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Bravely down the candle road
Oct. 14th, 2010 08:32 pmI want to talk about Saturday night. I'm not sure I can.
Okay, look, I know I have a bunch of posts that I should write about StrowlerCon weekend: Three nights' worth of fantastic live music, including Heather Dale, the Gypsy Nomads, and of course the amazing![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
s00j, among plenty of others. My first burlesque show. The juggling workshop I taught and somehow survived. Getting up and performing with cluegirl. A side trip out to Davis Square for Honk Fest. And I did, indeed, purchase a hat. A lot happened, suffice it to say.
But if you have anyone on your f'list who was there, you've already gotten a metric earful about how much greater than the sum of its parts it all was. This post is no exception. There was magic. And the best way for me to explain is to talk about Saturday night—more specifically, the Saturday night Tricky Pixie set.
Tricky Pixie, for those not in the know, normally consists ofs00j, the divine stealthcello, and Alexander James Adams; Alexander, however, had inadvertently double-booked himself with a show in Vegas, so his fiddle parts were covered (and dazzlingly so) by Ben Deschamps, Heather's partner in crime. They unleashed a spectacular set, with dancers springing out of seats and onto every available stretch of unoccupied floor at one point or another. One very pretty dancing boy in front of the stage had my Kinsey score fluctuating before my very eyes; when he brandished a stuffed alligator at Betsy during "Alligator in the House," threatening to devour her, Sooj barked, "GET IN LINE." (By the way, for those who were there: that phone at the top of "Daughter of the Glade" was mine. Mea culpa.)
None of this surprised me. I was expecting something wonderful, and got it. What I wasn't prepared for was the last two songs.
And this is where words are going to fail me. Fellow Strowlers who were there, you know what I'm talking about. It started with "Come to the Labyrinth."
It….
…okay. The videos of the live streaming feeds are all up on the Web right now, and I recommend them all. The one I want you to see, though, is this one, starting at the 53-minute mark or so. You might miss the first part of the introduction if you start there; the song is dedicated to a recently-passed Burner friend. But please don't miss the song. You need to hear this. You need to hear the two-part counterpoint the audience breaks into. (Make that three-part—one fellow, which I didn't know until later, began singing the Mourner's Kaddish under the surface.) You need to hear Sooj take the song places I've never heard her go before. And most of all, you need to hear the whispered "Blessed be" at the end, and then that deep expanse of silence. No one would applaud, because no one wanted to be the one to crack that fragile, precious moment. I was crying openly by that point, and I don't think I was the only one. I swear to you that I may never be worthy enough to have been there.
And then? Then came "Tam Lin." Oh, mercy. That video I linked you to? When you're done with "Come to the Labyrinth?" Keep watching.
First of all, the Tricky Pixie version of "Tam Lin" was already astonishing to begin with—Sooj's oft-quoted intent was to bring the sexy back, and whoa Nellie, did she evah. But this time, they laced up their knee-high boots and kicked the fucker over the top, hard. Because not only did they have Sooj and Ben and Betsy rocking our collective faces off as per usual, they brought Heather Dale up to sing Tam Lin's part, and Sharon Knight to join in on the chorus.
And in front of the stage? Lee Harrington strung upshadesong in a suspension bondage scene. Unrehearsed. In character. Using a bandage on which they'd written the entire lyrics to the song.
Yeah. Precisely. Dear gods.
I don't use the phrase "Magic was made" unless I mean it. Magic was made on Saturday night. The thing that keeps coming up over and over again about the weekend is that StrowlerCon did the rare thing of actually creating community. That performance, I think, had a lot to do with it, because we in the audience weren't just in the audience. Those of us who were there for the Con are Strowlers now, no matter how overly earnest that may sound, and that won't be taken from us. Not easily, anyway. I'll join the chorus of voices that has been saying we'll all be back for the next one.
And by the way, not counting badges and programs and whatnot, I have saved two souvenirs from the weekend. One is the hat. The other is a length of bandage, on which "BOLD AS BRASS HE TAKES HER HAND AND COLOR RISES TO HER SKIN" is scrawled, with a single knot holding two loops in place. Just wide enough for a pair of wrists.
