Kina, Pete, and a Blonde Beast
Aug 3, 2018 2:47:35 GMT
TimPig, 👨🏼⚕️delapandemic🚑, and 6 more like this
Post by eric on Aug 3, 2018 2:47:35 GMT
I took the train and my second Uber ever down to Pete's place. The lovely Ethiopian driver made sure I was at the right place when I was foiled by Pete's building's impenetrable security system, then a random lady let me in.
I met his lovely significant other and their dog. I hadn't been domiciled with a dog before, but in this case I found it to be remarkably like toddler if toddlers could sprint way faster than you, were much quieter, and had marginally worse hygiene. We got Chinese food and traded fortunes. Pete asked me which song I hoped for, and I told him my hope was in vain, because the song for me was older and sedate, and so unlikely to make its way into the set list.
I showed up at the venue for the Kina concert as instructed. These instructions turned out to be extremely conservative, so we waited outside for about 40 minutes. I had plenty of sun block on my human skin.
We went inside.
Kina is giving away these pins to all Patreon members who come to a tour date. (After tour she will determine a way to get them to the rest of the patrons.) I couldn't get mine to stand right way up, but foxes are a cunning sort, and the source of this particular fox is a video Kina made that includes the fox doing flips on a trampoline, so that was alright.
The meet and greet was in a hallway, so we were about five across and twenty deep. Kina stood on a chair and sang Heart and Mind to us. She was wearing a simple white T shirt, and the second thing I noticed was how different the fabric looked in life versus on line. The first thing I noticed was that my plan to not get emotional until the show itself started was completely out the window. I have heard her sing candidly many times and the quality of her voice was excellent as always.
I wasn't sure how to stay standing.
I have stood on my human legs many times, and before now it had always been pretty easy to continue standing once I started.
I leaned against a wall.
After the song she met us one by one. I had thought about planning this many times, and it always seemed like a bad idea. I am not good at spoken words. I am pretty good at written words, so I made her a card with sheer white space and candy stripes and Escher's butterflies and lots of words, then tied the envelope with ribbon, then taped the ribbon when I couldn't figure out how to finish it with enough beauty.
My expectation was that she would be amazing and I would be incoherent, and everything was going according to plan. We talk on the Internet a lot, including about my coming to this specific show, and she's seen my face, so I wasn't surprised when she recognized me. I was surprised and concerned when she reached under the table, because my assumption when something goes suddenly off is that I messed up.
I was extremely relieved and laughed out loud. I'm told Pete Herb and Ank (Kina's_agent) conspired to get a Knicks jersey with Grannis on the back and get it to the venue, with a big assist from Sam (Kina's_tour_manager), whereupon Kina signed it and held it for me. This is an amazingly thoughtful gift and I really appreciate it, you guys.
I prefer not to be photographed, so when it was time for Kina and I to take our picture I asked her if we could do this instead:
She said yes.
Then I met Jesse. He was also amazing and I was still incoherent, but I needed to tell him a story about a lyric of his from his song Snow (under the JOME artist name): "My suitcase was heavier than I thought it'd be. / I looked back and caught you crying." This is an amazing lyric, really an amazing short story. Here's a similar if somewhat less amazing short story.
-I have one older and one younger brother.
-We all grew up together.
-He went to college.
-When we dropped him off, he didn't look back.
-When we got home, we sat around the table.
-In the wrong seats.
-My father smiled and observed how he didn't look back.
-My mother wept.
I relayed this story to Jesse (more or less, like I said, incoherent) and he was very appreciative. The JOME artist is a collaboration where he writes the lyrics and sings and another artist does a lot of instrumental work, so it's not something he can reproduce on tour since he and Kina bring one acoustic guitar, one other acoustic guitar, and a keyboard. We agreed he should consider it for future tours.
I was already exhausted and the show wouldn't start for an hour.
The nachos weren't good, not enough cheese. The fudge brownie with ice cream was sensational. The bottle of white wine went down real smooth.
Kina tweeted at me. She is amazing.
Pete arrived just as Jesse started his set. There are a lot of his songs that are intensely emotional for me and I think most humans who have heard them. One is All My Love, which was inspired when a beautiful young YouTube singer named Christina Grimmie was murdered at the meet and greet before a small concert she was performing. This hit very close to home for them. When he said he was about to play a song off All My Love, my heart spiked, but it was a different song. Close call, no emotional issues here, ha ha ha, look at me applauding after the song with my human hands.
Then he played Snow.
Even in ideal circumstances it's extremely emotional for me. The shock factor here did not make it less so, and I started sobbing as quietly as I could. The first time. What I discovered was that if I could look into the guitar hole I still felt safe to express myself emotionally. Eye contact was totally out of the question, but there was a quiet little dark place. And then he played All My Love (song) - sobbing for the second time.
