Good morning. I’m listening to Iron and Wine at the moment, drinking green tea and, it appears, writing my first blog post in a while (for this blog anyway — I post a lot at Scanning the Dial). Bernard is doing his best to get situated in my lap. He is doing much better since I took him in to get a steroid shot a few weeks ago — it seems to have cleared up the condition he had that was causing him to scratch himself frantically and rip himself up. Yay for a happier Bernard.
I wanted to write about my night last night, while it was still fresh in my mind. It began with my meeting up for drinks and dinner with Arin and two friends of hers, Ian and Jonas, at the Red Derby. I took the Metro in — I’ve been taking the Metro a lot more lately, even though it’s not as convenient in some ways, and I still don’t trust the bus system because the buses usually don’t come when they’re supposed to. I just don’t want to drive so much, use so much gas and harm the environment.
So I took the Metro to the Georgia Ave. stop and then got lost trying to find the Red Derby, but I got there eventually. We had a good time drinking beers in cans (such as Dale’s Pale Ale and Old Chub, for just $4 a can! that’s a bargain in D.C.) and eating and talking. I liked the Red Derby — it seemed homey, like a neighborhood hub. Apparently there’s a Sunday night drinking club of regulars, for example.
I really would like to live in D.C., but I don’t think I can afford it, and this is not a good time to sell. Or I’d even live in Arlington, but within walking distance of a Metro stop. That would be fine, too. Maybe someday. It would also be nice to have a neighborhood bar, or even a coffee house, within walking distance of where I live.
After hanging out at Red Derby for a while we walked up to this house where a concert was taking place. We ended up missing the first act, but got there in time to see Unicornicopia. Unicornicopia is a woman playing a keyboard and samplers and singing songs that to me seemed to be mostly about being a woman, a girl, female, and relating to others. I know, that’s a terrible description. The music didn’t lend itself to easy interpretation, though.
She was wearing a billowy yellow garment (maybe it was just yellow due to the lighting) that was tucked high on one leg, and on that leg she had a yellow band of fabric tied around her ankle. She had quite a magnetic presence, I thought. At times she would do this wild boogie dancing behind her keyboard or even come around the front and dance around. I enjoyed it. It was interesting, at least. I’m not sure what to compare it to, so it’s difficult to write about or place within a context for my own judgment. Not that that should be that important.
The house was cool — they call it the Lighthouse, apparently, and have noise/experimental concerts fairly often. There were many posters and paintings all over the walls, instruments and old media (LPs, cassettes) lying around. Folks gathered in the backyard and sat on the porch and smoked and talked. I talked to a guy, older than me and most of the people there (I think I was older than most of the people there), who happens to live a short walk from where I grew up and where my parents still live, in Fairfax. He plays cello with various people. He had played cello as a kid and teenager and then gave it up, only to pick it up again years later. Now he plays the best he’s ever played, he says. I also met one of the guys who lives in the house, who happens to be involved with Radio CPR, so that was interesting.
After a while we went back inside and went downstairs for the final performance, by Twilight Memories of the Three Suns (here’s a YouTube video). This relatively brief performance began with a guy flexing and shaking a large piece of metal, making noise with it, and a girl strumming an amplified tuneless homemade instrument of some kind of metal strings pulled straight across a piece of wood, sort of like an oversized homemade autoharp or something. After a while the guy began crumpling the piece of metal. Sometimes he would bury his face in it, and it looked as if the metal was swallowing him up and he was fighting to get free of it. He ended up on the floor bent over the metal, and the girl later just laid the harp-thing on the floor and pulled it back and forth, bobbled it up and down and the like.
I don’t know — experimental “music.” What’s to say about it? I’ve seen a fair amount of it. Sometimes it’s interesting. Sometimes it just seems self-indulgent and weakly expressive. People applaud, but what are they applauding? Especially when the music doesn’t necessarily involve any actual musical skill or even conception in that vein. As I was watching the final performance, I was thinking, “Heck, I could do that” (which I wasn’t thinking as I watched Unicornicopia). But I admit that I get really annoyed when people look at modern art and say, “My kid could do that!” So fine, my expectations are confounded, my vocabulary for describing such experiences is poor, and perhaps always will be, and perhaps that is the point. What do you think?
I made it home uneventfully after the show. Now I’m dong laundry and considering my plans. I must must must get to my garden after a long absence and do some work there. Weed, stake a Roma tomato plant, maybe plant some new things, dig the ground, and so forth. I’ve been so inconsistent about tending to my garden. I wonder whether I should still be doing this. But I do think it’s important. I will stick with it and just try to be more disciplined, I guess.
Tonight I’m going to play Scrabble at a hookah place, which I’m looking forward to, and what else is going on? Maybe poker sometime this week. I might volunteer for Arlingtonians for a Clean Environment at the Arlington County Fair next weekend.
Posted by nedlog at August 3, 2008 12:14 PM | TrackBack