The fans, the people, understand what so many journalists do not
I
don’t think stories necessarily have to go in order to make sense.
Our minds aren’t really like that: they move from the comfortable
mundanity of the current moment’s cup of coffee, to a childhood
recollection of walking to school, to the gravity of a tearful memory
of saying goodbye, almost simultaneously, in seconds. The older I
get, in fact, the worse this phenomenon gets; I’m perhaps more now
a decaying library of memories than anything else, and at times it
makes me feel as if the pages of my mind may collapse, dust to dust.
So,
I want to start after the beginning, and return to the middle
of Morrissey’s US tour. I’m in DC, walking along the wharf, and
late November sun breathes cool fire and its pale gold rays dance on
the water. In 2017, I attended a Morrissey gig at the
neighbourhood’s new venue, The Anthem, and today I walk past
that same venue, having already received news that this year’s gig
won’t be happening. I feel sadness, but I’m trying to put things
in perspective, as this year, I’ve already experienced over 20
beautiful gigs. As long as everything is okay, I’m okay.
The
Wharf’s docks creak lightly and there’s a slight breeze, but this
gentle ambience is invaded by tinny Christmas music, piped in through
invisible speakers from who-knows-where, jarring my ears with Do
they know it’s Christmas?, an Elton John and Ed Sheeran
duet, and other auditory assaults. I don’t like the
holidays. At all. And tour is distracting me from this – and
again, in yet another way, in my own strange way, I am grateful to
Morrissey. And birds.
 |
| DC Bird |
If
I can’t see Morrissey today, I decide I will birdwatch, and I meet
many new friends. Mallards slice through the water in pairs,
murmuring ducky sounds to one another, and tiny songbirds flutter in
and out of gaudy Christmas decor, including a tree made entirely from
Jack Daniel’s barrels. They perch and pose, completely
synchronized, for a photo, before flickering away. Clumsy gulls
totter about comically in pursuit of chips and other handouts, and a
row of silent black cormorants sun themselves below the docks, some
with wings spread like great Dracula capes. I sit for a moment and a
little songbird lands so close, almost on my knee; I wish I had
seeds. For once in my life, I don’t feel entirely pessimistic.
Something tells me I will see Morrissey in Brooklyn in two nights’
time.
The
venue in Brooklyn, King’s Theatre, is exquisite: baroque, gilded,
ornate, with little New-York finishing touches of art deco amongst
the lobby’s lighting fixtures. The theatre ceiling is perhaps its
centrepiece: it reminds me of a gorgeous intricate brooch, somewhat
petallike, pregnant with more brooches nestled within. I’m 2nd
row tonight, which is a rarity for me, as I prefer first, but tickets
were not exactly easy to get, and I am happy to have a wonderful line
of sight to the stage and be standing near friends. Inside, I
reconnect with some friends I haven’t seen yet this tour, and also
introduce myself to footballer Bernie Slaven, who I recognize from
Twitter as also being a big Morrissey fan.
“I lost my
voice... in San Francisco...” Morrissey
sings, and we are reunited with our dearest love. Thunderous
cheers soar, oh yes – he is back, and the band, a
powerhouse of vitality: Jesse Tobias, Gustavo Manzur, Alain Whyte,
Juan Galeano, and Brendan Buckley,
kicks in to an invigorating
rendition of We
Hate It When Our Friends Become Successful. Morrissey is
a good looking man about Brooklyn, wearing a tour tee featuring James Dean, a navy blue suit jacket, dark blue jeans, and super cool
yellow and black loafers. On his jacket, he wears 3 pins: two
that a friend of mine gave him, and
the little owl I gave him
with my letter in Las
Vegas. It is such an honour
and means the world: my heart
is so happy, and it feels like I’m in the best dream ever.
 |
| Morrissey in Brooklyn |
My
aching 40-something year old
body is now light and
supple with energy and I
bounce to the music, as Morrissey enthralls us with an energetic
setlist, including Smiths number Stop Me If You Think That
You’ve Heard This One Before, and
Kill Uncle’s Our Frank.
