Contrapositive
Feb. 27th, 2005 12:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jere7myI played for another contra last night, and I don't know if they were piping something in through the ducts or what, but for some reason I double-timed it through nearly every reel we did. The music just required that kind of energy, I think; maybe it was the drummer, who was a new addition, or maybe it was the amazing new fiddler Ginger, who sight-read everything we threw at her and still found time to curl the melodies into Lochrian Gypsy fillips and keening counterpoints. But I felt much of the time like my left hand was holding on to my guitar neck for dear life while my right went into one of those fast-motion cinematic zombie-spasms, like in 28 Days Later. The end result was aching shoulders and scraped knuckles and a fair amount of wooziness, but I think the music was worth it; we got a lot of smiles and nods and bopping about from the people at the tops of their sets. The last time through the last tune elicited one of those spontaneous whoops musicians live for. Good times.
People were friendly; my fellow guitarist had a spare pack of strings he didn't need (he plays a 12-string) and donated them to me, and I talked a bit with Ginger and the hammer-dulcimerist (is that a word?) between sets. One of K.'s students sweetly chatted me up during the break, showering kind words on the band and K.'s teaching alike; I think she detected that I feel storkish and out of place at these mostly-undergraduate gatherings, particularly when K. is away, and it was sweet of her to seek me out.
Some mukluk turned the lights off before the final waltz, and due to some quirk of the Con they don't come back for fifteen minutes after they go out. So we played the Crystal River Waltz in the dark, from sheet music illuminated by a wavering Mag-Lite, while couples spun heedlessly around the room, magically failing to collide.
It was a good night, but I felt pretty lonely walking back through the snow to an empty house. (Not quite empty—Gus was there to mewl at me, the sweet thing.) It's hard to go abruptly from heady energy to stillness.
People were friendly; my fellow guitarist had a spare pack of strings he didn't need (he plays a 12-string) and donated them to me, and I talked a bit with Ginger and the hammer-dulcimerist (is that a word?) between sets. One of K.'s students sweetly chatted me up during the break, showering kind words on the band and K.'s teaching alike; I think she detected that I feel storkish and out of place at these mostly-undergraduate gatherings, particularly when K. is away, and it was sweet of her to seek me out.
Some mukluk turned the lights off before the final waltz, and due to some quirk of the Con they don't come back for fifteen minutes after they go out. So we played the Crystal River Waltz in the dark, from sheet music illuminated by a wavering Mag-Lite, while couples spun heedlessly around the room, magically failing to collide.
It was a good night, but I felt pretty lonely walking back through the snow to an empty house. (Not quite empty—Gus was there to mewl at me, the sweet thing.) It's hard to go abruptly from heady energy to stillness.