Not all of his set was weepy, and he was very charming with his stage banter, and then he was finished.
The lights came on and Pete and I fell deep in conversation. Then I thought going to the human's room would be a solid idea. A person came in behind me and I heard the crowd cheer through the briefly open door.
I made it back before the first song had really gotten going. She turned the lights on and she could see us, and we could see her seeing us. She started with some pleasant songs like Jesse and I thought I was wise to the game, like Jesse there were then going to be sadder songs. I was prepared.
Then she played This Far.
This pouch was full when I left Pete's apartment. If I had been able to see anything at all I would have been alarmed at how rapidly my resources were depleting.
This is my song. It is everything I love and everything I want to become. I have heard her sing it at least ten thousand times, and it has always, always brought me peace in the darkness. Hearing it as she plays it has a slightly different result; sobbing #3.
Then she played Birdsong, which happens to be played on keyboard, and which also happens to be an emotionally catastrophic story of loss, and I found myself thinking 'now here is a remarkable turn of events, with no guitar to look into I am having some relative difficulty getting these inside feelings to the outside, how droll' and I also found myself thinking 'he was so small'.
Then she played a duet with Jesse whose music video recorded them at her sister's wedding, playing the song they wrote about her for her to her, and she was pregnant, so what I'm getting at is it's a real tearjerker, but I was pretty much done crying.
Then she played For Now.
When she was held in Jakarta she overcame the whole world and found gratitude and hope. 'Maybe it's enough to know that we were here together.' Can you find a better epitaph? I've thought about it a lot and there aren't many.
I wasn't done crying.
I had resolved to give a standing ovation of one if necessary, since she had told us it was the last song.
I was sure I wouldn't reach standing, but nobody else did either so that makes us even.
We sat in the light.
.
Much later I realized she is doing the whole thing again tonight.
And Friday.
And for another two months.
E=mc^2 tells us energy is proportional to mass - the bigger the body, the more power. Looks like ol' Einstein better take that one back to the drawing board.
.
Thanks again to Ankly and Herb, and special thanks to Pete and his lovely gal and their moderately attractive pooch. That this happened to be one of the very few (only?) seated venues, and that Pete happened to offer to host me, and that I happened to get hooked into this community at all, and that I happened to come across Kina's music at all, and that all of this aligned precisely when it did is an almost suspiciously unlikely series of coincidences, and I'm so lucky to have benefited so greatly from them.
That's it, thanks for reading!
I met his lovely significant other and their dog. I hadn't been domiciled with a dog before, but in this case I found it to be remarkably like toddler if toddlers could sprint way faster than you, were much quieter, and had marginally worse hygiene. We got Chinese food and traded fortunes. Pete asked me which song I hoped for, and I told him my hope was in vain, because the song for me was older and sedate, and so unlikely to make its way into the set list.
I showed up at the venue for the Kina concert as instructed. These instructions turned out to be extremely conservative, so we waited outside for about 40 minutes. I had plenty of sun block on my human skin.
We went inside.
Kina is giving away these pins to all Patreon members who come to a tour date. (After tour she will determine a way to get them to the rest of the patrons.) I couldn't get mine to stand right way up, but foxes are a cunning sort, and the source of this particular fox is a video Kina made that includes the fox doing flips on a trampoline, so that was alright.
The meet and greet was in a hallway, so we were about five across and twenty deep. Kina stood on a chair and sang Heart and Mind to us. She was wearing a simple white T shirt, and the second thing I noticed was how different the fabric looked in life versus on line. The first thing I noticed was that my plan to not get emotional until the show itself started was completely out the window. I have heard her sing candidly many times and the quality of her voice was excellent as always.
I wasn't sure how to stay standing.
I have stood on my human legs many times, and before now it had always been pretty easy to continue standing once I started.
I leaned against a wall.
After the song she met us one by one. I had thought about planning this many times, and it always seemed like a bad idea. I am not good at spoken words. I am pretty good at written words, so I made her a card with sheer white space and candy stripes and Escher's butterflies and lots of words, then tied the envelope with ribbon, then taped the ribbon when I couldn't figure out how to finish it with enough beauty.
My expectation was that she would be amazing and I would be incoherent, and everything was going according to plan. We talk on the Internet a lot, including about my coming to this specific show, and she's seen my face, so I wasn't surprised when she recognized me. I was surprised and concerned when she reached under the table, because my assumption when something goes suddenly off is that I messed up.
