The Jamily (or Why I'm Hardcore)

Just as a quick follow-up to that last post (check that one out first if you haven’t):

Whenever someone asks me, “How many times have you seen Pearl Jam?” and I reply, “Oh, somewhere in the 20s,” and they say, “My lord, Pearl Jam has come around here 20 times?” and I reply, “No, I’ve seen them in a variety of different cities,” and they say, incredulous, “You take trips to see a band you’ve seen 20 times already?” when I say, “Yes,” always, without fail, I get that look. It’s the same look as when someone asks, “You paid how much for that first edition Hemingway?” or, not believing the seemingly impossible words I’ve just uttered, “You don’t eat French fries?” It’s a look not far from disgust; it’s a look, at the very least, of admonishment, as if I were a child and I’d done something so stupid, so beyond belief, that it seems impossible even a child would do it, let alone an adult. A grown man. It’s a look that immediately reminds you of your parents. It’s a look you never thought you’d have to see again, now, being an adult; now, you make your parents proud; that look, you’d hoped, was a thing of the past.

So, look, here it is: “I’m going to see Pearl Jam next week. Four times. In one week.”

If I meet you on the street and you ask me why, what I’ll tell you is this: “Every night they put on a new show. They’re not like other bands, who just repeat the same set list over and over again night after night; Pearl Jam doesn’t just change the order, they change the whole set. There’s a different energy and different song selection. It’s not really the same show like you imagine.”

While all of that is true, you can tell I’m being defensive (and dry) in my response to the You I encounter on the street; the reason: how can I possibly, in mere minutes on the side of the road, explain to that twisted look of ridicule and derision that no matter how many times I see Pearl Jam, I will never tire of the feeling(s) the experience produces, I will never tire of running into fellow fans outside the venue who, when I ask where’s a good place to get food (because, I say, I’m not from around here), they say, hang on a minute, we’ll take you to our favorite place, we can grab something together; I’ll never tire of spending an entire day sitting outside a ticket booth with seven other strangers, who, in a mere matter of hours, become friends for the long haul, friends who, when I’m later in jeopardy of missing the show for which we’ve been waiting around all day, risk missing the show themselves in order to get me in, and later offer lodging when I explain I have a very long drive home; I’ll never tire of the immediate trust when I offer to sell something to someone online, someone I’ve never met before, never spoken to before, and I say, “How do you want to work this?” and they say, “I’ll just send you the money, you’re a Jammer, it’s all good.”

I will never tire of having a family.

Because if the one thing we want most is to live forever, the second thing we want is for our family to live forever, too. And more than just escape, more than simply shutting out the aforementioned insidious voice, the music allows this Ponce de Leon dream, this Frankenstein intrigue, to become reality. From the creativity of five individuals, from the sounds of string and drums and wood, something greater is composed: a whole.

I do want to live forever. We all do. But as much as that is true, I can’t imagine Forever without Family, without the whole. And while my sister is around the same age as me, my parents are beginning to get old, and gradually, with each passing year, the inevitable begins to stare you in the face just a little more clearly. The clock ticks louder. The voice gets louder. In all likelihood, barring a Kurzweillian cure, I will one day have to face that day, the one that will be worse than anything I can even begin to imagine. And while nothing—nothing—will ever begin to fill that hole, on that day, at least I’ll know this:

With the Jam, I’ll always have a family.