Kill: The director of Amtrak, the engineers behind MBTA, and anyone else responsible for making train travel in this country such a shitshow.
Marry: Sufjan Stevens. I'm in love.
Screw: That guy who was sitting a couple rows behind us, in the denim jacket.
Sufjan Stevens concert last night blew my mind. It was incredible. I had several epiphanies. One of the songs was said to be 23 minutes long, and it wasn't boring. He played new things that I didn't really expect to like, and I liked them. He played old things that were just amazing in general.
Getting there was a mess. The concert was supposed to start at 7:30, so John and I decided to catch the 6:00 commuter rail into Boston, which was supposed to arrive at a little after 7. Then we'd have a little while to take the T to the Orpheum in a leisurely fashion.
The thing about trains, though, is that they never ever run on time in this country.
It's actually ridiculous. Our train didn't leave until 6:30ish, and they didn't give us any indication of when we'd be arriving. They just kept saying, "We'll get moving as soon as we can. Sorry for the delay" in their crackly loudspeaker voices.
It turns out, there was an Amtrak train in front of us which had technical difficulties, so rather than, I don't know, have some kind of backup plan, they just made us sit there until they figured the Amtrak issues out.
Well, excuse me, but I don't think this is acceptable.
People take trains so that they can get places. Usually if there's somewhere I need to be, I need to be there before a particular time. I expect trains to deliver me to that place at or before that time.
It really inspires this indignation in me. It's this "No, we all deserve better than this" feeling. Why haven't there been riots? Why hasn't there been legislation? Why isn't it illegal to make a train more than 15 minutes late without refunds for everyone's tickets?
Why hasn't anyone done anything about this?
I was telling John all of these angry thoughts while we were on said train, and for a second I thought, "Clara, you should be quiet and stop sounding so entitled."
But that's ridiculous! We're all entitled to trains that run on time! That should be the expectation! We are entitled to reasonable expectations!
John: We need someone like Mussolini.
Me: Yeah. But... I don't know. Let's just get someone like Mussolini in charge of Amtrak and nothing else. That would work.
When Daph came to visit her train was absurdly late as well. Like, an hour and a half late. She was almost late to the class she was going to. No refunds were offered. The apologies, I would bet, were halfhearted at best.
That would not fly in Switzerland.
It's ironic, too. Americans have this reputation for being go-go-go all the time. We don't like to sit in restaurants for a long time. We're a little more frenzied than people in other countries. And yet we have this lackadaisical train ethic. It's incongruous with the rest of our lives.
If I had been going to Boston just for the hell of it, I'd have been annoyed but not enraged. But I had places to be, and so did everyone else on that train.
Anyway. Moving on.
The concert was amazing. We didn't get there until almost eight, but it turns out there was an opener (we were pretty sure there wouldn't be one) so we didn't miss anything important. Sufjan made it all very personal; even though we were on the balcony I felt like he was talking to me. The whole thing was more of a mixed-media experience than a concert in itself. There were trippy projections on the walls. There was a fifteen minute montage about the life of a schizophrenic artist-prophet in Alabama (or something). There was dancing.
Sufjan: So this song is about being in love, feeling empty inside, working it out inside, going to therapy, working it out outside, working it out in the world... It's like I'm the patient, and you are my therapists... except I charged you money.
He played Chicago toward the end. It was incredible. There were balloons. I had an epiphany about the state of my life and the sources of my angst and the fact that I should really just listen to more Sufjan Stevens.
Good good good night.
(Besides those fucking trains)
Clara
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