Jonathan Davis photographed by Sébastien Paquet

THIS. This is the joy of which I dream. This is the face of my dreams for reality. This, what I imagine to be, pure elation of crowd energy and connection through music – ultimate connection with hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands…

Distant connection through the void and toward the ultimate connection, to the love-eternal that is music.

I remember seeing KoЯn in the amphitheater just this summer, 2019. Of all the times I’ve seen my favorite band, this one, I remember the happy moments. I remember Jonathan laughing, talking to us, the tens of thousands of us piled up to the fence in the back, and saying something like, “You made my fuckin’ dreams come true, y’all!” Or some other such in his easy So-Cal cadence.

That, I remember most, the few moments he took to talk to us, to thank us, to inspire hope in us. To remember the exact words would be to quote a moment that cannot be quantified into words (says the author).

Remembering much more than inexorable extacy or the intoxicating lights silhouetting the movements of rockstars and decorating the inside of my retinas.

Seeing Jonathan walk onstage with his bagpipes, greeted by a stage of mirrors, looking into them, then looking out towards us.

Looking into the mirrors, then out at us…