"Thanks so much for asking me out tonight," she said.
"It's my pleasure, I know we have a lot to talk about," he said. "And the Destroyer concert here at Islington Assembly Hall seems like the perfect place."
"I know we just started seeing one another and wasn't sure when to bring this up, exactly, but I wanted to ask you here to see if you wanted to talk about a bunch of stupid things with me."
"Absolutely."
"I'm so relieved. And now that they've started playing, let's talk super loudly. I love to talk loudly during the songs, non-stop."
"I can be loud."
"So can I. See?"
"Yes. What about me?"
"Good. Maybe a little louder?"
"Like this?"
"Better. The things sound better when they're loud." He leaned closer and said, "Plus I don't think others can hear us — they're only listening to the band."
Destroyer, a seven-piece band fronted by Dan Bejar, had just started singing the first song of the evening’s set. There were two guitarists, a bassist, a keyboardist, a multi-instrumentalist, and a drummer. Some of the members are also in The New Pornographers. The band played an array of songs from the band's solid new album, Dan's Boogie, plus highlights from past records like Kaputt, Have We Met and Destroyer's Rubies. It was an excellent show to see and talk loudly over.
"I really like the band but I'd love to wear a Destroyer T-shirt and say things loudly while wearing it, it would be like being at the concert all the time," the loud man said.
"How intriguing. Please explain."
"Because you'd see the band on my shirt, just like we can see them tonight. Then we'd say things and not hear the band playing its music, so it would be like we're in their presence but not actually listening at all to the music. Plus we'd get to talk loudly about stupid things."
"I love that."
"Let's start talking together about all sorts of stupid things."
"Do you mean talk together at the same time?"
"Yes."
"So if we wind up saying the same things about stupid things at the same time it'll be a way of revealing that our inner selves are perfectly in sync and we should be together?"
"Exactly. Like really together forever."
"Let's do it."
"One, two, three."
The man and woman began speaking loudly together: "Pizza tastes good. I like peanuts but I love cheese. This song reminds me to exercise. Thai food. Brussels sprouts. Long blinks are naps. Cheese again. Tortoise rhymes with turquoise. More stucco. Crisps. Synecdoche. Chiaroscuro. Squirrel. Specific statistics. Rural. Talkin' to a hamburger."
They paused, looking deeply, longingly into each others' eyes, then shouted, "We love live music!"
