First of all, it is hard to overstate how emotionally freaked-out girls get about Devendra Banhart. An hour before I went to his September 7, 2007 concert at the Palace of Fine Arts, I got a call from a hippie girl I had just met at the Green Tortoise youth hostel. M was just beside herself with nervous laughter, gushing at the prospect that she might get to meet a man she said she would do anything to see in person, marry, sleep with, etc. She wanted to know if she could come with me. I was about to leave anyway so I said sure…why not?
Her hair was freshly blow-dried, her nails painted, she wore cut off jeans with tights, and a strange necklace hung around her neck. Most importantly she had brought along her magic rock. Her magic rock, she told me (which she got in Kansas), divined that one day she would meet Devendra and that he would fall in love with her. She believed that an element of fate would bring them together and that it was a mystical thing.
Yet she didn’t even recognize Devendra as he approached me on the sidewalk in front of the Palace of Fine Arts. I had to get her to focus on the guy coming our way so she didn’t miss him. He and I chatted for a moment and as I went to shake his hand he reached out and gave me a big hug instead. I knew him from the Mission District and from art shows here (FYI: he’s a famous artist too). The band was about to do the sound check so I knew it wasn’t really a good time to talk. But he smiled, glanced over at M then went back inside with a group of people.
It took a few minutes for M to process what had just happened to her. After all, Devendra Banhart had just looked at her; they were face to face! She kept repeating “I can’t believe I just met him, I can’t believe I just met him. Oh my god, oh my god.” Her first rational thought was that she wanted to go get a bottle of whiskey somewhere to calm down. Since we arrived early, we took swigs of JD and coke on the way back to the Palace.
By the front doors emotions were running high. A guy standing next to us had surprised his girlfriend by taking her to the show in a cab. But he did so without telling her. She of course was upset because she had no time to get ready or to change what she was wearing. She was on the verge of tears. How could he do that to her? Just surprise her like that? She was livid, so she walked away from him and drank half a bottle of wine with some other girls outside. Meanwhile he paced nervously wondering out loud what he had done wrong.