He moves in time with the music, whipping the microphone cord, a
little
catlike. We sing along joyously, and in these moments, I do stop
thinking, so deeply, so bleakly, because I’m with my favourite
artist and my friends. I'm entranced, and awash with familiar unfamiliar happiness.
“A miracle has
taken place. As you know, we actually have a new song circulating
around the world... and there it will stay no doubt. And here it
is.”
The
guitar-driven jangle of Rebels Without Applause dances
in our ears. I think of excited messages from my UK tour friends
when it was released the previous week as a single, and how we all
raced over
to iTunes to nab it, or Spotify to stream it. A perfect single, it’s
a blend of buoyant musicality and wistful lyrics about times gone
by, and the audience
sings
along while David Bowie and David Johanson look down from the
backdrop, in all their pattern-laden,
decadent 70’s splendour.
“Bawdy boys of song and girls all gone wrong – I loved
them all.”
“I find that
when I’m depressed, I tend to read a lot more. So, as you can
gather, I am very well-read. Laughter? Laughter,” and
the dark percussive wall of Jim Jim Falls
pulses like hammering
thunder, as a well coiffed Ezra
Pound looks forth from the backdrop.
The lyrics juxtapose between blackness – jump-then-jump, and
lightness– sing-then-sing, and one can imagine themselves standing
at the precipice of the falls. From my own
experience, the suicidal mind
is so often
at battle, drawn to the edge, searching for an end and a means to
that
end, fighting itself and whatever life-drive that
pushes back. I think this song is powerful because it speaks to that ambivalence, and the hope, or life-drive here is music.
You Are The
Quarry’s dreamy
My Life Is An Endless Succession of People Saying Goodbye
draws captive awe
from the audience, and rightly so. Succession
seems to dance on the
edges of the otherworldly, as
Morrissey’s voice scales with haunting beauty over the
notes, reflecting on loss after loss, and the
passing of time. Lights
wash gently over the stage and the crowd, almost imparting a surreal
sense of being underwater. Everything desirable is behind glass,
untouchable, unreachable:
“money, jewellery, and flesh,” and
the line “at one time the future, it stretched out before
me, and now it stretches behind” brings
tears to my eyes. “And what’s left for me?” This
is a rarity live, and I feel incredibly fortunate to be here to
witness it.
“Good times for
a change...” Morrissey stands
alone under a spotlight, which dances in silvers and whites like the
moon. He
looks angelic, luminous
against the darkness as he
sings “Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want”
salving and saving our souls. His voice is gentle yet expresses
such depth of emotion, and the guitars weave ethereally, framing his
phrases. My heart hurts with love and one thing I find very special
about Morrissey gigs is how, especially during slower songs like
this, I feel like it’s just him and me, even though I’m
surrounded by thousands. There
is a dreamlike quality, and I become lost in the blueness of his
eyes. Some fans jump up for
a hug towards the end of the song, and during the refrain, Morrissey
adds
“this is life, this is it! This is it! This is life!,”
his eyes widening. This
is life...
 |
|
When
Morrissey runs backstage, the crowd screams and cheers in
anticipation of the encore, begging him to come back: “we luffs
you,” and he returns in a dark blue button
up shirt. The pit is rumbling, jumping
to Sweet and Tender Hooligan,
and fans try to leap
on stage or reach for handshakes. Morrissey is an artist of the
people, and we love him for it. He tears his shirt off and
flings it into the crowd, in our direction, and in a chaos of people,
I reach into the fight, and feel my hand wrap around some of the
dark blue, incense-fragranced fabric. As if by magic, with
almost no effort, a long, thin piece tears off into my hand. A thrill shocks me and I hide the damp fabric up my
sleeve. At least 3 more of
my friends make it out with a piece. Amazing.
...
And...
we do it all again the next night in New Jersey. It’s a blur, and
the most wonderful blur I could have envisioned.
