pho·bi·a (noun) : a persistent, irrational fear of a specific object, activity, or situation that leads to a compelling desire to avoid it.
I am claustrophobic. Not in the “Ryan Reynolds-trapped-in-a-shallow-grave” sort of way. I don’t mind tight spots; in fact I quite like them. When I was a kid, I would make little hiding spaces all over the house and sit and read and imagine. The spaces were a womb of sorts – the tight-factor was part of the appeal. No, my claustrophobia happens in huge groups of people.
First of all, I generally believe that Friedrich Nietzsche, Albert Einstein, Oscar Wilde (and others) were absolutely correct about the stupidity of humankind. We embrace the herd mentality more often than not, and we are seemingly incapable of making decisions based on rationality rather than emotion. Because people tend to act either like passive sheep or stampeding cattle, they freak me out in when in large groups. When 10,000 people are all corralled into the same space, the chances of something going wrong rise exponentially. Usually nothing bad happens; I understand this. But understanding everything is probably okay doesn’t mean that I don’t cast a weary eye toward other people when I’m trapped with them in a place with only a few exit routes. It’s their sheer numbers that freaks me out. So many people all packed together is like jungle juice at a frat party – you never know what’s in that shit.
Case and point: concerts. I LOVE live music. There is no better judge of a band than whether or not they can pull off a live show. If the band is kind of shitty, but they have great studio producers, the audience is going to be disappointed within the first two songs. Some bands are consistent enough that they sound just like the cd you downloaded/bought, so you can sing along and have a good enough time. But truly great bands sound better live than they do on their albums. And how can you know if you don’t go to the concert to find out? (Sigh.) So I have to keep going to the concerts – I go hoping the music will counterbalance my dissonance with the horde of other people.
Crowds have a distinct personality. Some are more serious or excited or drunk than others, but they generally operate as one unit. The masters of massive crowd control were the Grateful Dead. Their crowds weren’t “ordinary”; the people were old, young, sober, drunk, high, tripping, dancing, sitting. Some were on stilts, some were twirling, many were losing contact with reality. But somehow the band brought all those people together with the music: “If you get confused, just listen to the music play.” (“Franklin’s Tower”)
My most recent enormous crowd was a Pearl Jam concert last weekend at Alpine Valley, which happens to be situated in the middle of fucking nowhere near a farm or two in Wisconsin. 40,000 people converging on the same place. We drove from Chicago, so it should have been about an hour and 15 minutes. Our driver got lost. More than once. (The claustrophobia started to pay attention in the back of my brain. Not having control of the situation is one of the symptoms, I suppose.) When we got there, we parked in a field. No venue in sight. There were a few people with orange jackets who looked like they might know what was going on, telling us where to park, so we followed directions. When we got out of the car, we had no idea where to go, so we just followed other people. For all we knew, there were leading us off a cliff, but people’s natural reaction is to assume other people know what they’re doing. Like when everyone is standing in line, other people just line up behind them. There might be another open door or another, faster way to get in or get what you want, but the natural inclination is to just bleat like a sheep and do what everyone else is doing.
So we walked. Did I mention that it was raining out? And that we were walking through a field? So … let’s just say there was a lot of mud, which is now permanently embedded in my Birkenstocks. For 40 minutes we walked: through the field, down a path or two, in the dark, with mist rising settled on the valley like a scene out of a movie. Eventually, the venue appeared and we went inside with the thousands of other people, many of whom had been there all day waiting (and drinking) in the rain. So what is the proper form for finding a place to watch a concert when it’s raining, dark, and foreign? Stumble around until you find a little space where you can see the stage (hard to do when it’s General Admission and the entire grassy knoll is two-inch thick mud) and wish you’d brought a sweatshirt or a poncho or a taser (for the annoying people around you, of course). And then, if your phobia is in charge, look around and see all the ways this could go terribly wrong. See how far away the exits are. Wonder if you could ever get back to the car if you were separated from your friends. Wonder if your driver will get lost on the way back to Chicago at 2am (she did). Try not to hyper yourself into a frenzy while you sip the $14 Beck’s in your hand.
But then the most magical thing happens: a guy walks on stage and changes everything just by opening his mouth. He starts to sing a song, and with the very first resonation of his voice, he has the attention of every single one of those 40,000 people. He puts a spell over everyone, and we are transfixed. I am fixed. Because now it’s just him and me in that enormous amphitheater. He sings songs and tells stories and brings out his friends and he doesn’t want to leave – he just keeps bringing the air out of his lungs and making the most beautiful sounds I’ve ever heard. He’s it. He’s the cure for my claustrophobia. I want to put him in a pill and swallow him, or shoot him into my veins with a syringe, or just climb inside his body and stay there. He can be my new hiding place, because it’s so safe there. He doesn’t leave anything behind; he gives it all to me, to us.
So Eddie, thank you … for being. You don’t do it alone, but your voice is the transport – it is the bridge which delivers us home.
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