MELISMA | FALL 2012 | FEATURES
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HOW TO BUILD A WORLD IN 25 SECONDS, HOW TO BUILD A WORLD IN 25 YEARS by CRAIG DATHE
D
uring the last set of the night the stage turned into a tarmac. Throughout the set’s hour-and-a-half long duration dozens and dozens of people, of all shapes and sizes and in all sorts of attire, lifted off from the stage’s edge. They arrived from the back of the crowd on a wave of raised hands, trotted over to another side of the stage, maybe did a little spastic dance along the way, and then threw themselves off into the human mass. The constant flying of bodies didn’t slow for even one moment of the set. The band playing hardly ever had the stage to themselves. But they didn’t look frustrated, nor did they
try to ignore their many guests. On the contrary, as they played they watched the crowd and the stage-divers with expressions that communicated an astonished gratitude. They frequently smiled to themselves and to each other, and sometimes gave one of their guests a hand up onto the stage or a healthy push back into the crowd. You see, to this band, the stage-divers weren’t guests at all. The band’s placement onstage and the crowd’s on the floor, as opposed to the other way around, was rather arbitrary to them in many ways. No one owned the stage except the venue. And so the band was delighted to see so many of those in attendance understand that fact, understand it and feel empowered by it to take their rights into their own
