The Great Loud Beast of Large-scale-yet-stunningly-intimate Concerts Has Passed Me By

If I were to be my eighth grade self today, my eighth-grade self would be stunned at my out-of-touchness.
My eighth grade self would never have imagined that there could or would be a day wherein I would not know that U2 tickets were going on sale, and she would have probably not believed me if I told her I failed to know the proper time to assume position in a long line to obtain tickets to one of five (5) shows.
My eighth grade self would have pointed to the moulding of my old bedroom as evidence of my once-hearty involvement in all things EastSideDublin-based. The moulding went around the ceiling of my old room, and onto it, in Sharpie-marker faerie-font, I wrote out the words from The Unforgettable Fire's "Bad":
Desperation.
Dislocation.
Separation.
Condemnation.
Revelation.
In temptation.
Isolation.
Desolation.

And then my eighth-grade self continued the tradition in Sharpie marker, all around the place:
Emancipation.
Elevation.
Disintegration.
Violation.
Masturbation.
Injection.
Prognostication.
Oration.

She was so devoted, that girl.
Robyn told me a story the other day about this friend of ours who once was staying in a hotel where it turned out the band was also staying. This friend heard singing and she stood in the doorway of the ballroom and saw Bono rehearsing for a show that night, a small man expressing sound in an echoey room, and this friend said she understood what she previously had not about U2 in that moment.

When I heard this story, the eighth-grade version of my self leapt up into my throat and tried to climb out of my mouth so that it could yip about in jealousy and jump up and down; thus my current self couldnt get obtain words to provide Robyn with a reaction to that story.

I can't speak to you of the holy feeling I get when the white lights go on in all our faces at a certain point in their shows. It isn't ludicrous, it isn't an exaggeration. It is simply very true.