Under the cover of darkness, at the Bootleg Theater last night I walked (Okay, I ran across Beverly) to head to what I initially thought was going to be just another great night at the venue.  Boy was I sorely mistaken.  Much like Danielewski’s debut novel House Of Leaves, the venue was much larger inside than outside and I suddenly found myself in a room I never knew existed.

We entered into a dark room with the four men of the hour perched upon stage and me not willing to be a wallflower got on all fours to get as close to the spectacle as possible.  Let me tell you- after nearly one on one Biffy Clyro spawned serenades, live readings, and two wigs later, and I’m high fiving myself for stealthy sneak attack stageside, armed with a flip and a worn out copy of Only Revolutions.

Now I may have forgotten my kilt at home, but I was still in with the other Biffy/Danielewski fans that knew full well this would be the first, last, and ONLY opportunity to see the team in such an intimiate setting.  (Biffy Clyro’s playing Glastonbury & Danielewski sold out Madison Square Gardens for god’s sake!)  The contrast between acoustic versions of Biffy’s album intermixed with the semi-soothing often urgent reading’s from Danielewski’s latest edition to the literary world successfully sent chills on a one way ticket up the arms and backs of the majority of the audience.

The in person renditions of “God and Satan” amidst the book that spawned several slightly more than difficult themes served as an audience eye opener and left us with the notion that people divided by oceans, years, and countries are still fighting to tackle the same issues.

So there on a night working together to erase pasts (the event served to benefit Homeboy Industries,) and hopefully give people the chance to author their own futures, a Scottish band and an American author came together with several of their closest former strangers now forced friends to prove that we’re all working on interpreting the same themes, filling voids, and navigating our way through the often uncertain future.  Because we all “talk to God as much as we talk to Satan cause we want to hear both sides.  Does that make us cynical, there are no miracles- this is no miraculous life”- but I think transcending years (Only Revolutions was written a few years prior to Biffy Clyro’s release,) on different sides of the world is indeed, a miraculous feat.