對你愛不完 - Love You Endlessly

I miss Aaron Kwok (郭富城) concerts. I miss them so much I can taste them. The cheering, screaming or singing of the crowd; the waterworks, fireworks, stage hydraulics, safety harnesses, lighting; the costumes; the dancers; the atmosphere of total and utter love, adoration, enjoyment and pure unabashed joining in.

I miss all that. Hong Kong pop concerts are a spectacle and Aaron concerts are arguably the pinnacle; you don’t get someone sitting on a stool and playing guitar or piano, or someone singing their greatest hits plus new songs. You get interaction, excitement, fireworks, twisty-turny stages that lift, turn 360 degrees and then do it again vertically. You get audience participation (“which of the four sides of the audience shouts the loudest? Hmm, let’s find out shall we?”) and bong-bongs (inflatable tubes you can hit together), tiny lights, whistles and all kinds of noise-makers. You get wet as a certain Mr Kwok dances through water troughs so hard he douses the first five rows. You get your sign out with your country or a message of support spelt in LEDs so he can read it when you’re waving it. You get pure joy and exaltation running through your veins for the 3 plus hours he’s on stage.

He talks in between some of the numbers - he tells you he’s learnt an entire song on an instrument he doesn’t play, or had his hair shaved off again in another amusing pattern just for the concert series of 12 - 18 consecutive HK nights. He banters with the crowd, then tells you it’s just between him and the people who made it tonight, because he’s not going to let that bit go on the concert DVD / blu ray. He tells you who’s made his costumes for the event, who’s done the music, who’s trained all the dancers and helped him bring it all together.

And then he launches into another 3 - 5 songs, then does another costume quick-change before the next segment. He might appear from a secret entrance, or from behind the audience, or from the ceiling, or shot out of a spring-loaded trapdoor so that he’s thrown 10 feet straight up in the air before landing perfectly in his dancing shoes, ready for business. He dances like he doesn’t think he’ll get another chance in this life, and he makes it count - Every. Single. Time.

When the entire routine of himself, the dancers, the lights, the music, the audience is just right, you can see it on his face. It’s the most beatific expression you will ever see - he knows everything is on point, he knows the audience is screaming because it’s perfect, and he lets himself enjoy it. That’s what you can see on his face - like Gene Kelly’s smile as he looks up because he’s not even trying and it’s still perfection.

A recording can only tell you so much, of course. Everyone who’s ever gushed over a painting but also understands that it can only include what’s within the confines of the dimensions of the canvas, and leaves out so much more landscape and the feel of the weather, or the time of year, knows what I mean. The sounds, the smells, the atmosphere, that electric feeling of being part of a group of people elevated by excitement and enjoyment - in a harmless, fun way - can never be transferred to a recording. If you weren’t there, then you just didn’t feel it, it’s as simple as that. —And I say that as someone who wasn’t always able to get to every concert I wanted. I can tell - the collection of Aaron concerts on my shelves have different feelings associated with each of them, depending on whether I attended or had to settle for the recording. (Every recoding I bought was signed personally by him - but those are a different set of stories.)

In short - I miss Aaron Kwok concerts. I miss them so much I can taste them.

Soopytwist.