Of the many hobbies Megan and I had in common, attending concerts was one that we came into our relationship on equal footing. Not only did we both love to spend our money and free time going to live shows, but we also had very similar tastes in music. Most years the majority of our Spotify Wrapped playlists were nearly identical. We grew up on the same 90’s pop country stars like The Chicks and Shania Twain; we relaxed to 60’s and 70’s singer-songwriters like Carole King and Joni Mitchell. We grooved to the oldies like The Temptations and Otis Redding, or the more contemporary Lake Street Dive and Brittany Howard. We bopped to the same current pop favorites like Beyoncé, Harry Styles, and Kacey Musgraves, or stalwarts of contemporary gay pop like MUNA, Rina Sawayama, Lil Nas X, and Chappell Roan.
Growing up as a kid in the middle of Kansas in the 2000s, bands and singers I loved rarely ever came within a two-hour radius of me. I was a bizarre hybrid of an overeager theater kid overachiever with the music taste of an angsty pop punk emo kid. During rehearsal breaks for the community theater production of A Christmas Carol I would listen to My Chemical Romance’s The Black Parade on my iPod Shuffle with SkullCandy earbuds. The base of my daily uniform was a band t-shirt from Hot Topic (with a cami underneath to cover the top of my ass peeking out of the low-cut jeans that were the only cut option). I would pour over every issue of Alternative Press Magazine, looking up tour announcements for my favorite bands like Panic! At The Disco, Paramore, Cobra Starship. I would optimistically look up and down the columns for the name of my hometown. I would never find it.
Megan and I would often talk about what a privilege it was to live in New York City and know that when one of our favorite music artists announced a tour, the question wouldn’t be if they were playing in our city, but when. Megan grew up in a Midwestern hometown much smaller than mine, so she too did not take for granted the access we had come to have in adulthood. She decided early on in our relationship that she wanted to buy a t-shirt from every concert we went to and build our shared collection. And build we sure we did.
COVID, of course, changed all of that. At least for a while. Back in 2021, after we had been vaccinated for most of the year, Megan and I bought tickets for our first concert since lockdown. In June 2021, a singer that we had started listening to during pandemic times, Katie Pruitt, announced a headlining tour for the fall and winter later that year. At that point, we had already learned from the world not to make plans for too far in the future and count on them happening. We had no idea what the world would look like six months later in December when she was scheduled to play New York City. But we decided to plan a little bit of joy for future Mac and Megan and have some hope.
Life looked different by the time December arrived. Megan and I had gotten engaged two months previously after proposing to each other at the same time, and we were already deep in of wedding planning. We had scheduled our engagement photos for a brisk and COLD early December day (although you certainly couldn’t tell from the photos that Megan’s teeth chattered the whole time). We hadn’t realized that we had scheduled the photoshoot for the afternoon just before we had tickets for our first concert since COVID began. We had our hair and makeup done, the most put-together outfits we had worn in over a year and a half, and we hopped on the train and headed into Manhattan.
This first concert back took place at the Mercury Lounge, an iconic small indie venue in the Lower East Side. The venue has a 250-person capacity, and while still under COVID restrictions, the room held no more than 100 people. The show itself was electric. Megan and I stood in the front row, inches from the stage. The crowd was so small and intimate, yet still giving each other a comfortable amount of distance, so we didn’t feel like our tall stature was blocking anyone’s view (a rarity). We felt so present yet transported.
Katie Pruitt is a queer artist, and the audience reflected that. After so many months of isolation, it was so special for our triumphant return to be in community with other queer people, and during a time of our lives that was brimming with so much excitement and love for our love. It was one of those moments that felt like we were really turning a corner, and life would soon look more and more like what we always dreamed it would be.
This past week I attended my first concert since Megan died. I bought the tickets a while back when I saw that an actor/ musician I follow, E.R. Fightmaster (who uses just “FIGHTMASTER” for their music), was playing a show in New York. I purchased two $20 tickets (realizing while in the Ticketmaster queue that I no longer had a guaranteed concert buddy and would need to ask around and see who wanted to be my 1+), put the date on my calendar, and like most things these days, forgot about it until I noticed it on my “This Week” Google Calendar view.
By the night of the concert, I did in fact find a friend to attend with me. We arrived at our local station to head into Manhattan together, both with iced coffees in hand despite the time being 7:30PM (because when you are almost 30 going to the late show time slot on a Wednesday night, the only pregame option is caffeine to guarantee you make it to show time).
