Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

Please don't wake me
No, don't shake me
Leave me where I am
I'm only sleeping
    -- The Beatles, "I'm Only Sleeping"

Long day. Not sure how coherent this'll be, since I'm pretty tired. Guess I'll find out when I re-read it in the afternoon. I'll try to at least avoid "oversharing"...

Woke up, started getting ready for the Homespun Ceilidh Band gig, had a bit of trouble getting myself going, wound up running late. Minor glitch en route regarding a bandmate who forgot to bring the CDs to sell, and some backtracking to pick up a few at the band leader's house. Got there and discovered a pretty nice green room, with enough veggie stuff to make a decent sandwich and lots of really helpful volunteers. When the band before us finished, we got our gear on stage pretty quickly, but the sound crew -- who seemed really on the ball in general, real pros -- appeared to be completely flummoxed by us. Started our set really late (which meant we had to trim it, 'cause our ending time didn't change), and I couldn't hear the fiddles in the monitor. After some communication glitchitude (I kept asking them to turn down the dulcimer and turn up the fiddles, and somewhere along the line things got mistranslated and they turned the fiddles down), and the surprise of finding out that the bouzouki had been plugged into a guitar amp set for crunchy distortion, they finally figured out our sound and gave me some fiddle in my monitor (though other instruments occasionally drowned out the fiddles). This was a pretty bizarre display of engineering goofs, 'cause -- as I said a moment ago -- they seemed really sharp the whole rest of the time I observed them. I guess we confused them? (Well, we are a bit to keep track of. Nine musicians (only eight today), taking up fourteen channels (though we can get by with twelve if we really have to).)

While we were setting up, Ruth found us and grabbed the cameras I'd prepped for her so she could shoot the band.

Despite all that, and the relatively small audience (the event organizers were expecting many more, but apparently there were a lot of competing events in DC or something), we had a good, fun, if slightly shortened, set. Saw a bunch of people in the audience bopping their heads and clapping along and in general getting into it. Good thing.

Afterwards I was (unsurprisingly) completely drenched in sweat. And tired. Stuck around long enough to listen to Little Pink (the band after the band after us -- we'd met them at the last Crosstown Jam, and I liked them, so I was glad of the chance to hear them again), whom I photographed from the wings 'cause I'd been too busy talking to people to make it out to the audience before they started their set. Whoops.

Later, Ruth followed us back to John & Trix' house, where I'd left my car. Ruth spent quite a while working on my muscles and trying to make my body a little closer to human-shaped in order to reduce the amount of pain. She made a significant difference. And it was nice to interact with her outside of the context of her Very Stressful Move. Eventually headed home where I found an email message from my boss saying he'd tried to call -- not only did my phone not ring, he also didn't show up on the missed-calls list. A glitch in the cellular network, I suppose?

Figured I'd fall right into bed, but I'm not quite asleep yet, so I made some late dinner, boxed up some CDs to ship to Southern Fried Filk, skimmed a couple of mailing lists, logged the film shot earlier, etc. Now I think I might actually be ready to crash for real.

But listen to the colour of your dreams
It is not living, it is not living
Or play the game existence to the end
Of the beginning, of the beginning
    -- The Beatles, "Tomorrow Never Knows"