Love is Our Resistance: Muse in Charlotte

By the time I'd settled into my seat at the Time Warner Cable Arena, Cage the Elephant's opening set was nearly over. I was only as familiar with them as a handful of singles, i.e. 2008's "Ain't No Rest for the Wicked," but with their third album in five years due next month, shows what I know. 

I prudently sipped my $10 beer and set my senses upon this band of merry men. Well, one merry man at least: the effect of frontman Matt Schultz, a lively blonde fellow donning track pants and no shirt, complemented their grimy, funky punk sound. Schultz jumped and jammed across the stage, slithering around his guitarists (there seemed to be tons of them), at times rocking too hard to remember lyrics. He had to be either really drunk or really sober; you know that fine line? (I would find out later that the answer was indeed "really drunk.") 

Schultz punctuated their set with an impressive standing crowd surf, like one of those people who balance on dolphins' noses. Shit yeah rock & roll. I'll probably buy their upcoming album. 

Time between bands was an aching eternity of over-caffeinated surrealism. I had been in the car for two hours with energy shots and a strange mix of XM radio stations: I'll just say Ricky Martin showed up more than once. I needed to move, to dance, to spread my fingers to the sky. I needed the fire of anger and love. I needed Muse.

And then, from the heavens, there they were. 

Not in Charlotte, but fucking hell

An extravagant crimson set piece, row after row of video screens seemingly influenced by the Devo dome, began its descent from the ceiling as pyrotechnic smoke shot like geysers in front of the stage. The three dark figures behind their instruments turned it right up to 11 with a dubstep-soaked instrumental track off the current album The 2nd Law, then slammed into the heavy-hitting, Zeppelin inspired "Supremacy."

In a candy red jacket and black pants, lead singer/guitarist/pianist/songwriter Matthew Bellamy led the way through an exhilarating, spot-on set. Chris Wolstenholme brought the wild metal bass lines, my bones pulsed with drummer Dominic Howard's crashing rock mantras. A setlist comprised of genre-bending new material as well as plenty of their older shit-stomping hits was making for a very satisfying experience indeed.

Again, not in Charlotte, but there's Matt Bellamy in a red jacket

That's not to say the band was in a particularly exploratory mood. With no solos or embellishments outside of original studio incarnations to speak of, they kind of shut up and played the hits. I hate to call it a fluffer show because this was my first Muse show and I did have such an incredible time, but I could feel a cool distance, an indicator that that really sweet symbiosis between artist and audience wasn't quite clicking. You know, when they're into it and the crowd's into it and everybody knows it and the secrets of the universe are revealed. Granted, these guys have been on the road for about a year straight, and not every show can be a Glastonbury. 

What puzzled me even more than the GA floor being half-empty (even after my repeated attempts to secure floor tickets--rude!) was the lack of what I assumed were now obligatory big screens in arenas, on which one can see the band's faces even in the highest reaches of the venue. At big shows it is even more important to me to discern their expressions, their sweat. In fact Matt, Chris, and Dom's faces were lost in darkness when they weren't flashing epileptically across the cluster of smaller screens. The disconnect of this combined with the fact that they engage in zero onstage banter (if you didn't know they were British you wouldn't have known that night, they spoke so seldomly), gnawed at me.

That disappointment aside, I did enjoy my spot because there was no one near me within arm-flailing distance. So I just went nuts. While some concertgoers are sit-and-thinkers, I am a jumper. And a shout-singer. And a jazzy Jesus hand-waving fist pumper. I am not ashamed.

After these last couple weeks with the situation in Syria and the ongoing awareness that the bones of truth are buried deeply underground, I turned within and offered my body up for a true catharsis. This communion--with the art we love, with each other, with ourselves--is the kind of power that conquers. Replacing rigidity with flexibility, conformity with creativity, fear for love, incendiary bombs for incendiary guitar solos: shit, this is how we rule the world!      

Gawwwwd Depeche Mode is gonna be so fun. ACL Fest is gonna be so fun!* Concerts are so fun! LIFE IS SO FUN! 

*When I'm not cursing the name of whoever scheduled DM and Muse at the same time. 

***

Highlights: Going balls out during "Stockholm Syndrome" and the anthemic "Knights of Cydonia" and "Uprising." "United States of Eurasia" was also particularly welcome, as it fits my keen appreciation for poignancy. I do wish they had made any comments at all about the subject matter, ya know, considering the highly political nature of their work and America's impending foray into yet another one of "these wars [that] can't be won."  

Lowlights: The slow audience and what I assume is the band's indifference to Charlotte, NC (can't blame 'em) made for a slightly stale atmosphere; beers that cost $10.

Fun fact: I intimately familiarized myself with all six of Muse's studio albums in about two weeks' time. 

Setlist:

The 2nd Law: Unsustainable

Supremacy

Panic Station

Supermassive Black Hole

Plug in Baby

Resistance

Star Spangled Banner interlude

Hysteria

Knights of Cydonia

Monty Jam

United States of Eurasia

Follow Me

Liquid State

Madness

Time is Running Out

Undisclosed Desires

Stockholm Syndrome

Agitated

The 2nd Law: Isolated System

Encore:

Uprising

Starlight

Survival

Tracks I would not have kicked out of bed: Map of the Problematique, Sing for Absolution, Citizen Erased, anything from Showbiz album

xx

This "Freedom" Ain't Free, That's For Sure

You saw me there

you didn't care

that I was poisoning your tea;

it was the glare,

maybe my hair

that convinced you you are free.

