roger waters

Yesterday, after I got done with my stuff at COPA, I had planned to walk home, eat a really late lunch, go meet Vale as a little moral support for her doctor's appointment (she hates doctors), run and then come home, eat dinner and go to a party that Sarah's (a new program girl) host brother was having in Vitacura. But Vale called me as I was on my way back to the apartment, saying that she had gotten tickets to see Roger Waters at the Estadio Nacional, and would I like to come? This concert, like any featuring a big international name down here, had been wiiiiidely publicized and tickets were the opposite of cheap (19,000 pesos to stand up on field away from the stage was the lowest they got). But she said the tickets were free, so I said, hell yeah! I don't really know much of anything about Pink Floyd, but who would pass up free tickets to a huge event like that? Plus, as it turned out, we had box seats. Pretty sweet. And the concert was great, too. It's not really my first choice of style and some of the songs were boring, but when the (great) band got going and the pyrotechnics and fog machines started spewing out fire and smoke and all that, it was REALLY fun. The stadium was jammed and everyone was really into it (except where we were, but I guess that's generally true...the real fans are the ones in the cheap seats, screaming their hearts out).

And when they played "The Wall," Waters brought a bunch of schoolkids, maybe 10 or 12 years old, onto the stage to dance and sing the chorus. THAT was a highlight. Another one, from earlier, was a song that he'd written recently about the Middle East and American/British policies there, which was very moving. It was based on his experience as a 17-year-old traveling across Europe and into Lebanon, where he was taken in by a family just outside Beirut for a time; he wondered in the song what had happened to them and he wished them well. Still another came at the end of that song: as it was reaching its climax they brought out a HUGE pig balloon with socialist and anti-Bush slogans on it, and "Victor Jara" in big letters, which got a gigantic reaction from the crowd (for those of you unaware, Victor Jara was an important member of the Nueva Canción movement in Chile and across Latin America; he was captured in the immediate aftermath of the 1973 coup here, taken to the Estadio Nacional and, along with thousands of others, tortured and killed--he's a pretty big hero here). After parading the balloon around the stadium it was cut loose and flew away into the night. Kick ASS!

So anyhow that was pretty exciting. And now I'm back in San Joaquin, having arrived for an 11:30 class only to find it postponed for the third day in four. But I've got another class that I'm sure starts when and where the book says, at 3 just across the lawn here. After that, it's COPA office, frisbee, and then finally, FINALLY, Borat. Oh my lord, I can't wait.