jam

so often when i listen to live music, i find myself fixated on who i wish were also there, hearing and seeing the performance.  i can be obsessed with my certainty that this person or people would be transformed or should be exposed or inspired by what i am experiencing.  i will torture myself with trying to record the most exemplary clips or trying to capture the tone and magic of a live performance with still photography.  (from a phone, to make it all the more absurd.)   and at the end of the show, i leave wistful.  

it just occurred to me last night:  what an idiotic waste of a concert that has been. 

ironically, that clarity arrived at the end of a show in which a misguided, ungrateful thought of who could be enjoying it alongside me never once entered my mind.  i can't claim that i realized the irony of hinging my enjoyment on that of another and hence consciously made this change though. it was more likely due to the fact that one of those who i often long to share things with was there with me: todd.   

a first, of its sorts, really.  though i've taken him to many concerts, we've never shared a table at a live music venue (i.e. a bar) and sat shoulder to shoulder as adults...  perhaps it's semantics.  perhaps it's maternal nostalgia.  or maybe it was the glass of wine i enjoyed.  whatever the cause, i contend it was a first.  

my memory uses shorthand when it comes to media.  i rarely remember what a book was about, what happened in a film, or even who sings a song or what a certain musician's style is.  but in the scribbling notes of my mind, i can usually recall my opinion.  often it's as rudimentary as a thumbs up or down; but occasionally there's an exclamation scrawled in the margin.  

when todd asked me about the musician i invited him to see last night, i said, the most amazing f'ing guitarist i've ever seen.   he asked what kind of music he played.  shrug  he asked me who his music resembled.  shrug  he was understandably skeptical of my high marks with little to substantiate and said, i guess i'll see..but he won't hold a candle to hendrix, i'm sure.  silently i hoped to myself that my memory's headline wasn't skewed or exaggerated.  

it wasn't.  

and when i looked over at todd's face, transfixed on the magic happening a mere seven or eight feet away, the only person brought to mind was myself at his age...  there's nothing quite like being audience to a jam.  a spontaneous merging of magnanimous talent and the acoustic art that it creates.  

jam.  yum.  

my favorite way to spend a saturday night and put on a biscuit sunday morning. 

d:  savor the sweetness, jessica

b:  my shorthand review held up

g:  the musicians in my life