“Memory is the
diary we all carry about with us.”
- Oscar Wilde
I’m trying to
channel all my memories from the past few weeks,
before they fade or settle. Some times in your life mean so much you are almost afraid to transcribe or translate them into words,
because there is a fear that your words can never be enough. However,
I have always loved writing these moments down because - in a sense
it preserves them - and I can relive whatever I’ve experienced. Lately, home
is too noisy for writing, so I’m trying to channel
unknown streets, flashes of eyes, laughter with friends, and whatever
comes to mind, on my laptop in a cafe – chasing the background noise of coffee
grinders and wilting variations of Silver Bells from my ears.
A challenge.
So, the question is,
can I transport myself back?
A few weeks ago,
almost two, to be almost precise (at the time of writing) I was
flying to DC. Waiting to board an overnight flight, TV news drones unavoidably on screens scattered throughout the boarding area. Stop
watching the news. Prince Harry is engaged – who cares? Updates on stock
market numbers or investments that sound very adult and foreign to
me... The word “cat” snatches my attention... someone in a town
not too far from me kidnapped and abused a cat. I might
cry. The cat is alive, and recovering. Now the despicable abusers
are ‘upset’ because people are sending them angry messages
online. The law is on the abusers’ side, apparently. Nothing makes
sense.
One, two, red-eye
flights blanketed in blackness later, I’m on my final layover
waiting for my third flight. Has it sunk in yet that I’m going to
see Morrissey in concert? It’s about 36 hours until he will appear on stage,
and the moment I first see his silhouette emerge from the darkness
– that quiff, his shoulders, the turn of his head – as he walks towards the
bright stage lights - it’s one of the most powerful,
soaring joys I know.
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| Photo by plainchant1974 on Instagram |
I’ve flown into
the wrong airport, Dulles ... a much further drive to my hotel as I’m
notoriously incapable when it comes to directions. My uber driver
asks what I’m travelling for - is it for work?
“Oh God no,” I reply.
I tell him it’s my first time here in DC... he asks why would I want to come to the US:
“Oh God no,” I reply.
I tell him it’s my first time here in DC... he asks why would I want to come to the US:
“Well you know
what I mean... with our, umm... situation down here...” he begins.
He’s feeling me out to see what I think about Predicament Trump.
Presidents come,
presidents go – and oh, look at the damage they do.
We touch on
politics... would I like to see the White House?
“Wasn’t there a
giant inflatable chicken placed outside it a few months ago?” I
ask.
I watch the
multi-coloured beaded cross hanging over his rear-view mirror dangle and jangle with jerks of his car; I haven’t slept in a while.
The uber driver
tells me stories of how he’s had to deal with a lot of shit at the
airport because of his ethnicity. Security makes him feel insecure, and simultaneously defiant, and the police often stop him and his brother in their tracks simply
due to the colour of their skin.
Who will protect us
from the police?
As we drive on, I
tell him that I’m in town to see Morrissey – but he's not familiar with his music. I tell him Moz has penned songs
that speak up about politics, the police, and the societal control and corruption that seems bent on keeping us locked silently in our place. Do you ever say what you really feel? He says he’ll check out his music.
My hotel in DC is on the
water, with a view of white boats glistening in the sun’s high noon
rays. It’s gorgeous, but I pull the black-out drapes shut, and pass
out on the bed.
It’s 4 a.m. and
once again, my friend and I awake to line up. The sky is still a
canopy of velvet and all is silent except for the lapping of
water against boats and the scurry of a plump little rat across weathered wooden planks. The yellow-jacketed security people around the venue are pretty nice and are interested in where we
are all from: UK, US, Canada, Germany, Belgium, Japan, just to start. Moz fans of the world unite
and take over.
There’s more
excitement in the queue as later in the morning, Morrissey’s new
video for Jacky’s Only Happy When She’s Up On Stage
debuts. Huddled in sleeping
bags and winter coats, we have an impromptu viewing party on our mobiles. In the video, Moz is
wearing the suit from Hollywood Bowl, the one with a little butterfly stitched on
the sleeve, and swings his hips to the music. The band dons satiny
baby-blue leisure wear and sways with Four-Tops
dance moves, their faces amusingly expressionless. I
wonder if the lyrics are somewhat autobiographical, as Morrissey has said before that being on stage is “the only time in my life I feel
right. I’m not sure if I even exist off-stage.”
