I know, I know, I know.
Guy discovers emotion and writes a Substack post about it. It’s not lost on me. But alas, I had to do it. Just in case there’s someone who needed to hear it, including my future self.
This is the kind of post that a previous me would have rolled my eyes at while secretly wishing to be a part of but not knowing how. So here you go, previous me.
I went to a concert recently.
You may know him from this song, which I recommend listening to as you read this. Seriously, listen to it. It’s a beautiful performance from a live concert at the Barbican, my favourite place in the world, and coincidentally somewhere that I am always deeply moved by.
I originally didn’t want to go. My wife insisted we get tickets (which I’m slowly learning is how a lot of my good experiences happen). It took place at this big old theatre, which certainly helped put me in a vibe-receiving mood.
My typical concert routine is to think about if the person behind me can see properly while holding an empty beer can wondering if people think my dancing is weird. For some reason this evening was different.
I shut off my mind for a moment and ~surrendered to the experience~.
The funny wonderful thing about it is that it actually worked.
Something new found its way through to me. I could feel the joy radiating off of the stage. The focus. The tension between someone being dead serious and not giving a fuck. By the time the opening song was over, something had changed for me.
All I could think was damn, how beautiful is this? What a gift to be experiencing this here, with all these people, in this place, at this moment. I felt like the luckiest person in the world (at this point in the post, I do feel an obligation to clarify that I was stone cold sober).
The show had no apparent through line, other than the one I’ve been seemingly missing my entire life: the raw experience of people coming together, to witness a fellow human make art in the realest sense of the word. To be there, fully, not in my head, and experience what was happening. Experience, that’s what it was.
The world in front of me was suddenly much less complicated.
Here’s the thing that’s so frustrating about life. It’s that everything I could ever want, everything I’ve ever dreamt of, it’s been there all along. It was right here, in front of me. Being sung, pedaled and pianoed over to me across the stage. All I had to do was simply be willing to accept it, and just for a moment.
So I went to a Patrick Watson concert and it changed my life.
Not just because it was life changing-ly good (it was). I’ve been to a hundred concerts and not one of them left me with the same feeling.
This might sound hilarious to someone more emotive than I, someone who is all in their feels, but I suspect there are also a lot of people out there like me. People who have also been to a hundred concerts but have never really been to a single one. People who have been on a thousand walks around the neighbourhood, but have never really seen it.
If I had to guess, the main thing that changed was that I noticed I had a choice. I could try to use my brain to live through the experience and rationalize it, to make sense of it all. But there was no hope in doing so. The situation would simply not allow it. You can’t just invite your friend up on stage to play some sort of psychedelic woodwind beat pedal fiasco as an attempt to “open up our hearts”, open your set with a full blast electronic + strobe light extravaganza, and then start singing a cappella in a tune that doesn’t even seem possible and expect me to be able to make sense of it.
So I just sat there and took it all in. No judgement. No brain. Just my ears, and I guess my heart?
Anyway. I did a thing. It made me feel quite deeply, and it showed me a glimpse of what might be possible if I could spend even 1% more time in my heart vs. my head.
Ok so since I originally wrote this, I became a father, which was a directionally similar experience but infinitely more intense and earth shattering. Almost to the point where this feels like a previous life, written by an entirely different person. Dedicated post on that (one day).
This absolutely slaps. And so beautifully written.
I'm grateful to see you publishing your writing again; the world is a better place when you're sharing your perspective into it.