I stand apart from my friends on the lawn of a concert venue during a Lauryn Hill show.
I look through my glasses at Lauryn, sitting with her head wrapped. A spotlight focuses on her, her microphone and her guitar. An MTV logo floats behind her shoulder. She begins her song called “Mystery of Iniquity,” a guitar strikes and she croons,
“It’s the mystery of iniquity ?
“Said it’s the misery of iniquity ?
“Said it’s the history of iniquity.”
She then stops strumming and spits a few words a cappella:
“Children ?
“Eat your bread ?
“Little children ?
“Eat your bread.”
Since my friends are clustered away from me, I am in the middle of one of the makeshift aisles on the lawn; taller people walking by block my view.
A shirtless, sweaty Asian boy wearing an Abercrombie hat and yelling on his cell phone slides past. He leaves a streak of water on my right arm.
Lauryn pounds her guitar, stops and preaches:
“Y’all can’t handle the truth in a courtroom of lies.
“Perjures the jurors ?
“Witness despised ?
“Crooked lawyers ?
“False indictments publicized.”
I give a sideways glance to the cute girl standing next to me. She looks back. Her unknowing boyfriend, on the other side of her, picks her up, flips her upside-down and playfully slaps her on the ass as if she were a newborn. A few seconds pass. I try to eye her again, but instead of looking back at me, she’s staring at Lauryn.
Lauryn slaps her guitar, stops again and passionately sings:
“Do we expect the system made for the elect …
“To possibly judge correct?
“Properly serve and protect?
“Materially corrupt ?
“Spiritually amuck ?
“Oblivious to the cause ?
“Prosperously bankrupt.”
A tube-top standing on her social ladder walks by. Two steps past me she stops, flips her hair back, smiles and waves frantically at someone somewhere behind me. I jerk my leg backwards when I feel her beer spilling on my pants. She walks away.
Lauryn continues:
“How long will you sleep?
“Troubled by the thoughts that you keep ?
“The idols you heap ?
“Causing the destruction you reap ?
“Judgement has come.”
Marijuana smoke drifts up my nostrils. I look at the person walking by me. My eyes follow the smoke down to his thumb, which partially covers the still-glowing weed inside of its colored-glass pipe. I watch him as he walks away.
While my head is facing that direction, my eyes catch those of a fat, white kid with a shaved head. He’s wearing a red-and white-striped shirt. It’s halfway unbuttoned so that I can see much of his lightly haired, sunburned chest.
I expect him to walk by me, like everyone else, but he stops.
“Hey man, you want some Valium?” he monotones.
“Naw man, I’m cool,” I say.
He then moves so that he is directly in front of me. I try to look back at Lauryn, but he’s staring at me.
“Are you sure?” he asks me, putting more emphasis in his words and gazing at me with glazed eyes.
“It’s okay man, I’m alright,” I say.
He shrugs and walks away.
Lauryn finishes her song:
“When it all ?
“All falls down ?
“I’m telling you all ?
“It all falls down.”
The crowd applauds politely. “Thank you,” she says and fixes herself in her seat, unaware that her message fell on deaf ears.
Liam Dillon is a sophomore in the College and sports editor of the Georgetown Voice. His party ended last week when somebody pulled the fire alarm.
