Going to a show with somebody

Some of the best evenings I had during my last few years in Sydney where when my dear neighbors would score some free tickets to the Woodfire Pizza Restaurant in Double Bay. It was a strange hole-in-the-wall joint with pizza out front, but then a curtained off area with a little stage where they would hold shows that were usually really good. And we never ate pizza, the back side of the menu was a full, page-long, densely typed in small font list of outstanding Hungarian food. I always got the goulash that was a little spicier, with dumplings (nearly unmistakable from gnocchi) and a cucumber and sour cream salad on the side.

We saw some great shows. The first one was Monica Trappaga, who is better known for being a children's TV host, but on this night she was launching her new album of 1930's swing numbers and torch songs. Another really good one was Simon Tedeschi, reknowned classical pianist and the subject of an Archibald-Prize-winning portrait that made the most of his youthful face and intense blue eyes, but on this night he was sitting in with some well-known jazz players and realizing his second passion of playing jazz piano.

The meals were great, the shows were great, and I love my neighbors who used to invite me, but every time, especially at the point I got most transported by the music, I wished I had someone there with me. My heart would go out to whoever I had a crush on at the time and I'd imagine them there with me, being similarly moved by the music and the experience. I never imagined my ex there because this tradition started after he left me, so I didn't miss having him with me, only some new person. It became sort of a mental litmus test - any new boyfriend who was going to hang around with me - to get to the point where we were a social unit - would have to love these nights as much as I did.

Fast forward to Appleton. Last night I went to see my guitar teacher's band play at a big barn-like place called the Rodeo Bar, out Country Road II in the middle of nowhere. I had emailed a work colleague who I once went to another concert with to see if he wanted to come along, but never heard back from him, so this gave the convenient cover that I was waiting for a friend to join me and not that I was some pathetic groupie there by myself. But I wasn't there by myself - I am now not just a music fan, I am a guitar student. I talked to my teacher before the show, after the show, and in the break when he took me up on stage and showed me all their gear and his effects pedals (explained to me the history of all the effects pedals - he's pretty encyclopedic really). During the show I stayed up front, not right at the stage but about two or three bodies back (most of the bodies were Wisconsin girls who are not afraid to dance in public, or a guy Eric whose birthday it was, who was drunk enough that he wasn't afraid either). But I was transfixed on the guitars. I tried to watch their hands as much as I could, to catch them doing things that I know how to do. And there was hardly a favorite song of mine that wasn't in their set list.

I stayed for two sets, until 1:00 in the morning. I was transported by the music in the same way I used to be at the Woodfire Pizza place - more so, because I could dance and so lose myself in the songs more, and have the experience of being part of a crowd having a good time at the front of a stage. I was there with my guitar teacher. And sort of also with my whole history of my relationship to rock and roll - fan, collector, college radio DJ, amateur rock journalist. My new realationship to rock and roll is apprentice. And my future relationship to rock and roll is I hope as a craftswoman. I didn't feel any of that incompleteness or longing that I used to at the Woodfire Pizza place. I was at a show with somebody.