Vendela Vida - The Diver's Clothes Lie Empty

Another two hours pass. The famous American actress comes to the food trailer.

“Hey,” you say, surprised that filming, which has gone so slowly, has ended so suddenly.

“Hey,” she says. “I’m starving.” She picks up a submarine sandwich and bites into it and a slice of tomato slips onto her scarf. She pays it no attention. “This tastes terrible,” she says, and places it back down on the tray with the other sandwiches.

“Are you going back to the hotel?” you ask.

“No,” she says. “There’s this music festival going on — Jazzablanca. Get it?” she says. “My friend Patti Smith is playing.” You’re tempted to say, You’re friends with Patti Smith? Instead you say: “She’s considered jazz?”

“It’s just the name of the festival,” she explains. “Anyway, you want to come to the show?”

You shrug only because you’re too excited to speak.

The famous American actress opens the jar of M&M’s. She doesn’t use the silver serving spoon but instead she grabs a handful and pours them into her mouth.

You get a ride to the concert in the famous American actress’s van. She has a van and a driver assigned just to her. You sit next to her in the first row of seats. One bodyguard sits in the passenger seat of the van, the other in the row behind you.

The driver has difficulty finding the venue. It’s not a normal concert pavilion, but the grandstand of a racetrack that they’ve closed up with tenting. This is your experience of Casablanca thus far: no one can find the address they’re looking for. Most places that are not hotels are identified only by landmarks. The horse track has been described to the driver as exactly that, “the horse track.” It doesn’t help matters that the driver has been traveling with the film and is from Fez. This is his first week in Casablanca.

Finally, you arrive at the racetrack. One bodyguard gets out of the car, followed by the famous American actress, and the other bodyguard is close behind. You’re the last out and you slide the heavy van door shut behind you. Cheers are erupting from inside the tent; the concert is beginning. Two people from the festival are waiting for the famous American actress at the now empty will-call line. She walks up to them and they escort her, you, and the two bodyguards into the makeshift theater.

The stands in the back are filled with people and in front of the stage chairs have been set up in rows, the way they would be in a high school auditorium.

The actress, the bodyguards, and you are escorted to your reserved seats six rows back from the stage. You always wondered who the assholes were who came late to a concert and took up a whole row near the stage, and now you know.

You get into the chairs without drawing attention. Everyone’s focused on Patti Smith.

Patti stands on a stage with a neon sign that says JAZZABLANCA behind her. She’s talking to the audience about how she’s always wanted to perform in Morocco because of the desert and because of Moroccan mint tea. She holds up her cup, which ostensibly is filled with Moroccan mint tea, and the audience cheers loudly. Very loudly. They love her.

The actress whispers to you: “If I have to leave early, can you please go backstage after and say hello to Patti for me? Let her know I was here?”

“Okay,” you promise, wondering why she’d have to leave early.

You smell expensive perfume, and this is also when you notice the fur. All the women in the rows in front of you are wearing fur. They’re extremely dressed up for a rock concert. Some of the women are with men, all of whom are wearing ties, but the majority of women have come in groups with other women. They have coiffed hair and well-applied makeup, and are blessed with either good genes or the funds to improve upon them. None of the women wear hijabs. This is the upper crust of Casablanca. You observe that your group might be the only Westerners in the audience.

Onstage Patti Smith is wearing faded baggy blue jeans, a white blouse, and a man’s blazer. Her gray hair is long and parted in the middle. She wears no makeup. She introduces a guitarist and a bassist, and the crowd claps politely.

She sings a cover of Lou Reed’s “A Perfect Day” and the crowd goes crazy. Especially the women. The women of Morocco love Patti Smith.

When she sings “Because the Night” everyone around you sings the lyrics too.

Come on now try and understand

The way I feel when I’m in your hands

Take my hand come undercover

They can’t hurt you now,

Can’t hurt you now, can’t hurt you now

Because the night belongs to lovers

Because the night belongs to lust

Because the night belongs to lovers

You’re unable to keep your eyes on the performance because you’re focused on the women around you. They know every word, and sing along, joining Patti in proclaiming the night belongs to them, the lovers, the women who lust.

Everyone is up on his or her feet except one woman sitting in front of you. She doesn’t want to stand. Every thirty seconds or so, her furred friends try to get her to join them, and she refuses. You notice that the bodyguards have their eyes on her, on this woman who won’t get up on her feet at a Patti Smith concert. Her refusal to stand makes her intriguing to the bodyguards.

When Patti Smith sings “People Have the Power,” the crowd is raucous. Even the reluctant stander in front of you finally raises herself to her feet and you sense the bodyguards relaxing.

But then a sound startles you — it’s the sound of trampling, like horses stampeding. You turn around to see if the audience members in the back are dancing so intensely that the stands are collapsing. Everyone near the stage begins turning around. And then the audience starts to collectively look up. You follow their gaze and see what they see — it’s raining. Torrential rain. The downpour sounds like rocks avalanching onto the tent, and it seems likely that the rain might succeed in bringing down the tent on top of everyone inside.

You turn back to the stage and see that Patti Smith and Lenny Kaye and Tony Shanahan look confused; they have no idea why the front rows of the audience have turned around. They keep playing, but you feel you’re seeing them without their performance faces on. They seem baffled, concerned. It’s then that one of the furred women two rows ahead, who is looking back to observe the center of the tent, catches a good look at the famous American actress. The furred woman does a double take to be certain, and then tells her friend standing next to her. The friend turns around to stare, and then says something to the friend standing next to her. Within a matter of seconds you start to hear the famous American actress’s name being spoken. Then it’s not spoken but being called out. They’re calling out her first name as though she’s a friend they haven’t seen for a while. They want to see if she turns and looks in their direction. If she responds to the name they’ll know it’s her.

Suddenly, a collective gasp erupts behind you. You turn to see what’s happening. The rain breaks though the tent. The power goes out. But Patti Smith and her guitarist and bassist don’t stop. They continue singing a cappella:

I believe everything we dream

Can come to pass through our union

We can turn the world around

We can turn the earth’s revolution

We have the power

People have the power. .

The crowd grows crazier than before. The rain is hitting the floor and you can feel the vibration of stomping feet. The energy of the crowd has swarmed and collected and is harnessed toward the stage. You are certain the performers can feel this focused beam of energy too because they’re singing louder and no longer look at all confused, but the opposite: they have intention. Everyone is singing now about the power to dream, to rule, to wrestle the earth from fools. You know this is the reason many people come to concerts, come to witness anything live. There exists the possibility of surprise, of power outages, of connection and communion, the possibility of people who have never before met singing the same song to each other about the power they have to change the world.