Never The Same River Twice

I'm seeing them again tonight.

"Don't you ever get tired of going to the same gig?" she asked me.

My answer was instinctive and immediate.

"No. It's never the same gig."

Sometimes they play the same songs in the same order. Sometimes the same songs in a different order. Sometimes different songs completely. The venue changes and thus the stage configuration, sound, the lighting are new each time. Audiences mutate virally into unfamiliar combinations depending on location, support act, main act and night of the week. The band is in a good mood, bad mood, indifferent mood; I too change with the weather. There's the impact of hearing their music before and after the music of others. Then there's the drinking: presence or absence, quality tipple or lowest common denominator bilge, restraint or abandon. Plus the conversation with random strangers, with the people you meet up with, with the band members themselves.

It's all about the contrasts and juxtapositions, the relationships and dynamics. The basic elements might remain the same, but the specific experience is always unique. That holds true for so many different forms of creative expression. Robin Guthrie (Cocteau Twins) used to hate live performances and I'm sure I remember him once lamenting in an interview that no one ever asked Van Gogh to keep re-painting his sunflowers. The irony is, of course, that Van Gogh did precisely that. More generally, artists return constantly to the same themes, re-telling the same story throughout the course of their lifetime. The devil is in the details. It's a constant stream: superfically it's just "water", but once you dive in and immerse yourself each performance is always fresh and new

Just like it's never the same river twice, it's never the same gig.

Posted by Hg on Friday 08 February 2008 at 14:45.
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