I remember obsessing over live music. My friends and I would go to outdoor concerts and festivals, clubs and music halls, following bands, camping out, getting sunburned. I remember how it smelled, like trampled on grass and smoke and sweat. Like blankets and fried food, and something sweet I can’t identify, but that might just have been fresh air. When a favorite song was played, we jumped up and down, singing along and hanging on to each other, utterly gleeful. Once a friend of a friend came to a show, and, watching us as if we were anthropological mysteries, said, “I don’t think I like music as much as you guys do.”

Seeing live music is still one of my favorite things to do, and, even though it’s quite a different experience these days, Rob and I spent our weekend going to shows. On Friday night, we met a group of our friends at Sheba’s Ethiopian Piano Bar, where they had secured a cozy corner spot and ordered a few bottles of wine and some sweet potato fries, which doesn’t seem very Ethiopian, now that I think about it.

These are friends I don’t get to see very often, and they erupted in screams when we rolled through the door. I have no doubt they had erupted in screams each time one of them arrived prior to that, too. There were ten of us: One had flown in from the actual state of New Jersey, 4 others are NJ transplants, and the rest of us don’t matter because our roots are buried beneath all that Jerseyness. I say this with love.

The vibe was pure hilarity, as we made our way to The Fillmore to see Ben Harper and The Innocent Criminals. The theater is an historic San Francisco landmark, and although I’ve been there too many times to count, this was only my second time in a wheelchair. We left our friends at the main door and followed a burly roadie type to the back entrance, an outdoor forklift that “Willie Nelson has ridden on.” The open platform creaked and shook, and I gripped the only railing, which was behind me. We were deposited in front of a heavy door, and it swung open to reveal the side stage, where Ben Harper sat, mid-song, wearing a fedora.

The place was packed, but we found some space towards the back of the room, and I impressed my friends with my wheelchair’s ability to raise up and make me a whopping 5 feet tall. I could see Ben Harper’s hat, and when some tall people shifted around, glimpses of his band.

Here is what happens when you go to a concert with your* girlfriends from New Jersey. Right away they start talking about which of the band members they would have sex with. Why this is a discussion is a bit confusing, because it turns out they would have sex with all of them. I had no fewer than three girls in my ear making the following statements, totally independently of each other:

“I would have sex with the bass player. He’d probably crush me like a blueberry, though.” [Probably.]

“I’d have sex with that bongo player. I mean, he’s old, but look how much fun he’s having!” [He did seem boisterous.]

“Do you think Ben Harper likes to have sex, like, listening to his own music? Or do you think he’d rather, I don’t know…hear Norah Jones?” [What??]

*Maybe just mine.

This continued. It was a fabulous night, full of laughter, music we all bonded over 10 years ago, and lots of hugging. The group formed a circle around me, dancing wildly and singing along to every song. It felt really normal, even though only half of my body was dancing. My crazy friends, through extreme email effort in the weeks leading up to the show, had even managed to get Ben Harper to dedicate his last song to me. There was more screaming, but no one, to my knowledge, had sex with any Innocent Criminals.

On Saturday, Rob and I went to the San Francisco Jazz Center with my sister and brother-in-law for an entirely different kind of show. Egberto Gismonti, a classically trained Brazilian guitarist and piano player, took the stage, a rowdy puff of gray hair sticking out of his red knit beanie. We were sitting in the front row, where I could see his hands sliding across the 12-string guitar, looking like a couple of manic spiders who had never met, but were somehow creating a sensational sound together.

Whereas the Ben Harper show had been a celebration, this was more like a meditation. I sat in the dark hall, surrounded by other silent people, all of us sitting, all of us just listening to this master perform. And it occurred to me that there are things that ALS cannot take away from me. The way it feels to close my eyes, to be in one place and appreciate it. The way music reaches my ears, slips into my mind and calms it down. The way a friend can walk up next to me, rub my back and say “I’m so happy right now.”

This weekend I was happy. I felt like myself, back in the dancing days, when we climbed hills and spread out blankets, wrapped our arms around each other, and thought the answers to life’s questions could all be found in the lyrics to a song.

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