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Ben Mandeberg
I walked into Slim’s expecting the same old show. A power chord here and there, some jumping up and down, and maybe even some moshing. As usual, that sweaty, moist ‘guy’ scent hung heavily in the air, probably leftovers from the many metal and hardcore bands that had been playing previous to the time I got there. The crowd wore that familiar shade of black I’d become so familiar with after going to countless shows, but little did I know how truly different this show would be. As A Glass Gesture, the band I was there to see, walked onstage I raced to the front, ready to take pictures of my first subject: Ben Mandeberg.
Ben is a seventeen year-old guitarist who’s been playing actively for a solid eight years. More recently in his music history, he’s been playing guitar and singing for the local band A Glass Gesture. It’s easy to tell that he’s a musician when you see him, in fact, it’s hard to miss. With brown hair down to his shoulders, a notoriously known pair of purple pants that he wars regularly, and a spontaneous personality, he’s not someone you’d forget easily. He laid out his ideas nicely for me on what music really means to him, and what he gets out of it. And in doing this, gave me a piece of the bigger picture I was looking for: why the arts provide a way for a person to leave everyday consciousness - escape, if you will - and what’s so appealing about that escape to the artist.
“It’s really just about human interaction when it comes down to it. You can just connect with people on such a different level musically than you can, I think, with literature or anything visual, just because it’s all so cognitive and it’s such a
different, unspoken kind of interaction that you can have.” To him, music is so much more than just a catchy chorus and plays on Myspace - it’s a state of mind. The connections that he has and makes when playing music are indescribable, but they are still the reason music means so much to him. “It’s like trying to describe love or something. It’s just there, and it’s human nature. It’s rhythm and people need rhythm in their lives. It’s continuity, and they need something to fall back on, they need some kind of force to hold them down, and a lot of the time that can be music, just because music, I think, a lot of the time makes people’s lives see more real to them, just in the sense that people relate to music and it’s comforting, and people can see something in their own lives in the music, and it makes people aware of themselves.”
Music is Ben’s place of escape. But that’s not to say he’s alone - other people escape too, many times just in completely different ways, and for completely different reasons. However, he’s making that escape into another state of mind at some point, just like the others.