Pop culture. Who knew?

The evening of Avril Lavigne’s concert at the Memorial Coliseum couldn’t have begun in a more fitting way: I got lost trying to find the venue while never more than a block or two away. I was struck with the feeling I get inside of malls: How could I be lost, I think to myself, when I’m looking for a store and there are stores everywhere? Shouldn’t one be as desirable as the next? The Expo Center, the Rose Garden, the Coliseum.

I could swear before my maker that they were once one building, cosmetically rearranged to facilitate different events.

When I finally made my way, a little sheepishly, inside the venue, the group on stage was announcing its last song. Distinguished from Gob by the presence of a Luther-from-Smallville-looking fifth member, I recognized Simple Plan and applauded myself for doing my pre-event research, as there would have been no other way to tell the two groups apart.

On my way out to go wander the coliseum halls, I couldn’t help but wonder, as I surveyed the scene by the food stand, if nachos should be sold at rock concerts. It seems like they would severely handicap a person’s rocking ability.

Feeling a little out of place, I hung out with parents in the designated parent room for a spell, sipping coffee and swapping Vegas stories until the screaming of thousands and thousands of girls drew me back out to the arena. Here is where the story really starts.

Standing where I was, on the ground floor, directly in the middle of the stadium, I can only compare the shrill torrent of voices that flew around me to the feeling of being caught up in an unbelievably violent sandstorm. Just as the noise from one section would begin to wane, another would take up the slack, stretching the sound around and through my head like I was so much nothing, just a conduit for their energy. The tears flowed.

Then Avril came out, played “Sk8er Boi” and it was great. And then I left.

Walking home, it occurred to me: The music I listen to, Blake Dice came quickly to mind, is really only a musical simulation of the feeling of being a part of pop culture, produced for people who, due to their many neuroses and other social impediments, can never be a part of it. The elemental, primal unity that comes through their music is simply representative of the experience of being part of a huge mass of people with a common enthusiasm, clamoring in the direction of any one goal. The sound of Black Dice, Dirty Three or the Lightning Bolt is the sound of one person on a mountain, while this concert was the sound of heaven-knows-how-many people who could have been anywhere and felt exactly the same, due to the presence of each other and the simple existence of their common goal, in this case Avril Lavigne.

Really, it should have been obvious: The feeling of being at one with the universe can only be so intense, given the human’s inability to relate, emotionally, with the universe. Without an emotional connection, such experiences gain their strength by the incomprehensibly immense size of the universe.

However, to share an emotional attachment, an obsession with Avril, for instance, with an equally incomprehensibly huge mass of people is an experience far more intense.

That is, and I know that all of this should have been obvious, why people like boring music. I hear it on the radio, driving alone, and I wonder why. I listen to promo CDs in my lonely apartment and I am perplexed. It’s not the music, it is the feeling of sharing something, anything, with a group of people so huge that you could probably spend the rest of your life seeking them out and introducing yourself and never meet them all.

Granted, I only felt myself a part of such an event for a moment, and it will not change my listening habits. But thank you, Avril fans, you have forever changed my perspective on music and pop culture in general.