blog to brag

I just recieved my first "magazine editor" credit today! Wahoo!

Bubble in a Sound Wave

Los Angeles hums with feedback.It reverberates off of fluorescent-lit billboards for movies and tv shows which echo last year's movies and tv shows. The skywide ads have been designed by ad agencies based on what a demographic wants, and the demographic knows what it wants based on what the ad agencies sell it.Below the billboards, stores that cannot afford ad agencies simply state their purpose in red block letters, fluorescent or neon: CHINESE FOOD, DISCOUNT SHOES, ADULT VIDEO, WATER, DONUTS, repeat. A back-beat.And on the streets and the freeways, arcing across overpasses, winding down boulevards, a constant stream of blurring headlights and tapping break lights, everyone in line, waiting. The pitch oscillates as night falls, gets higher, tenser, electric. Daytime is a holding pattern of long lunches, development meetings and traffic, but night is when things happen. Or could happen.The line of cars drones on, pulses steady, even as one pulls away, turns down a corner. There are always more to pick up the pace.The car, no more alone than before, surrounded by dozens of others, buzzes past its destination, a nightclub. It will have to circle the block half a dozen times before finding a place to park. The club is in an old theater, its name spelled out vertically above the old box office, which is now painted black and covered in peeling rock and roll posters. There is a line of people outside that stretches around the corner of the sidewalk which is stained with gum and smells of beer. Those in line are mostly kids, either in age or in outlook. They wear sports coats and hooded sweatshirts, skirts over jeans, clothes designed to look like they were bought in a thrift store, patches with the names of bands that were dead before they were born, reverb. They are all waiting for a disruption, a system shock, a rolling drum beat, a boiling over, a bubble in a sound wave. It is after 9 p.m now. The band was scheduled to start at 7:30. Finally, the doors open.The club fills quickly, the crowd rowdy from waiting, on-edge from the constant drone of the feedback. They crowd up to the front of the stage, they buy drinks, they check their cell phones, then check them again. Some people start chanting the name of the band incessantly, but the chant dies out after a few minutes.Then the lights go down.As the audience becomes a solid wall of screams and cheers, three unremarkable women take their positions on stage in the darkness, sliding past amps and stepping over mic cables. There is a drum beat, there is a crunching guitar riff, then the singer, who is small and has more hips than she would like, steps up to the microphone just as the lights sweep over the stage and she closes her eyes. She sings with a voice that comes from so deep inside her that it feels like it the core of the earth.