A lot of last night seems sort of like a dream. Or perhaps a drug-induced hallucination.
This morning I was awoken by too much light, glistening and glittering… Heather was poking me and pointing to the landing. Dusted with snow, it was beautiful and bright and I was conscious of it only vaguely. By morning it had faded to a distant dream, and I had to ask Heather if it had even happened.
So, how do I go about even describing what we did last night?
Perhaps I’ll start with Whitney’s reaction: “I wish I would’ve filmed it. But then again, it’s probably one of those things that wouldn’t show up on film. We would’ve watched the tape and it would just show an empty room. With me dancing in the middle.”
Perhaps that invokes an image out of Labyrinth. But I assure you, we were not ballroom dancing, and we were not in a mystical snowglobe magically materialized by a bite from a poison peach. Hoggle can rest easy on this count.
Though we were in a 19th century church next door to Harvard Law School, sitting with our backs to a radiator, trying to figure out just what the Squawk Coffeehouse was. There were stand-up comedians and stand-up philosophers and off-beat jazz and off-colour rants. And then there was the Dreaded Ribbon Dance.
How do I go about even describing the Dreaded Ribbon Dance?
Truly, it’s not something I ever expected at an open mic, but the two fiddlers who were the Squawk’s featured artists for the night eventually got us to drag all of the chairs off the hardwood floors, form into partners, form into a circle – and they had us promenading and swinging our partners and we were looking to others for direction and being scolded for letting go of our Dread Ribbons. It was a rough night.
Whitney had brought her friend Jodi out to see us, and I can only thank her for being a good sport. We sold some CDs, but for Whitney and Heather especially, who are sort of inherently non-participatory creatures, it seemed to have been somewhat of a strain. All I could do was laugh. But of course, I got to dance with Heather (and by dance I mean step Lively to the beat and try not to run into other people who were either responding slower/faster NEVER at the same speed as I was to the directions shouted by the fiddler) and some Lovely blonde. Much circling and swooping.
Jodi tripped me at one point though, and I could swear it was a “I’m blaming this on YOU” kind of trip.
Still, I feel we all responded to these adverse circumstances admirably, and I for one, want to lead a Dread Ribbon Dance at the next ilyAIMY show with floorspace.
At the moment, we’re wending our way through small New England towns, following Dread Ribbon roads as they plow through lakes and hills and in extreme cases, large green leprachaun hats. Frozen ponds (we passed an exit for Walden Pond a little while ago) still hold snow from the past days’ flurries, and ice is sprouting whiskers down the rocky crevices that our roadbed inhabits.
Heather and I are having a little business meeting in the car. 2005 will be a brand new year, and we’ve got thoughts and plans and resolutions that we need to put into action. The Trip started with such fervour, and it’s fallen into a bit of routine at times… but it’s a routine of flailing… and it’s time to really take a firm grasp on our direction and make things happen.
We’re driving West into a caldera of sunset colours. We’re running late and it’s fucking freezing but my sweater makes things better and it’s almost Christmas. This red light too shall pass.
