long black night, morning frost

i would have written about this the night of the concert if i had have made my account by then, but i'm just on here from spacehey since last night. 

the mountain goats have always been one of, if not the most important bands to me-- just like everyone else, there was a time where i was listening to no children for the first time and gawking at the idea that music, having only listened to rather sanitized pop-punk up until that point, could be so raw. i've had a very close and strenuous relationship with their work since essentially the dawn of time, in my frame of reference. 

i just got to see them for the first time in cincinnati on friday. i'd never been to taft theatre before, and i'm sure i must have looked insane, craning my neck to see the murals on the ceiling, pointing and wide eyed at the artistry of that place of music. while i'm not partial to sitting venues (as someone who is as restless as they get, and young enough to not have knee problems,) it was an incredible and incredibly ancient-feeling building to be in. fitting for the show, i think. 

as a pretty frequent concert-goer, when i say it was singlehandedly the most spiritual experience of my life, i mean it. they played there will be no divorce, AND two songs from sweden, which was entirely unexpected, and when i admit that i cried a little, i'm being entirely honest. when my friend and i heard the first line of the song, we both turned to each other so fast and aggressively that when we looked back up, we were making only mildly embarrassing eye contact with a shocked looking john darnielle from three rows away. i don't often like band members for their stage personalities, but he was a really fun guy. incredibly quirky, as a compliment. 

the setlist was insane, and i'll keep it at that. 

feeling incredibly connected and optimistic in the days after witnessing such beautiful music so closely! i always get this kind of persistent buzz after a show-- the light through the windows is always more radiant, the noise in my head melodic, the world fallen into place and making sense in its own wondrous way. the mountain goats do an incredible job of making music that, while bleak and angry, fills me with this wild, spiteful optimism, a mange-infested coyote trekking through the endless desert, continuing if only for the impossible dream of the oasis, or something like that. sick and hungry but impossibly stubborn. i'd consider myself muleesque in that regard.

nine months out from a four-year-long wildly toxic relationship, i stood up to that stage, rubbing at the thick banded burn on my right ring finger, yelling the words to no children with incredible fervor, directed towards the same person i was directing it to when i was fourteen in pieces. really solidified the it's-really-over of it all. 

anyway, long live the live performance! that is not all i have to say, but i need to attend to other, cooler things (such as dusting my shelves.)