Most of my entries start with where we’re headed to or where we’re headed from. My entire Life is about either being in transition or being in transit. It’s not deep, it just seems to be the case. And so it’s 12.50am and we’re headed back from Annapolis where we played a bar gig – a pre-party for a festival that’s been canceled by the incoming threat of Hurricane Irene. It was an interesting spread of music and unfortunately we played after the cusp of the crowd as the people were bleeding away from us, migrating towards the bar to pay their tabs.
I couldn’t believe there was a boat that was entirely given over to being a billboard. I had assumed passengers or something until it got closer – somehow it’s cost-effective to be wasting THAT much gasoline just to tow one sign in front of a couple of miles of beach. Went to the beach.
Thank goodness for our fans (thank US for our fans? Thank our FANS for our fans? Fans? If anyone out there reads any of this stuff, thank you for YOU!!!!) – because they made the night bearable. Heather’s struggling with a breath-stealing incursion of some sort of allergen that only Irish coffee can beat back – and you can only drink so much Irish coffee if you plan to maintain your functionality – and I was just tired – but our friends made us feel Loved, they danced and whooped and hollered. We had some unfamiliar faces for whom we were familiar, and that always feels good. People recognized the name and the music from the radio ads, it was everything it should’ve been EXCEPT for the wrong timing.
Ah well, Irene will steal much from us this weekend – and I’ll blame her for the empty bar tonight too. Looking at Irene, I tried making friends, I had hurricane treats laid out, I tried to wine and dine her but my seductions were all for naught and she’s coming right up the I-95 corridor with mayhem on her mind and an ETA in the middle of our show Saturday night. Alas, Heather and I are bowing out in this altercation and you’ll just have to look forward to the end of October for our next ilyAIMY show at Teavolve. I was hoping for slightly different timing – I was looking forward to watching a storm from those big windows at Teavolve – but we would’ve been playing to another empty bar. Even if WE showed up, I think the rest of the world is ready to hunker down and weather the weather wisely and in hiding.
The night is intensely humid – presumably all the foetid tropical air being pushed ahead of Irene. Mayhaps she’s more like the Nothing, with Gmork ahead of her with his thick, hot dog’s breath. Everyone make a wish and hold on tight to grains of sand…
It’s later than I was hoping it was going to be. But I have the feeling I’ll get to sleep in tomorrow, and the hurricane’s howl should be fierce enough to wake me until long into the afternoon. Kristen’s battened the hatches and tethered the trash cans. I disassembled the hammock and brought everything in. Our landlord climbed up on our roof and attacked our gutters with a leaf-blower (oh, I DO Love being a renter) and all the flashlights are charged, candles located, batteries topped off… California can laugh all they want about our quivery reaction to a 5.8 quake, but no-one’s going to tell me we’re overreacting to Irene.
Should be good songwritin’ weather!
