Dreampepper

Friday was close to being a complete write-off. First I went downtown to take someone's photo, only to stand about waiting for an hour in the cold, at home a note sent through the digital, "stuck in a meeting, sorry!", my lack of cell phone stranding me yet again. Things cheered up briefly when I walked home to find an invitation to a job interview, only to find out, once I'd trekked back downtown, that it wasn't for legitimate employment, but instead with a guy who wants a girl to "boss around" his home. "Oh good, you're pretty enough." Pardon? I explained he should be advertising in the personals section and left, but not before he referred to special needs people as "feebs", (the second person to do so in my presence in as many days, ugh), and demanded I pay his bar tab. The entire experience lasted perhaps a total of fifteen miserable, uncomfortable minutes, but felt like a shotgun blast to the day. Walking home from that was even worse than the morning's photography failure. And, of course, at soon as I'm home again, home again, there is a voice mail message with my name on it, from the non-profit I interviewed on Wednesday, "we've gone with another applicant".

But David got home in time for me to borrow his bus pass to go to the Ayden Gallery opening, where I met up with my brother Kevin, in from Montreal, his friend Nicholas, and Diego, recently back from Spain, and the art was nice and the company nice and Diego gave me a pretty necklace as a holiday gift and we got slurpees on the way out of the mall and cadbury cream eggs and there was a clutch of hipsters at the bus-stop all wearing fake mustaches and it snowed a little and I got to show my brother Nightwatch when we got back to my place and everything turned out pretty well after all. Hooray.

Saturday was significantly better. Kevin took me to breakfast at Locus, one of my favourite Vancover restaurants, and we wandered around in the thin crust of snow a bit, talking about our mutual love of Montreal, before I dropped him off at a friend's place and bussed home. He's grown from an angry, unpleasant child into someone I am glad to know, for which I am thankful. It spills from me like water in cupped hands, brimming past the edges of our sad memories of childhood, a slow moving river that is going to take some time to get used to.

Then Aleks came over and napped in my bed with the cats for awhile before driving us over to Andrew & Sara's for an in-house Molly Lewis concert that was stuffed to with spectacular people. She sang about Myspace and having Stephen Fry's baby and generally charmed the heck out of everyone and for the first time all week I relaxed. It was wonderful.

Eventually the clever after-party dismantled for a trip to The Whip and though outside it was cold, it was beautiful, with snow, real snow, the dry, enchanting stuff, floating down like feathers after a televised pillow fight. We sparkled up the street, running in bursts then sliding along the frozen road on the flats of our shoes, arms akimbo, all transformed into ten years old. The group splintered at the bisto-bar, breaking off to different tables, mine against the far wall, the kitchen party, with Michael and Andrew and some folks from Seattle. We talked about terrible twitter jokes and a scandalous lot about nothing, but it was as full of odd glory as the weather, if inevitably more silly.

When it was time to go home, we skated down the road again, sliding even farther, whooping with cackling laughter, occasionally colliding, but never remembering to fall. Plans were made, Sherlock mentioned, and I fled down the street, trying and failing to get Andrew with the one tiny snowball I managed to make. S. drove me home, spinning the car down one of the back streets near my apartment, just because he could, with the sort of wicked joy usually reserved for roller coasters and haunted houses, toothless darkness and danger followed by ice-cream in the sun.

Jason Webley gave us such a gift this evening, a beautiful, marvelous experience, far beyond what anyone could call a concert.

Not to knock the concert, which was a blasting cap of a show, topping out almost everything else I've ever seen, (literally dancing in the aisles, jumping up and down levels of crazy amazing, that show. It just did. not. quit. ravishing. Melodies and shouting and poetry and snow made of feathers and surprise guest performances and identical twins and home-made instruments thrown into the audience and.. wow!), but the truly incredible part came after - when he silently walked off the stage and out of the hall, at the very end of the music, his fist tightly wrapped in the strings of a massive bouquet of giant red balloons, and swept almost the entire crowd into the street with him, everyone singing the last refrain of the last song over and over as the band played everyone out.

As we walked, hundreds strong, still singing, all the way to the water, down a cobblestone hill, under an overpass, over an overpass, Rafael and I arm in arm, up at the very front, sharing smiles with Jason, the leaders of a surreal parade that trailed four blocks long, thick enough to block traffic, the tune still soared with every step, as if the song kept our feet from touching the ground, as if the song was what kept us enchanted, a spell that he made but that we created, until we finally reached a smooth stone beach where a yacht was anchored, lit only with candles, fifty feet from shore.

