Running up that hill

It took this long for me to gather my (debatable) wits together enough to be able to write about what happened on the 13-th of August at the Arenele Romane-type-thingie.
It was probably the weirdest day i have ever experienced in almost 2 years. to begin with, there was this almost amusing sense of temporal and spacial displacement, so much so that i had gotten to that point where i almost succeeded in persuading myself that i can walk through the objects surrounding me. then the other crowd-woo-er: i went by myself. this came about as an unlikely game of circumstances, and as usual i ended up reading more into it than there really was: an occasion for demon exorcising. my foot! anyway, people were getting to see radiohead, people are now reformed metal fans, and some people probably wouldn't have gone even if thomas had taken over the keyboards (by the way: thomas and tony, sitting in a tree, b-*-t-t-f***ing in the finnish woods... or smth >:) ).
i threw some very unlikely clothes on me, picked up my book (nearly got me busted, will see why) and my camera (fat lot of good that did me, afurisenia asta tot nu vrea sa imi uploadeze pozele, pamatuful si sfeshtania) and went to za arene. funny thing was that this time around, you could look around the 7 statie and actually tell which people were going where even without reading their dejected expressions after the 15-th 32 left the station in 30 minutes and there was still no sign of the 7. (lots of numbers, now that i look back on it. eeew) anyway... i got bored and walked for one stop. this is the way it always happens when we go to carol. get the lemming to light a cigarette or walk for one stop and you can bet your last buck that the next tram is going to be the one (matrix fans, go shoot yourselves. certain persons are exempted). i got on and felt slightly out-of-herd while jamie kept singing time for holding hands together, time for rainbow-coloured weather in my ears.
i was already delighting in the butterfly-y feeling that i have now come to associate with arene, due to apocaplici. little did she know, she was in for a big surprise (cheap plot device smuggled in from the wolp and sewn in by a second-year as-of-yet-ungraduated plotsmith :D)
there was a hugmongous river of people streaming towards the gates. i figured i was early, since it was supposed to begin at 7 (*cough* bullshit *cough*) and it was only something to 6. but when i got there... omfg, when i got there! the whole slope leading to the gates was air-tight packed. i mean a fly couldn't get through unless it flew above the unbelievable tonnage of people. there must have been... erm... many, since i'm not particularly good at approximating numbers and other values. i wedged my way in and out of the throng until i got around the point we had waited in last time. it was really really hot, and the people were already worked up (turns out the people relatively at the head of the salmon migration had been waiting for more than an hour when i arrived). i settled in with a cardboard flyer for a fan and jamie still pouring his dear cute little heart out, and contented myself to staring obnoxiously at luna amara's razvan (nice accent, man!) and smirking at the jokes of some very haz-de-necaz type-pissd people behind me. over the years, there were cries of molko (at which point the dude behind me started chanting temishan! temishan!), cries of vrem sa intram, cries of e ora sapte, when it had indeed gotten to be that delightful hour, even cries of jandarmul e pedofil, when one of the very cocky and prolly brown-eyed (and thus full of it, thank you, professor rasher) guards lifted a little kid over the barriers (what the kid was doing there is anybody's guess. after all, this wasn't a michael jackson concert).
a little over seven and the crowds start moving... downwards, to my great surprise. turns out the barriers described a sort of peninsula inside the crowd, so you had to go through three filters before you actually got to the gates and then into the yard. urgh. people started pushing and shoving, but when i say this, i really really mean it. it was fun to be literally swept off my feet and carried towards the gates, but i got kinda panicky when i realized that my camera was in danger, so i started pushing and elbowing like there was no tomorrow (and for some people, there probably wasn't >:) ) and managed to get to the first filter. the dude wanted to check my schoolbag. i open it, he peers into the total gloom and slightly repulsive smell, puts a hand under its bottom and asks: why is it so heavy? lemming's mistake: i forgot about the book, so i said that i had my camera in it. take it out. i do. this is a video camera. you can't go in with it. go back, leave it somewhere and come back. where on this motherthumping world should i leave it, under a tree?! besides, it's not a video camera, it's a photo camera (that can film videos... erm... i didn't actually say this, duh!). if you don't believe me, i can take a pic of you. he let me through. second filter, check number two. i didn't actually stick around for this one, so ended up bumping into a couple of kids younger than i was, who asked for my ticked. i hand it to them, keeping the flyer with which i had been fanning myself crumpled up in my other hand. one of them laughs and says, not the railroad ticket! i stare in surprise, then bring forth the paper which looked like it had been trampled by a herd of dodos who had nothing but this standing between them and a bag of marshmellows. they let me through. i'm finally there.
