had a falling out, leaving her with one GA ticket and one semi-broken heart. Although not with her former best friend (who opted not to go at all), Elizabeth still went to Suki’s “I Can’t Let Go” tour. I remember her gushing in a video to me afterwards about how wonderful it was. How she had the greatest time. I think I remember her calling it “spiritual.” (Her and I later went to a Suki Waterhouse concert together, and let me just say, it was definitely fucking spiritual)

So I decided to go. In my casual-Friday outfit I set out after work to the Boston House of Blues. I have this insane false confidence about me (another product of being an only child? I wasn’t humbled enough?) that leads me to think that everything will be fine and work out because I am a young girl and I am relatively pretty. And persuasive. I also lack shame sometimes. You can thank my father for that one. I thought, if the doors open at 7:00, I can get there around 6:15 and still be close to the front. That is one benefit of being a solo fan at a general admission concert: I can… cut the line.

Should I have morally cut the line? Probably not. But also, I am one person. I am hardly 5’6”. I am just a small girl! Without any baggage (other people) weighing me down (to take up space around me)! I am also alone! Please have sympathy for me! 

(Am I a bad person?)

I once accidentally cut the line at the House of Blues when I went to a concert with another friend of mine, Lucas. Let me set the scene: There is a parking garage that the line for concerts forms against with a hot dog stand right next to it. There is a break in the line for the carpark entrance and the hot dog cart. When we arrived, we were so in-our-own-little-worlds that we did not realize that this break did not signify the end of the line, but signified the fact that cars were coming in and out and the hot dog vendor was vocally unhappy when concert-goers were cramping his style (crowding his stand; not buying hot dogs).

I knew of this weak link in the line so I decided to exploit it. And if someone nicely came up to me and told me I had actually cut them, I would gladly go to the back of the line. I respect people who are kind but also take no shit. 

Unfortunately, that was not the kind of person that was standing at the other side of the driveway-hotdog induced break in people. As I was on the phone with my friend from home, I simply slipped behind a group of teen girls and stood there like I belonged. After some considerable time, when I looked behind me because I heard a commotion (apparently a sign fell off the building and onto someone in line?), I saw this mom and son mouthing something at me. What is she saying? Go to the back of the line… bitch, mouths the mom. Is that really the behavior you want to teach your son is okay? Calling a woman a “bitch?” Fuck you, mouths the son. Okay, so it seems you might not care so much about your son’s foul mouth towards women, mother dearest. 

Was I technically in the wrong… yes. But also, and I say this with the utmost respect and patience and serenity in my voice, please take a fucking chill pill. Doctor’s orders. Hostility gets you almost nowhere in life, I have come to learn. If I told them that, though, they’d probably deck me. 

After her son walked past me a few times whispering, “Go to the back of the line, bitch,” and, “Fuck you,” and the mom came up to me and telling me that she hopes my mother is proud of the “shit person she raised; of the fucking bitch she raised,” I stepped into the glorious venue 7:00 sharp and walked right up close to the barrier. 

Now only one hour until the opening band came on! Now only two hours until flipturn performed! Now I was dreading being alone in an area where I could not take a phone call to mask my aloneness! Everyone around me was there with large groups of friends – it was then that I felt a pang of… sadness? Envy? Sorrow? Whatever it was, it was so deeply mixed with excitement that I wasn’t sure I had ever felt it before.

Something I have learned about indie rock fans is that they come in three categories: Intense mega fans with homemade shirts and signs, highschoolers, and genuinely the most normal and cool people alive. On my left: The mega fans (one of them caught a guitar pick that was thrown into the crowd and started screaming bloody murder). In front of me (only because they legitimately shoved me at one point and I cannot fend off five sixteen-year-old girls): The high schoolers. And next to me: The genuinely extremely normal and cool people. Two girls, a little older than I, with cool nose piercings and funky outfits, were my saviors that night. As we struck up conversation during the waiting period, I thought to myself, Wow, maybe this isn’t so bad!

The concert was amazing. The openers, Richy Mitch and the Coal Miners, were phenomenal. It actually hurt me to find out that the lead singer was a guy my age. There he is, basking in the spotlight and creating beautiful art, while I am currently writing about how I do things alone and apparently am beefing with a fifty-year-old woman.

flipturn’s performance was even more electrifying and magnificent. That's genuinely the best word for it: Magnificent. In all its simplicity, it rings true for exactly how I feel about them. 

I left the concert absolutely giddy. I felt alive again. Whenever I leave a concert I forget that I ever had any problems (ever) and remember that everything is amazing and life is so good and I am a free person in a thriving time and I am young and grateful and yippee! I left this concert the same way that I leave all concerts: Beyond delighted with all the beauty in the word. In short, I left the concert completely content. Happy.

And it struck me as I was walking back to my apartment: I might have had a better time at this concert because I was by myself. It was freeing. No one there to judge how bad you sounded when you were singing along to the songs, or giggle when you got the lyrics slightly wrong. I could dance as dumbly, sing as tone deaf-ly, and cheer as passionately as I wanted without a soul knowing who I was. I realized that being at a concert alone was like seeing your favorite band perform to you while you were driving alone in your car; like having them perform while you were singing in the shower. I could unabashedly enjoy the live art I was consuming as if it was just for me. Being alone at a concert was like attending a private show with the benefit of the energy from a crowd. Damn, it was spiritual.

The girls next to me welcomed me into their energy, as well. We screamed at the intros of the same songs and swayed during the chorus’ of others. “I can’t wait until they play ‘Glistening’,” one of them said to me. “It’s my favorite song. It’s so nostalgic for me.” Here was a complete stranger sharing her intimate thoughts with me, unprovoked. I felt a sense of freedom without disconnection. There was a mutual bond between this mosh of people. There was something tying together the stans with their glittery signs, the highschool girls whose parents stood at the back of the venue patiently, and the normal and cool strangers I was surrounded by. The music. The art. We all shared, in some sort or another, the same passion for the funky rock music we were being played. Technically, none of them are strangers. Technically we were all friends. Even the mom who called me a bitch. All these people are different versions of myself. Some from very different and far-out universes from me, but albeit, we were all part of one welcoming being.

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It's a strange thing to read back this post’s first draft word-vomit and see that I proposed experiencing two completely opposing feelings in the span of about three-hundred words. But, it is the truth. Both feelings conflict with each other while simultaneously existing. Concerts are better alone although I was never really alone. This feeling is like a contronym: a word that has two opposing meanings simultaneously. The existence of one does conflict with the other without condemning it untrue or inaccurate. I was technically by myself but I really was not alone at all. Are we ever?

As I was leaving, I thanked the two girls next to me for being so kind. “Are you here alone?” the one asked me. “Yes,” I responded. “We met at a concert when we were both alone,” they told me with big smiles. “Isn’t it the best?”