mitski concert = religious experience

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i bet on losing dogs

i know they're losing but i pay for my place

by the ring

where i'll be looking in their eyes when they're down

i wanna feel it

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last night i saw the one and only miski in atlanta. i knew it would be beautiful and special and touching but i wasn't expecting to feel as entirely empty, full, and blissful as i did.

something i've been grappling with lately is how widespread religious cults are here in the south. me and all of my friends have some form of religious trauma. the older i get and the more independant i become, the more i'm able to break free of the mould we all grew up in and think without fear. i'm realizing the bible centric culture of the bible belt is harmful. it doesn't need to just be overlooked or accepted as a fact of life, it can be resisted. my religious trauma is relatively light; i've thankfully never been part of any church i'd consider cult-like. by the time i stopped believing in god, i was at a point where i couldn't understand how anyone could possibly be dumb enough to believe that their hyper-specific, miniscule church in the middle of nowhere could be the one true religion. 

i understood for the window of time that i was in that theater how someone could fall victim to such a church. once you feel such strong emotion in a room full of people experiencing the same thing it's hard to not want to devote your entire being to chasing that high. mitski is a preacher and we are her congregation. she had something to say so eloquently that it was able to seep into our very soul without even being able to articulate why. 

in many ways, a concert is a church service. there was no scripture, no prayer, no communion. but mitski had something to say so eloquently that it was able to seep into our very soul without even being able to articulate why. i am not by any means a christian, i do not believe in the bible or in god, but replace mitski with a priest and the keyboard with an organ and i would be. i simply cannot articulate why. 

i can't seem to express that enough- i am so totally unable to express why. music, dance, lights, energy, it's all magic. it's all spiritual. it all feeds the soul. but more than anything, it's about the raw pouring out of emotion mistki onto every single person in the room, and the subsequent gracious and erratic return of energy to her. back and forth, over and over again. each millisecond. your soul starts to feel different, your heart feels like it's about to burst, you feel the bass in your bones, and every single person in that room is just like you.

there isn't really a point to this, i just need to put this somewhere before i forget. there was something so uniquely mystifying about her performance, and i wish i could relive it with the perspective i have now.

maybe there never was a god, maybe humans have been worshipping music this whole time.