March 2 retrospectacle

I wake up extremely ill and extremely late. Carmen is also ill and sleeping late. We cram Beau, my accordion, a guitar, a viol da gamba, a Kristina, me, Carmen, laptops, and backpacks all into my tiny civic. I have "Losing my Religion" on infinite repeat, because I infinite repeat songs as a matter of course. But I stop this for the sanity of others.

By the time we get to Connecticut I have turned into a miserable coughing wreck. Others offer to drive but I am not willing to stop since we are so late. I am valient and also needlessly melodramatic. I recover, tho, after we get there, and I've been sitting for a while.

Me: Will it break your heart not to do Wolff's Tilbury?
Beau: I hate the Tilbury.
Me: No practice! Let's eat lunch!

We eat Indian food. David seems boistrous. Matt is good-humored. I am off and on with attention.

Carmen gives me dayquil. I take a lot of it. And also get a large Americano. That's four shots of expresso, mind you. I am human again! kinda!

I set up my piece. No disasters. It is actually painless. I get changed into my post-modern cabaret hey-I'm-kinda-Edward-Gorey-like-I-swear costume. (David says "before you were sick now you're sick") The lace does an excellent job of hiding my accelerometer.

First thing: free improv. I can't remember a thing about it. Just sitting with my accordion and playing some descending half-steps on the bass... Everyone stands up and bows but that's too hard for me because the accordion is too heavy.

The show! Beau's piece is nice with the acoustics. I like it. Kristina's piece is crazy beautiful and man it really made me wish I could play the gamba worth something... Carmen's piece was v. good. I remember thinking it was way better than anything I'd heard at ICMC.

My turn. I get up. I turn on the sound but I can't hear it. Turns out its just cos the monitors are in front. OOOOOOooookay. Well, I restart everything and then go. I can hardly hear anything at all. I hear enough to stay in tune. I don't cough at all... its a miracle.

Okay, so for this show, I've rigged the set-up for my piece, balancing act to be very easy. I'm supposed to follow a moving invisible dot. Well. The dot isn't moving. Its still hard! I watch the screen for a while, totally cheating, before I resign myself, suck it up, and actually start doing it by ear. I can't actually hear myself so I just suck. There's no progression. I fake a progression actually. Its true that I am not quite sure what I'm doing because I'm trying to fake something or whether I'm actually trying to find that damn dot. I mean, its in the same place!

At some point, the cord falls out of my mic. I don't know how this happens... it just does. Well, I have to take my free hand with the accelerometer and fix it regardless. I remember thinking: oh, this is perfect. This is just what I'm talking about.

At one point in the song, where I'm just saying stuff... I tell myself: this is sad, remember. this is where you fall apart. and I'm out of it, I'm not remembering that. So, I'm like: okay... what am I saying? I am saying actually, the contents of a personal blog entry that is friends-locked on my myspace blog that I wrote when I found out something awful had happened to my sister. I have to remind myself at this point. Ironically, what I say is: "I am in this moment" and then I repeat that for a bit.

Then, I go into the bit where I say, "If I could save you all the time" again and again. Here, I'm like, maybe I should fall apart more here? hmmm.... and then everything runs out and there is just the organ-y sound and most everything is over. I stand still and I'm sort of mumbling my lyrics, and I'm thinking: so, do I collapse on the floor and start making high-pitched noises like in practice or is that just too much? In the end, I decide standing still and losing it that way is less rehearsed. I feel indecisive. I also reach over and fade out the song instead of letting it go the painful minute where nothing else happens. Maybe when I feel a little less jumped up on cough medicine and caffeine.

At the end, I say: "That was from my series, Every Night I Lose Control." I'm all composed and stuff. That's to be like: "No, I am a sane person. That's just my act." That's what I really meant when I said that.

Afterwards, Beau told me I made him feel very uncomfortable. I give him a thumbs up. Kristina asked me how much of it was real (the emotional part, I think, maybe)... I think I mumble something about it being inbetween. Stanlislavski, you know, but I am too sick to give her my spiel and she probably doesn't want to hear it in its entirety at that moment. I don't believe in reality anyways.

We end with an improv. All of us Dartmouth people keep on trying to end it at one point, but David & Nolan just keep on going. and going. NOooOoooooOOooOOOoooOOOOo! but it does end finally. I think I just stop playing my accordion at one point because I am so wrecked.

I meet some Hartt professors who now think I am a crazy person. They like my gloves. They like seeing the accelerometer. OOoo, shiny! Techy! One asks me if I use MAX. I say: NO!

We drive home. Beau drives actually.