Experiencing YMSB

I'm deaf, although a few minutes ago I wish I were more deaf. The cilia in my ears is flattened and an eternal hum, buzz and ring reverberates in stereo around my frontal cortex. Something like a good pair of headphones stuck on the emergency broadcast system and you can't tune it out, off or to a lower volume.

Never mind my ears. The other day while running down the beach and through the sandy Florida streets early in the morning I saw a sign hung on moldering bleached pinkish, brown bricks that said, "Yonder Mountain String Band (YMSB) - Thursday 8pm".  I went early and was the first one in line. Sad I know, but I've been to YMSB shows in Durango and the line snakes out further than I wanted to stand on a wet, gelid Florida night. A woman and her father came stand with me and chat. She's a lawyer who does medical malpractice lawsuits, he's retired and checking out chics, professionally, it appeared. She and I got into a vigorous and illuminating discussion. We took up standing positions along the upstairs rail, front and center and waited watching the crowd below go on a collective and expensive bender.

YMSB - Dave Johnston, Ben Kaufmann, Jeff Austin & Adam Aijala

When it all started there were a few "hoppers" up front that felt the word dancing meant constantly flinging themselves vertically away from the earth's gravitational pull only to find themselves being rudely yanked back by it's unceasing grip.

There were three men to my right that I called the judges. All were well over the age of veiled peeking and had degenerated into twelve year old males, engaging in the, "punch, nudge, wink, har har," view of females. They pointed and assessed expertly, mouths obtusely agape at the bouncing, lissome females in the crush below.

People behind me waved their arms in the air in erratic patterns, hopped and bowed to the rhythm of the base, mandolin, banjo and guitar. The iniquitous rhythm drove even the most upright person to nod their head like a seizing bird.

I wondered if I took a video with all the sound gone if all of you would think I visited an asylum for fun. Everyone looked like they'd come undone. 

It was a good show for a small venue.

Like molecules moving from different states people's movements changed throughout the night. At first with maximum space the people flowed, jostled and hurled themselves as if molecules in the gaseous state (something is just not right with that sentence). Collisions were infrequent and fully elastic.

As the night became darker, the music louder and the crowd denser their movements were more like that of a liquid. Some formed bonds and bounced around but most could still fling themselves in abandon before hitting the next person.

Finally we hit solid. It was flesh from wall to wall. At this point each molecule's degree of freedom was limited to simply quivering from side to side. Most of the real motion was up and down. Bonds were formed and broken regularly throughout the crowd. People, well sozzled, were kept up right and jumping by their neighbors. It was at this point I decided I'd had enough of the balcony and was going to join the solid on the floor.

It looked like the concerts in Colorado but missing were the distinct little pillars of smoke that shown the way to a pot pipe and a pinch of the good stuff.  But although they were visibly absent the affects were still there. People upstairs were unmistakably chemically loony, whirling in large circles with arms flying out beside them like streamers and eyes inscrutably looking at the tongue and groove ceiling. Girls sat in darkened corners fixated by the bits of dirty torn carpet near their feet.

Down on the ground floor I squeezed my way through bulky fat middles and skinny eyeball jabbing elbows until I was in the middle of the solid. At this point they began to sing one of the songs that always makes me laugh, "Granny Won't You Smoke Some". What a hilarious song.  Up and down the crowd surged. What had taken me so long to join the solid? It was fun dodging elbows and being pummeled by rings of fat as they orbited the twirling bodies to which they were loosely attached. And hearing my shoes schluck off a floor covered in drying beer and mud. It was fun, I know this appears  sarcastic but I enjoyed the experience.

Social lubricant had greased the wheels and one fine young man up front pulled up his shirt showing his scrawny chest to the boys on the stage. Save two members, the band looked bored. They've seen it all and mentally they were off in Tahiti on a beach just like you and I when we're at work from 9am-5pm. Likely they were likely aided by a chemical agent that we'd be fired for having. The two front and center fed on the energy of the crowd and it was hitting feverish.

I was considering coming home early, you know midnight or one, like the pathetic old person I am but decided to stay a little more. I was not disappointed. They pulled out all the volume the speakers had and jammed out "Crazy Train," another favorite of mine and from the reverberating howl everyone else's too. The crowd bounded up and down and up and down hands flying and waving people yelling and singing.

Strobes

Strobes broke us into vignettes of the moment. I was there hopping, singing and crossing my fingers that all the jumping would help build muscle to avoid injury when I ran. The boy behind me with his hoody askew was leaping with two arms in the air while bowing and thrashing around. He fell on me several times not being as much part of the solid as he should have been with that much induced instability. Sweetly, he screamed a sincere mushy drunken apology in my ear each time.

Suddenly a great gap in the crowd appeared in front of me. Three people were on the floor.  A trampling at a YMSB concert? Unthinkable. Then I saw they were kneeling, heads down in the gummed, muddy beer floor. I thought perhaps they had decided they wanted beer so badly and were so high they were licking it off the floor but not wanting to make too many assumptions I decided to ask. They were looking for the glasses. Being the only one that saw one of everything rather than with wobbly, double vision I found the glasses quite quickly. YEY! Everyone around gave me a hugs. Hands soaked in mud and beer stuck lovingly to my back and hair. It made my night. I know what it's like to have lost your glasses.

It was time to go and the solid began to melt and once out the door it nearly instantaneously sublimed back into a gas. Released from their solid state most of the molecules were teetering down the street appearing unable to shoulder the responsibility of holding themselves upright. One helpful teeterer perhaps in his twenties and with frightening brown curls that shot straight out from his head shouted at me in his profound deafness to put on my coat, didn't I know it was cold? The streets barren, had been almost silent, neon lights bouncing off of wet, glimmering asphalt.

It was cold the wind blowing off the crashing waves a few hundred yards to the left but I was warm, sweating. "Thanks Mom," I wanted to yell back to my helpful teeterer in my own state of hearing loss. What a night.