A night with…Rufus

I’ll do everything from jazz to neo-soul, italo-disco, zydeco, experimental, ectofolk, neorofunk, calypso and country music: yes, I’m a music slut. If I like it, I’ll do it.

“A night with…” is a way of celebrating musical promiscuity and those rare moments when your favourite artist takes the part of the stage that’s right in front of you and the band starts playing “that song”. You know which one I’m talking about…the song that used to be “your song”, the song you remember every accent and pause but always get the words wrong to, the song you grew up to, the song he said reminded him of you, the song you played whenever you’d have your heart broken, the song your dad hated, the song you listened to every summer on your way to the seaside…that song.

The first time I heard a Rufus Wainwright song was in 2001. I was eighteen and had this all-consuming crush on a guy. We had been talking via Mirc and finally decided to meet…It was three o’clock on a breezy summer morning when he pulled over in front of my alley and waited for me to come down. We went to his place which I don’t remember much of, but us talking and talking about everything and listening to music I’d never heard before: Heather Nova, Joseph Arthur, Crash Test Dummies, Tom Waits, Rufus Wainwright, until the sky turned from indigo to light blue. I guess it’s true that there are moments in your life that forever stick to you and change you. That was one of those moments and these artists will forever have a special place in my heart because of a stranger that could have hurt me and a summer night that could have gone either way.

A few weeks later we met again and went to “Anger management” (where I became a Louie Prima fan) and that was the last time we saw each other. Not the last time I saw him though, as I soon turned into his stalker. Needless to say I went on obsessing over what I thought was “our” music until I learned all the words, pauses and breath effects asking myself which of the songs was his favorite (so it would be mine too) and which was the one he absolutely hated (so I wouldn’t waste any more time on listening to it). I truly believed that a bond had forever been made between us, through music. Unfortunately it wasn’t so, but he left me more beauty than I could have ever hoped for.

 

Fast-forward fourteen years after that night: Rufus Wainwright is celebrating 20 years of musical career at the Royal Albert Hall in London. I have been wanting to get tickets to a concert at the RAH since I got here, but never found the right event (and by “the right event”, I mean one that would not leave me completely and utterly broke).

(Plus, I have been secretly praying for a sold out Portishead concert held here, but no luck so far).

But the moment I stepped into the concert room and felt all the greatness and energy the walls have been holding in for hundreds of years through every inch of my body, I forgot about everything else. It was truly a magical experience, not meant for words.

  

Good luck followed us all the way; first, when I was allowed my DSLR camera inside no questions asked, although that is completely against their rules.

Whenever I go to a concert, I sit as close to the stage as possible to take in the sweat, the subtle gestures and details, the glances, the unnatural movement of the mouths as heavenly sounds come out. This was no exception, although I did not expect our seats to be that close to the stage. Fortunately, both couples on our left and right were experiencing a concert at the Royal Albert Hall for the first time just as we were and didn’t mind at all my loudly expressed excitement and compulsive picture taking.

  

Rufus absoulutely owned that stage with unexpected chord resolutions, a perfectly controlled voice and his resonant, nasal, memorable timbre. He poured his heart out on Joni Mitchell’s “Both sides now” and I cried (which almost never happens) for all of us in that room and in the world, for how small we are and how little we know about life no matter how much we’ve been through. In a humorous tone, he declared that “Basically Leonard Cohen was obsessed with me” and dedicated “Sally Ann” to him. He then played “Beauty mark”, which was written as a dedication to his toughest critic – his mother, Kate McGarrigle who’s last public appearance was on the same stage. About her, he once stated that “your mother gives birth to you twice: once when you’re born and once when she dies”.

  

A rather strange dedication was his newest song “Sword of Damocles”, written during the Midterm Elections as a critique to President Trump, exquisitely played for us.

I heard most of my favorites: “Imaginary love”, “Song of you”, “Going to a town” and “Tower of learning” but not “Hallelujah”, which owns a special place inside my heart.

  

The “three-cape show” ended perfectly with a flamboyantly ruffled Rufus singing “Across the universe”, but not before letting us know of his support and appreciation for London’s climate change protests.

Green Eyed Kisses,