Farewell Alexisonfire

I want to go to heaven.

There's something that I need to write about while the feelings are still fresh from it. I'm pretty delirious from pain and illness and general dazed-confused-Jason behavior, but I'm still going to do my best to set this down in words, so bear with me. Also, I'm aware I haven't done real-life posting in forever, but I have an end-of-year wrap up post planned for the end of December to sum up all of the things that I've done if I can possibly do that, so look forward to that.

Two days ago I went to hospital for bacterial tonsillitis  my throat nearly closed over and then I went to the MUST wrap party, which was nice. I danced with Jen and Jamila and Savannah and I didn't collapse and die despite the morphine, which was good - and then yesterday I had the farewell gig for Alexisonfire.

There is nothing but anger burning inside of me.

How to describe the feeling of going to that gig? At the time it was all so crisp, so pure, so vibrant and so right, you know? Like, there was every conceivable obstacle to me being there. I ran out of money, I didn't get a ticket until very late, I'd been in fucking hospital, I'd had everything thrown at me to prevent my attending, and yet there was no possible way that I would not be there. And yet...there was something subtly wrong about being there. Lining up with the alt-rocker twenty-somethings with their angry expressions and their band t-shirts, smoking cigarettes in the line and listening to people talking about other bands they like - it all felt kind of jarring, like I wasn't a part of that world anymore. I am - was - a faded disciple, returning to the temple that I had forsaken so many years ago. My relationship with the music had changed, but I was there to honor what it had done for me, what I owed it. The gig was a sad one for me, but also one that I had to attend. Maybe I'm making a big deal out of nothing.

Your god is a two-door elevator.

And my relationship with the music has changed, that much I do know. When I was a kid of twelve, Alexisonfire was the first band I ever discovered for myself - just one track that found its way onto my stepsister's Itunes by mistake. She ignored it, but I stumbled upon it one night and I was instantly hooked. It spoke to me in a way that music has never spoken to me before or since - with a language of primal rage and eloquent destruction that is so ridiculously seductive to my personality that I was hopelessly enamored. In those early, formative years, I do not think I go too far to say that it kept me alive more than once, huddled in my caravan, hiding from my stepfather, shaking and cursing and muttering around a single speaker, a headphone, humming under my breath when I had to brave the house, singing at the top of my lungs out in the bush when it all got too much for me...

Oh, these hard-faced boys and soft-legged girls...

I got older and my relationship with the sound changed. They released a new album, which I loved and adored, but it wasn't the same. Actually, my relationship with the music during the later years reminds me a lot of my relationship with Isabelle - they make me feel alive, and they remind me of what it is like to feel overwhelmingly angry and powerful, and those two are remarkably similar things and yet still distinct. It also reminds me of Tim Newport for some reason - maybe because the band is Canadian and they started my infatuation with that kind of thing (by which I mean Canadian boys). Anyway, now I'm rambling.

Poor little tin man, still swinging his axe!

So I went to the gig. I was sick. I was miserable. I could barely stand. I passed out in the mosh. And yet it was absolutely, 100% the right thing to do. I acknowledged what the band had done for me, and what they do for me. I gave myself over to the crucible of their music yet again. The set that they played was actually kind of mediocre. The opening band was frankly terrible. Despite that, I made the right call. I felt the beast stir - weakly, oh so weakly, as a beast will grow when you stop feeding it everything that you have, but still it stirred - and I felt powerful in that moment, even as my body collapsed around me and the only band ever played their final song.

Wait up for me...