In
New Jersey, Morrissey opens the show with the coolest version of How
Soon Is Now ever. The guitars burst forth aggressively with a wall of robust passion, capturing the defiance of the song. Tonight,
Morrissey wears a dark jacket, dark blue jeans, a tour tee cut DIY to
expose his handsome neck, and those fabulous yellow shoes again. He
even has yellow bandages on his fingers that match the shoes –
oh-em-gee: I adore his attention to detail! He thrashes about the
stage, bending at the knee, twisting his hips, swatting the
microphone cord around. I am immediately drawn into his world, and
he changes up the lyrics to How Soon Is Now. I live for
little changes like these at gigs: they add to the excitement and
make the night feel extra special. In this rendition, Moz sings he is
“the scum and heir” Hail Mary full of grace, pays tribute
to New Jersey-born Sinatra’s The Lady is a Tramp, puttin’
on the ritz, with copious “shut your mouth”’s, and
finishes the number with how happy he is “to be an animal”
- the lyrics have been almost completely revised! NJ's How Soon is Now is clever, avant garde, and quite addictive (yes, I'm still humming it this way now) - it's Freestyle
Mozzer – and he’s entirely mesmerizing!
“This is art!
This, this this, is art!” he
exclaims. The crimson walls
and boxes of the New Jersey Performing Arts Centre continue to heat
up with a blistering rendition of First of The Gang to Die.
“You have never been in love...” Morrissey slinks the stage like a feisty
alley cat, gifting us with voice and song. The
sparkling
bracelet on his wrist catches
glimmers
of light as he moves,
his silver quiff impeccable,
and his dark eyebrows expressive.
Below, we
bounce
and dance in the pit - the pretty petty pit thieves - and everyday
mundaneness has melted away, at
least for tonight.
He
jokes with the audience in moments between songs: “Now,
if you don’t like this next song, I’m afraid I’ll have to poke
your eyes out” before
Gustavo’s trumpet leads
into The Bullfighter Dies,
while video
clips of bullfighters being gored appear on the backdrop. It is hard to believe
such a barbaric ‘sport’ still exists, and again Morrissey gives
voice and thought to animals, who have no voice of their own, as
humans continue to exploit them in unthinkable ways.
This is another reason I love
Morrissey, for his devotion to animals.
At
his concerts, there is often a Peta information
table set up in the lobby,
and volunteers hand out flyers about veganism. It is my belief that
only through saving animals, will we ever
be able to save ourselves.
It
is the purest sign of compassion, and it is clear that the horrific
ways
humans treat animals is
now destroying
the planet we share with them.
Sure Enough, The
Telephone Rings is yet another
stellar track from Bonfire of Teenagers,
and I’m smitten with its
hard rock driving guitar sound and punchy, cynical lyrics. “Please
be fair, you must tell the little kids they live in hell now...” is
pure Mozzer dark humour, reminiscent
of the children’s choir in The Youngest Was The Most
Loved. It’s undeniably
a testament to how strong and loved these new songs are to see and
hear the audience singing along, word
for word, and it feels criminal
that such a great record has
not yet
been released, or is under
the hold of censorship (at
the time of writing).
Little
details burrow their way into my memory. On introducing the band,
Morrissey refers to them as “The Banana Splits,” which sounds
terribly funny to me in the moment, and becomes even funnier
when I learn it is a reference to a late 60’s/early 70’s
children’s show that
features a band dressed up in
animal costumes: a dog with a lisp, Fleegle, an ape named Bingo, a
lion called Drooper, and an elephant, Snorky. I
wonder who is who. In one
moment during the concert,
the little girl beside me, who is attending with her father, hands
Morrissey a present, and he carries it across the stage while
singing. Her face beams with joy. In
another moment, during Everyday is Like Sunday, Morrissey’s
tambourine seems to spontaneously disintegrate in his hand, bits and
pieces falling to the stage floor. He looks at it quizzically, and
flings it over his shoulder. Clearly, Moz is too hot for the
tambourine to handle.
 |
| No tambourine malfunction in Brooklyn |
The
encore is full of “I love you’s,” and many fans rush the stage
for a chance
to hug Morrissey. A friend of mine makes
a particularly elegant invasion,
and hugs him gently, with adoration. The little girl, with
help from her father, also
makes it on stage for a hug, and I’m sure she
will cherish this moment for the rest of her life.
