A few weeks have passed now and I'm still finding undeveloped rolls of film in my jacket pockets.
It had been raining most of the afternoon.
I got to the venue early and spent a while standing beneath the marquee, hiding from the weather and waiting for Alec and Marlowe to get back from lunch. Another Red Bull. The second or third of the day. Hard to remember.
At some point a fan arrived five hours before doors and sat down beside me. "Is this where the line starts?"
For a while it was just the two of us under the sign while the rain kept coming down.
Later, during soundcheck, the room was still empty. Cables everywhere. Alec stood onstage with an acoustic guitar while their voice echoed back from the walls. For a few minutes it sounded less like a concert and more like someone testing a memory. They played "In Violet." I finished my second roll of film and had a good cry somewhere in the middle of it.
Afterward we went looking through thrift stores near the venue. Marlowe disappeared into a fitting room with a quilted coat while I stood outside holding a collection of dresses and trying to take photographs at the same time.
Upstairs I found Alec debating a bag.
Not dramatically. Just turning it over in their hands and presenting arguments both for and against its existence in their life. Eventually the bag won.
As the afternoon went on, more people arrived. Friends from Portland. Theatre kids. We spent the next twenty minutes discussing whether the word "soft" should fully pronounce the T before wandering into a completely unrelated conversation about the British monarchy. The venue slowly filled.
During the show I found a railing to climb over and a ladder leading to the ceiling behind the stage. I climbed it.
Looking down, I could still make out the fan who'd arrived five hours before doors, now at the barricade singing along.
The rain had stopped by then.