As we slithered our way amongst the crowd to find a good spot to post up for the rest of the evening, my grief wave crashed against me with a momentum so hard that I was shocked I stood upright and didn’t succumb to it cresting against me. The last time I was here was with Megan. The only other time I was here was with Megan. We were in this room. She was in this room. I found myself constantly looking in the general area we stood before, as if I was looking for her. I kept waiting to see her head poking above everyone around her, looking back for me. Waiting for the moment when two lost people lock eyes and take a deep breath, knowing all is okay and all is found.
I tried to mentally ground myself in the present, and remind myself that I was standing here in the now in 2024, not 2021. But as I tried to ground, I just kept finding more and more similarities that brought me back to that night. FIGHTMASTER, like Katie Pruitt, is also a queer artist. (Coincidence, or do I just listen to a lot of gay music? Why not both?) The audience around me looked very similar on both nights, this time with an extra sprinkle of gay because it was Pride month in the city. Both nights were big, anxious “firsts,” but my anxiety for my new current night was rooted in a much deeper and more twisted pain. Whereas in 2021 we were coming off a celebratory afternoon, reveling in newly engaged bliss, I had walked into the Mercury Lounge realizing that that date was the anniversary of the day years ago Megan and I first met. Needless to say, grounding myself in the present wasn’t going too well.
As FIGHTMASTER began performing, I was able to get out of my head a bit and let the energy of the room lift me up and out of my memory cycle. After finishing the first half of their set, FIGHTMASTER stopped playing for a few minutes to talk to the crowd. They talked about the inspiration for the EP where the first songs came from, and set expectations for what was next.
“Act Two is the grief-centered act.”
My friend and I shot looks at each other. Oh boy.
“I want you to feel like this is a space where you can feel all of the grief and all of the joy.”
Waaaaaaay ahead of you on the grief! The joy, as always, is a work in progress.
In the aptly described griefy “Act Two,” FIGHTMASTER performed their cover of Death Cab for Cutie’s I Will Follow You Into The Dark. I should have known this was coming, as they have recorded the cover as a single. But that night, on that date, in that room, with the ghosts of concerts past, the performance felt particularly piercing. For those who didn’t have an angsty indie phase and listen to this song on repeat, I’ll leave you with the opening verse and chorus:
Love of mine, someday you will die
But I'll be close behind, I'll follow you into the dark
No blinding light or tunnels to gates of white
Just our hands clasped so tight, waiting for the hint of a spark
If Heaven and Hell decide that they both are satisfied
Illuminate the "no"s on their vacancy signs
If there's no one beside you when your soul embarks
Then I'll follow you into the dark
Griefy Read
I just finished listening to the audiobook for How to Keep House While Drowning: A Gentle Approach to Cleaning and Organizing by KC Davis. How is this a Griefy Read you may ask? This book is made specifically for those with anxiety, depression, grief, PTSD, fatigue, ADHD, (the list goes on), or anyone who struggles with “care tasks,” what Davis has rebranded to encompass cleaning and organizing your home, personal hygiene, feeding yourself, etc. I have never been skilled at cleaning my habitat (just ask my parents), but I had worked for years to develop systems and structures to keep relatively afloat. With my current grief and trauma brain, I can confirm that these previous routines simply no longer work (not to mention what used to be split between two people is now all on me). Davis is so kind and validating in her approach while being honest about how much capacity (or lack thereof) we have when struggling mentally. Early in the book, when speaking of how to show ourselves compassion in the face of struggle, Davis writes “No one ever shamed themself into better mental health.”
Since Megan died, I have eaten every meal I have made for myself on a paper plate. The act of doing dishes in my dishwasher-less apartment right now is simply not something I have capacity for. And this was a hack Davis mentions in her book! This helped me release shame about some of the ways I have to “hack” my own care these days. This book also helped me reframe how I see that pile of dirty paper plates in the trash can. Rather than those paper plates representing some sort of moral failure, instead, I see them as a win. Seeing paper plates in the trash can means I took care of myself and fed myself. And that right there is a win.
While I usually use my sign-off to thank y’all, I wanted to also use it to say hello this time! Over the past couple of weeks, I have gotten an influx of new subscribers. If this is you, hello! I invite you to poke around my post archive and see some of my other recent writings.
If you are a new subscriber, I would love to know how you found me. Feel free to comment, or reply (if you are receiving this as an email) and let me know. As always, sorry to see you here. But I am glad you are here.
Until next time,
Mackenzie
Thanks for sharing, Mackenzie! I especially appreciate the reminder to reframe the various piles of paper plates in my life. Also, I Will Follow You Into The Dark has been one of my most listened to songs since Kara died (along with a healthy dose of Sufjan, of course). And this cover is SO good. Definitely going to check out more of their stuff.