This was @authorandpunisher at @substation.seattle on 9.27.26.
It’s been forever since I’ve taken my camera out to a show. I haven’t even been to many concerts in the last three years; I sort of fell out of love with it after throwing myself at live music when covid restrictions started to ease and I was desperate for a hit of that energy again. The old binge and purge dialectic, I suppose.
But I could not pass up the opportunity to see Author & Punisher live after two decades of only seeing him on YouTube. I even wore my old “SET FLAMES”-themed soccer hooligan-styled scarf that I’d ordered years ago, which worked beautifully for standing in front of an air blower on stage.
Someone asked me about my camera at this show, and I said “it’s just for fun,” the verbal air-quotes around a hobby I was recently gently admonished for doing at a gathering of cultural workers—“don’t downplay yourself,” she’d insisted. On Sunday, I got a polite “oh cool!”
I would not make a good concert photographer. I don’t want to use flash or run around hunting for frames. I ended up in a pretty shitty angle, but that was my experience and I want my documentation to be true to that. I don’t want to amplify the energy. I want to slow down time and cut through the noise to grab hold of timeless nuclei of humanity beneath all genres. I rarely leave with more than a handful, but that’s all I need.
“There’s no hurting / if I keep running.”