if lester could have seen them

it was easier to stand there than any other place on earth. easier to stand watching them move and weave in and out of time and space and tell us fairy tales. "fuck it, let's talk." she says and folds herself into another song.

a day like this restores your faith in rock and roll. it reminds you that it's not all smoke and lights and dancers hired on because the band can't be bothered to learn.

and i stare at her. knowing she could make grass grow by dancing on it, by singing to it. i think about how alot of poeple didn't like the new songs didn't think it was rainer maria. i think about how wrong they were. i think about how they never change. how their sound may grow or alter but rainer maria is always still rainer maria.

i watch her stepping foreward fingers racing up and down her bass she bounces backwards four quick hops her cowboy boots kicking out in odd directions and i know that rock and roll can save our souls.

as they slip into the title track form their new ep she dances with kyle reckless synchroized her face contorts as she sings the lines "your conscience is failing" and i am left withered and gray shedded skin left aside and growing to new heights i can feel life trapsing by and i want only to jump in and make a mosh pit of it make a love scene of it, make something of it but make. just to fucking create for a few seconds.

i talked to her for a few minutes after shared a bottle of wine with her and thanked her for coming. i thanked them all. i knew she wasn't felling good (she told me before they atarted playing), but you couldn't tell when she was on stage. i thanked her for getting up there and playing anyway, i tell her it meant alot to me.

she goes into this little rant about how the world folds under itself when you're playing. how you can always lay up for rest and heal yourself later but you never get another chance at being alive. i feel so new afterwards. i feel grateful in a way i can't capture in the feeble realm of words and i want to run out and start a band or sing a song or learn to dance or something, but now!

as i'm looking at her i see in her the things that i loved so fiercly about coastergirl, but it doesn't make me lonely. i don't feel tired or sad or upset about anything. just thankful. thankfult hat i was there to see the world stop spinning see the world fall over itself and emerge sacred and profane and worth every ounce of tears and laghter fired into it from the canon of our tiny little lives.

josh screams out a few songs in "tinfoil" and a parade of yelling ensues. they play it. i've never seen a bands actually play a song that people yelled for. the world erupts and we are left smiling shiny eyed tears running down the face of my mind.

they waddle out as the show eneds spent like a lover after a three hours session but we're not ready to let them go yet. i see kyle pop his heard around the back door (rubber gloves doesn't have a "backstage" they have a boack door and the band can go outside if they want.) no one is quieting down.

i see them coming back, it seems like they didn't intend to come back. they played breakfast of champions and the whole universe pops like a zit and we are free.

somehwere in the set she stops for a minute or two laughing and tells us this silly little story about her roomates hamster getting caught inthe air vents and being all dusty and shivering when they finally got him out. she's laughing almost to the point of tears. she is so real so alive, it's obvious she means it. i miss bands meaning it. i have missed it anyway. i could watch them play for two hundred hours on end and never get bored or slow down.

she tells us that "planetary rotation" is about sex. "it's about sex," she says. "i don't know if you ever knew that, but it is." then they rip into it. her face crinkles and her head leans back as she screams the lines "i want to go to far away places, but momentum makes my head ponderous and heavy, planetary rotation. is time winding down? momentum makes my head so heavy." and i know that there hads never been sex like this in all the world except had by her in that moment. it's all the in the way she sings it tells it she's on the verge of crying every moment and i can't help but fall in love with her.

i wish lester could have seen them play. he would have believed again.

2002-11-20 | 10:04 a.m.
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