A Series of Unfortunate Events, Lessons in Karma, and Explosions in the Sky

Time flies. It seems to be an eternity ago when I ordered my ticket for Explosions in the Sky and yet, all of a sudden tonight was the night. And it proved to be quite an eventful night too.

For starters, it started to rain when I left home, which was a problem seeing that the concert took place in open air in the middle of a park. On top of that, it takes some fifteen minutes on foot to get from the entrance of the park to the venue. My car was parked another five minutes or so from the entrance, so I had a bit of walking ahead of me to get to my destination. When I was almost there, I realised I had forgotten to turn off the headlights of my car. I considered a moment, but decided to head back there to turn them off, so as not to run the risk to have a dead battery after the concert. So, I went all the way back, turned off the lights, and headed for the concert once again. At the ticket control, another unfortunate event occurred: I couldn’t find my ticket. I had put it in the inside pocket of my jacket – which I normally never use, but I stupidly thought it would be safer in there. Unfortunately, the pocket appeared to have a hole in it, so the ticket had probably fallen straight through the damn thing… Can you believe it?! I didn’t see any other option but to retrace my steps back to the car, hoping to find my ticket. So there I went again… my hopes were high, I tried to stay positive and kept saying to myself I will find it, all the while visualising the ticket on the ground somewhere – maybe with a footprint on it, but even so, visibly there, right where my eye would catch it. But no luck: I arrived at my car as empty-handed as I was when I began my search. By now, all my hope was gone and I started to inwardly curse everything and everyone. After some rest (I had been walking for almost an hour by now), I decided to go back to the ticket control and tell them what had happened and ask if I could enter anyway, pretty please? It was a long shot, and I didn’t feel like going back there for nothing, but I went anyway. I wanted to try every possible solution and not give up too easily for once. On the way back (fifth time), the inward cursing continued and I also figured that my inconveniences might have had something to do with bad karma. So just in case, I started to work on a karma list. But when I came to the ticket control and started to explain my problem, the guy interrupted me and asked for my name. After I told him what it was, he just said Here’s your ticket. Some nice people found it on the ground and brought it here. Wow, so nice people aren’t extinct just yet, thank you so much anonymous, honest finder! And with that, out went my karma list. No need for lists, karma had merely given me a little scare to teach me a valuable lesson: it pays off to think positive, it pays off not to give up easily, it pays off to explore every option, every possibility. Best of all, despite the delay (I arrived at seven thirty and was finally seated at a quarter past nine), I was right on time to see the Texas quartet enter the stage.

When they started off with the wonderful First Breath After Coma, I smiled: OK, my feet were tired, but here I was at a great venue, for what promised to be a great gig, the rain had stopped and was replaced by a soft, end-of-summer breeze and somewhere out there was a Very Nice Person. The band played non-stop for over an hour and ended with the awesome The Only Moment We Were Alone. They had no breaks, no talking in between songs, no encores, and despite the meandering and at times maybe slightly boring middle part, it was a nice enough concert. All’s well that ends well!