The Swell Season and Martha Wainwright

I had a journalism professor my last year of college who spent a whole class discussing the virtues of the f-word. It means something, he said. When I say something is really amazing, it doesn't mean the same thing as if I said it was f-ing amazing. F-ing means something so much more - like you mean it from your toes, from your soul. Like you are willing to risk offending the people around you by saying it because it communicates exactly how you feel. I get his point. Because tonight, what I saw, what I heard, was f-ing amazing.

It really all goes back to Glen Hansard, who walked on stage to sing and discovered the microphones weren't working. So he walked to the edge of the stage and sang, or should I say shouted, expressed, communicated every emotion possible as he sang Say it to Me Now from Once, with no microphone, in the Crystal Ballroom. I couldn't really hear the lyrics from where I was standing. But the feeling I felt when he sang went from his toes, out his mouth, down through the top of my head, through my heart and touched my toes. It silenced the room.

The perfect harmony between Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova reflected the couples all standing around me at the concert - these were not first-date couples in tight jeans and low-cut blouses. They were solid relationship couples with scarves and turtlenecks and wool coats. No flashy fashion, just artsy passion. And when they sang Falling Slowly and the audience joined in at Glen and Marketa's request, we were all part of one solid relationship couple. Performer and audience. It was f-ing amazing.

He sang a song called Leave, which he prefaced by saying that sometimes men are good at saying what they want to say in just a few words.

"...Leave, leave,
And free yourself at the same time
Leave, leave,
I don't understand, you've already gone
And I hope you feel better
Now that it's out
What took you so long
And the truth has a habit
Of falling out of your mouth
But now that it's come
If you don't mind
Leave, leave..."

This song made me want to say LEAVE to the guy I went out with who was rude and arrogant and talked about other women the whole time and who I have to be nice to now because he hangs out with my friends who don't know that we went out. It made me want to say LEAVE to the people who always say maybe when I invite them to something, like they are just waiting for a better offer. It made me want to say LEAVE to the friends who say they will be there but they're not. It made me want to say LEAVE to my long-time crush that has ended and left me sad. So I'm saying it. LEAVE. LEAVE. leave. please.

I deserve better than you maybes, you I-think-I'm-gonna-pass-es and you yeah-I-will-be-there-and-then-no-show-s. I deserve for my life to be amazing. Not maybe amazing. Or amazing-as-long-as-I-meet-the-right-person. No. I deserve to have an f-ing amazing life.

Phew. I should go to concerts more often.