Belated Faithless (6)

Posted by DillyTante on Fri 2 Dec 05, 1:22 AM to DillyTante's blog.

Last Friday night, I was lucky enough to attend a Faithless concert. Kazzaz has already posted a vivid and beautifully descriptive account of it here http://www.informedconsent.co.uk/weblogs/kazzaz/...

This was the first gig I've attended in around two decades, so to all intents and purposes, it may as well been my first gig ever. It felt that way to me.

It really felt that way.

I'm unaccustomed to crowds, but not once did I feel anything other than excited anticipation, because I was lucky enough to be in excellent company (MykelO, kazzaz and Ofkazz3).

It seemed that it took forever to start and briefly, standing in the partially filled mosh-pit, I wondered if really this country mouse, should even be there; it seemed such an alien thing for me to be doing.

Faithless came on and immediately, I had no doubts. The music was so powerfully loud I felt it vibrating in my chest. I've no recollection of feeling that before. The audience were mad with happiness. I looked around at one point, to see thousands of people purely and entirely happy - all of them it seemed, in perpetual and rhythmic motion.

The music, the lights, the crowd, were overwhelming in their physicality.

This was also the first gig I've attended, in the company of someone with whom I am intensely physically involved. Too tedious to explain here, so I won't bother, but it is relevant - to me at least.

In what seemed like a few frustratingly short moments, we were racing towards the encore.

I can't even remember what it was now. The memory of that last number has been drowned out now, made irrelevant by the memory of what happened next.

From behind, suddenly my hands were held behind my back; a fistful of my hair was grasped; my head pulled back; my neck kissed and bitten. I was held firmly. Willingly trapped. Warmly. Comfortably. Time stopped. I leaned back into him, feeling entirely vulnerable but unafraid. I was in a huge crowd of dancing, clapping, ecstatically happy people, bouncing all over the place - and yet in those moments, I felt as though there was a forcefield around me. Around us.

He touched other bits of me, grasped and fondled, brutal and gentle. It was impossible to distinguish between the two sensations - and I can't even say what or even where I was touched as my memory of those details, are as lost to me as the memory of the music that was playing.

The penetrating sound and motion all around me, combined with what was happening to me personally, overwhelmed and then paralysed me.

Beautifully.

With sensation. With pleasure. Acute pleasure. Mind and body. As the music reached its crescendo, so did I. Not an orgasm. Nothing so recognisable. The most enormous, delightful and prolonged - really prolonged - shiver ran throughout my body.

The lights went up. We were blinking in the aftermath. I was deaf. I was also incoherent. This meant of course, that I bellowed incoherently once or twice.

Which in retrospect, was a little regrettable, but as I couldn't hear what I was saying, I'm hoping that the others couldn't either - and as I've no recollection of what I might have been trying to say anyway, I've decided that I'm going to forget that bit.

I've already thanked my companions privately. I'm doing it publically now. One of them knows what a step this is for me and so to that person in particular, I direct this grateful acknowledgement of a wonderful and wonder-filled evening.

Thank you.

I'm glad it wasn't Basement Jaxx, now.