I'm Better Than Fine

Approximately three weeks ago, we were here:

In case you aren't sure what you're looking at, that is the seat map for the Ikeda Theater at Mesa Arts Center.  Those two fat little yellow squares at the bottom of the picture -- see them?  Those were our seats.

Our tickets

Yes.  I got to see her.  Fiona.  The one that started it all for me.  The one that sang me through my teens and twenties.  The first one that showed me it's okay to be me.  That it's okay to wander the halls along the walls.  That I AM an extraordinary machine.  Her.  I got to see her.

Honestly, I never thought I would.  She rarely, rarely comes to Arizona and I didn't know that she'd ever tour again.  When I heard that she was coming, I set my alarm for 10 minutes before the beginning of the presale.  I scoped out the seat map for the theater, so that I knew exactly what seats I wanted.  I actually practiced clicking them.  I ctrl-c'd the presale code.  I refreshed the page every chance I got for 10 solid minutes until I saw in big letters "PRESALE OPEN" next to her listing at the venue.  A quick ctrl-v in the presale code box, click-click on the seats, PURCHASE TICKETS... and they were mine.  I just had to stare at the computer screen for a few minutes after that.

We had a back-up plan.  Thomas (who was at work at the time) was on the phone with the box office, purchasing tickets that way.  The woman he was speaking to said they were disappearing too fast for her to click on them.  He ended up also purchasing tickets (because, uh... we forgot to have a plan for how to communicate if he was on the phone and I had already purchased tickets), but they were in row D, which is actually the 7th row back, if you can see it on the chart.  (We ended up selling them to get our money back.)

Well, the night came and I felt like a fat sack of crap.  How is it that pregnancy always makes me feel like a fat sack of crap??  Well, I did my best to look beautiful, even though I'm pretty sure Fiona didn't once look at me.

Thomas agonized over what shirt to wear.  "She likes The Beatles, right?..."

We got to the theater.  The ushers did double-takes at our tickets and called me lucky.  Yes, I suppose I was lucky... but mostly because I'm neurotic.  And we sat down.

That's my seat.  That's the stage.  They're like BFF's.

My view of the stage

Chilling before the show

Fiona Apple's apple

The opener was amazing.  It was actually just Fiona's band, doing their own thing.  And it was amazing.  Thoroughly enjoyable.  And then she came out.  Would it weird you out if I told you I actually shook a little and got teared up?... Well, anyway.  Then, she sang.  And it looked like this:

And this:

And I wish I could've captured every second.  Every smile.  Every grimace.  Every furrowed brow.  Every nose wrinkle and every baring of teeth.  Every fist clench.  Every foot stamp.  Every arm swing.  All of it.

But I couldn't.  I'll just have to try to remember.  I'll have to try to remember all of the little quirky things she does.  Things like this:

They actually wrap that leg of her piano bench.  She never once sat down without tucking her left foot behind it like that.

The concert was amazing.  There were some eyes-rolled-back-in-your-head guitar solos and some moments that really made me feel like I was intruding.  Like I was witnessing something intimate.  She doesn't just sing.  The music literally IS her.  She gives herself over completely.  Every movement of every muscle in her body is expression of that music and it's like... well, it's like she can't control it.  And who would want her to?

"I am the baby of the family.  It happens, so..."

"Look at, look at, look at, look at me.  I'm all the fishes in the sea."

"I miss that stupid ache."

I ended up not taking nearly as many pictures as I thought I did.  It felt like I was taking too many, like I was interrupting the atmosphere, so I just tried to snap a couple here and there.  And part of me wishes now that I'd taken more.  And the other part of me is so glad that instead of taking pictures, I spent most of the concert gazing up at Fiona with this expression:

And after the concert was over, we got one of the stage hands to give us a set list:

Fast As You Can
On The Bound
Shadowboxer
Paper Bag
Anything We Want
Get Gone
Periphery
Sleep To Dream
Ex Machine
Werewolf
Left Alone
I Know
Tymps
Every Single Night
Daredevil
Not About Love
Make Believe (encore that wasn't actually an encore)

And we went outside and waited near her bus with a few others in hopes of getting her signature.  Alas, she didn't show for that.  But we did get to see her bus drive away...

Anyway, there it is.  Pretty much the one item on my "Bucket List" or whatever.  Ok, maybe there's a couple more things I'd like to do before I die, but this was a big one.  And I did it!