My coworkers made copies and typed up lengthy reports to make rent payments on time and feed their families. I made minimum wage and was lucky that I didn't have to worry about paying bills and buying groceries. I scanned and filed documents until I had paper cuts on my fingers; I was working for concert tickets.
Whenever I thought of concerts all I imagined was singers sweating under the spotlights, the vibrations from the amps, and singing along until voices were lost from screaming for just one last song. I wanted to experience that, I wanted to sing until my throat ached and throbbed. I saw Fall Out Boy, 21 Pilots, and Panic! At the Disco at the first concert I ever went to. I was surrounded by friends and strangers, we were all united by the lyrics we had sung in our cars and showers. I felt an energy in the air everyone was counting down checking watches until the concert started. Short girls were standing on their tippy toes to see over tall boys with Mohawks and skinny jeans, signs were held proudly, and we all kept our gaze on the stage, where we knew that memories would be made and the songs we could recite in our sleep would be louder than ever and at the end of the night we would wake up our families stumbling in at the early hours of the morning.
The smell of sweat was thick in the air as teenagers and twenty-something’s thrashed and danced to the music. Patrick Stump, the lead singer of Fall Out Boy was short but he stood up straight, he encouraged us, the fans, to follow our dreams and never stop believing. He had the voice of a pop punk God and Pete Wentz the bassist was in his thirties but kept his emo hair black and straightened. It was a dream come true. “Sugar we’re going down swinging” was sung in sync and “This Ain’t A Scene It’s A Godd*mn Arms Race” was chanted as we shook our fists. The band continued to play older hits and newer hits from their new album Save Rock and Roll.
I spent the whole week at school tired and falling asleep in classes; I felt like I was waking up at the concert, I was alive.
Twenty One Pilots was opening and most people didn’t sing along, but I belted out the words to their song “Holding Onto You”; “lean with it rock, with it, when we gonna stop with it? Lyrics that mean nothing, we were gifted with thought, now its time to move our feet to an introspective beat, it ain’t the speakers that bump hearts, it’s our hearts that make the beat.” By the end of the night I had completely lost my voice, along with most of my friends. We stopped at the closest McDonald’s and ate ice cream to sooth our throats. When I got home that night I did not sleep, I laid in my bed and listened to the music I had hear hours before.
I decided I was going to go to work on Monday and start saving for the Macklemore and Ryan Lewis concert at the Palace. With a sore throat I fell into a deep, exhausted sleep.