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| Jacky viewing party |
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| Jacky's Only Happy When She's Up On Stage |
Two hours til doors and we are showered, shivering, dressed, and waiting outside the venue, The Anthem. I’m at the front of the line and people keep asking me what time I arrived – when I say four, they assume four p.m. – “No, a.m.,” I correct. They think I’m a little crazy, and I like to think I am too. I know it's all worth it; I live for this. The clock ticks down towards 7 p.m. Reflecting back, I don’t even remember doors, as adrenaline takes over, and somehow I am wristbanded, scanned, stamped, or whatever else happens... and my legs instinctively find their way to the front... and next thing I know my arms are wrapped over the metal barrier in front of the stage.
The
pre-show videos this time around feature everything from cat-eye lined R&B goddess Dionne Warwick to bell-bottomed nimble limbed 70’s
dancers, to teenage Russian duo Tatu
singing How Soon Is Now wearing Hit-Me-Baby-One-More-Time schoolgirl garb.
A man behind me comments that Tatu sounds like the chipmunks but I
not-so-secretly enjoy them. The towering screen is close enough to my eyes that it
looks distorted, wavering and wobbly... I can feel the excitement
pulsing through my chest, ears, veins.
In a rush of
crumpled silver, the stage curtain is ripped down and the floor
rumbles... I see a beam, the flashlight - that little white circle enveloped in misty dusky darkness
- and Moz walks to the front of the stage. He’s
wearing a midnight blue jacket embroidered with gold, and a white
shirt underneath. For a moment, my friend standing beside me thinks he’s wearing a
tux... “Oooh is it a tux?” I completely
understand her excitement: her thing is tuxes, mine is cardigans. Boz, Mando, Jesse, Gustavo, and Matt are wearing
blue jeans splattered with white paint and black Animal Rights Militia t-shirts and they jump into swoony Elvis number You’ll
Be Gone.
Incense
is in the air.
The
show opens with high energy songs like
the Smiths I Started Something I Couldn’t Finish,
and the edgy bursts of I Wish You Lonely:
heroin,
heroin, heroin, heroin, heroin. Lonely feels both bitter and
empathetic; I can’t explain how, so
I won’t even try to. The
catharsis is incredible. Morrissey is my therapy.
Seeing Jacky
for the first time since the release of the video feels especially thrilling. As Moz
sings, rosaries and chains on his belt loops sway and swing. I
can’t stop thinking of the lyric, “free in the truth of make
believe.”
Tonight
I am treated to hearing two songs, back to back, that I’ve never seen
live before: Who Will Protect Us From The Police? and
Munich Air Disaster 1958. I’m
transported into the mind of someone running from the ever-present
invasive rampage of police brutality, and then I’m
a mourner of those lost on flight 609’s plane crash, all
those years ago. Art draws you into another
time, place, or into someone else's mind. How else can we understand the
world on a level greater than our own experience of it? Tempos, lyrics, notes create something otherworldly - yet I've never felt so present. So often in my life I'm unable to stay in the moment - anxiety, overwrought overthinking, - but right now, looking up at the stage, I'm here - cue lights: completely, utterly, entirely
Strobe
lights dazzle in time with guitars – microphone cord whips, and How
Soon Is Now? At one point,
Morrissey, kneels down at our side of the stage with his head in his
hands. He’s so close to us, as the guitar notes rumble through my chest, then sprawl up to the ceiling. A photo would be beautiful, but
the emotion feels too strong, and I can’t remove myself from living this moment in the flesh, in the present, to fiddle with a smart phone.
I
would love to give him a hug, or thank him for helping me.
I
lean on the rail and think of how, over the past few years, I’ve turned to his
words and his music - like an old friend.
At
one point a guy tries to jump
over the barrier, and security denies him. His thick black-framed glasses go
flying, leaping and landing onto the stage, while he does not. Morrissey kindly bends down to pick them up and hand them back to him. Later on, someone
else in the pit
passes a vinyl copy of Irish
Blood, English Heart up to Moz
with a sharpie. He signs it, and it seems like he’s writing more than his signature in his distinctive large loopy writing. I can just barely hear the squeal of the pen, all the way from the other side of the stage.
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| Photo by plainchant1974 on Instagram |
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| "Yahoo!" |
The
concert finishes with Shoplifters of The World Unite And Take
Over, and the lyric shift to
“Trumpshifters” feels particularly fitting here, in the United States Capital. At the end of the song, Moz tears the white
shirt from his torso, and flings it into the centre of the crowd. The audience members pounce on it like a cat on a coveted ball of yarn.
I
already miss him as he walks off stage.
But
-
Tomorrow,
it’s on to New York City.
All photos by me unless otherwise specified.
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