Burner Magazine: The MUSIC Issue

the headliner words by Christopher Green photos by Constance Hunt Applause is one of those little corners of the world you don't really get to see for yourself unless you're right on top of it. You think you understand it—you imagine a great number of human beings slapping flesh against flesh in an auditorium, appreciatively, respectfully, even frantically, and you know that this is the idea of applause. But this is even less than a beginning. The anatomy of human ecstasy is truly grasped only from within the belly of the beast, and its power, its intense, gravitational dynamism, its desperation, will only reveal itself when the applause is for you.

It all begins with silence. No round of applause is complete without a vanguard of anxious quiet, the tiptoed expectation of something you can only sense on the maddening edge of your vision. You grip your mic, lift your pick, tense your arms, and breathe out, out.

There is nothing.

And then the sound begins, your sound. The first wondrous chord, the clarion voice, the quiet drumbeat like a guest softly knocking. And then, their sound. It's slow at first: a vicious cry from a half dozen points in that inky, rolling sea. Then something happens that doesn't happen anywhere else in the world, a sound like the beginnings of a light rain, only harder, inconsistent, and filled with something you can't begin to pull from the periphery. This is only the first vague hint; this is the brief, volatile outburst of so much tension, so much high-pitched energy wound around you and your audience, tightening its grip, pushing you closer together, thickening the darkness that surrounds you both.

And then something else. You're a bar and a half in and suddenly, with dizzying force, recognition drops from the ceiling and grips them all, it ripples out from the stage like a blast wave, and then