A little OVFF course: onwards to FRIDAY (night).
The first time I was asked to participate in the Pegasus Concert was 2004, when I performed 'Black Davie's Ride' with Paul Kwinn and Alisa Garcia (one-half of Puzzlebox, aka, 'my darling Matt's favourite filk group in the entire known universe'). I've actually been in the concert every year since then, which I hadn't fully realized until I really stopped to think about it. In 2005, I performed 'Archetype Cafe' (it didn't win, but it sounded awesome). Last year, I performed a song of my own, when 'Maybe It's Crazy' was nominated for Best Torch Song. But somehow, this year was the year that made me the most nervous, because this year was the year I was performing the song that meant the most to me, even though I didn't write it. 'Still Catch the Tide', by Talis Kimberley. Only cover song on my album. Only song to ever get stuck in my head before I'd even heard it performed.
But, y'know. No pressure or anything.
(And really, there was no pressure. I was overjoyed when I heard that the song had been nominated, and even more overjoyed -- and also honoured -- when Talis said she'd be happy to have me perform it in her stead. I love that song with a scary sort of passion. I first heard it at OVFF, on the weekend where Talis and I met in flesh for the very first time. Singing it in the Pegasus Concert was oddly like bringing it home.)
Still, the Pegasus Concert is a fancy sort of event -- not as dressy as the Pegasus Banquet has slowly become, but definately the sort of thing I don't like to approach in jeans and a T-shirt, unless I'm singing something that suits jeans and a T-shirt. (In 2006, I wore a hootchie little black dress and a labcoat. Oh, and I did a strip-tease. So you see, my idea of 'fancy' is exceedingly variable, depending on the situation. Kate is probably feeling unaccountably proud right now, and will have no idea why until she reads this.) So as the afternoon wore on, I went back to my hotel room, to change.
My attire for this year's concert had been chosen as much for 'simple to put on' as it was for 'looks attractive', because, well. Herniated disks, table for one. I had brought my long brown velvet dress (comfortable and stylish, and it pulls on over my head), my pretty slip-on ribbon shoes (which Erin later took a picture of, as she found them as adorable as I do), and the gold and orange clone necklace that Spider made for me a few years ago. (I love this necklace beyond all sense or reason, I really do. Also, please note that the dress was a gift from Kate. So this outfit, as a whole, is a lot like wearing a bunch of hugs from people that I love.) Add a borrowed hairclip of Merav's and my Seal of Rassilon earrings, and I became quite presentable. Cute, even, which was the goal.
Grabbing my cane, Interfilk donations, and bag of sketching supplies, I went hobbling out of the room and towards the programming space. Now, the universe having a sense of humour and all that, our room -- 229 -- was, of course, just about as far from the con space as it was physically possible for a room to be, being located at the opposite diagonal end of the hotel. To make things worse, I am a creature of habit, and over the past several years, it has become my habit to take the stairs whenever possible. So I kept finding myself midway down a flight of stairs, realizing with faintly irritated dismay that I really should have taken the elevator. Sometimes, blonde are dumb. Luckily, blonde is usually equipped with a horde of people* dedicated to keeping her from hurting herself in any really lasting manner.
(*Like any good evil overlord, I believe in the value of minions. And this convention, my minions were even helpfully labeled, as the lovely Debbie G. had made buttons reading 'Fierce Protectors of the Blonde' and passed them out to people who were willing to stand between me and such convention water hazards as 'people who like to hug', 'things that need picking up', and 'staircases'. It was fascinating to watch the buttons make the circuit of the con, and a great many people wound up wearing them all weekend long. To which I must give a great and hearty 'thank you'. It actually helped a lot just to know that people were there, even when I was trying to do simple things, like carry my art supplies, by myself.)
