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fallouttboy · 28 days

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fob nashville: the feelings

(tw throwing up)

fob nashville truly was an experience that will never be forgotten. i went alone and had floor tickets, though i spent most of the show either behind the scenes or in a sensory room due to excessive tummy problems that i thought were anxiety induced but turned out to be a stomach bug.

it was hot in the arena. unbearably so to me, but i was also anxious and in the beginning stages of illness. i was sitting on the actual floor of the arena during we didn’t start the fire and i was then moved by staff to a chair that was just behind the sound and lighting crew. i thought to myself that this was perfect, because i had planned on asking one of them for a set after the show, and pete’s riser was right in front of me! unfortunately, that’s when i got sick again and was helped to an area that was for sure not meant for me.

this area was for the vip passes for the arena and the band’s guest list havers, not backstage, but not for normal people. in sitting back there, i saw jack and alex from all time low walk past, joking and talking to each other. the fifteen year old in me wanted to shoot up and run to them, tell them how much they meant to me and get a photo, or no photo, just the experience. but the twenty four year old, much less fangirl and much more human-y, realized that i was sick and it wouldn’t be worth spreading it to them. it was fucking cool seeing them like that though; despite growing up inside of the music world and seeing stars that are well established and making their way up the ranks, it is still always so shocking to me that they really are just people. they have mortgages and bills and get sick and have off days just like me. their stardom doesn’t make them less human, it just makes some aspects significantly easier. to see jack and alex goofing off like me and my friends did back at fob austin was a feeling of “oh, right. humans.” and it grounded me in a way; at fifteen, i saw them as these huge stars that were so much cooler and so much more talented than me, living my dream, our dream. i saw them as, to put it plainly, gods; i saw every musician i looked up to as a god. i’ve been to all time low shows since then, one in the nosebleeds and one about 7 rows from the stage in a small venue, but even then they were still untouchable; they were on a pedestal and we couldn’t touch, we were the dreamer and they were the dream. it was them at the altar and us at the pews. seeing them in this capacity, where i was a (sick) human and they were best friends walking to the bathroom-it’s like something in me shifted. i saw a part of them that i was never meant to see. i saw jack and alex, not Jack And Alex.

fall out boy played kintsugi kid and i couldn’t help but weep. jack and alex rounded the corner coming back from the bathroom around this point and then circled back to go to the lexus lounge, a fancy food and bar area that’s blocked off to normal people that don’t have a pass or a hundred dollars to spare for access. i wonder if they saw me crying. i wonder if they saw me at all. i was dehydrated beyond belief, so almost no tears came out, but my body was weeping. my face was scrunched up and ugly and i was snotty and vaguely nauseous from emotion this time, not just the oncoming of a bug. kintsugi kid is my song from so much (for) stardust. i’ve been attached to her since the drop, i miss the way i felt nothing, overwhelmed by being seen. to have her as a full band song was too much, salt in a wound, rubbing alcohol to clean a cut that’s still bleeding, a kick when you’re still down. it’s what i needed. i needed that release, i needed that feeling of being so deeply, desperately seen. i needed them to know me, even if they don’t know who i am. i needed to know them, even if i don’t know who they are. baby please, i just need someone to hold me, even though you don’t even know me.

i didn’t see jack and alex again. instead, around the start of the medley, i was escorted back to a sensory room on the second floor. to get there, i was taken in the behind-the-scenes part; bridgestone arena is home to the nashville predators, our hockey team, and since fall out boy is decidedly not a hockey team, all of the hockey game set up items (the plexiglass walls, the nets, etc) were stored away in this section. this is also where the band’s load in things were; fall out boy’s were all still out since they were currently performing, but the amps and props for carr, hot mulligan, and jimmy eat world were all being loaded up into their trucks as i was walking through. i walked through a group of people that i'm sure had relations to some of the bands (i didn’t recognize anyone else) and it reminded me again that these people are just people. they have a capital n name and more money than i’ll probably ever see, but they’re humans. they’re people.

me and my medic passed by a black box-table that probably held some sort of sound equipment, and taped to it were two setlists. i half joked to my medic if taking one would be a bad idea, and she smiled at me, knowingly, and simply responded that she didn’t know, and she didn’t want either of us to get in trouble. we proceeded to the second floor and exited the elevator as patrick began spotlight. i asked my medic if she was a fan, and she said yes, this was her second time working a fall out boy show. she said more that i wish i had caught but it was then that i realized that it was spotlight being played, and i was trying my hardest not to cry in front of this woman i barely knew.

i got to the sensory room and flopped down into a beanbag and cried. all of the emotions were hitting now; i was missing my favorite band in my hometown because i was getting sick. but i paid hundreds of dollars for these tickets, i was not missing this show. i was being safe, doing my best to stay away from people and not transfer anything, which was easy given that i was so distanced from everyone. it did hit me, though, upon talking to my friends, that this was truly such a me experience.

