magic. My own personal total eclipse or super-ginormous moon or Halley’s Comet. One of those blink-and-you’ll-miss-it, once-in-a-lifetime, home-before-the-stroke-of-midnight kinds of magic.
It was so very special to me and to everyone in attendance that I can’t tell you about it. I know what you’re thinking. What the actual fuck, isn’t this a review? Well, yes. I realize that’s, in general, how I roll.
But here is why I can’t share: it’s not mine to tell. Luke Greenly (yes, that Luke Greenly) didn’t mean to release his hit song. He didn’t want to share it with the world. It slipped out of his hands and tumbled onto the world’s stage without his permission. There was no intention behind it. Even last night, when he performed for a giant crowd, it wasn’t for his benefit. It was for, well, mine, actually.
I know. Get fucked, Vada. Right?
I know, I know. Believe me.
*ahem* Anyway, what am I doing here? I’m painting a picture, folks. I can’t tell you about the music—which was brilliant, by the way—but I can tell you what that music did to those listening.
After all, that’s what we really care about when it comes down to it, isn’t it? We care about what we felt. We want to be moved and changed and knocked over and pieced back together. We want to swoon and taste and cry and scream to the sky, Yes, this. We want ninety-minute relationships encompassing a lifetime of feels. We want the fantasy, the reality, the immorality, the salvation … we want to be seen.
Well, friends, I was all those things and more. And more.
Oh. And remember a few months ago when I went apoplectic over (Not) Warren?
Psh. Greenly was better. My eyes were basically glued shut through the entire thing, which is a damn shame because he’s a sight to behold.
Opportunity with Rolling Stone Online
Lori Kephart-Spinks Jun 10 to me
Dear Ms. Carsewell,
Welcome to Rolling Stone.
Lori Kephart-Spinks
Director of Musical Review for Online Publication
EPILOGUE
LUKE
THREE MONTHS LATER
People are packed in like New Year’s in Times Square tonight. The summer is wrapping up, and we hosted our last performance of this year’s Liberty Live season this afternoon. Apparently, no one wanted to return to work after that. Everyone just migrated from the Square, came in for happy hour, and haven’t left. Phil’s had to double the bar staff and even hire on new help. It’s still the same old Loud Lizard. Same sticky floors, same graffitied walls, same grungy regulars. But it’s also brand new with exciting bands coming through thanks to Vada’s blog—and more capital from the success of my performance. Which feels good, even if I never want a repeat experience as long as I live.
Over the crowd and music and clinking of bottles, I hear a familiar laugh, and I look up from the table I’m clearing to take in Vada and Phil in conversation with a regular. Her freckles are a little darker, and her cheeks and tip of her nose are slightly pink from our weekend trip to Chicago so she could report from Lollapalooza. She’s not technically working here anymore, but she offered to come in to help train the new staff.
We leave for the West Coast in five days. I have to arrive a week before the semester starts for my composition program orientation. It sounds like a ballbuster, but I’m so grateful they let me in that I’m happy to comply. Vada’s being sent to a private session with the Foo Fighters at the Starlight Theater, and if I didn’t know she loved me, I would definitely be worried about her obsession with Dave Grohl.
I had no idea how deep it went.
Too late now.
She got two tickets just so I can stand next to her and watch as she melts into a puddle on the floor at my feet so I can then mop her up and take her home afterward.
“Oy, Greenly, stop staring at the ginger and grab these fellas a few pints, will you?”
I turn to a round of chuckles behind me and see my dad entertaining a group of soccer fans, Manchester United from the look of their jerseys. He has a clean rag slung over one shoulder and is leaning, propped against their booth, looking as if he’s been painted into the scene.
May as well have been. After the benefit concert, my dad met with Phil and proposed a partnership. He’d gotten a taste for club ownership and liked it, but he preferred Phil’s low-key, practically no-key way of managing