The Mad Hatter's Tea Party was cheerfully swinging by the time I made it down to that end of the hotel, questing for the elusive Brenda Sutton. This is where I footnote again: you see, up until three or four days before the con, we weren't expecting the fabulous Amy McNally to actually make it, since she's in the process of moving, along with her husband Benet, to Wisconsin. People who are in the process of moving to Wisconsin rarely take the time out to attend filk cons. As a consequence, I'd tried to build an arrangement for 'Still Catch' that wouldn't suffer from the lack of her blazing fiddle, and had asked Brenda to play bodhran for us. And then we found out we'd have an Amy, and suddenly our arrangement looked to be made entirely of awesome. One thing leading to another, however, meant that we'd never actually run the whole thing. This seemed a bit too likely to be a recipe for a disaster, and I was on a Quest For Brenda. Take no prisoners!
Brenda had last been sighted in the Mad Hatter's Tea Party, so that was my first stop. Now, technically, you're not supposed to enter the party without a hat of some sort. Very few people make pained-looking women leaning heavily on canes and moving like they're being pursued by really slow velociraptors stand on technicalities, and so I made my way into the room. I did not find Brenda. Instead, I found Rand and Erin -- always a pleasure -- and Erin promptly handed me a Plague Bat (tm) of my very own. Hurrah for the Plague Bat! (Technically, it's a Halloween Beanie Baby bat. But it's flat-out adorable, and given my abuse of Erin in the Plague Bats strip, I choose to believe that my new bat buddy is just waiting for the proper time to start spreading Marburg across the globe. All hail the Plague Bat.)
As I still lacked Brenda, I slipped Plague Bat into my art bag and went hobbling off. Erica was in the main concert room, doing the usual pre-concert flutter as she made sure everything was okay. Still no Brenda. I stopped at the Interfilk table to drop off the unusual chocolates I'd procured for the auction, and made the offer of a comic strip commission/cameo for the voice auction, which Persis happily took me up on. I love being able to support Interfilk with surrealism. But there was still no Brenda.
In the hall...Brenda! Hurrah! I confirmed when we would be appearing in the concert line-up, and had almost managed to wrangle all my musicians when we heard the announcement that the concert was starting. Whoops. So there would be no final run-through for us, and we would simply have to trust that Brenda's professionalism and sublime musicianship would be enough to save us from disaster.
...oddly, I wasn't all that worried.
The nominees for 'Best Song of Home' were first up in the concert lineup; I settled myself and my art supplies in the back row of the concert hall, where I wouldn't be a distraction if I had to get up and move around, and worked industriously on the pencils for my Current Secret Project (tm). This was the category in which Vixy and Tony's song, 'Emerald Green' -- basically a hymn to the wonders of Seattle -- was going to be performed. The competition was pretty steep, including Ookla the Mok's 'Home', Playing Rapunzel's parody of same, 'Go Home', Anne Passovoy's 'Lullabye (Home Is Wherever)', and 'Will Ye Come Back Home?' by Mike Richards. But...well. Vixy loves Seattle the way very few people love the places where they live, and it shows when she sings that song. She's showing you where she keeps her heart, and it's hard for any good instrumentalist to not respond to that. She set herself on fire for that song, and Mary and Tony followed her lead. Gorgeous.
Next up were the nominees for 'Best Dorsai Song'. All five of the entries in this category were, of course, fabulous, although I'll admit, having little actual interest in the Dorsai as a fannish 'thing', I was less emotionally involved than I might have been. (The Dorsai never really reached the West Coast, at least not that I noticed.) I was in the OVFF concert hall, surrounded by friends, drawing, while people made music. Blonde at rest, blonde at peace. Somewhere during this category, I moved myself up to the front of the room to sit with Erin and wait for the break between the two halves of the concert to occur. Also somewhere during this category, Melissa Glasser came over to ask if I minded changing the order of 'Best Classic Filk Song' (the category in which both she and I would be performing), as there had been a medical emergency at her vet practice, and she needed to go. Of course I didn't mind, and so the set list shifted to put 'Elf Glade' at the front of its category.
