London, UK, June 26th 2002

I don't know why I went to line up so early. Obviously something deep in my unconsciousness pushed me to. Maybe it was fate. Maybe it was coincidence. Maybe it was the fact that I know I am short and I just wanted to get a good view but either way I was sitting outside the London Arena on a "Summer day" (if there's such thing in England) at 8 o'clock in the morning “standing in line to see the show tonight...”Well sitting is more like it.

It's a very strange phenomenon me and going to concerts. I sat there for probably 10 hours with no need for food or drink and the excitement even probably prevented me from even wanting to go to the toilet. I didn't take a pee or a poo until the show was well over.

The strange thing is that I didn't know what the excitement was all about. I only knew who the Red Hot Chili Peppers were until my then beloved boyfriend tortured me with their rather loud music before we went to sleep. It was our ritual to go to sleep with music on. But my boyfriend wasn't there to go with me to the concert and instead I went with my beloved friend Joaco. He just came 1 hour before the show to find his front place in line well guarded.


I only got into the RHCP music to be able to memorize the lyrics to their tunes so I'd be able to get into the mood in the concert because if there's something that I LOVE is scrrrrrrreaming and singing loudloudloud, no matter how much my throat hurts. So I went to the gig with my cd player and the Californication album trying to memorize the last lines just in time for my inaudible performance along with the band and the crowd.

When Joaco arrived he told me interesting stuff about the band that I absolutely ignored. Like I was lucky to see the original line up. Or semi original, since the original guitarist died of a heroin overdose. And that the actual guitarist almost nearly died to another heroin overdose. And that the lead singer was hooked on it too and apparently so was the bassist... Well, isn't that what they say rock 'n roll is all about?

Finally the doors opened and we ran our way to the front row. We made it, left side of the stage, "in front of Flea", Joaco said.

We went through the opening act who were really killing me softly with their songs, and everyone else around me was dying slowly too, and people started to get very anxious and violent and anxious, anxious, anxious and at some point I was finding it hard to breathe.

The opening act left the stage SOAKED and INJURED from all the bottle-coin-and-whatever-object-they-could-find throwing from the audience. I couldn't help but to feel sorry for them.

Gwyneth Paltrow appeared on stage and sat on a side just in front of us.

Shortly after she graced the stage with her presence, the lights went off and the initial riffs started.
The crowd went WILD-CRAZY-OUT-OF-CONTROL. People turned from a human mass into a homogenic animal beast. I started suffering the euphoria. Already and so early the crowd surfers were flying and swimming over my head.
I got my head pulled, my neck twisted, face slapped, my breasts elbowed, my toes deadly squashed, my legs paralyzed and unable to move, not because of the excitement but because there was literally no place for them to even bend.

The second the band got on stage the whole London arena was pushing their way to the front. The laws of Physics say that two bodies can't occupy the same space at the same time. Not to mention over +5000 souls. And that was only the beginning. The drummer, the guitarist and the bassist were in their spots.

Then a very manly figure walked into the center front of the stage and the euphoria metamorphosed into hysteria as the first notes of a song called "By the way" came out from this man's voice.

Everything froze. I didn't mind not breathing. I didn't mind the immobility. I didn't mind my neck breaking down from the weight of somebody floating on my head and for that matter I didn't mind the unbearable amount of physical pain I was put under. From the contiguous galaxy I heard my friend saying "I am sure Gwyneth is wetting her undies just looking at Kiedis" . Looking at who? I didn't know who Kiedis was but I was given no choice but to figure it out myself.

I remember seeing his silhouette through the back light. It was one of those miraculous/sacred visions. The light seemed to be glowing out of his body, out of his skin, out of his pores. A source of radiant energy himself. I was enchanted. Those Lenny Kravitz lyrics popped right into my head: "All of my life where have you been..."

It was the too-much-pain-to-bear situation that broke the hypnotism. My long hair got stuck to one of the head surfers' zippers and my head was going along. It became really too much in spite of my effort to keep the spot to contemplate the beautiful landscape that man was.

We left to a safer spot and I stayed under the spell from the distance.

I had been to many rock shows before... and never ever left a venue feeling the way I was feeling .I could not explain it. What was happening to me? What was all that adrenaline running furiously through my body? What's going on…

Ten hours in line, hour and a half being physically punished, pushed, squeezed, all the jumping, dancing, singing (or at least attempting to) and I left the London arena not feeling a sign of exhaustion. Quite the contrary, I wanted more.
My stomach was dizzy. My head was revolted. An inner revolution started within myself. My blood was pumping and my heart trying to pop out of my chest. I was In Love.