Tori Amos 12.03.98 East Lansing, IL

So much to catch up on from the last entry.  That's what happens when you're so busy for so long and don't have a computer to do this thing with even if you have the time...

Sitting here with the requresite Jack and Coke (it *IS* friday after all, even if I'm here typing...puuuuuuuleeeazzzze!!) I dwell back into more than two weeks worth of life.  It's been exciting and eventfull to say the least.

September launched with a four day weekend--Labor Day.  Tori coincidentally was only some scant 750 miles away for a couple concerts...Need I say more?  I got good tickets and took off down the road, alone, again.  In Columbus, Ohio, I arrived at something like 1030 for the M&G as normal, meeting awesome fans, as normal.  People from Canada, a couple locals, a guy from Detroit, etc. etc.  We hung out and all got to know one another while waiting to see Tori...Susi was the girl in the green dress.

Still leary from the TN incidents, I walked into the venue early and stashed my backpack.  Later I would be reported by good samaritans after retreiving it...musta imagined I was up to no good by it.  Security demanded to see it...after I'd hit the stalls and set up thank goodness so they left with a scowl w/o even bothering to check my fanny pack (DOUBLE thank goodness!)  Needless to say it was (and is) the last time I'll ever try doing that sort of thing--too risky all around!

But at the M&G, I was about 4 rows back...Tori came out and she saw me and my beret.  The shock on her face and the "YOU!" was almost frightening.  "You gave me that hat!".  I'm was on cloud nine.  She recognized me.  The hat i'd worn to make myself stand out and be identified by all the internet people I was giving rides or getting tickets from also succeeded in making my memorable to Tori as I had also hoped...So many people loved that beret and came away thinking I was a pretty damn nifty guy !  Hehe.  A lot of people scurried to get pics with me cuz of it ;)  Tori and I talked for a good five minutes or so about the beret and what it meant and everything..it was mindblowing unbelieveable the interest she took in it all.  I tingled from the exchange.  I asked her to play "Hotel" for myself, and christa...telling her I knew she probably practiced it with the guys much but still hoping...She said it was a song she needed to get out so...

That night I crashed on the floor (along with a few other fans) in Josh and Sean's apartment...a gay couple I'd met at the show.  Josh is the guy with the fairy wings pictured...very cool guy.  I locked my keys in the car (again) and once again had to resort to roadside assistance (at least I'm getting my money's worth! hehe) so Left for Indy a bit later than the others going to the show there.  Sadly Josh and Sean couldn't afford to go...

The columbus show was a really solid show, and the tape was my best of the entire tour, but the next night was incredible.  After the drive I got there around 1330, forgetting about the hour time differance (again)...but the M&G was a mob scene so I went out to eat with Keith and a couple other hardcore fans...The was only just over when we got back to the venue.  Joe had left his backpack so I scrambled about waiting for him to come back...he never did so I shouldered it and waited at the front gates...I had looked inside it to see if he had tickets in it...he did.  I later learned they were detroit tickets, but I had thought they were for that show that night...i was getting edgy...but I finaly saw him, went inside and set myself up no problem.  I had purchased my ticket from a cool fan I'd hooked up with over the net.  Eigth row left stacks.  Of the seven shows only two were not right at one of the stacks--and those two were close and center so tape was more secondary than normal.

While waiting for Joe I heard the familiar strains of Hotel...she soundchecked it with the band, practiced it, for a good half hour at least.  I tried not to get my hopes up and actually managed to stay calm about it.  Just because she practiced it didn't mean she would play it...but it sure sounded as if she had it down...

When she played Hotel a little past halfway in the set, I almost broke down and started bawling.  I literally had to fight back tears and the you know that little stomach and throat feeling.  I didn't give a damn about anything else.  For those few minutes, I was back with Christa in Arcata, being the person I used to be and smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee in my living room...even though I knew Liz would be able to smell it no matter what we did, knowing we had to get up for class the next day, even knowing we should go to bed--that conversation was just too important...or the time we drove to the beach, the first time I heard siren.  We walked forever and then sat to watch the sunset.  Then there were all the times I spent on my own up there...The entire country, the whole forest was greener and more lively after I made that friendship with Christa.  It was the post suicidal days when she helped me most...not even aware until later just how important she was to me then, how much she made my days manageable--that simple day in day out left foot right foot mentality of a duty bound survivor...not living for myself but only because it was easier to be alive than dead to my family...She seemed to be the only spark of worth in my life at the time, and I was in love with her.

