Sonder Under the Spotlight; The Lives Behind the Applause at a Johnny Marr Concert

Mimi Berkowitz

07.08.25

The first thing you notice at a concert is the sheer mass of people — a sea of bodies pressing forward, faces aglow in the stage lights, all eyes reflecting the same anticipation. For a few hours, strangers move as one, singing the same words, caught in the same rhythm. And then, in the middle of it all, comes a quiet realization: each person here carries a life as layered and complex as your own. That feeling — overwhelming yet beautifully human—has a name: sonder.

I was at the Orpheum Theatre on October 10th, wrapped in the sound of Johnny Marr’s guitar. To my left was my best friend, Claire Johnson. To my right was a stranger who later introduced herself as Elsie. In that moment, though, she was just another body in the crowd; just another fan lost in the music. 

Claire has seen Johnny Marr perform seven times, the first when he opened for The Killers, making this her eighth show. She knew exactly when to cheer, and every song down to the note. I watched her experience the concert with a kind of muscle memory, moving through each moment with the comfort of someone visiting an old friend. 

For Claire, concerts have always been about more than just the music. They’ve been about connection. “When I first started going to concerts with my dad, all I could think about was whether the artist on stage could see me,” she told me. “I learned quickly that they couldn’t, but there was still always a part of me that wished they could see how happy their music made me.”

It was the third show on tour where Claire finally got her wish. The Killers were closing their encore with This Charming Man, featuring Johnny Marr himself, and as the song ended, the band exited to the left, but Johnny broke away, running off to the right. “Before I had time to process what was even happening Johnny Marr was in front of me shaking my hand and giving me his guitar pick,” she says. “He told me he hadn’t seen someone so young love The Smiths so much; I just stood there crying tears of joy.” It was a moment that belonged to Claire, but also to every experience that had brought her there — to every concert she had attended, to every song she had played with her dad, to every second spent in the crowd hoping to be seen. 

At one point in the concert, I felt a light tap on my shoulder. Turning around, I met the eyes of an older woman, her face alight with the same exhilaration I saw in Claire. “You don’t realize it yet, but you’re part of something bigger,” she told us, her voice just barely audible over the roar of the crowd. She introduced herself as Elsie, and as we talked, it became clear that she had lived a lifetime chasing the very moment we were in.

Elsie, now 60, has been a fan for more than half of her life, recalling her early twenties spent chasing the rush of live music across cities. She had first seen The Smiths in London around the mid-‘80s, and from that moment, she was hooked. “I worked dull jobs during the week and every spare dollar went to train and concert tickets,” Elsie claims. “London, Manchester, Paris. I followed them wherever I could.”

Decades later, Elsie was still following the music. She had watched Johnny Marr transform from a guitarist in a band that shaped her youth to a solo artist commanding a stage of his own. “It’s strange,” she said. “I’ve grown older with him. It’s like watching history unfold in real-time.” Though Elsie is not the same person she was when introduced to The Smiths, the thrill of a Johnny Marr live show remained unchanged. 

Elsie was once a young girl standing in a crowd, wide-eyed and full of wonder. Now, she was watching the next generation fall in love with the same music she did. Claire found herself caught between nostalgia and new memories. I stood between them at the beginning of my own story, wondering how my life might one day intertwine with others in the same way. 

As the curtains closed and the crowd erupted, I couldn’t help but look around at the hundreds of strangers surrounding me. Every person in the Orpheum Theatre that night each had their own histories, emotions and reasons for being there. For a fleeting moment, all of us were connected, our lives overlapping in applause, and then just as quickly, the doors opened and we dispersed into the Boston night, continuing our own separate stories.