caitlin mccann

i'm just a kid

journal entry: november 30, 2022 - I’m just a kid

I worked at union transfer last night and this band surf curse played and it was the dude from current joys who I met briefly at a festival while I was touring w vundabar 4 years (!) ago. that was the tour where I got home and cried uncontrollably for a week. someone would ask me how tour was and I would just bawl. in my studio. in the car. in my soup. I was so moved and transformed by that tour, the only way I could process it was by crying. I still cry every time I part ways with vundabar but that’s besides the point. I remember I went thru a current joys phase after that tour. I listened to wild heart til I was sick of it. and until my boyfriend and I broke up and it was too closely associated with him to listen to on a regular basis.

so it was a nice surprise to work the show last night ‘cos surf curse was sick and I listened to that current joys album when I got home from work. and they made me feel all feelsy and young and the crowd was young too and they were baseline ~stoked~. as soon as the doors opened, kids ran to the barricade, eager to be front and center. they still had yet to learn that you can always push your way to the front at a show, no matter what time you get there. I laughed at the idea of yelling NO RUNNING IN THE HALLS just to fuck with them. they ran and skipped and found ways to entertain themselves without alcohol til the opener came on. admirable.

when the show was over and the crowd was filing out, this one chick started picking up the empty beer cans lined up on a ledge. she shook a few of them, unsatisfied at first but found one with leftover liquid and started pouring it in her mouth. I pulled the can out of her hand and said 'get out of here.' not angrily, just like, yo ew stop doing that. like that’s fucking disgusting but I couldn't help but wonder…is that kind of punk? I think I’m leaning towards disgusting but at the same time I applaud her not-give-a-fuckness, especially since I was standing right there. but who am I kidding, I look like any of the kids who attended the show last night, in my beanie and cut off hoodie and replacements shirt. I thought about how strange it was to be working security and telling people they could or couldn’t do things. like I don’t give a fuck if you drink the empties, live your life. but last night it was my job and this job doesn’t ask for much so I do what I gotta do. I guess what I’m saying is in some ways I felt like a phony. like I was pretending to be a security guard when really in my heart, I’m one of those kids who’s losing themselves in the pit, sweating and screaming along to all the words, being picked up by the sea of other sweaty bodies compelled to move by the rhythms of the songs.

I watched the set from my perch on the stairs, between the floor and the bar, and I felt stoked on music but not to the capacity I was used to. it was more like, feeling that I had felt the feeling of being stoked on music before. I was feeling the memory of a feeling. I know that I am capable of feeling the burst of liberation that comes from a fucking sick show. it’s not even about being nostalgic for being young and experiencing things for the first time. it’s that I know I am capable of feeling the wave nostalgia in my gut after being so deeply moved by a show. you know, that feeling like you just accessed a lost part of yourself. woke it up. shook it loose. everything's glowing and you feel connected to everyone and everything around you. I could feel that I had felt that, that maybe I was on the verge of it, but I was not actually feeling it.

I know it’s ’cos I was working, but I will admit, I experience this more now. this strange liminal state of experiencing something so many times that I can remember the feeling it would give me, without actually fully feeling it in the present moment. that bliss doesn’t come as often as it once did. but it’s actually so fine ‘cos I feel like now when I experience bliss, the weight of it is far greater and far more rewarding against the trials and tribulations of being frickin 30.

still tho, as nick rattigan would sing, I’m just a kid.