goodbye love

The trouble with anticipation is that it occasionally strips an actual event of its meaning. You expect things to go one way, building hope and hype around the moments that precede your long-awaited happening, and usually, things end in disappointment. But sometimes, they end just the way they should have.

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The closing night of my last concert with AiR probably should have fallen to pieces. Our entire group did not arrive until one hour after the scheduled call time. Shortly after, people went missing for no apparent reason. We did not polish. We did not rehearse. We did not have ushers to sell tickets. We were sick, we were tired, we were grumpy. I had tears in my eyes for all the wrong reasons. A brief argument over nothing at all left me so unnerved, I could not deliver the pre-concert speech I had prepared for months in anticipation of my departure. I began the show feeling worse than I had in a long time and resentful that my last AiR concert had to be like this. Regardless, the show had to go on.

I went through the motions, mentally berating myself for not soaking in and enjoying every passing moment. I blanked out on a part I had so desperately wanted to sing to embellish one of my favorite songs and felt terrible as the applause begin, sustained, and subsided. I remember having to force myself to smile while on stage, something I have rarely done in the 15 years I have been performing. Why did it have to come to this?

When the time came to show the AiR Documentary, which I had worked tirelessly on for the week prior to the show, I tucked myself away into the room off the stage to work the computer and projector as the rest of AiR sat in the audience and enjoyed the product of my labor. Admittedly, I was bitter. I did not get to view the documentary I had worked so hard on either night of the show, except for on the 17-inch screen of my laptop computer, which paled in comparison to the projected image put on display in 145 Dwinelle. Everything, at that very moment, seemed so unfair.

But as the images flickered and seconds ticked their way to the end, nostalgia found its way into my heart. The audience laughed and sighed during the 12-minute synopsis of the year that brought us to this end, and I felt sorry for all that they were missing. 12 minutes can do no justice for the year we spent together. Granted, not all of it was good. There were many things I wish had happened differently. But in the end, you take the good with the bad because you know that though it wasn't perfect, it's better because it was real.

The show continued in a blur, but my spirits had definitely been lifted. I took my final bow, posed for countless pictures, thanked my family and friends for attending. I cleared the back stage area, double checked the aisles, and helped sort supplies out for packing into cars. While all of AiR departed to load up a car parked in the back of Dwinelle, I sat in the lobby, propped up against our ticket-selling table, empty handed and alone. Peering to my left, I caught sight of three bouquets of flowers, lovingly given to departing members in gratitude for all they had done. And it was then that I actually let myself believe that the end had come. I cried in silence, wiping the last of my tears away just in time to see my fellow newly-initiated AiR alumni come bounding down the hallway, ready to celebrate the closing of a show one last time.

It truly is the end of an era.