i was torn about where to plant myself. but since there was already a gaggle of 15-year-old n00bs crowding in front of the stage, i decided to sit my behind down. i picked a chair, went to get a soda (the word large doesn't do it justice) and settled in to an hour-and-a half reprive of iain banks and marlboro ultra.
people i knew? by the shitload, and every time i spotted one i was thankfull for my banks to hide behind. antisocial? think again. travka's aliosa wanted to sit in front of me with his girlfriend, but this bitchy chick said the seats were taken, that annoying fattish know-it-all from the urma forums, para, was also there, the pathetic guy from last year's joe commercials (wtf, did they let anybody in?!), half of cosbuc, my info seminarista from last year (she really grew in my eyes)... and obv, the bomboana on the coliva (atat la propriu cat si la figurat)... our own, our one, our only, our oli. (enter trumpets, confetti, pathetic dancing midgets). i knew she'd be there. i was also acutely aware that she had as much right to be there as anyone else (except for the joe dude. he should be taken out on a field and... you get the picture. it involves red paint, a polearm, chocolate-covered peanuts and a scared-looking siamese cat named puddles). but that still didn't help matters any. i felt my heart falling rapidly through my stomach and dangerously nearing my lower intestine. you know, the only other time i cried was, oddly enough, when i heard the happy joy joy news? why did that hurt me more than when mom kept trying to tell me that he might have could have possibly had the opportunity to have a one in two zillion chance of maybe possibly somehow almost maybe sleeping with adina? he wasn't mine anymore, i had let him go. but this meant that he was becoming forgotten. and now it made it permanent. it made it for good. she was here. he was not. she had heard meds. he hadn't. she had probably gotten black holes and revelations off the net... i think you got the picture. but i didn't find it so cutting anymore. just really really sad. no more.
oli was with mihaela. directly behind them, the two parties oblivious of each-other, was kika. go on, laugh, it was funny. well, you should have been there. (makes george face)
at 20.25 precisely, the crowd grows particularly excited, the lights grow particulalrly annoying, and ab4 get on stage. it was still light outside, in a dusky sort of way, and that made it a bit more pathetic. the guys are good with their instruments, so that the live is as good as the recorded. too bad about the voice totally losing its quality. but still, it was cute. thought number two: haven't these guys come up with new songs in the last 4 years or so?!
another half-an-hour break. it was too dark to read, so i settled for looking at the crowd. the arene were packed. i had never imagined anything like this. people were all over people, and there was no room to drop a fainted wannabe rockeritza cu chilotzei roz si postere cu chester... erm... i have one of those items too... not telling which, but i suppose you've guessed it's not the poster. :D
however, something wasn't right. when i went to apoplici, i had felt the music coming from the stage, from the players. now it was more likely coming from me, from the inside. i wasn't listening to a dude in a black tight top singing preferences, i was listening to my own winamp back home, on the old computer, all those billion light-years ago. i had a feeling the same would happen with molko et co, and as far as feelings go, this one was pretty accurate.



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later edit, ca mi-am adus aminte: thoughts of the evening, de Brian Molko
1. ladies and gentlemen of bucharest, we are the ladies and gentlemen of placebo
2. this is a live show, things are bound to go wrong. and they just did