My friends say that I spontaneously combust.
Spontaneous combustion is when a piece of organic matter—damp hay, coal, lawn clippings—bursts into flames with no apparent cause. It’s instant combustion. Autoignition. It happens when a substance is heated to its unique ignition temperature and is combined with roving oxygen in the air.
My friends say that I spontaneously combust.
It has only happened twice: once at a concert and the other at a soccer game.
June 9th, 2023:
I was at the Eras Tour at Ford Field in Detroit, Michigan. My friend and I were situated on the first balcony, overlooking the sparkling crowd below, all of them frozen in a time capsule. Every person dressed as a different album, adorned in vivid tulle, bathed in glitter, and dripping with passion. The stadium held nearly 59,000 people, and together, the stampedes of Swifties were toying with the concrete seams of the stadium, coercing the jointed walls to split with the violent, wild conversations. Talking was only a distraction—with the pounding instrumentals of the openers, nobody could hear anything.
I just wanted to see Taylor Swift.
My friend told me that Taylor comes out after the pre-show setlist plays “Applause” by Lady Gaga. The second the song radiated throughout the stadium, the crowd started teeming and buzzing with life. It was sort of a levitating sensation, and all I recall from that moment was hyperventilating and shaking so much that my bottle of water was spilling all over me.
Like many people in the stadium, I couldn’t breathe.
My hands were numb, actively trembling with pent-up energy and anticipation. Sitting down to watch her entrance was unthinkable, yet my legs were shuddering along with my whole nervous system when Taylor entered the stage. The whole place was inching toward delirium with how powerful the performance was. It ended up being three hours of unhinged frisson from a crowd 59,000 strong, and by the end of the night, my face was frozen in dried tears and my voice was shot.
July 29th, 2023:
It was an arduous journey to get there.
I was restless the night before the soccer game. Arguably, I was a touch more excited for the soccer game than I was for the Taylor Swift concert. It’s strange: most people wouldn’t see the appeal of flying to Dallas and standing in blistering one-hundred-degree heat to watch twenty-two men chase a ball for ninety minutes. However, this exact scene is what defined the peak of my summer.
After a feverish morning (canceled flights, three-hour drive to Fort Wayne, bumper-to-bumper traffic in Dallas rush hour), I caught a first glimpse of AT&T Stadium as the Uber driver navigated through a myriad of soccer fans, all storming the sidewalks and street corners in a maddened, impassioned rush.
I knew what I was walking into, but I didn’t really know. I had watched dozens of games on the television in my friend’s basement, slouching on her bean bag, becoming well-versed in all of the players and the foreign soccer jargon. The atmosphere was always contained onto a small screen, and the only noise we heard was the slander pitched by the British announcers.
My family found our seats in the stadium, overlooking the lined, viridescent field below. Workers were swarming the pitch, checking that everything was in playing condition for when the players entered the field. It was FC Barcelona vs. Real Madrid, an iconic rivalry, rooted in centuries of bitter clashes and strident discord.
Everyone was thrilled to be there, but I swear I was the only one vehemently sobbing, unable to hold my cup of water because I could no longer feel my hands. I couldn’t even feel my teeth. It was the strangest sensation, as if someone electrocuted every frayed nerve in my body and zapped it with an ill-timed adrenaline rush.
Those were the two times I have “spontaneously combusted.”
Those were the two times when my passion performed as oxygen, sculpting a substance that hammers my waking thoughts and charges my veins with life. I have always had a constant awareness of these passions, a present warmth that is always steady, immune to volatile upsets, and preserved by a flickering, incandescent flame.
When someone regards the world with indifference, shadowing their interests with feeble, muted emotions, rarely feeling that sort of zealous, hot-blooded love, that ignition temperature dwindles, diminishing until there is nothing left but a heap of sooty embers.
I’ve been burned before.
But I would rather walk away with an armful of gnarled burn scars than slump unscathed through a colorless, dormant life.