Morrissey is an artist of the people.
...
The
next morning, the train heaves on to Philly, and I gaze out the
window at brick buildings, graffiti, and barren winter trees rushing
past. I am happiest like this, travelling from gig to gig, city to
city, and it feels like home to me, to the strange girl who has
always lived on the same island her entire life. Stifling suburbia
never really understood me, and I never really understood it, so it
wasn’t until my 30’s I really found anything that spoke to me. I
also understand how lucky I am to have found this, and I in
fact become homesick for
tour, whilst at home. I know
tonight I want to work on a letter for Morrissey, and I hope I can
find the words to express how much this year has meant to me.
I
have rented a little apartment near the venue, and I like walking
down the chilly December streets of Philly as the late afternoon sun
retreats. I never, ever want to go home, but yes, the reality that
tour will be ending soon is indeed with me, and brings pangs and
pecks of sorrow to bemark my joy. Everything looks quite beautiful,
even the cracked bits of pavement, and when I get like this life
feels like a poem, and the sensory takes new meaning. That night I
sit at the small desk in the apartment, and write my letter to
Morrissey.
Who
put the M in the Met? The theatre marquee is alight, and inside us
regulars gather at the stage, taking in our surroundings. The lower
balconies boast gilded “M’s” and from the heights of the
ceiling, a massive, sparkling chandelier hangs. One venue security
guard informs me the chandelier weighs 2 tonnes, and to my eyes, it
looks like a beautiful exploding star, frozen in time. I’m
clutching my drink while familiar pre-show music teases my ears, when
a fan I don’t recognize shows up and squeezes in beside me to claim
her front row spot. She tells me it is her first ever Morrissey
show, and apologizes in advance if she screams too much. I reassure
her I am very used to screamers.
 |
| The MET Philadelphia |
The
New York Dolls blaze onto the screen, and Lypsinka indicates that Morrissey
will soon take the stage. My heart rises to my throat, pounding.
Every time feels like the first time, and every time induces emotions
I can never quite describe; a nervous excitement bites my fingertips,
and there is a complete absence of weight in my body as it’s
overcome with bliss.
Screams,
cheers, claps, and luff greet Morrissey as he takes the Met stage.
It’s entirely exhilarating, that first glimpse. He bows to
us, and says, “I dare you, I dare you, I dare you, I dare you”
and the band takes off with Your Arsenal’s We Hate It When Our
Friends Become Successful. It’s incredible how a 30-year old
song sounds so fresh, but it truly does, speaking to the timelessness
of his music, his own agelessness, and the vivacious, tight band
he has behind him. On guitars, Alain is bold with rockabilly energy,
and Jesse exudes infinite coolness, and together they make a gifted
team of players. The rhythm section is spirited fire and precision,
with Juan Galeano on bass, and Brendan Buckley on drums, and
mutli-talented Gustavo Manzur is brilliant on keyboards, acoustic
guitar, and trumpet – and he even plays the harmonica.
“I
come to see you!” Morrissey, says, pointing at the audience,
and I think of how he holds our hands, accepts our letters, and
actually interacts with us on a human level and what it means to us:
quite simply – it means the world. When Morrissey sings I Am
Veronica tonight, I am reminded of its debut in Phoenix back in
May, watching him with friends who had travelled from afar: the UK, Belgium, beyond...
Hearing the live debut of a song is beyond breathtaking, and I feel
blessed to have witnessed so many live debuts this year. In
Philadelphia, Morrissey stands before a backdrop of noir film icon
Veronica Lake, and he sways with the
music, his voice phrasing each note enigmatically. It’s
hypnotizing to watch him: the rosary swinging against his chest
catches snippets of light, and he is almost playful when he sings,
“dolphins swim to rescue you, schools of fish will
keep your throat afloat, owls bow their learned brow, so slide me
into your pocket now...”
