#32 - On Vampire Weekend, randomness and generosity
One of our oldest family friends in Australia is a wine aficionado. He loves to buy, age (in a cellar he built) and, of course, drink wine. His collection stood at over 600 bottles last time we spoke.
Many years ago, he had told my brother and I that everybody should have a similar passion, where you would be willing to spend illogical amounts of money, time and effort on satisfying that passion. Having thought about these words for a while, there are four things I am truly passionate about: Travel, Arsenal FC, art (especially romantic through modern) and Vampire Weekend.
Vampire Weekend
I started listening to Vampire Weekend in 2011, during my semester abroad at NYU. Vampire Weekend’s music was the perfect accompaniment to my time in NYC. The band was formed by a group of friends who met while studying at Columbia University and their music heavily referenced the city and the preppy life I imagined I wanted to live. As I came to love NYC, so too did my love for Vampire Weekend grow.
Since then, Vampire Weekend has been the soundtrack to my life, through all the highs and lows. When I go for a run, I set my pace to ‘Campus’. ‘Mansard Roof’ used to be my morning alarm. I psych myself up for presentations with ‘A-Punk’. When I’m feeling down, I listen to ‘Unbelievers’. If something happened in my life, chances are that Vampire Weekend was playing in the background.
Last Tuesday (10 July), Vampire Weekend announced a surprise show in LA, that would happen 2 days later on Thursday. Even though I already had tickets to see them play at Lolla in Chicago, I knew that I had to make the drive down from SF (where I am interning this summer) to see, what I assumed would be, a very different show.
So I applied for the ticket lottery and waited.
Throughout Tuesday and Wednesday, all I could think about was how amazing an experience it would be when I got a ticket.
And then I didn’t get a ticket…
The future of my blog
Around the same time that the Vampire Weekend concert was announced, I had been considering the future of my blog.
I enjoy writing this blog, and hearing from people who have enjoyed/been impacted by certain posts. However, maintaining a weekly posting schedule isn’t easy and I’ve been slipping. My blog has never had a focus, beyond random things that I am interested in/happen to me, and the lack of purpose means that it can often be difficult to think of things to write about. At the same time, there have been some other creative pursuits that I wanted to focus my time on, including photography and interactive art.
I was planning to announce that I would stop writing this blog and post on a quarterly basis, or even more infrequently.
That was, until I missed out on the Vampire Weekend tickets.
Dealing with the loss of tickets I never had
I was shocked at how hard I felt the lottery loss, even though I was still going to see Vampire Weekend in a few weeks’ time in Chicago. It was as though someone had crushed a lifelong dream, even though the concert had only been announced the previous day.
As I scrolled aimlessly through the comments on Vampire Weekend’s Instagram page, a few people were selling tickets. But by the time I responded to each of them, the tickets had been sold. As an hour went by from receiving the rejection email, I accepted that I wouldn’t be able to see Vampire Weekend at this special show and felt a growing sense of calm. I was avoiding an 11hr return drive (or an expensive flight) and would get to catch up with a close friend over dinner at a Pakistani restaurant in SF on Thursday evening. More than anything, I was grateful that I would at least see them soon.
A ’why not’ attitude
Normally, that would have been that. I would have gone to sleep and continued on with my life. The effort required to find a ticket and last minute transportation to LA would have overpowered me in that instant (such as when I didn’t drive down from Sydney to Canberra to see a JMW Turner exhibition in 2013 because I was too tired after seeing the Lions/Wallabies Rugby match).
But over my last year at Kellogg, I’ve found that my personality has changed. I’ve been willing to take more risks around every part of my life and be more spontaneous in general. Some of it has worked, some hasn’t.
So with this new mentality, I decided to post a comment at 10pm, asking if anyone was selling a ticket, and hoped for the best.
Randomness and generosity
When I checked my phone half an hour later, I had a message!
Matt had seen my earlier comment, together with multiple requests from other people to buy his spare ticket. However, he had decided to give the ticket to someone who would really appreciate it. After clicking through each of our profiles, he stumbled onto my blog and began to flick through the posts. It turns out that both Matt and his wife are very independent people, often choosing to go and do things that they enjoy by themselves. So when he got to my post about doing things alone, he found that my point of view resonated with him. On the basis of that post, and my commitment to drive down from SF, he sold me the ticket!
If it sounds crazy to you, it felt even crazier to me in that moment. I had no guarantee that he would turn up with the ticket, since they could only be collected by the person who purchased them originally. I put caution to the wind and told myself that if worse came to worse, I could spend some time in LA and would have a great story to talk about.
Fortunately, my worst fears did not come true and I got the ticket from Matt. I ended up hanging out with Matt during much of my brief stay in LA. He’s a cool guy with a passion for craft beer and music. Thanks to his agility and generosity, I even managed to get a Vampire Weekend guitar pick that I will be framing and hanging on my wall.
The concert
After renting a car and driving 6 hours to LA, I had one of the greatest experiences of my life!
I got to stand right near the stage in what turned out to be a very intimate concert. The band covered some of their greatest hits and my favourite songs, across a monster 2.5 hour set. Words can’t describe how great it was to be there, so I’ll leave it at that.
Randomness
It's somewhat crazy to think about the set of coincidences that occurred to make this happen. I had to be in California, a certain blog post needed to be near the top of the index, a certain person had to have seen my message AND been willing to put in the effort to do the research and read my blog. But each of those things conspired together in the best imaginable way.
I've also found it incredible rewarding to have something so amazing happen as a result of my blog. I've written this blog largely for my own interest and partly to improve my writing skills for a purpose that isn't apparent to me as yet. Normally, the result of a blog post is a few likes and some decent conversations. But nothing like this has happened before.
This episode also reinforces something we discussed in my Selling Yourself and Your Ideas class. We were told to always maintain a strong point of view about life and everything within it. Some people will resonate with your views (which is great) while others won't. (which is inevitable but not a problem - these aren't your people). To see it play out in the wild has been fascinating.
So after this experience, I think I'm going to keep blogging. And I can't wait to see Vampire Weekend play again in Chicago in 2 weeks.
tl;dr
My favourite band, Vampire Weekend, announced a show in LA last week. They have been inactive for years and I had never seen them play live. There was a lottery to buy tickets and, unfortunately, I didn’t get a ticket. Although some people were selling tickets in the band’s Instagram page, I kept missing out. Finally, out of desperation, I put up a message saying that I was looking to buy a ticket.
Just before I went to sleep, I decided to check my Instagram and found that someone had responded to my message. He said that a lot of people had reached out to him to buy his spare ticket. However, he had stumbled onto my blog, read my UTalk post and found that it really resonated with him. Because of my UTalk, he wanted to sell the ticket to me!
I bought the ticket, drove down from SF to LA and had one of the greatest experiences of my life!