On Snail Mail, Heat Waves, and Being Sad In Summer Time.
Monday was poetically hot. Even as I peeled myself from bed to silence my third alarm of the day at 8:05, I couldn’t help but let out a sigh. Every sign pointed to the day being one that required multiple outfit changes and endless, cold showers. The sticky air was penetrating the now pronounced gaps in century-old windows that line the north-facing wall of my bedroom.
Waking up to this feeling of uncomfortableness was nothing new. We were in the middle of a heat wave, after all.
***
I am sitting outside of a friend’s house that night when my phone vibrates. EMERGENCY ALERT: FLASH FLOOD WARNING. The notification makes me laugh because I am a) sitting in my car, waiting for the sheets of rain to let up so I can make a dash for her front door and b) about to see Snail Mail in concert for the first time, a venture I had been emotionally preparing myself for since I bought the ticket in April.
Finally, the sky provides a brief reprieve and beckons me to go inside. As if it has seen the impending downpour. Inside I go, knowing nothing of the rain.
We wait in her entryway for our ride to come. The rain starts to pick up again by the time the car arrives. It is in the safety of the car, with a stranger accompanying us, that we agree to not suppress any feelings we have tonight. We talk about the small things that have been weighing us down. We ponder the setlist. We sink ourselves into any thought not too scary.
***
Lindsey Jordan holds your attention from the moment she steps on stage. There is a certain magnetism about her performance, her energy, and her in general. From the first note, she is just enjoying the hell out of herself.
The crowd comes alive during her hit single, Heat Wave.
I'm so tired of moving on
Spending every weekend so far gone
Heat wave, nothing to do
Woke up in my clothes having dreamt of you
We bounce and sing out the lyrics which speak to feeling lethargic and being stuck in love with someone who doesn’t return those feelings. This speaks to the power of Snail Mail.
Lindsey’s songwriting is exceptional. She is a wonderfully talented musician. But what makes her and Snail Mail as an act so special, the reason, I would wager, that most of the crowd is here, is her ability to slice through any emotional barriers you’ve previously set up and cut straight to your core.
This otherworldly ability comes out full force towards the end of her set when she announces that she will be playing her last song of the evening. She explains that she won’t be doing an encore because she doesn’t really do encores. A disappointment, albeit an understandable one.
After a few moments of tuning and picking at her guitar, Jordan has a change of heart. She tells us that she is going to play one more song before her final song, an unreleased one. There is no hiding. On stage, in front of a thousand mesmerized faces, she tells the backstory of past love lost. This is followed closely by a plea that no one in the audience leak the forthcoming song.
Then, after an hour of emotional toil, we hit the peak. Jordan stands alone on stage, guitar in hand. For nearly three minutes the crowd is quiet. There is not a single phone in sight. We all stand attention as she pours out her heart, giving back the feelings we have asked her to take all evening. A rare instance of call-and-response vulnerability that feels nothing short of a miracle.
Especially amid this heat, In the middle of the summer, the season where we are all plagued with the feeling of dread when we feel anything lesser than happy or alive. But tonight we have come to congregate and uncage every unsightly emotion. And we do it, all of us, all at once. We free them and ourselves.
By the time her ballad comes to a close, her final song carries the weight of an encore. Which is to say that we have beckoned her back to center stage for one last goodbye.
Do you dream about the people that wrong you?
She asks in song, sending us off into the night to think about what we’ve endured.
***
And I did dream of someone that night. Someone I had tucked away into the folds of another season.
When I woke up, I was not at peace. There was no good nostalgia present. I felt like a freshly pitted peach. I woke up feeling raw and sweaty and emotionally hungover from the previous night. I woke up in a heat wave. I have never been more grateful.