“I think we’re
all completely well aware now that idiot culture has taken over the
world... Idiot culture has taken over politics, sports, and I’d say
music, but there is no music industry, there is no music scene now.
May it rest in peace, it’s gone, it’s gone. But, if you feel
crushed by idiot culture on television commercials... on television
commercials, if you feel crushed by idiot culture, please remember,
in your aloneness, you are not alone. You are not alone. And one day,
maybe in about 1000 years, common sense will return.”
Welcome to this
Knockabout World
As
the lights fall, I stand in transfixed awe, as the opening notes of I
Live in Oblivion fill the
theatre. A
gentle darkness of notes
envelops
me, and Morrissey’s voice sings, with beautiful sorrow: “I
apologize I grew old, I apologize I grew tired.”
I’m torn between wanting to film part of the song, and wanting to
be entirely present, but I feel I need to capture it to
take with me, and hold my
phone down quite low so I can still absorb
the stage with my eyes. It’s the first time, I believe, that
Morrissey has sung I
Live in Oblivion since his Las
Vegas residency in the summer. Oblivion is
incomparable to any song
I have ever heard, and to channel such heartbreak
and
human vulnerability
into art, standing upon
the stage, is a complete act of bravery. Part of me wants to embrace
Morrissey, somehow console him, and another part of me is with those
I have lost after a slow decline.
For life at its end can be inconceivably cruel, and this is rarely
spoken about: the last days in a hospice or care home, as
the spark fades.
During
the refrain, Morrissey
sings “open wide,
there’s a good boy... down the hatch... there’s a good boy,”
a piercingly poignant
observation of how the old
and dying are inexplicably
treated like children, their
dignity shuffled away.
The woman beside me, the new fan,
is so moved she is sobbing; I
have no idea how to console her, or
what to say. Her
response speaks to the power of Morrissey’s music and lyrics:
I Live in Oblivion is
so intense and so painfully
bleak, it’s almost
frightening because it addresses
these feelings, these final moments, in a very
raw way,
without the
shroud of
toxic positivity imposed on
us by society, or
popular psychology. Rather, he
allows us to feel and
express, as
this terrible
suffering
is channeled into
a
beautiful, rare
work of art.
Morrissey
rattles a pair of turquoise maracas and Juan dazzles
on upright bass for rockabilly beaut The Loop. The
intro gets the crowd jumping and clapping with
delightfully raucous ecstasy. “I just wanna say, I
haven’t been away... I am still right here, where I always was...”
Morrissey croons alluringly, and swishes
his hips to the beat, left to right, and he’s a vision of rhythm,
wearing wide-legged trousers with his shirt open at the chest,
maracas flung defiantly
high in the air, a few
droplets of sweat on his handsome neck.
I’m completely heart-eyes! The Loop is
an invigorating and
intoxicating
tune, and one can’t help but want to dance, even within the crowded
confines of the pit.
 |
| The Loop in Boston |
...
I
have an early morning flight
to Boston with a friend, and maybe snag
4 hours sleep. On the plane, we are a mix of excited giggles, and
anticipatory sadness, as tonight will be the last show of the tour.
Forget airplane turbulence, because
we’re
an erratic storm of emotion. Forever teenagers. I’m quite sure the man in the seat
beside us thinks we are insane, which is probably fairly
accurate. In Boston, we stay
at a hotel called the Verb, which features rock memorabilia on the
walls, Marshall amp fridges, and fuzzy
zebra print bathrobes, and I
snap photos of Lou Reed’s and Kurt Cobain’s autographs. The
rooms even have their own record players, and downstairs in the lobby
there is a small vinyl collection to choose from. Alas, I find no
Smiths or Morrissey, but snatch up Amy Winehouse’s Back
to Black and Lou Reed’s
Transformer, which I
realize, back in my room,
is not in the correct
sleeve, and in its place is the
Saturday Night Fever Soundtrack. Sigh.
