The first time I heard the new album, Everybody Scream, from Florence and the Machine, I had an unshakable feeling of kinship. I felt, in ways, it must've been written to address me directly - the hubris and arrogance notwithstanding - and recognized myself acutely, almost painfully, in several of the songs.
As such, it was with considerable regret I watched the days and weeks tick by until the European leg of her tour, knowing I wouldn't be able to go. All the shows had been sold out. It was not meant to be.
And yet...
I'm by nature quite stubborn, the sort of person who thinks often that she can get most things she sets out to (and so far, life has often proven me right). So I kept returning stubbornly to the ticket page, checking the situation. Hoping. I don't really know why I started clicking on UK dates when they clearly said SOLD OUT.
Perhaps I had a hunch they were lying. The first time I noticed a few resale tickets for sale in Glasgow, I didn't think much of it. I figured it was too expensive, too far, too quirky to get there. But a few days later, experiencing a bad case of FOMO over the record-breaking premiere of Markiplier's "Iron Lung" (also not screening in Romania, sadly), I remembered Glasgow. I checked the website again. And lo and behold, there they were. Not even resales, but actual tickets in the standing section (as should be for all concerts, in my book).
Sign? Must be. On a whim, I booked the tickets for the show (as my brother's also a fan), booked the movie, booked a complicated layover through London, Glasgow, then finally Edinburgh... all just four days in advance. It was wild and fun, and we cycled through a bunch of adventures through my beloved London before finally hitting Glasgow last Monday for the show.
Now, I was particularly interested in catching this run of the tour as it also featured Paris Paloma as an opening act, whom I also really enjoyed discovering.
If you're not familiar with her, she's this girl my age who sings about all sorts of things related to the feminine experience like weight, our relationship with out bodies, sexism of course. And I kept thinking how cool it is to be able to just rock up to a show where people are singing openly about such things, how necessary, though, still. After all these years.
I also really like the vibe people like her and Florence enbody, this embrace of femininity while not relinquishing power and autonomy. I loved how many women there had flowers in their hair and wore long, flowy dresses. As I was on a tiny luggage, I wore my own witchy, flowy blouse at least, and joined in with this celebration of what it is to be feminine but also genuine and free. I love that we can do this.
On to the main act. Florence herself utterly blew me away. From her long, black witch dress to the coven of wild-haired dancers that followed her around and embodied the music, it was a phenomenal production from start to finish. The set featured a good mix of new and old, and a beautiful blend between the fierceness of the lyrics and Florence's softness. Again, the reminder that the two don't need to be opposites, they can co-inhabit the same body. A lesson I still try to learn properly, perhaps.
I resonated so much with the songs, most of all with "You Can Have It All" from her latest album. To say it was a moving performance would be a fantastic understatement. It utterly shook me to my core and I couldn't really seem to get it back for a while. Even hours after, I had a hard time talking about the impression it made. A subject that's close to me, to my heart and my own experience both as a woman and an artist.
It set me thinking, and revealed in that moment to me the transcendental power of creativity. The option to save yourself through your own art after tragedy, and how weighty that is, but also the very real danger of losing yourself in certain kinds of grief. That there's a very real edge you're running alongside of. That you're not guaranteed salvation.
It was easily one of the most moving performances I've ever witnessed. Lately, I find myself more drawn to women's music, to women's books. I'm reading now Olga Ravn's "My Work", about her relationship with her writing and her womanhood after becoming a mother. I find more and more that despite this shared humanity I deeply believe in, there are some aspects of life that only women will understand (the same is true, I expect, for men from men).
It is what it is, I suppose.
I was also thrilled she included "Dog Days Are Over" and "Free" in the set, as I love both, find a sense of personal freedom in it, and danced myself into exhaustion to both. "King". Another rousing favorite. I am no mother, I am no bride, I am king. A sentiment I definitely resonate with a lot the older I get.
It was a fantastic evening, one that spoke so cleverly to experiences I'm having and struggling with, my own questions about identity and womanhood. Florence rolling skyward her eyes and asking, am I a woman now? As if to say, almost, how much grief can I endure, how much is a girl to do before she is pronounced a woman. All questions that, I think, haunt us women for years, and perhaps in some cases, decades.
It was also a reminder, as all great concerts I've so far attended in this life, that life is short, and it's worthwhile to go on as many adventures as you can, particularly as it came the night before we learned my aunt had passed. Unmet womanhood, untaken journeys. An apt reminder that life is finite and for taking chances. For taking the long, ardorous process of understandign your own femininity and womanhood, while you inhabit this body.