He motioned us all to stop, then, and began to dance quietly where the shore sloped into the waves, gesturing to us with the great red balloons, a poem in motion, throwing our attention to the dazzling, full moon, then whimsically shifting from joyful pose to joyful pose, his heart bursting for us as he was painted with the flashes of a hundred cameras, like a strange, moving art fresco at the side of the sea. Eventually he paused at the top of some rocks, every inch the grand jester, both the king and the fool, suffused so thoroughly with glittering exultation that his face was a miracle, and finally began to say goodbye, certain, I suppose, that everyone had arrived.

He continued the act without saying a word, tying his treasured trademark hat to the balloons and, with a series of Chaplin-esque gestures, releasing them bumping into the sky. He lay on the rocks, watching them go, the red of the balloons weirdly lit by the moon, the saddest, most happy, fiercest gentle creature that ever lived, all the while as we, his crowd, kept singing, until they were nearly out of sight. Some people cried. (He might have too. It's hard to say, even though I was close, one of the very front line.) Next he began to strip, unbuttoning his shirt, peeling off his pants, unhooking his shoes from his feet, then he waved to us, we the hundreds, crammed onto the beach, spilling out, farther back, still singing, some stuck all the way back on the street, and we waved back, felicity incarnate, and many shouted, "goodbye!" and "until next time!". He looked at everyone, posing as he did so again for our cameras, as if it had all been rehearsed, the camera flashes picking him out for our eyes, then turned, satisfied, and bravely waded into the cold, black sea, the blackest thing, the coldest, and swam for the boat.

And that was that. Except that it wasn't. Telling you what happened doesn't explain what it felt like, how extraordinary it was, how perfect and clever. I could tell you how we cheered when he reached the yacht, how the crew that eventually emerged was dressed all in theater blacks or what it was like the police arrived to break us up or why my shoes got soaked or even more about the astoundingly good concert, but these are details and, in a way, unimportant. We were transported, as truly if we slipped sideways through space in that theater and briefly inhabited another world only a few molecules away, but happier in every respect. That was the magic. We were there as audience, but we were part of it and essential, all of our voices required, all of our eyes and hearts and minds.

Tony had a wonderful surprise for me when I arrived in Seattle: two tickets to the beautiful and bizarre Billy Nayer Show, the band that birthed That 1 Guy and one of the best movies of all time, The American Astronaut.



Flanked by Bobbie Lurie and Cory McAbee on the first night of the newest Billy Nayer Show tour. This one's for you, Mike! We all love you!

REMAINING TOUR DATES:

October 23 - Portland, OR
October 24 - Arcata, CA
October 26 - San Francisco, CA
October 27 - Seaside, CA
October 28 - San Diego, CA
October 29 - Los Angeles, CA

At my insistance, Tony and I blew off all of our other plans to go to the Crash Test Dummies concert at the Chan last night, which turned out to be an acoustic show promoting their new album, Ooh Lah Lah, the first music they've released in six years. (Also for sale, Ellen Reid's out-of-print opus, Cinderellen, which we also scored. Purr.)

It was epic. I am inspired.

Oh my stars.

That is all.

WAYFARERS OF THE GYPSY MANSION
a musical bazaar of sorts with
HUMANWINE, THE BLACKBIRD ORCHESTRA, NATHANIEL JOHNSTONE, TOY BOX TRIO, MEISCE, FINN VON CLARET, and DJ Q.

"These are the times, my friends. And these are the days. Where the world becomes malleable, palpable. When novelty and genius are within our reach. We are cautioned against being passionate about these things by tales of progress turned to greed and of technology turning on us. And yet, the golden light is just right, the clocks are synchronizing, the stars are in alignment.

This is what we celebrate tonight. We celebrate these transient times, with these transient artists." - c. lantz

Sunday, May 10, 2009 3 pm to 10 pm
The Little Red Studio
750 Harrison Street, Seattle, WA
ALL-AGES, $15 donation

Wearables, craftables, and edibles provided by a plethora of local and regional artisans. (ex. Sock Dreams will be arriving from Portland to vend excellent foot/legwear.) We will take a dinner break (with DJ) at 6:30 pm - please bring your own sack meal, a picnic to share, or food can be acquired from two of our vendors. Vegan options available. Adult beverages can be purchased by 21+ individuals.

Spread the word. All are welcome.

[Another fine event brought to you by the incomparable Libby Bulloff and Willow Brugh.]

Who lives in L.A.?

Your mission is as follows:

Obtain entry to the The Hollywood Knitting Factory this upcoming Sunday, September 23rd, for 7:30 pm.

Rock out.

(Tickets will be the most worthwhile $10 you've spent this year.)

