When I was still in school, there was a concert I wanted to attend, but had not bought tickets for. It was hosted on campus. It’s cold in the winter where I went to school, so there were tunnels connecting most of the buildings on campus. I wondered if I could sneak up to the concert venue from below, and come out through an emergency exit door.

I walked around earlier that day, but couldn’t find a way that would get me in to see the show. I didn’t want to see it badly enough to buy tickets from students who no longer wanted to attend. In fact, sneaking in was probably the main reason I wanted to go to see the band. I had never heard them before finding out they were coming to campus.

As luck would have it, when the evening came around, thunderstorms appeared, and the concert moved indoors, to a place more usually reserved for orchestras and ballets. To preserve the concert atmosphere, the organizers had allowed a limited number of guests to stand in the orchestra pit. It felt kind of like those young experiments that would feel contrived unless forced by the situation at hand.

I hadn’t seen any of this yet, but I did hear of the move inside, wandering around campus taking a break from working that night. Years before, when acting in a play onstage in the orchestra/ballet/highbrow hall, I had spent a fair amount of time exploring, and knew that there were other tunnels which lead directly backstage, from the mathematics department, among other places. Old campuses are often like that, I think, but I’m not sure why.

In case I got caught, I figured it would be worthwhile to look extra goofy, so I brought some juggling balls. Someone trying to get into a concert so as not to pay is considered a freeloader, but someone wandering around late at night with juggling balls in the maths department was just someone with some thoughts to think out.

I came down the stairs to where I knew the mathematics building and backstage met, I tried the door. It opened onto a set of stacked chairs. My adrenaline rushed a little, because I knew from experience that bands had bouncers, and bouncers were paid to make sure people didn’t sneak backstage. I wasn’t so much interested in going backstage to meet the band - although that would have been fine - I just wanted to get in.

I watched a little, and not seeing anyone started to push the chairs back. Two people started walking by and a froze a bit, then asked how they had managed to get in. They turned and looked at me funny, said they had come from the back, and kept walking. When they turned, I got a glimpse of their organizer nametags. I froze until I realized they’d gone without wondering why someone was squeezing past some chairs in front of a door. I guess people don’t see what they don’t look for.

After waiting a bit more, then squeezed past the chairs and found myself backstage. Hearing noises in the back, I decided heading that direction was better than jumping on stage, so I tried my best to confidently walk into a group of people. Just when I walked in, a roadie asked everyone for help moving a heavy metal case. I jumped in, grabbed a handle, and did my part. No one had looked at me funny yet. I’m guessing the roadies thought I looked student enough to be a student who’d forgotten a nametag, and the students thought I looked traveled enough to be a roadie. Perhaps not having a nametag makes you look even more important, like you’re a friend of the band, but given the way the organizers didn’t wonder why I was coming in from a door behind a ten foot high stack of chairs, I’m not sure anything hand crossed their minds yet.

When the first band had finished, and everything had been moved offstage, the audience waited for a while for the second band to come out. I held the realistic assumption that I would be found out soon enough, and I felt awkward with nothing else to help with. People tend to look at each other less when they’re working together to solve a problem. So I went to the front of the stage and started juggling. I believe there were some cheers, and a bit of “wtf” but it turns out you can’t really see the audience with the bright lights anyway, so I have no real clue what the reception was. I’m sure I dropped a few times, but mostly I was concerned with a gigantic bouncer grabbing the collar of my shirt and hefting me back like a naughty kitten. The longer this did’t happen, the more worried I became, so I grabbed my balls and returned backstage.

Soon after, a younger student organizer looked at me cockeyed, and said “Who are you with?” I knew if I said ”I’m not supposed to be here” I was done, and I knew if I challenged her with a fib “oh, I’m with the roadies,” it would be extroardinarily easy to check. So I simply said “Hi, my name is egocodedinsol!” and extended my hand. I think the key was that I said with my eyes that I knew I wasn’t invited to be there, but that I thought I belonged nonetheless. If I’d forced her to acknowledge that I wasn’t officially supposed to be there, she’d have had to take action - after all, if anyone just let friends backstage, all manner of problems would ensue. Alternatively, if I’d insulted her intelligence with a fib, she’d have had to take the same action.

Funnily enough, she introduced herself right back, and we found out we had a love of science in common. We talked for a bit, moved things around some more, and I grabbed some water. Then she asked if I’d like to watch the concert from above. I wasn’t quite sure what this meant, but I nodded. Probably best to get away from other people who might ask me where my nametag was. She lead me down the front of the stage, to the back of the hall, and up a ladder. I followed her down a catwalk to where some overhead lights were shining on the stage, from maybe 50 feet up. 50 feet always seems so short horizontally, but so high vertically. Obvious reasons, I guess, but no less shake-inducing when you’re looking straight down. The band came on, and we listened for a while, until the lead singer started crowdsurfing over the mosh pit. That’s a pretty phenomenal thing to see from 50 feet up. Obvious reasons, I guess.

After dancing for a while up there with no one to see, we walked through the crowd to the front stairs of the stage. A bouncer tried to tell me not to come, at which point I thought “I guess I’m finished, maybe they’ll let me watch from below” but she convinced him otherwise. I think I’m the most proud of that.

There are plenty of obvious points, and I’ll let those stand on their names: take risks, make friends, don’t bullshit, people don’t think about you as much as you think they do. But there’s one that ties them together that wasn’t clear to me until recently. You can do it even if no one has told you that you can. You can make friends, even if no one tells you “be my friend!” You can take a risk, even if no one has said “hey, this is an appropriate risk!”