Beach Ball Martyrs

Our appreciation of music is more than an aural experience. While music has become increasingly accessible through the technology of downloadable and portable mp3s, we, the listeners (or consumers) constantly desire the most basic form of the music-experience: live concerts. (Similarly, given the technology of mp3s, record labels and musicians see concerts as one of the few ways to make a buck on music.) If we just cared about the audio, we could just stay at home (or go out) and listen to those same notes, rhythms, and melodies at our leisure. But we want more out of our music, to be informed of and by our favorite songs in ways that only a live show can offer. That’s why we spend money or (when free) time on these oh-so-ephemeral events. It’s the context, stupid. There are those dimly-lit and smoke-filled jazz clubs, where your senses all fall into some dizzy haze or another. There are those arenas where you think the whole world is cosmically unified in singing its heart out with the screeching chorus about hope, redemption, or triumph. There are those basements, where energy is oozing from everywhere at once and the dancing is so intense that the only things sweating more than you are the walls. There are those dusk concerts outside where the music kisses the day goodnight, evoking mood and emotion of poets, painters, and prophets.

This past weekend, I went to another kind of concert, the day-long summertime concert that epitomizes the greatness and party-readiness of summer days. It was sunny (too sunny even) and it was hot (too hot even) and it was great (too great even, considering how tired I still am). These are the experiences that nostalgia is made of, the things that I can look back at as both unique and familiar, specific and general. Things that I’ll one day compile into a single memory of youth, summer, and awesome. And it’s only possible because these sorts of festivals are so consistent and therefore so strong in my mind. Really, if nothing else, you can be sure of seeing the following things at these shows: (1) at least five people from school you didn’t plan on meeting up with, but are happy to talk to (or at least say hello to), (2) a whole lot of women wearing American Apparel bathing suits, and (3) at least two beach balls of varying size.

Item (1) is always great, because even if you don’t really like the person you run into, you may very much like their friend who will be back in just one minute. Alternatively, these small bumping-intos seem to have the power to make the world go round.

Item (2) is sometimes great, depending if you are (a) a man who is attracted to women in American Apparel bathing suits, (b) a woman attracted to women in American Apparel bathing suits, (c) really love American Apparel and the scene that wears it, or (d) don’t deduct points for unoriginality. Regardless, it’s a harmless phenomenon.

Item (3) is usually not great at all. Or actually never great after about, say, five minutes. Sometimes these are beach balls with company logos on them passed out as advertising by the concert’s sponsors. Sometimes these beach balls are just plain beach balls brought from home by someone. I’m not sure which is more alarming. Regardless, they are always present at these types of shows and as far as I can tell they are never tolerated for long.

The course of the crowd’s relationship to beach balls is fairly standard: at first the crowd is happy to see beach balls surfing over the crowd—people even compete to get to hit the ball themselves, as if the entire crowd was participating in one large communal game in which everyone is a winner and recipient of good cheer awards; the crowd’s attention however soon shifts, either a band comes on stage or people just get bored, but most of the crowd generally loses interest in any beach ball that may or may not be coming their way; this, of course, leads to a beach ball hitting you or a loved one in the head, which may not hurt (although some of these beach balls are pretty big), but is generally annoying; reacting to this nuisance people begin to hit the ball harder, trying to get it further away from their section of the crowd; of course the receiving section of the crowd doesn’t want the ball either so they just hit it back equally hard; a passive-aggressive situation, leaning more on the aggressive side ensues and the entire crowd gives each other looks of annoyance and castigation until someone finally stabs the ball with something. The fact that they stab the beach ball as opposed to just letting the air out of course makes them complete garbage to be picked up by event staff at the end of the day.

Without leaning too heavily on the-world-is-a-beach-ball analogies (which by the way could have been reinforced by the invocation of globe beach balls, but wasn’t, due to my own restraint, sort of), there is an important social phenomena on display. Namely, that no one actually deals with the issue at hand (i.e. the beach ball). Instead, everyone is pushing their problem (read: the problem) on someone else, which only gets pushed on someone else, a chain reaction resulting in a whole lot of annoyed people.

In the past, I’ve used these balls as inflatable beach chairs between acts. This past weekend, my friend earned extra points of respect and admiration for collecting beach balls at his feet, simply catching them and putting them down. In both situations, the idea was to take a pro-active and non-violent stance towards a care- and beach ball free concert. And yet, the people around us shot us both dirty looks. But we were doing it for everyone! We spared everyone all kinds of future pains! Here is the solution! You’re welcome!

But they wanted none of it. The beach ball and the ups and downs therewith are part of the experience. It’s part of that summertime nostalgia that we are already, at a young age, creating for our future reference. We may not want to deal with the beach ball at the moment, but we want it there in our memories to draw threads of continuity between familiarities. It’s a powerful image, suggestive of warmth, youth, softness—all good things. Too colorful to pass up on. The type of detail that makes memories seem all the more authentic, despite their soft focus.

Our suffering will be rewarded one day, not in our next life, but later in this one. We are all beach ball martyrs. Hallelujah.

~josh