Here's the Fing
In which this little rabbit attends the Idles "Love is the Fing Tour", Oakland, California.
Lord, are we animals?
Lord. Are we ever. Primal. Primitive. Beats and bones and our ears ringing with life. Deafness beckons, closerclosercloser to the inevitable throb of it. We are savage, savaging the air with our wild arms and tilt-a-whirl legs.
Too old for the pit, she thinks, looking down at the spin of it, envious but alive with the spectacle.
Energy.
What is energy?
That. It is that. It has a color and a shape and a sense and a surge and a sound and the best thing about energy is that it extends. It pushes out and at the edges of everything to enter every door and window and under all the cracks and into the fissures of your heart and no matter where you are, you are in the pit.
You are forever in the pit. Sweaty and electric.
The conductor—Joe—wields his microphone, reaches out a hand. Instructs the congregants as he crouches to the floor.
Get low, he says. Everyone get low.
A man is held aloft.
Keep him up. Keep him up!
Idles never idle. Growl prowling, their engines revving at the center of my tame town. My brain opens a window. I smell fuel. Life fuel. Over emotional, seeking satiation, this is something, she thinks.
Take my money. Take all my money. Smash and grab. Grab and go. Go and gone.
I’ll take it. I’ll take them. I’m taking them for all they’re worth, all they offer, all they give. I will store this away for later. For my greedy memory. For these words that mean nothing and everything with their pointless letters attempting glory. A remembrance. To honor. It is feeble, this. Genuine, though. True.
Let it go.
What does it mean? That feeling. Surging, stomping, squinting hard as the mouth opens wider. The yell when it comes hits all angles and surfaces of the room. Everyone’s faces. It goes into ears and straight to the thump of you. At the center. The righteous and gooey center.
What is life?
Surely, this. Circular. Building. It stomps and charges and beats and sweats. All orchestras—us—playing at the same time. A din at the periphery, twiddling dials to make it make sense. Clarity is illusive, but there are moments of pure joy. Pure knowledge. Pure yes.
This is not a review. This is an observation.
Blood has a sound.
Plug in the body to power the room. Blood surges and gurgles and screams and wails and you cannot shut it up. It will not be silenced. Not here, not now.
I don’t know the set list. I can’t recall the order. All I know is that I listened out for my favorite snippets. The salt and the spit.
“You are not a man you’re a gland
You're one big neck with sausage hands”
Distillation cuts and jabs. Poets. Oof.
Everyone sings. Everyone knows all the words. Anger can be broken down to reconfigure its atoms and sound a lot like joy. Of shared pain and love and dissonance in a room. He’s right. We don’t need another murderous toff. He’s right. He ain’t the King, she’s the King. He’s right. With veins and sinews and chest and sweat.
Sometimes you’ve just got to yell.
Stomp about.
Clench a fist.
Give the world the finger.
Who have I become in this moment?
Is this who I am all the time?
Yes.
Some times are just louder than others.
“Watch my steed go far. Goooooo!”
A body is a megaphone. A body is a tool. A body is a weapon. A body is fickle and fallible and lonely and sad. A body gives and it takes and receives and broadcasts and a body dies and it lives, right there, with you in it.
A body, a body, a body.
“Never fight a man with a perm”
Noted.
He prowls. He stomps. I’ve never experienced a tornado warning. The sirens. The summer crackle of energy in the air leading to chaos. Is this what it is? The building energy and klaxons and sense of potential danger. There is no shelter. I want the wind to take me. To pick me up and shake me and charge me with static and electricity before dumping me back on earth with a bodily thud.
Wake up. Wake up, Janeen! Time is not on your side and there’s work to be done.
What is energy?
What is spirit?
What is caged?
What is free?
Running through a field with the dopey heads of thistles whacking at our legs.
Living with the cuts and bruises and prickles and itch.
We are cruel and lovely and complicit and dumb.
We are all over the damn shop.
Chests out and ears ringing.
Animals.
The world keeps churning. The crowd keeps swirling. Sucked down the drain hole of wonder and glory, into the bowels of some kind of infinite bliss.
The kids are alright, I think. The kids are not alright? I listen to their voices as they sing a chorus.
The kids. They are alright.
“The best way to scare a Tory is to read and get rich”
Fucking poets.
Savages.
I’ll take two, please.
