Day 2: Return to the States
I woke up to the alarm clock too early on Saturday May 13th, and got myself up and out on a short walk to the train station just down the road. It was a beautiful morning and the sun rose pink over the quiet dawn streets. There was no rain, and I snapped a couple of parting shots of Vancouver.
Once on the train, with coffee from the dining car and some breakfast before me, I began to write and sort through the deluge of impressions from the preceding two days. I had some time to process some feelings and observations from the first night. At the end of the Vancouver show, I had heard a woman near me say to her friend, "That was a sad concert." Disappointment came through in her voice. I had to agree. I began to notice thereafter that I was feeling really uncomfortable, and I considered the possibility of accepting the contrast of this unwanted experience, with the possibility that it might help me to better appreciate what would come next.
Then I recognized that I was practicing a method I had been learning for staying in a highly receptive mode of vibration, and I was even grateful for the opportunity to practice dealing with this disappointment in a way that would leave me open to receive that which I really did want. I just sat with it, let myself process what was going on, and get in touch with the trigger for that feeling of dislocation, separation, and desperation. I have found, recently, that the only way for me to return fully to a state of joyful connection is if I first become witness (with a sense of friendly curiousity in the observation of my own response) to the moment of alienation within.
No, it didn't feel good. And I'd been there enough times to know that it would not be a permanent state, so I was able to relax into it, feel it, and let it pass, even as I noticed myself feeling urges to use something outside of myself that might let me feel okay again. I just noticed this urge, then chose to do the next right thing instead.
At that point, I felt the next right thing was to connect with my daughter via Facebook video chat. She greeted me with her characteristic, lovely enthusiasm, and my spirits rose quickly as I showed her the passing scenery out the train window. She turned to Ted, who was there next to her, and said, "Let's go on a train!". There was no way for me to stay blue, as the beautiful scenery rolled past my window, and my sweet girl smiled through the screen at me.
Soon thereafter, my nephew Kevin, whom I would be meeting for the show in Seattle, messaged me with a recording he had made of "Where The Streets Have No Name". The sound of this was incredible, and ultimately, indescribable. Hearing it, my eyes grew misty, and my funky energy was gone completely as Seattle approached.
https://soundcloud.com/kevinshoop/where-the-streets-have-no-name
Before noon, I found Kevin at the train station in Seattle, and he greeted me with a warm hug. He started talking about how long it had been since we'd last seen each other, but, after our quick embrace, I was already off and speed walking with my baggage in tow, trying to get my bearings to find Century Link Field, where the GA line list was already well into the 100s. By this point, I felt driven to get on that list. Margaret and I had been IM'ing on the train, where she was seated in another car with her mother, and I knew that there were a lot of other U2 fans on the Amtrak with us that morning who would be making a beeline over there for the same reason. So, I had messaged Kevin, and we agreed we might as well go for it.
I've harbored some mixed feelings about the ever lengthening, obsessive compulsive, and perhaps inappropriately controlling procedure of fan run GA lists that has been going on since the Elevation Tour in 2001, when U2 initially brought back the process of GA entry. Part of me has felt, and said out loud, since the end of that particular tour, that it is a bad idea, and not in the right spirit, to sit in line all day waiting for a chance to be able to see the band up close. It is also a plan that could fall apart at the last minute due to any number of random possibilities, and an investment in time and energy. At the core, perhaps it is an attempt to control the uncontrollable, and its a game in which ego seems to play a big role.
However, after Vancouver, I felt a strong desire to get close in and feel a part of the tribe for this show, and I was excited to have the opportunity and the willing company to do what we had to do to give it our best effort to get really close for the Seattle show. I would just go into the whole process knowing that it might not work out after all, I told myself, that the meticulously fan-prepared line up and numbered list including check in times the night before and the morning of show was ultimately not official, and was not binding for the band nor the venue.
Still, the magnetic draw of the possibility of getting close enough to the stage to see and be seen by the band was temptation enough for me on that day to play along with the crazy GA line up ritual in Seattle. I was ready to get my number marked on my hand and line up at my own risk, though I had a feeling that Bono himself, for one, would not have approved nor appreciated anyone's participation in this time and energy vacuum. After all, who wants the same obsessive people right up against the stage every show, exhausted from spending so many hours on the sidewalk before the show, checking off hundreds of names on a list? Not very rock and roll, maybe, but there it was, and there we were.
Once we found the list managers huddled discreetly around the back of CenturyLink Field, we got our numbers 181 and 182, plus 183 for Heather, my soul sister who was flying in from Denver that evening. I was hoping she would be able to make it from Sea-Tac to Century Link in time for the evening check in to keep her number with us.
It was miraculous to me to have Heather joining me and Kevin for the show in Seattle. Heather and I both had our kids in April of 2014, both under unique circumstances, and there is a spiritual resonance between us that is unlike the bond I've known with anyone else. Plus, she was there for me in June 2015 at the Denver I/e show, before which I had managed to give Bono irises, and she captured on film the moment he had graciously received them from me.
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| June 6, 2015: Irises and a hug for Bono in Denver |
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