A conduit for feeling

Can a rock concert make you cry? If so, how many songs will it take to make you cry?

These are questions that I did not know were questions until the Jason Isbell concert on Sunday.

The answers: Yes. And two. With “Something More than Free.”

I need to preface this with a confession. The only reason I was at that concert was because of my husband. He read an article about Jason and put a bug in my ear. The next thing I knew, I was hitting refresh a million times at 9:59 a.m. the day the tickets went on sale. And thus, we were there.

A week before the show, we started streaming Jason’s songs through our phones and our cars and in our house. But a song on your stereo doesn’t match up to a live experience. It doesn’t replace the feeling you get when the drums beat through your heart. It doesn’t match the way a guitar can vibrate in your throat like a scream.

How hard do you cry before it becomes a sob? When is a human body no longer a body but a chord in a melody?

These and other questions remained unanswered until Sunday. The answers themselves came in a form other than words. At “Last of My Kind,” I let myself go. I released myself from the responsibility of remaining calm. I released myself from the fear of someone judging, someone seeing. I had already cried and allowed myself to keep crying. I became a conduit for sound and for the raw feeling exposed by guitar strings and piercing vocals and honest words. I let myself slip.

It was, in Jason’s words, a quiet carnage. JENNY MASSANELLI Little Rock