Despite what the State Department tells me, it occurs to me that freedom is intrinsically free. It just depends on what you call freedom and who's responsible for making sure you've got it. McDonald's, iPhones, nose hair trimmers, Pepsi, chicken wings, NFL, Grand Theft Auto--is this freedom? That's what my culture tells me it is. We should be proud and lucky to have these things. We're privileged to have heart disease, cancer, eczema, suicide, child molesters, and no less than four school shootings a year. If this is freedom, then yes, that comes with a hefty price tag, one that we must pay for with all our military might and constantly defend. But is it all worth it? It seems to me that it's just good ol' ignorance that calls for an unending series of costs: a billion dollars here, a child's life there, another billion, a kidney, a heart, a soul.

Have you ever seen a commercial for lentils? Bear hugs? Meditation or yoga? Okay, maybe you've seen some yoga ads on your Facebook side bar, but the wisdom that underlies all of these things is already free and available to anyone who chooses to tap into them. They don't need a $3 million Superbowl ad to try to convince you to participate. But Wonderbread, sirloin steaks, the US Army, eyeglasses, vodka and Symbicort--these are things on which this culture is willing to spend trillions of dollars every year for the express purpose of making you needlessly dependent. Are these so-called trophies of freedom really setting you free?

A system that conditions us to believe that we must kill others, strip them of their resources, culture, and connection to the Divine just so it can turn around and sell us the idea that we are living freely is not a free system at all. We are compliant slaves in it, because the cost of our "freedom" is the blood of others. Did we not all learn the Golden Rule as kids? "Treat others as you want to be treated," "Putting others down to make yourself feel better is wrong!" While this society teaches kids nice concepts like that between the hours of 8am-3pm, it simultaneously sends the military and corporate bulldozers into every country on earth to simply take whatever it wants. I'd say cutting down the Amazonian rainforest--the lifeline to millions of tribespeople--so we can have Garfield notebooks is considerably worse than kids calling each other "doo-doo heads" on the playground.

"But they're savages, godless heathens that hate us and would kill us if we didn't stop them first!" is the theme I derive from this whole "Freedom ain't free" shit. All Arabs are religious zealots who want to see Christian America burn in the name of Allah. Tribal folk in Papua New Guinea don't want iPods, so they are of no use to us. They're simple, stupid, and ignorantly missing the train speeding through the 21st century, so fuck 'em. These are myths that have been planted in our collective psyche, myths that attempt to justify the system's flagrant use of cruelty and violence to get what it wants. Well--newsflash--Arabs don't hate freedom. Does it look like Egyptian Arabs are fundamentally opposed to human rights? Maybe they just hate western leaders coming into a culture that it frankly does not at all understand and paying off their own leaders in order to perpetuate the cycle of corruption and repression. It's quite simple: if the United States didn't directly FUND oppressive dictatorships, the oppressed people wouldn't hold contempt for the United States. Maybe they wouldn't be oppressed at all, and we could all act like humans again.

I want to be free. Oh yes, I love freedom. It's sweet. But I know true freedom doesn't come by paying allegiance and taxes to the very system that takes it from the rest of the world, processes it into a toxic pile of bullshit, and spoon-feeds it to me for a "very reasonable price." The freedom to buy cheap crap at Walmart, to drink Coca-Cola all day, to lose my teeth, my mind, my patriotic high school classmate, my compassion, my soul--that kind of freedom comes at a very steep price. And we are all paying it, all the time. But just as interest accumulates on a bank loan, we can't really pay it off until the bank simply crashes. We are automatically indebted, not just financially, but karmically, to all those whose blood has been shed for our fast food, morning coffee, iPhones, Toyotas, Crest toothpaste, and T-bone steaks.

You may be thinking, "but what about your freedom to be an obnoxious little bitch and speak your annoying radical mind? What about your right to come and go as you please, wear slutsuits and get an education? What about that??" And to that I say, you're right! I do have very important freedoms where many people, particularly women, in some parts of the world do not. But I also think that the only threat that faces me of losing these freedoms comes from this government itself. Does it get any worse than running into jungles rich in resources and killing all the indigenous peoples? Can it get worse than dropping bombs on Iraqi schools? In this country, gay people cannot exercise their human right to love and honor each other through marriage in more than 5 of the 51 states (if we're including Puerto Rico). Maybe it will one day tell me I can't gather in a group of five people or more. For my "safety," of course. I know what America is capable of; why should I believe it would never tell me I can't leave my house after 6pm?

Now, on the other hand, I love my morning coffee. I love my iPhone and computer from China. I (kind of) love my Ford Focus, and I love that I went to college for two years before realizing I was a debt slave and subsequently running away from it. But freedoms? I don't know. I think sometimes enslavement feels reeeeaallllyyy good, but we have to be aware that it is enslavement nonetheless. Because I have felt free. I am learning what that means and trying to recognize it more and more, but I know it doesn't feel anything like owing $30,000 to Citibank, getting cancer from a lifetime of processed food, or reading about Chinese sweatshop workers committing suicide in droves. The kind of freedom I am trying to cultivate...well, it's blood-free. It's fat-free. It's just plain free.