I was extremely relieved and laughed out loud. I'm told Pete Herb and Ank (Kina's_agent) conspired to get a Knicks jersey with Grannis on the back and get it to the venue, with a big assist from Sam (Kina's_tour_manager), whereupon Kina signed it and held it for me. This is an amazingly thoughtful gift and I really appreciate it, you guys.
I prefer not to be photographed, so when it was time for Kina and I to take our picture I asked her if we could do this instead:
She said yes.
Then I met Jesse. He was also amazing and I was still incoherent, but I needed to tell him a story about a lyric of his from his song Snow (under the JOME artist name): "My suitcase was heavier than I thought it'd be. / I looked back and caught you crying." This is an amazing lyric, really an amazing short story. Here's a similar if somewhat less amazing short story.
-I have one older and one younger brother.
-We all grew up together.
-He went to college.
-When we dropped him off, he didn't look back.
-When we got home, we sat around the table.
-In the wrong seats.
-My father smiled and observed how he didn't look back.
-My mother wept.
I relayed this story to Jesse (more or less, like I said, incoherent) and he was very appreciative. The JOME artist is a collaboration where he writes the lyrics and sings and another artist does a lot of instrumental work, so it's not something he can reproduce on tour since he and Kina bring one acoustic guitar, one other acoustic guitar, and a keyboard. We agreed he should consider it for future tours.
I was already exhausted and the show wouldn't start for an hour.
The nachos weren't good, not enough cheese. The fudge brownie with ice cream was sensational. The bottle of white wine went down real smooth.
Kina tweeted at me. She is amazing.
Pete arrived just as Jesse started his set. There are a lot of his songs that are intensely emotional for me and I think most humans who have heard them. One is All My Love, which was inspired when a beautiful young YouTube singer named Christina Grimmie was murdered at the meet and greet before a small concert she was performing. This hit very close to home for them. When he said he was about to play a song off All My Love, my heart spiked, but it was a different song. Close call, no emotional issues here, ha ha ha, look at me applauding after the song with my human hands.
Then he played Snow.
Even in ideal circumstances it's extremely emotional for me. The shock factor here did not make it less so, and I started sobbing as quietly as I could. The first time. What I discovered was that if I could look into the guitar hole I still felt safe to express myself emotionally. Eye contact was totally out of the question, but there was a quiet little dark place. And then he played All My Love (song) - sobbing for the second time.
Not all of his set was weepy, and he was very charming with his stage banter, and then he was finished.
The lights came on and Pete and I fell deep in conversation. Then I thought going to the human's room would be a solid idea. A person came in behind me and I heard the crowd cheer through the briefly open door.
I made it back before the first song had really gotten going. She turned the lights on and she could see us, and we could see her seeing us. She started with some pleasant songs like Jesse and I thought I was wise to the game, like Jesse there were then going to be sadder songs. I was prepared.
Then she played This Far.
This pouch was full when I left Pete's apartment. If I had been able to see anything at all I would have been alarmed at how rapidly my resources were depleting.
This is my song. It is everything I love and everything I want to become. I have heard her sing it at least ten thousand times, and it has always, always brought me peace in the darkness. Hearing it as she plays it has a slightly different result; sobbing #3.
Then she played Birdsong, which happens to be played on keyboard, and which also happens to be an emotionally catastrophic story of loss, and I found myself thinking 'now here is a remarkable turn of events, with no guitar to look into I am having some relative difficulty getting these inside feelings to the outside, how droll' and I also found myself thinking 'he was so small'.
Then she played a duet with Jesse whose music video recorded them at her sister's wedding, playing the song they wrote about her for her to her, and she was pregnant, so what I'm getting at is it's a real tearjerker, but I was pretty much done crying.
Then she played For Now.
When she was held in Jakarta she overcame the whole world and found gratitude and hope. 'Maybe it's enough to know that we were here together.' Can you find a better epitaph? I've thought about it a lot and there aren't many.
I wasn't done crying.
I had resolved to give a standing ovation of one if necessary, since she had told us it was the last song.
I was sure I wouldn't reach standing, but nobody else did either so that makes us even.
We sat in the light.
.
Much later I realized she is doing the whole thing again tonight.
And Friday.
And for another two months.
E=mc^2 tells us energy is proportional to mass - the bigger the body, the more power. Looks like ol' Einstein better take that one back to the drawing board.
.
Thanks again to Ankly and Herb, and special thanks to Pete and his lovely gal and their moderately attractive pooch. That this happened to be one of the very few (only?) seated venues, and that Pete happened to offer to host me, and that I happened to get hooked into this community at all, and that I happened to come across Kina's music at all, and that all of this aligned precisely when it did is an almost suspiciously unlikely series of coincidences, and I'm so lucky to have benefited so greatly from them.
That's it, thanks for reading!
