Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

Didn't actually fall asleep between the two concerts but did sortakinda doze (with intermittent babbling about random topics) in the passenger seat of my car in the parking lot in Greenbelt for a while. Both concerts went well (I think Greenbelt went better than Gaithersburg). I am e x h a u s t e d. And dizzy. And my head feels kind of ... well my brain feels a wee bit too big for my skull. And my eyes hurt. And when anniemal pulled the car into her driveway it took me several minutes to convince my knees to function to get out of the car.

Took enough drugs & potions to not have my knees hurt on stage (well, almost -- a couple of moves did hurt a little) and not be too dizzy (I had to be careful how I moved my head relative to my body, though I managed to jump around some), but my knees did start hurting while I was resting between the gigs and I had to drink the magic migraine tea (to counter dizziness and post-theobromine crash) at intermission of each concert to pull it off. (What worked was Ultram + codeine + ibuprofen an hour before the concert, theobromine -- 100 cc of cocoa powder dissolved/suspended in 12 oz of water -- half an hour before the concert, and lavender/basil tea as soon as the first set ended. I did the same thing for both concerts, but added an antihistamine before the second one. (I'd also taken an antihistamine and ibuprofen before leaving the house in the morning.) The upside: I'm staring to get the hang of timing my meds. The downside: too damned many meds.

I had a good, though long and f'ing exhausting, day. A great day would have been if I hadn't needed so much chemical assistance to have this good a day. That was a hell of a lot of stuff to put into my body. But it worked. The painkillers I took before playing in Gaithersburg had started wearing off (but not completely) by the time I started carrying stuff into the Greenbelt Arts Center; my knees ached even lying down, but I was able to handle stairs without too much trouble.

Now I feel terribly caffeinated (included in the Canadian OTC codeine). Tomorrow I will feel very uncomfortably post-drugged from the codeine (I'm not feeling that yet, but I know what tomorrow will feel like). Gonna hate that, but doggone it, I wanted to do two good shows today.

We played. People danced (mostly children, and more in Gaithersburg than in Greenbelt). The fire was there. People smiled and nodded and clapped and tapped their feet. Life is good.

Something I've observed for a while finally sank in tonight: when The Homespun Ceilidh Band has a good performance, the audience doesn't congratulate us afterwards; they thank us. With their eyes and faces, not just their words. I'm gonna have to ponder that more, but for now I'll file it as something interesting and probably a sign that we're doing something right.

I think it might be the fire.

It's kind of like ... especially with the Celtic dance repertoire, the notes are dry tinder, begging to burst into flame. They can be presented very pretty and precise and orderly, or you can give them the spark and let the fire take over, warming hearts and bodies and dazzling eyes and ears. Same melodies, just a matter of whether you release the potential energy trapped therein. Or maybe I'm too exhausted to think straight. But there's definitely fire in this music.

And in this band. As fine musicians as these folks are, whom I'm fortunate to get to play with, this band is greater than the sum of its parts. Things happen.

Bill and Becky, performing as Peat & Barley, did a few sets at the Greenbelt concert. They debuted a womdigious reel, set with a truly brilliant arrangement. (I must remember to ask the title of it; I'd forgotten by the end of the evening.) Yowza. Jim arranged "The Languor of Love" for lute, playing it once through as a solo then backed delicately by the rest of the band the second time (rehearsed this week, of course), and as much as I liked that tune before, I absolutely loved it as a lute solo. So there was major niftiness that I got to just listen too, as well.

A good day, musically.

( possibly TMI, regarding fluids )

The next couple of days, recovering from this, are going to suck. But dammit, we got to set some tunes on fire and make people move and smile.

I just hope the next time we play I've got my physical problems sufficiently under control to do this with just Ultram and ibuprofen. That would be even better. But I'm glad I did at least have the tools available to make my knees work and not be too dizzy on stage.

From the Quotation of the day mailing list, 2005-11-10:

"Any technology throughout history has been adapted to two things -- first of all pornography and secondly, the paranormal." -- James Alcock, professor at York University, who specializes in the psychology of belief.

(submitted to the mailing list by Terry Labach)

[Hmm. I was under the impression that most new technologies got their economy-of-scale breakthroughs thanks to adoption for either military or pornographic purposes ...]