TWISTED LOVE: Berlin Reports
Nic's Berlin Report
Nobody's making any sense. It's hot, there's no air here and I'm being crushed from all sides by bodies, sticky with sweat and grime and they're all screaming in my ear. I inhale. The voices around me are like I'm witnessing a new Pentecost, speaking in tongues. They are incomprehensible, I understand nothing.
In front of me, a man is remonstrating about something. I can't understand him, either. He looks pretty pissed off, though. He appears to have ripped the insides of his cheek open with his fingernails and blood and spit is dripping off his chin. He looks inconsolable. The noise crescendos, the air thins and I'm crushed against more bodies. I could die here, I think, if this went on for long enough. I've been in places like this before: there are tricks to surviving. Bend the knees, drop your arms to your side. Relax. Let the mass surrounding you be your support. But getting a good breath of air here is impossible. I'm gaping like a goldfish on the carpet. Inhale.
I stand up, face to the ceiling, on tiptoes. Inhale again. The air's better up here, if you catch the currents just right. If you can turn around you can get even more air as it cruises in from above the masses. Not that you could turn around if you wanted to. For one thing, the madman in front of you is the sort of guy you don't want to take your eyes off of. The other thing is that turning around has become a physical impossibility. It's like I'm wearing a straitjacket made out of 3,000 frantic people, all trying to pin me to the spot, stop me doing anything stupid.
The root cause of death for nearly all people is anoxia. Lack of oxygen to the brain. There's a choice few deaths where the cause of death is ultimately that there's no brain left to get oxygen to, but let's segue past that for now. Each breath coming into my lungs right now is woefully insufficient to support my body's outrageous demands. Stood on tiptoes for half an hour, pushing back against intolerable pressure from behind me, arms above my head because I'm crushed so tightly that I can't put them back down by my sides. My heart is beating as fast as it will go and it's making no difference. My lungs are letting me down. The blood being pumped is empty of oxygen. It might as well be battery acid. Inhale. Inhale. Inhale.
When the body knows it's fucked, it starts to take emergency measures to support itself. The brain is the last thing to go, preceded by the vital internal organs. The first things to go are the extremities. Right now, my arms are losing feeling. It's like pins and needles, but duller, less painful. The raging man looks pretty tired too. He's been ranting and screaming and leaping around for ages now and he's covered in a sheen of sweat. So am I, but now it feels cold and when I turn to look at him, it takes a moment for the picture to come into focus. I signal to a man in a white shirt that I want to leave this place. I'm plucked by two big-muscled guys, the crowd behind me collapses into the space I leave behind. I wave to the man on stage and his compatriots and I'm ushered into the night-time air. I've just been watching Dir en grey's first live performance in Europe.
***
Not to equivocate; watching Dir en grey live was phenomenal. The band themselves were consummate stagemen with a passionate presence and an intensity I have never witnessed on stage in quite such a way. I've seen a lot of bands on tours and many of them have been my favourite groups. None of them have matched the kind of energy which Diru burst onto the Columbia Halle stage with in buckets. It might have been us, the audience, baying for them. It might have been the sheer devotion and love of the fans for the band. The kind that leads some people to start queuing for the gig at 3am the night before. Maybe the band give this kind of performance to any crowd; either way, the result was a huge sense of satisfaction. Walking out of the Columbia Halle to the U-Bahn, people were exhausted, bedraggled and sweaty but with ubiquitous grins on their faces.
If anyone knows of any pics of the pre-concert scene, the queue, the ambulances and whatnot, I'd really appreciate a link! If I get time later I'll do a more personal writeup of the gig, the people and the weekend in Berlin. I was lucky enough to meet some really decent peeps out there and we got up to various shenanigans in the run up to the gig which should probably be recorded for posterity. :)
Thank you Nic!