Nicely Stung

I went to The Metropolitan Opera last night. I saw Sting. It was hard to describe. It was like sitting through a car accident or drowning - that moment before. The music overwhelms. You find yourself travelling through a slideshow of your life. Slide after slide captures moments in time, people, places, smells, your life.




I saw Sting as I originally saw him, not that he has aged. But I saw myself as I saw him, in highschool. He was wearing that Russian naval, horizontal blue and white striped shirt (you know the one from the 80s when we were smuggling blue jean and cassete tapes into Moscow in exchange for fur caps and pea coats). I was wearing a red mohawk. Not just red, but bright red. Aided by a little lemon, a lot of "sun in" and a blow dryer (hey, it was the 80s). I wore Doc Martens and Diesel Tee Shirts. I sang to "The Sex Pistols: God Save the Queen" like it was my own personal, national anthem, and then I melted to songs like Roxanne and Walking on the Moon. I found a voice in a man, and a group, who felt as I did but could say it, sing it, so much cooler. Last night he brought me up to date.



Over the years, Sting has meant my wife and married life (she has threatened on more than one ocassion to leave me for him). His music has captured the room where my first son, and child, was born. It has reminded me of an open air ride to a soccer game with the whole family jamming to a version of Synchronicity (even my two year old, who just yelled anything and everything he could to keep up). It is joy, sadness and longing, but overall it is everything I feel: good and bad.



If I take one thing from tonight, as I look around at all the people here, different people, but happy people, it is the electricity and energy. Maybe its not love but it is emotion. I wonder what would happen if we could get Osama and Obama, Jews and Palestinians, Muslims and Christians, Catholics and Protestants, Democrats and Republicans, Yankees and Red Sox all in the hall to listen to Sting. Bring their wives and lovers, fathers and mothers, sisters and brothers to hear his music. To feel that slideshow of emotion. I wonder if we could not solve a lot of what plagues us today.