Dogmatic

I’ve seriously lost count of the times I have seen Henry Rollins on his spoken-word tours of Australia. It must be at least ten times or pretty damn close to that.

It was with great anticipation I was waiting for this gig. I bought six tickets to the show for myself and friends a couple of months ago. Two of them decided not to show up tonight, leaving me with two unpaid-for tickets. So in essence, I only received monetary compensation from one person and ended up paying for everyone else. I can assure you, this will never happen again ‘cos if people want to go to gigs from now on, I will not be the one buying tickets. Never again. I will only be getting them for myself and my girlfriend and everyone else can make their own way to the show.

I digress. I just felt bitterly disappointed to be treated this way but I wasn’t going to let this spoil my evening.

Hank, as usual, was phenomenal. He performed a riveting dialogue for close to three hours never once even stopping to have a drink of water. Dunno how he does it. It must be exhausting, but as usual he had the entire audience in the palm of his hand for the duration of his act, hanging on every word he spoke. Amazing.

The real treat of the night tho, was getting to meet the guy after the show. There were about ten fans waiting at the side of the venue and Henry was there posing for photos, signing autographs and chatting with all in question. After three solid hours on stage, you’d think the guy would just want to go back to his hotel room and just crash. I was exhausted from just sitting there witnessing the guy but nope, he was on the street giving his time to all the fans that were there.
And he seemed genuinely pleased to be doing so.

My sister, who would have to be one of his biggest fans had left just after the show - so I thought it would be a nice surprise for her if I asked Henry to sign my ticket stub for her. I approached him introduced myself and asked if he wouldn’t mind signing the ticket. He obliged. I shook his hand and thanked him for all his years of amazing performances. He was totally cool and I felt delighted that I got something really cool and special for my sis.