“Everyone’s got a hero that forms them.” — Paul McCartney
In a dimly lit venue, I am waiting. It will be at least an hour before my Favorite Band takes to the stage. First, an opener. And before that, we stand.
Husband and I are two heads in a sea of hundreds, all facing a stage draped with sequined tapestries and cluttered with gear. I have been in this anonymous position dozens of times before, a person among strangers all waiting for the same thing. The crowd’s interest ranges from boredom to curiosity, from appreciation to obsession. Some of us have been counting down the days to this moment. Some of us just had a free Tuesday night and $40 to spare.
The artist may not discern a difference between these two extremes, and to an unwavering fan this is mildly devastating. I am the one who has danced to your early stuff in my childhood mirror, my legs and hips swaying like wild weeds in the wind. It is I who feel seen and held by the sounds you compose. And I am the one who keeps trying to like your latest album, even though I really just don’t.
How liberating it felt the times I’ve been on the more casual side of things. Going to a show where you only sorta know a band feels cool and chic. Like, I just had something to wear and needed a place to wear it. So here I am to watch you play from a cocktail table in the back. Might even step outside and converse mid-set, I’m so uninvested.
These low-key concerts are few and far between for me, because I befriend music the same way I befriend people. I prefer a handful of close ones, rather than a whole lotta ish ones. As a result, it is with great anticipation that I stare at an empty stage, willing the musicians to appear.
My Favorite Bands play small-medium venues, with stages low enough and close enough that you could set your elbows on them. Before their sets, they hide away in greenrooms off to the side, just beyond the heavy stage curtains. There will be a cooler filled with beer, a full-length mirror leaning against a wall, a counter lined with snacks listed on a rider: hummus, tortilla chips, salsa, carrots, tequila, a 12 pack of something specific, mixed nuts, basil, tomatoes, mozzarella.
I know this spread because I’ve seen it myself. I’ve shared in its wealth. I’ve dipped a chip into the hummus. I’ve taken shots from the tequila bottle.
For so long, I wanted to be equals with my idols. I dreamed of reaching the same landmarks, sharing the same scene. Each time I play a venue that’s hosted a band I love, I feel rush of giddy excitement that I hide behind what I hope is cool professionalism. The saying “fake it ’til you make it” has always irked me, but it does make sense when pushing past imposter syndrome. The mere fact that I am there means that I belong.
But I lose something in this effort, too. To step into this experience, I lessen the distance between fan and idol. In an effort to see myself as equally capable and equally deserving, have I destroyed my ability to fangirl?
I stare at the stage knowing that eventually my Favorite Band will come out, and I don’t want to miss it. Let me be the person who begins the cacophony of “woos” that will greet them.
At last they walk in. I smile at them with saccharine earnestness, a display of true pleasure paired with the fluttering eyelashes of demonstrative fawning. I hope my muses will see me gazing up at them so smitten, so human, so ready to receive.
The more times I try to make meaningful eye contact with a musician I admire, the more I become aware of the inevitable and insurmountable distance between fan and idol. Even if we are gazing into each other’s eyes, at best catching a wave of something pleasant, I will never be more than a stranger who streams their album. It is impossible for them to see beyond this momentary encounter and into the depths of my life’s most isolated moments, where their creation ignited something lasting. All they can see is my smiling mouth tinted blue from stage lights, the way my thickly applied lipstick has smeared away from the center due to my absent-minded habit of chewing at my lips.
Throughout their set, I remain engaged and attentive. I stand tall and sway expressively, meaningfully. The setlist surprises me with selections from decades ago, and I am delighted to feel intimate with the deep cuts. It is a favorite song. It warrants a scream, a whip of the hair.
I am also surprised that others are equally enthused. It makes no sense to feel something public belongs to me, but sometimes I do. I thought it was my secret, but these people are in on it. I look around at my musical allies: a middle-aged man in unironic workwear raising an enthusiastic fist to the delicate distortion, a couple undulating along in unison, a person decked out in spiky studs and a bedazzled trucker’s hat dancing wildly.
I have been known to cry at the sight of crowds singing along together. There’s certainly a feeling of community when you share in fandom with strangers. But it’s also a touch isolating the way our experience with the music is otherwise so private, each of us listening intimately in the spare moments of our lives. We can listen to music together, but the weighted feelings music sometimes carries seem impossible to share.
After the show has ended, I walk meekly but determinately towards the stage in hopes of scoring a set list. My Favorite Band gives out its copies at random to a few of the many outstretched hands that reach for them. I am embarrassed enough to want one so badly, and more so when I don’t get one. But vulnerability is power, and I walk away with my head held high.
I see the person in spiky studs has received one, and is crying tears of happiness to their friend. They are gushing about the evening, hugging in the room as it empties around them.
Back in our Airbnb for the night, husband and I sit on an uncomfortable couch eating freezer-burnt ice cream cones from a liquor store. I’m wearing my Favorite Band’s t-shirt, and feeling slightly dismayed that I could be in the same room with them without having communicated my feelings. The one-sidedness of fandom is uncomfortable for me. The way we feel our favorite podcasters are our best friends and they don’t even know us.
When I was younger, I didn’t need reciprocation. Now I wonder if you can be a fangirl and still have dignity. And whether dignity is something you have to start having after you’re, like, 20.
I don’t like to adore from a distance. I don’t like my love unrequited. Must it be so personal to be a fan? Does every brand of love feel the same for me?
I think ultimately my Favorite People and my Favorite Bands do something similar. They give me permission to be what I want or need to be. My fandom has always been built on a desire to belong. Songs I found and fell in love with made me feel seen and held. I always wanted to make a show of how they changed me. But maybe all I really need to do is surrender.
I'm almost 70 and I still "fan girl, " although it seems a little more amusing at my age. I have a favorite performer that I go to watch, whenever he is close by, and after the show I wait at the stage door until he comes out so I can adore him verbally and get a picture with him...me at my age and him at 81.
Oh Katrina, that opening line! And so many others that floored me throughout another luscious, lyrical piece that manages to be so much all at once.