I
take one last walk to the
venue in the biting
Boston air. There’s a slight iridescence to everything; perhaps
because it is cold, or perhaps it is something about the street
lights. Lining up, I see
familiar faces, and meet another fan who is just 18 and beaming with
excited energy. We’re mutuals on Instagram and she has a
spectacular collection of Morrissey posters, tees, and records. It’s
not unusual to see a wide range of ages at a Morrissey concert: not
only the expected Gen-xer’s and older millennials, but also
children
with their parents, teenagers and
college kids, and fans well
into their 60’s. His music
is ageless and timeless, and he is always creating, so his appeal is
not limited to a certain age group.
We
file into the theatre, afluster
and aflutter, and I feel like a schoolgirl as I hop down row by row
to get to the front of the stage. When I arrive at front row, I’m
asked to show my ticket again, fumbling,
I find it, and as I walk down
the long
line of chairs,
I eye the seat
numbers
til I see mine,
stop, and then turn to face the stage: Morrissey’s microphone stand
is almost directly in front of me – centre stage. I knew the
ticket was good... but it’s an altogether different feeling when
you are there, in person, and
you suddenly realize that in
a couple of hours, Morrissey will be standing at that microphone, singing right in front of you. I
grip my double vodka and cranberry, and swirl my straw, a security
blanket to lightly numb my nerves, anything to fiddle with so I don’t
dissolve into
a mess of tears.
I
could try to describe the venue, the other fans, the pre-show videos,
how the band walked on stage, but I’m not sure that would be true
to my own experience of the concert that night, which can
only be described as intense.
In a strange emotional mix, I wasn’t only excited, I also felt a
sense of dread for the show starting, which may
sound odd, but I knew as soon
as it started, the clock would begin ticking down, and then
tour would be over. When
would I see him again? I
wasn’t ready for it to end, and as I looked up at Morrissey, with
the first notes of Alma Matters
rising through the theatre, I started crying.
 |
| Alma Matters in Boston |
Can
you please stop time? I’m not ready to return to “normal life,”
whatever that is, where I feel unseen and unheard and out of place
and weird and lonely.
He stands in front of me, flicking the mic cord with his own unique elegance ...
“so the choice I have made, may seem strange to you...”
we’re all singing along –
outstretched arms, and he sings back to us. Massachusetts-born poet
Anne Sexton surveys us from the backdrop, reclining with an
ashy cigarette between her
fingers,
her dress swirling late 60’s fashion, her eyes knowing-ful,
almost
looking somewhere beyond.
Morrissey introduced me
to her poetry; his
influences, particularly writers, have made a major impact on my life
as well, and everything is a piece I cling to, partly
out of fascination, and partly as I
untangle more elements of my true self. “Anne is with
us! Anne is with us,” he adds
at the end of Alma.
Morrissey wears a dark jacket with a “Defend Truth” badge, a dark
shirt, and dark blue wide-legged jeans. The stage lights frame
him, almost like a halo, from where I stand. I try to snap a few
photos, but I’m overwhelmed and doubt they will turn out: I am
shaky, and trying to absorb the moment as completely as possible,
feeling the intermittent dampness of tears on my cheeks. Yet
meanwhile, a distant film is playing in the back of my head: from my
first glimpse of Morrissey back in May after a long winter, to the
intensity of Bonfire of Teenagers’ and I Live in
Oblivion’s debuts in Las Vegas, to driving through the
UK on a winding road trip with friends in the fall. Every moment I’ve lived
and loved this year comes flooding back: each handshake, each flight
leg, train, and mile crossed, and it feels surreal. I beg inwardly
again to some invisible spirit: can you please stop time? But the
songs slip through my fingers, note by note, and the minutes ticking
down seem faster than usual.
Our
Frank – Morrissey deftly
catches a cigarette thrown mid-air from an audience member. Early
on in the gig, the setlist
journeys between a lot of older solo and Smiths songs, like
Girlfriend in a Coma
and We Hate It When Our Friends Become Successful
to his most recent work from I Am Not a Dog on a Chain
and Bonfire of Teenagers, like
Knockabout World and
Sure Enough, The Telephone Rings.
