Everyone knows the new year begins in September. School supplies and class schedules, room numbers and brand-new non-scuff sneakers with the curly laces you don’t have to tie. For musicians, for orchestras, September is about new beginnings, too. Kick-off concerts and hype from the press.

I made new year’s resolutions for September 1st this year. Some of them are mundane, like “make your own lunch” and “never wear the same thing twice”, but something else I want to do is write more about music. So my Resolution, this September the First, is to write a review for every concert I see. It doesn’t need to be professional, it doesn’t need to talk about the artistry or the talent or the tuning of the scales; I want it to be Sean-from-Said-the-Gramophone-style, flashing experiential evidence. I want to practice the combination of otherwise-unrelated words for the cause of re-evoking the moment.

Who: The Scissor Sisters

Where: Sound Academy

When: August 31, 2010

I wonder what Ana Matronic eats for breakfast. I wonder if Jake Shears wears old man sweaters when he’s at home. I wonder if the keyboardist is the life of the party on the tour bus – if he’s the go-to guy for hallucinogens, awful puns, and cheap shots. I wonder if Del Marquis has a thing about Oxford Commas. I wonder these things because at this concert (packed in among so many girls and gays) there is a space between the music and the dancing, a space that would ordinarily be filled by staggering bass or the singer’s feelings slopping all over the stage. I resort to filling the space with idle, mental queries and remind myself not to wear just one earplug next time.

(It was a really good concert, though.)