Reporter: Ravi

I have never had a concert experience as unique and breathtakingly original as the Porcupine Tree gig at IIT. This was a experience where the band performing was an adjunct - an almost unnecessary adjunct - to a clever and torturous alternative reality game themed around 'getting to see Porcupine Tree at IIT'. Through it all, IIT was able to give you a sense of the deeper meaning to some of Porcupine Tree's lyrics and themes - alienation, the devaluing of music and a general free floating depression by making you actually experience all of these sensations. It's not for nothing that IIT draws some of the brightest brains in the country! The ignited minds that our great stoner leader has spoken of were aflame and burnt everything that came in their path. But I get ahead of myself. 

There was a ticket procurement and delivery system of Byzantine complexity which is just the way we Porcupine Tree fans would have it. Leave the simple act of paying for tickets to people who listen to less progressive poseur bands like Bryan Adams or Iron Maiden! Paying for tickets at the venue was an option IIT did introduce later on, but we who'd used the power of the internet to get our tickets spat in contempt and derision at these poseurs who just sauntered up to a stall, bought tickets and hurried away, acutely conscious of the shameful nature of this act. The fact that these people didn't have to stand around for two hours was an obvious testament to their lack of commitment to the band and I daresay, the technological wizards at IIT must have worked some special mojo on these 'bought at the venue' tickets, rendering the people who had them blind in an eye or deaf in an ear for the duration of the concert. 

Arriving at the venue, i thought I could just saunter into the show. I immediately realised the folly of this on being confronted with a large fucking maze. Yes. A. Maze. In a mad rush to get through this I began to run, becoming uncomfortably aware all the time of how the bamboos that held this structure together kept closing in. And how sharp their edges were. My pace had soon slowed to a crawl like I was trying to negotiate a particularly spiky part of Prince of Persia. It was around this time that I realised this maze was not an officious and bothersome security measure but an intellectual challenge to weed out the people incapable of appreciating the complex progressive mastery of  Porcupine Tree. "You think you could get in just cause you bought the tickets?! FUCK YOU AND YOUR MONEY!" IIT seemed to be saying. I found my way through the maze by finding openings in it large enough for me to get to the next segment and finally hit clear ground. Other people who are not as smart are probably still in the maze contemplating which body part to eat next, some time about now. 

I raced towards the stage area hearing the band start up, when suddenly something that I could have sworn was a loutish security officer grabbed me and yelled BREATHE! Nonplussed, I could only stare idiotically at this humanoid and say "What?!" And it yelled louder, in strident metallic tones "BREATHE! BREATHE BREATHE!" At this point, I began to wonder if the maniacally fast ricker who'd dropped me off at the gates of IIT, had in fact met with an accident, and that part of me was left smeared somewhere on the Eastern Express highway. And if the entire trip to IIT was in fact some kind of a death dream; and this man's injunctions were actually those of the doctors struggling to bring me back to life. It was a train of thought (ha! see what I did there?), entirely worthy of a fan of those progtastic meisterminds Porcupine Tree. Sensing my obtuse and uber-cerebral cogitating, the creature before me said "Daaru piya? Cigarette?! BREATHE! HAAAA! HAAAA! BREATHE!" And then it hit me! This was clearly the latest product from the Robotics Department of IIT; a humanoid breathalyser. I subjected myself to the breath test going HAAA HAAA in its face, wishing I'd eaten those vada pavs with extra garlic chutney that are constantly available near my office. The machine relaxed its grip on me as it computed the data I'd presented it and deemed me not a threat. It's a testament to the technological arch magii of IIT that this creature didn't go all ED-209 on my ass and shoot me to McNuggets, turning my death dream into self fulfilling prophecy. 

By the time I entered the concert area, I felt strangely drained of all enthusiasm for the band or the music I had come to see. The stage was way too low and so seeing the band was in any case something that passed out of your hands (or line of sight) into that of what the camera people chose to show on screens. I'd thought since this was an amphitheater, the steps would presumably give me a better view but was informed by another one of the breathalyser security drones about that area being off limits. The band were tight and put up a great show but could only occasionally pierce the immense sense of ennui I was racked by. 

And then it struck me! The point of this entire exercise was NOT to see the band perform. That was just a hook - a fairly flimsy hook - as it turns out. The point was to go through this vastly frustrating, frequently infuriating mess of an experience which almost totally devalued what I'd valued enough to spend a lot of time and money on.  Which I think is what Steven Wilson was trying to say in Fear of a Blank Planet albeit in a more confused and incoherent way with some truly abysmal rhyming. Having attained this bizarre inversion of nirvana, I left before the encore.


"Unfortunately this whole culture we live in promotes this idea that if you’re somehow insignificant then you’re worthless. If you’re somehow not successful, if you’re not popular, if you’re not famous, if you’re not a celebrity, you are somehow worthless. And the only way to become famous if you are that piece of shit on someone’s shoe is to go into a school and blow 25 of your classmates away. Instant fame! That’s fucked up. That’s what’s wrong with the world right now."

- Steve Wilson