#smoke and mirrors

          BOOK STARTERS VOL.50    SMOKE AND MIRRORS    NEIL GAIMAN

1. ❛ When I was a child, adults would tell me not to make things up, warning me of what would happen if I did. ❜
   
2. ❛ My memory is a patchwork of occurrences, of discontinuous events roughly sewn together: the parts I remember, I remember precisely, whilst other sections seem to have vanished completely. ❜
   
3. ❛ Would it be worse to love someone who is no longer there, or not to love someone who is? ❜
   
4. ❛ Like mirrors stories prepare us for the day to come. They distract us from the things in darkness. ❜
   
5. ❛ It is not that I was credulous, simply that I believed in all things dark and dangerous. ❜
   
6. ❛ Sometimes you do things you regret, but there’s nothing you can do about them. Times change. Doors close behind you. You move on. ❜
   
7. ❛ Love will be an impulse that will inspire and ruin in equal measure. ❜
   
8. ❛ He died alone. It don’t matter a rat’s ass whether there was anyone with him or not. He died alone. ❜
   
9. ❛ It was love, I knew, and it tasted like champagne in my mind. ❜
   
10. ❛ The end of the world is a strange concept. The world is always ending, and the end is always being averted, by love or foolishness or just plain old dumb luck. ❜
    
11. ❛ She was my dream; and if you touch a dream it vanishes, like a soap bubble. ❜
    
12. ❛ Daylight is always safe. ❜
    
13. ❛ If not for death, they’d be content to simply exist, but with death, well, their lives will have meaning. ❜
    
14. ❛ You want to know the future, love? Then wait. ❜
    
15. ❛ There are things in the darkness beneath us that wish us harm. ❜
    
16. ❛ Fairy tales are more than true. Not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be defeated ❜
    
17. ❛ But sometimes you leave blood on your instruments. ❜
    
18. ❛ I’d like to be a wolf. Not all the time. Just sometimes. In the dark. I would run through the forests. ❜
    
19. ❛ You’ve seen them. They have mouths that twitch, and eyes that stare, and they babble and they mewl and they whimper. ❜
    
20. ❛ They are not mad, or rather, the loss of their sanity is the lesser of their problems. ❜
    
21. ❛ Good a reason for writing as I know: releasing demons, letting them fly. ❜
    
22. ❛ That miserable state in which everything seems flat and of equal importance; when nothing matters, and in which reality seems scraped thin and threadbare. ❜
    
23. ❛ Someone had scrawled graffiti in black marker on the metal: JUST DIE, it said. Like it is easy. ❜
    
24. ❛ Winter started today. The sky turned grey and the snow began to fall and it did not stop falling until well after dark. ❜
    
25. ❛ Memory is the great deceiver. ❜

First of all, I know it’s been literally a month since this fest took place, but I really wanted to write about it and didn’t have time before so, it’s whatever, right? Let’s just pretend it was yesterday!

I know tons of people attend festivals not because of the artists and bands that are gonna be there (or it’s not their main concern at least), but because of the experience, the partying, to hang out with their friends and to have a good time, basically, but I’m not one of them.

I’ve been to Lollapalooza Chile twice, and it has always been about the music. This year, it was mainly about Imagine DragonsandThe Killers, two of my absolute favorite bands in the whole wide world.

You know what? Before the festival, I wasn’t even planning on making this post, but as I was leaving Imagine Dragons’ set, I was trying to make sense of all the emotions I was feeling, and thinking of the best way to express them, to express my love for them and my endless gratitude.

So that’s how I came up with this idea: my top 3 bands that I saw at Lollapalooza in Santiago de Chile on March 16^th, 17^th and 18^th.

3. Imagine Dragons

What an iconic bunch of musicians y’all, what an iconic group of legends. I first started listening to Imagine Dragons back in early 2014, and they’ve been amongst my favorite bands ever since. I saw them live in 2015 on the Smoke + Mirrors World Tour, and that was the first concert I ever went to alone. Also, they’re the only band I’ve ever seen more than once. Safe to say they have a pretty special place in my heart.

Now, onto the actual concert experience: that day I arrived at 3pm, ish, and their set was supposed to start at 8:15pm. Therefore, I intended to see other bands in the meantime, but, when I approached the stage Imagine Dragons was going to play at, I realized I had a real shot of being really close to the front, which is THE GOAL, as every fangirl/boy can attest to, so I just stayed there, but I decided to position myself at the side barrier instead, so I could get some shelter from the sun and besides, it was still a good place to be.

Throughout the entire set, I was pushed up against a lot of people I didn’t know, I was sweaty, out of breath and tired, but also the happiest I had been in a while.

Seeing the ever-present smile on Dan’s face and knowing we as an audience made that happen, everyone around me passionately singing every word and filling every small bit of silence with loud screams, it all brought me so much joy.

Even though they barely sang Smoke + Mirrors tracks – my favorite album by them – and sang a lot of their newer stuff – which I must admit, I’m not the biggest fan of – it was the best experience, and I’m eternally grateful to them, for being humble, kind, charitable, loving and so frickin’ talented.

I feel like I can’t even put into words how much I love them and how much they really mean to me but oh well, I tried!

Bonus: Dan passed right by my side and I touched his shoulder, UNFORGETTABLE!

2. Kaleo

I had heard about Kaleo before, because they were openers for The Lumineers (my absolute favorite band), but I wasn’t at all familiar with their music, other than listening to their album a few times before the festival.

I must say, I was greatly surprised! They played at an alternative smaller stage, right in the dust, but oh boy, I think they honestly deserved to be at the main stage. Even if no one knew them, everyone would’ve loved them by the end of their set, just like I did.

I know for a fact a lot of the audience there didn’t know them, but that didn’t stop us from having a hell of a good time! Everyone jumped up and down, not caring about all the dust flying around, and clapped along to every song. 

Honestly,Kaleo’s music is AMAZING and I still go back to it today. It makes me so happy knowing they left with a good impression of our country and with a bit of luck, they’ll be back sometime soon. Yet another incredible band to come from Iceland! :-P 

For sure check them out if you haven’t!

1.   The Killers

Do I even need to explain why The Killers are like, the best thing to ever exist?! (I love being dramatic lol)

I only learned about this band in early 2016, by seeing Brandon Flowers’ set in Lollapalooza, but since then they slowly started becoming one of my absolute favorite bands, so obviously, I was looking forward to seeing them for the first time this year, and they did not disappoint!

Their set was full of classics and iconic anthems, like the popular ‘Read My Mind’and ‘Mr. Brightside’, that I’m sure most people have heard before, and it also contained two of my favorite songs by them, ‘Run For Cover’ and ‘For Reasons Unknown’, both of which I sang at the top of my lungs, surely annoying everyone around me, but not caring a bit :-P

The only slightly disappointing thing is they didn’t play a lot of songs from their newest album, ‘Wonderful Wonderful’, a masterpiece in my opinion, but they did play all of their most popular and best songs so, no biggie!

Probably my favorite moment was right before ‘Mr. Brightside’, when Brandon went ‘Santiago, we have to go now’, the whole crowd went ‘NOOOOO’, ‘you gotta go back to your lives’, ‘NOOOOOOO’, ‘we have to head to Paraguay’, ‘NOOOOOO’. Truly iconic and to be honest, a big fat mood!

Anyways, that’s the end of it, I don’t know if it was somewhat interesting, hope it was, but thanks for reading if you did!

:-)