Fans pass him handwritten
letters, and he walks to the
far edges of the stage to an outpouring of outstretched arms,
grasping uncountable hands.
He truly is an artist of the
people.
“You
were made to be prayed to, for you are a Saint in a stained glass
window...” Morrissey sings the
latest-revealed
track
from Bonfire of Teenagers,
bathed under blue light, as
jewel-toned
stained glass window imagery
covers
the backdrop, reflecting in lacy
mosaics on the stage floor. His voice opens with
soft thoughtfulness, while
weeping
slide guitar and faint percussion gently frame his phrases. “You
weren’t corrupted, you tell the truth and you face being
butchered,” his voice slowly
rises with intensity, “I’ve had such a hard time, I’ve
been waiting my turn, since the wretched day I was born”
and sorrow swells palpably,
like a wave. Saint
captures the anguish of a
person who can’t be bought and is true to themselves in a world
that punishes these qualities and attacks the outsider, the
independent thinker, the one who speaks up. The
lyrics ache
with loneliness: “you’ll never find my trace on lover’s
lips.” It feels
deeply personal: a struggle between the exhaustion of living one’s
truth, the self, and trying
to somehow find solace in religion during
one’s darkest moments. The
tired
soul searches, in some breaths with desperation, and in others,
resignation, for rest
or relief, or an end to suffering. Emotion,
both in Morrissey’s voice and the music, builds throughout the
song, and as he sings “give me rest, give me rest, give
me rest...” it is completely
wounding,
and again I wish I could hug
him, or make this
spirit crushing world somehow be okay.
An immediate masterpiece,
Saint in a Stained Glass Window is
one of the most beautiful, soul-wrenching
songs I have ever heard.
Lights burst into volcanic reds and fog swells into the air, as
Jack The Ripper’s opening notes soar to the sky. Morrissey
contorts, pulling his jacket over his head, and we are transported to
Ripper’s knife-plunging London alleys, perilously
dark. “Crash into my arms...” we sing back to
Morrissey, our arms outstretched as he moves towards us, drawing us
in. "Come to me..." It is spellbinding. But oh, my head, I know this is likely the
last song before the encore... can you please stop time? I feel
tears building again, but suddenly a shorter woman appears behind me
and drapes her arms around me, and I can’t help but find this
development a tad amusing. She embraces me for the latter half of
the song. It feels like the entire pit is swaying, seasick yet still
docked, a rapture of energy emerging from a sea of people.
“We
would like to thank our beloved crew for this tour. I would like to
thank you for allowing me to sing, it saved my life, and I’m
grateful, I’m very grateful, but I’m saying goodbye to you now,
and I might not see you for a long time, but thank you for
everything, and thank you for everything you’ve done for me, which
is enormous. I’m very grateful. I wish you never lonely, never
lonely, shalom.”
I
feel I’ve dropped 100 feet into the floor. Will it be a long time?
My head and heart can’t process the words, and Sweet and
Tender Hooligan’s notes are
already pulsating through the venue. “I need to hold his hand once more...” I try to prop myself up on the barrier, and curse my
lack of upper body strength “I could almost jump on stage for a
hug?” The pit of my stomach tightens with anxiety and longing and I attempt to balance myself upwards again, and out of my
peripheral vision I know venue security is between me and the
barrier, and that other fans
are trying too. I need more
time and more strength – can you please stop time? It
is almost like gasping or
grasping for oxygen.
Morrissey sings, walking to the other side of the stage, then he is
back in centre. The song is short: I know time
is drawing in. The metal
barrier crushes into my ribs as I attempt
to lean
forward, for
one last shot at a handshake. I try to reach up, and then the venue
security guard pulls my arm down and my heart sinks. Not tonight, my
love. The end of the song is a blur: tears
and limbs. And then, as
quickly as he appeared in front of me, Morrissey
turns towards backstage, his cheekbone catching
a glint of light, and he disappears into the chilled Boston night.
 |
| <3 |
