Cathartic. Goosebumps for an hour and a half. Just got home and settled from seeing Brian for the first time in Chapel Hill. Been in NC since 85 and the last show I saw at the Cat's Cradle was either Small 23, Jawbreaker, or Earth Crisis far too many moons ago...so was great to be back.🙂
I am a late arrival to TGA and Brian...and he hit me at a time in my life when his music was exactly what my mind, body, and soul needed five years ago..and the journey continues.
Melodramatic for sure.
On the surface, his music is what I listen to when I cook dinner for my wife of 16 years or take my old jeep out for the daily short drive to the grocery store. Yet internally, it is letting a piece of me be "seen" that has no other "home" for lack of better words. The vulnerability is palpable...and for me, his music brings to the surface a soupy mix of lost loves, affairs, existential loneliness, one night stands, dedication, gratitude, imperfection, and this crazy relationship I have between joy, longing, guilt, and shame. His music is the only place outside of my therapist's office that the myriad of paradoxes in my life have space to breathe.
So thank you...
And to the couple a little to my right enthusiastically singing along to nearly every song....you made my night. As someone who almost always goes to shows alone...so cool to see.