Re:Ligious Experience: The live audio odyssey is the new wanderlust

MANILA, Philippines - Not a lot of people will understand traveling some 1,486.24 miles and spending more than 50 percent of their monthly paycheck to, essentially, see four people play together. I knew I would have a hard time convincing my parents, so I just didn’t ask and went ahead and booked tickets anyway. My master plan’s flourish included cajoling my brother into flying with me to Singapore. Fortunately, he is as crazy as I am.

On the way, we drafted a list of 10 songs each and made a bet with each other. Whoever guessed the most songs would win. The prize was personal gratification and/or bragging rights. We convinced two of his friends, Lora and Julius, to go on this pilgrimage with us. To prepare for the show, I re-tweeted two @-replies from Ezra Koenig (both from 2009, one about cats and one about empanadas) for posterity and, also, my own self-esteem.

The concert venue, Singapore’s famed Esplanade, was two stops away from our hotel. We were an hour and a half early. Before the show, five strangers asked me to take their photos. I met (more like giggled awkwardly and said “hi” to) two Singaporean Tumblr friends, Shawn and Kaysee, with whom I’d only spoken to via the Internet prior to the show.

Contra band: Vampire Weekend played The Esplanade in Singapore in late October.

Vampire Weekend played a total of 19 songs, opening with Holiday, and playing three for the encore: Horchata, Mansard Roof and Walcott, which frontman Ezra Koenig (who is part of my list of favorite people) called Cape Cod. I was 13 rows away from the stage, and caught zero guitar picks and zero drumsticks. None of our two LP sleeves were signed. My brother won the bet, hitting nine out of 10 songs, while I walked away with eight correct guesses. I also left the building with a Nokia-shaped hole in my pocket — I had lost the phone while jumping around during the show, and during my extreme concert withdrawal, I constantly wished for a time machine so I could just replay the entire experience for the rest of my life.

Even with these numbers, it still doesn’t really make sense why anyone would fly four hours to a foreign country to listen to music. I’m significantly poorer, but armed with an inexplicable, unquantifiable high in my heart. Trying to explain and justify this crazy journey is close to being an impossibility, but I don’t think these kinds of experiences are meant to be summed up in numbers and figures.

Which is probably why I am already on the lookout for budget airline tickets for the Mosaic Music Festival in March.