still obsessed
Yay, sicker than I was yesterday. Continuing to labor under the belief that going to Folklife and pushing myself there was worth it. Hope I didn't give anyone else the Crud for it, though.
(Old joke: I suck at climbing - I must be a vector, not a scalar...)
Contra, because I haven't squealed about it enough, was amazing... I got there quite late and spent most of the last square set commiserating with virtual256 about not being square dancers, and tore my skirt running to join a square formation that fell apart... but those were some great contra bands. The first piece was very odd music, essentially minimalist, with only one instrument at a time and an odd cadence that sounded closer to 3/4 than 4/4. It was kind of exhausting to dance to, and then it suddenly burst into a crazy high-energy version of the tune with a full melodic line, and turned out decently in the end. A bunch of fairly normal dance music, a rather dull waltz, and then (when the next band came on) something that sounded distinctly electronic. I think I heard some intentional back distortion in there: folk dancing to techno is one form of fusion I can get behind. Their later stuff was sadly less interesting.
The last band to come on (Double Diamond, says the program) was partly composed of members of another band I quite like, KGB, who do intensely layered Russian-inspired music, and a lot of the same layers and transitions came out. The penultimate dance was very well-written and visually beautiful. The last dance, words fail me. It was also well-written, much faster and more interwoven than the last, and I have apparently reached a degree of competence where better dancers than myself are comfortable trying wacky ornamental stuff with me. squee. Okay, it's just a dance, subconsciously a slightly dorky one, but in the best moments one can be given over to movement in the same way that swing dancers lose themselves.
Bagels, REI, and wedding stuff today, I think. finatronics has taken up all of my brain's few remaining spare cycles thinking about locality and place in the making of art.
(The days are just packed. Last weekend I took a two-day wilderness first aid class with gfish and vixyish, stomped about in Discovery Park for much of that time, and picked an apartment upstairs in my building to move into. This week I started my new job and spent an immense amount of off-hour time in my SEKRIT NINJA SEAMSTRESS mode. Aside from the sickness, even with my project queue going pear-shaped, life is pretty good.)
(Old joke: I suck at climbing - I must be a vector, not a scalar...)
Contra, because I haven't squealed about it enough, was amazing... I got there quite late and spent most of the last square set commiserating with virtual256 about not being square dancers, and tore my skirt running to join a square formation that fell apart... but those were some great contra bands. The first piece was very odd music, essentially minimalist, with only one instrument at a time and an odd cadence that sounded closer to 3/4 than 4/4. It was kind of exhausting to dance to, and then it suddenly burst into a crazy high-energy version of the tune with a full melodic line, and turned out decently in the end. A bunch of fairly normal dance music, a rather dull waltz, and then (when the next band came on) something that sounded distinctly electronic. I think I heard some intentional back distortion in there: folk dancing to techno is one form of fusion I can get behind. Their later stuff was sadly less interesting.
The last band to come on (Double Diamond, says the program) was partly composed of members of another band I quite like, KGB, who do intensely layered Russian-inspired music, and a lot of the same layers and transitions came out. The penultimate dance was very well-written and visually beautiful. The last dance, words fail me. It was also well-written, much faster and more interwoven than the last, and I have apparently reached a degree of competence where better dancers than myself are comfortable trying wacky ornamental stuff with me. squee. Okay, it's just a dance, subconsciously a slightly dorky one, but in the best moments one can be given over to movement in the same way that swing dancers lose themselves.
Bagels, REI, and wedding stuff today, I think. finatronics has taken up all of my brain's few remaining spare cycles thinking about locality and place in the making of art.
(The days are just packed. Last weekend I took a two-day wilderness first aid class with gfish and vixyish, stomped about in Discovery Park for much of that time, and picked an apartment upstairs in my building to move into. This week I started my new job and spent an immense amount of off-hour time in my SEKRIT NINJA SEAMSTRESS mode. Aside from the sickness, even with my project queue going pear-shaped, life is pretty good.)