When I watch and listen to Thom Yorke soulfully play the piano, I often wonder if I will ever be able to do anything in my life that feels like how I imagine it is for him in those moments. What can compare to performance? Using your body and voice in such a moving way? Possibly losing yourself in those experiences, creating, and re-creating. Expressing your innermost self. Sharing that experience with others. It looks to me like something worth working towards and figuring out how to get closer to. Piano and voice lessons?
The closest I’ve ever been to Thom in person was at an Atoms For Peace concert at Roseland Ballroom in NYC on April 6, 2010. It was kind of an adventure and I think an interesting story. Since I had never had the experience of waiting in line for hours ahead of a show to get a great spot close to the stage, I decided this would be the concert to give it a try. So I got in line at Roseland eight hours or so before the doors were to open. There were already at least 30 people in front of me when I arrived. So we all sat there for a few hours talking and people watching, and then something happened that altered our sidewalk vigil. Con Edison was working on some utilities at the end of the block and somehow they started an electrical fire under the street. Horrible smelling smoke began to billow in increasing intensity from the metal grates where they accessed the depths of the city.
Fire trucks eventually showed up and the street where we were camped started to fill with this smoke. Since we were really the only stationary people anywhere near this problem whoever was in charge had to decide what to do with us if things got worse. It seems they did, and we were asked to relocate to the back of the building. Those of us who had been there for many hours became worried we would lose our places in line, but one smart and quick fellow concert-goer wrote numbers on a piece of paper and handed them out to us so we could reassemble in order at the back door.
Once safely away from the sirens and the dangerous smoke-filled block, we waited the rest of our time in peace and were eventually let into the venue. It was worth the wait and the narrowly averted catastrophe. The spot I claimed was right against the front wall, directly in line with Flea from the Red Hot Chilli Peppers. If you watch the blue low-quality video you can get an idea of what the scene and show looked like. It was a marvelous experience made even more interesting by the near disaster we avoided innocently waiting to see some of the best musicians in the world.