I can say I was in love with her now, in retrospect.  I still am in at least a subdued by necessity way.  My original hand to her was reached for a date, for a possible relationship...but she was too troubled to try one at the time.  I settled for a warm and open and caring friend.  At the time, it was what I needed even more than a mate to burden my soul upon so heavily.  Even still I held back on the full thrust of my problems for several several weeks.  But I loved her with a passion.

Now she's living with a wonderful, open, caring man named Bryan, and she's happy.  That makes me happy.  I knew when I left that nothing would ever develop with us more than friendship.  When I left I thought that friendship was all it ever was...but I've never had such incredible thoughts for a friend before.  I never had the feelings for amy or april the way I did and still do for christa. In fact, I never even had the same feelings for Rebecca, and I thought I loved her as I never would love another or be loved in return the same.

SO the song has come for me to be a symbol of what brief time I had with Christa, and all the incredible life she breathed back into me in the days just past my suicide plans.  Hearing tori play it live has been a dream for over a year and a half...and for the dream to come true finally...It's made me realize everything I've just written...that what I felt for christa is what LOVE is...

I've always told Dan, whenever he's having troubles with his girlfriend, that, even if it all comes to naught, it's better to have love and lost than never had loved at all.  I never had a basis other than "look at me, Dan, I've never loved at all...and it sucks, I'm lonely and always have been".  Well, now I have a more factual back for that.  I lost christa, through no real fault of either of us--the timing just dictated it all otherwise...and I don't get angry at that, and I'm not depressed or sad--it's just the way it is.  I miss christa, and seeing tori so much lately--whom I connect with christa on such a highly intimate level--makes it just that much worse...BUT, like I already wrote, I'm insanely happy that she and Bryan found each other, and I wish her all the love and hope and joy I can imagine.  If I'm lucky, I'll find someone who will take my thoughts and my breath like christa did.

All these thoughts swirled though my head while Tori played "Hotel".  It was a moment of true enlightenment for me, and may never be rivalved...so when she played it again in Chicago with me standing at the front, ( tape damned early in the show so I gave up on it) I sang with my heart but it was not nearly the profound experience it was the weekend before.  It is still the song I relate to that loss and that gain, but the tenor is changed now and I suppose will be forever.

But still, in chicago I was front row at the M&G and got my picture taken with Tori, finally!  I don't have the photo cuz it was a friends camera...but hope to have it soon to scan...I'm planning on building an online tori shrine from this tori tour...more to follow on that one.

Hurrican Floyd came through this way wednesday night.  We'd prepped the motor pool for it by taking apart various parts on the HMMVs, doors, canvas roofs, etc, and the storm wasn't even strong enough to have warranted all that attention it seems...but today was still spent cleaning up and putting everything back together.  Spent that night over at Rich's place with Dave...we had a good time--he made awesome omelettes for breakfast.  Summer was gone, I gave her a ride to her parents in Indy (on my way to Chicago--we talked the whole way, it was awesome.  Great woman and the miles seemed to just coast by...and i've noticed that driving long distances is **so much easier** if you actually stop when you're tired and need to sleep.  I get by on 4 to 5 hours for days at a time on the road...)

Works been work.  SGT Phelps graduated Platton Leadership Development Course and so she's been back to do work too--lightening the load conisderably.

And I'm sure I've forgotten a bunch of things...but I guess they'll just hafta go unrecorded and unrecalled forever.  *Shrug*  happens.  Now to scan photos...

The drive home from Indy and Ohio...10,000 mile mark...Must be a bad sign or something because there was a roadside cross *right* there...Still made it home OK.
 
 

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