A patient's self-rewired brain revives him after 19 years in a vegatative coma.

Minus Kyle, Duncan, & Grant, you people missed a fantastic show. Tigers crept off the stage, dreams of lights, lakes of visionary stormy weather. The Roman Empire shuddered and fell under the waves of Atlantis. Shane brought his mother back to life as the audience cried and his grandmother told us all to rise and shine, all to a really good steel string slide. I managed to film clips of most of the first act, but not all of it, only enough to give you the barest skeleton of what actually happened. In the end, I have shaky teasers, but no real trailers. Next time, you, be there. Get out your silver kitchen knife and go culture hunting when I tell you to.

So with only about a full day's warning, we managed to get almost thirty people to Pirates of the Caribbean. An affable man sitting behind me noticed that our group took up two full rows and asked how much organization went into it. When I told him we hadn't bothered with very much this time around, how it was entirely arranged through our on-line journals, he mentioned oh-so-fortuitously that he has an event coming up at the Planetarium. He handed me a cleanly designed flyer, the sort of thing I would notice on a table, and smiled when I said I would give him a plug. After a bit more conversation, he asked, "Will you really mention us?" Then handed me a free ticket.

UK scientists have developed technology that enables artificial limbs to be directly attached to a human skeleton.

I've been listening to the music The Beige have on their website for hours now and I'm going to leave one on when I finally go to bed. The flyer design made me ask if it was ambient, but though their songs powerfully insinuate Brian Eno leanings, they seem to play something else, a translucent mellow jazz with a delicate twist of quiet pop. I really like it. Stylistically, they remind me charmingly of Múm. The musicians, Andrew Arida, Geoff Gilliard, Mark Haney, Rick Maddocks, and Jon Wood, manage to dance the line between chill, softly effervescent, and catchy without being fluffy, bland or relying on hooks. I'll have to remember to bring extra money when I go, because I want to buy the album.

The show is only an hour long because they have to vacate in time for the stoned kids to watch the resident Doors/Zeppelin/Hendrix/Pink Floyd laser show, but they'll have drinks and mingling downstairs afterward and their own visuals projected on the ceiling during their set. I'm curious to see what they're going to do with the space. It can be awkward to set up anything meaningful around a giant robot projector ant that rises from the floor, but already I can imagine how their melodies could transform awkwardness into underwater gracefulness, sort of how a good director cuts out the sound in moments of tension.

University of Alberta researchers have created an ultra-sound technology to regrow teeth, the first time scientists have been able to reform human dental tissue.

About half my books have been spoken for and some already bought.
( a list of what's left )

I love re-dying my hair. Colours get everywhere, marking me guilty of vanity, guilty of having more fun than blondes. Red like roses, like letterboxes, like the inside of your lips when we kissed that once and my eyes were closed. That's my hands now. That and purple. Purple like a Kate Bush song. In the shower, the dyed water is bright enough to blind and I have to watch where I touch else I leave vivid murder prints on the walls. It makes me giggle.

The Arcade Fire has made music geeks exceptionally sexy. One member, particularly, stood out as an embodiment of everything Right with them by the way he played accordion like it was a superhero power, hips out and mouth howling, his mop of curly Dr. Egon hair falling into his steamed up glasses. Another played the tambourine as if it was an enemy he could kill with physically demanding theatrics. Wolf Parade was equally intense, a squeezing wall of traditional everything that made rock and roll dangerous to the adults experience, all the way down to the seething mass of crowd that shoved me to front and center at the expense of my breathe and balance. The lead singer still looks too wrung out to be alive and sings like he's going to continue past us all on sheer adversity. (The other lead singer, the man on the electric piano machine, he came into the shop yesterday. It cheered me up immensely when he didn't buy anything.)

Most concerts end with the finality of the period at the end of a favourite novel, but not this one. They crowded both bands onto the stage for the first encore, bringing up a member of the audience to look lost among them, then took their instruments into the crowd for a second one, leading the crowd around with a charming skeleton version of a New Order song. I'm terrifically glad I went. I feel as if my life would have been less interesting without them. If anyone's got a full album of anything Arcade Fire, I would greatly appreciate it, as all I have to listen to are carefully collected little scraps of from 'Funeral'.

*sniffles*

Tea Party is playing at the Commodore on Sunday!!

Augh!

Why can't the concert be on Monday? Oh world! Alas! I would be soo happy!!

I cannae afford a tickie. They're $30 & I've $55 to feed Bill and I until Monday. (Monday is pay day).

Dammit!!

I wish there were someone I could offer to pay back next week...