Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

The Maryland Faerie Festival was a fair amount of fun, and would have been a whole lot more fun if I'd been feeling better and had gotten there as early as I'd hoped to, instead of getting there half an hour before our set and feeling too wiped to really do much. I heard some good music, I got to talk (too briefly) to a few folks I see too seldom, I go to watch folks getting excited about finally matching LJ UIDs to RL names and faces, and I enjoyed truly fine weather (very sunny, bright, but didn't get hot).

I didn't have to carry the double bass terribly far (unfortunately my arms were already pretty sore before I even left the house, but it would've been a lot worse if I'd had a really long trek from the car with the bass on my head). And bandmates had sheet music where I could see it, so I wound up not referring to my PDA crib sheet. I even used the bow on one tune, though I'm a looong way from being able to use it on most of the tunes where I'd like to. Hey, progress.

The festival had about one and a half thousand visitors. I don't care how good the publicity was; that many visitors the first year of an event suggests that there was an unfilled need (or, if you prefer, an untapped market) in the community, that the festival filled. (OTOH, not to put down the pre-event publicity, no matter how big the need, to get that many people there the first year takes some really effective promotion -- folks still have to hear about it after all, to know the need's being filled -- and that publicity effort, though perhaps helped along a little by luck and a mention in The Washingon Post, seems to have mostly been the result of hard (and imaginative) work.)

Good festival. Kudos to the staff and volunteers. I'm looking forward to next year.

I stopped in Bowie on the way home. I asked my mother, whom I didn't see or call two weeks ago, whether I could get away with saying it was "Orthodox Mother's Day". She seemed at least a little amused, rather than annoyed -- though that may have been because she was enjoying having her grandson / my nephew in the house -- and she pointed out that last week was Mother's Day in some other country.

I must have set the bass (or the empty case) on some interesting plant or something, because when I came home Perrine kept sniffing and rubbing and rolling and rubbing and squirming and sniffing and rubbing against the end of the case.

Now I'm beyond tired, but I've taken care of my various post-gig tasks and am ready to crash. Let's see how dead I am tomorrow, and whether I manage to do any of the things I'm hoping to get done. I'll see about catching up on email if I'm not feeling utterly spacy all day.

From the Quotation of the day mailing list, 2005-05-05:

"Art by its nature is a transgressive act, and artists must accept being punished for it. The more original and unsettling their art, the more devastating the punishment." -- Joyce Carol Oates