something about me is my full body love for music and music industry and everything surrounding the field. i’ve been backstage, i’ve been in studios, i’ve been raised in the industry. i have experienced the music industry first hand, my father being away a lot of weekends as i was a child because he was doing shows, my uncle taking me to studios to drop off papers, the list goes on. i’m not bragging either, it’s a fast paced and unforgiving industry.

but there is something so magical to it. there is an atmosphere that reeks of i’m doing this and it doesn’t matter your status in stardom (unless you got there in a means of paying people off or another, in my opinion, unethical way). and while i’ve seen backstage, i’ve seen artists come off stage and immediately take a huge swig of a mysterious clear liquid, i’ve seen bills get difficult to pay because the union payment hasn’t hit yet-it’s always like looking into a world of what should be. it’s looking behind the curtain to see the man behind the wizard: uncomfortable and sort of life ruining, now knowing that it isn’t some magical thing but is entirely explainable with human standards, but that almost makes it more magical.

getting to see how fall out boy looks behind the scenes, the boxes and crates and groups of roadies all rushing to pack up before the bus call; that’s beautiful, but in the way it’s beautiful when the weather is horrible and your shoes won’t stay tied and the bread is moldy on the day after a breakup.

experiencing fall out boy’s set from a dark and cold sensory room is the ideal, by the way. i’m not diagnosed as anything other than Major Depressive Disorder with Moderate to High Anxiety Symptoms, but I have recently (in the past couple of years) started exhibiting overwhelming symptoms of sensory sensitivity (specifically light, sound, touch, and temperature) and feelings of sensory overload have been coming very easily to me as of recent. i didn’t know bridgestone had a sensory room, and i’ve been attending events there since 2009. it’s a room absolutely meant for children, with bubbling color shifting lights and toys aimed for toddlers, but that’s almost perfect, because when i am overloaded i feel almost akin to children. any semblance of adult knowledge on how to approach my feelings go out the window and i am a little kid crying on the floor of a grocery store because it’s too loud and i want to go home.

as i half laid in the beanbag with my doc’s off to the side and my crop top shoved up just below my breast, i finally felt myself cooling off, coming down. patrick went into golden and i cried again, all of the mothers raised their babies to stay away from me, catching my labored breath in the cold of the room. and things were fine, as fine as they can be at a fall out boy show when fall out boy has been your favorite band for half of your life, until the 8 ball.

the 8 ball is always somewhat horrifying in the best ways. i went into sunday expecting the worst (best): one song off my bingo for the 8 ball, maybe one or two for medley. this was almost worse (better); nothing from my bingo got marked off, but they played exactly the songs i needed to hear most.

recently, due to personal reasons, i’ve been feeling an awful lot of shitty feelings. i’ve been struggling a lot with feeling like a whole person, or a person at all. i’ve been struggling with feeling like things are ever going to be okay again. i’ve been struggling with the fact that i thought i'd be in a successful band by 18 and i’m 24 working at a fast food place for the third year in a row, this april. i’ve been struggling with helping myself feel like this is okay, what im doing is okay, i don’t need to be ashamed of who i am because i’m not living the life i thought i would be by now, the life that i made up when i was fifteen and suicidal.

spotlight (oh nostalgia) on its own would’ve been enough. kintsugi was enough. golden would’ve been enough. but we got jet pack blues, and i was dehydrated sobbing again. i have spent the past ten years crying to this song, trying to find that peace of mind behind these two white highway lines, driving into the night until i felt like a human again. this song is my song.

i was scared that nashville would be disappointing after austin, and then after madison square. by nashville, many of my favorite songs had been played already. i didn’t think there would be room for anything. that, and how the 8 ball was decided with the raffle winner-it was in the hands of a stranger. but oh, fall out boy once again takes everything i know to be true and turns it on its head. they didn’t play my favorite songs, they played my songs. they played the songs that exceeded favoritism. they played the songs that are so truly, genuinely, unfortunately and beautifully me that i don’t know what to do. they wrote that setlist for me (they didn’t, obviously, and i had no part in influence). they knew i would be there (they didn’t), they knew what i needed to hear (they didn’t), they knew that in that crowd on sunday night was a half man of a woman that’s going through some really grown up shit right now, and they need to hear these songs.

oh nostalgia, i don’t need you anymore. did you ever love her, do you know? did you never want to be alone? all of the mothers raised their babies to stay away from me and pray they don’t grow up to be. i felt you at the beginning but needed you at the end. but don’t forget it’s your right to do whatever you like, cause you can be your own spotlight.

#mine #fob nashville #w

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