Okay, look, I know I have a bunch of posts that I should write about StrowlerCon weekend: Three nights' worth of fantastic live music, including Heather Dale, the Gypsy Nomads, and of course the amazing
s00j, among plenty of others. My first burlesque show. The juggling workshop I taught and somehow survived. Getting up and performing with cluegirl. A side trip out to Davis Square for Honk Fest. And I did, indeed, purchase a hat. A lot happened, suffice it to say.But if you have anyone on your f'list who was there, you've already gotten a metric earful about how much greater than the sum of its parts it all was. This post is no exception. There was magic. And the best way for me to explain is to talk about Saturday night—more specifically, the Saturday night Tricky Pixie set.
Tricky Pixie, for those not in the know, normally consists of
s00j, the divine stealthcello, and Alexander James Adams; Alexander, however, had inadvertently double-booked himself with a show in Vegas, so his fiddle parts were covered (and dazzlingly so) by Ben Deschamps, Heather's partner in crime. They unleashed a spectacular set, with dancers springing out of seats and onto every available stretch of unoccupied floor at one point or another. One very pretty dancing boy in front of the stage had my Kinsey score fluctuating before my very eyes; when he brandished a stuffed alligator at Betsy during "Alligator in the House," threatening to devour her, Sooj barked, "GET IN LINE." (By the way, for those who were there: that phone at the top of "Daughter of the Glade" was mine. Mea culpa.)None of this surprised me. I was expecting something wonderful, and got it. What I wasn't prepared for was the last two songs.
And this is where words are going to fail me. Fellow Strowlers who were there, you know what I'm talking about. It started with "Come to the Labyrinth."
It….
…okay. The videos of the live streaming feeds are all up on the Web right now, and I recommend them all. The one I want you to see, though, is this one, starting at the 53-minute mark or so. You might miss the first part of the introduction if you start there; the song is dedicated to a recently-passed Burner friend. But please don't miss the song. You need to hear this. You need to hear the two-part counterpoint the audience breaks into. (Make that three-part—one fellow, which I didn't know until later, began singing the Mourner's Kaddish under the surface.) You need to hear Sooj take the song places I've never heard her go before. And most of all, you need to hear the whispered "Blessed be" at the end, and then that deep expanse of silence. No one would applaud, because no one wanted to be the one to crack that fragile, precious moment. I was crying openly by that point, and I don't think I was the only one. I swear to you that I may never be worthy enough to have been there.
And then? Then came "Tam Lin." Oh, mercy. That video I linked you to? When you're done with "Come to the Labyrinth?" Keep watching.
First of all, the Tricky Pixie version of "Tam Lin" was already astonishing to begin with—Sooj's oft-quoted intent was to bring the sexy back, and whoa Nellie, did she evah. But this time, they laced up their knee-high boots and kicked the fucker over the top, hard. Because not only did they have Sooj and Ben and Betsy rocking our collective faces off as per usual, they brought Heather Dale up to sing Tam Lin's part, and Sharon Knight to join in on the chorus.
And in front of the stage? Lee Harrington strung up
shadesong in a suspension bondage scene. Unrehearsed. In character. Using a bandage on which they'd written the entire lyrics to the song.Yeah. Precisely. Dear gods.
I don't use the phrase "Magic was made" unless I mean it. Magic was made on Saturday night. The thing that keeps coming up over and over again about the weekend is that StrowlerCon did the rare thing of actually creating community. That performance, I think, had a lot to do with it, because we in the audience weren't just in the audience. Those of us who were there for the Con are Strowlers now, no matter how overly earnest that may sound, and that won't be taken from us. Not easily, anyway. I'll join the chorus of voices that has been saying we'll all be back for the next one.
And by the way, not counting badges and programs and whatnot, I have saved two souvenirs from the weekend. One is the hat. The other is a length of bandage, on which "BOLD AS BRASS HE TAKES HER HAND AND COLOR RISES TO HER SKIN" is scrawled, with a single knot holding two loops in place. Just wide enough for a pair of wrists.