Ten minute break. Various announcements. Deep, measured breaths. Vixy and I had both made half-wistful, half-joking comments about performing 'Still Catch the Tide' on the Pegasus stage, starting just as soon as we'd heard the rough recordings. And now, because the universe is kind, we were going to have the chance to actually do it.
About midway through Melissa and Daniel's rendition of 'Elf Glade', my hand started to shake.* I willed it to stop. It seemed to listen. Yay.
(*My hands start shaking when my neurodepressants start wearing off. So shaky hands = an early sign of pain to come.)
Melissa and Daniel left the stage. The six of us -- myself, Vixy and Tony, Mary, Brenda, and Amy -- took it. (As a footnote, this lineup included every single North American nominee for 'Best Performer'. So if people wanted to see how we performed, well, this was definitely their chance.) The sound crew, which is very professional, very awesome, and very tolerant, brought us about a bajillion microphones, and we made the usual assortment of 'turn it up, turn it down, turn it into a pony' requests, because we really, really wanted to hit this one out of the park.
I don't have a recording, unfortunately, although I really, really hope to acquire one. Picture the recording on Stars Fall Home. Instead of walking into the song with harp, do it with light, eloquent piano. Bring in the guitar exactly where you'd expect it...but underneath the guitar, layer the broken heartbeat of the bodhran, played with an expert hand. And then bring in the voices, bring in the lyrics, and halfway through the second verse, bring in the fiddle, crying like a seagull, crying for the sea. Can I assess how good a performance it was? No, because I was in the middle of it. But can I say it was perfect? Yes. Because for me, it was.
Talis, I treated your baby good.
About midway through the song, my painkillers wore off like a lightswitch being flipped. This was an interesting experience, and not one that I'm in any real hurry to repeat. I finished the song without any really visible change -- a few people who know me well noticed my expression shift, but otherwise, it was fine -- and once off the stage, fled the room with the assistance of Amy and Merav, who carted me back to my room, and my painkillers. So I missed the rest of the category, which made me sad, but stopped being in screaming agony, which made me happy. YAY FOR PAINKILLERS. They make the universe endurable.
Since I wasn't going to make the run to the hotel room twice if I could help it, I changed into my evening clothes as soon as the painkillers kicked all the way in: black shorts, green and orange legwarmers, and an orange T-shirt with a camo turtle on the front. (I have a tendency to spread my arms and declare 'Behold the turtle of enormous girth!' when wearing this shirt. This is a Stephen King reference. Also a distraction, as it's a fairly tight shirt, and the turtle spans my bustline. Oh, well.) Merav most helpfully agreed to carry my songbook, which was good, as my songbook could be used as a murder weapon in the wrong hands. Like, say, mine.
We returned to the main concert hall just in time to catch Tom, Rob and Will performing 'Rich Fantasy Lives'. Since this was Will's first OVFF, this was made of awesome. I stayed in the back of the room, breathing and letting my medication levels settles down, and thus concluded the Pegasus concert.
I ended up in the circle around the Grand Piano -- where we'd rehearsed 'Still Catch the Tide' not all that long ago -- with Tony, Vixy, Amy, Rand, Erin, Adam, Will...oh, heck, I can't list everyone that was there, my brain would explode and I would die. That would make me Sad. Vixy, Amy and I did 'What A Woman's For' after a lovely run of monster songs. Tom damn near killed me with a song about dying in video games, and Rand and Adam -- not to be out-classed -- did a song called 'Evil' that actually made me stop breathing. Mary and Tony conspired to make 'Paper Moon' happen with her on the piano, and we actually performed it that way, which was just fabulous, given that Mary's piano was the original reason the first verse repeated at the end.
I sat and I drew and I listened to wonderful music while surrounded by wonderful friends, and eventually Will and Jon escorted me back to my hotel room, where -- after some funny adventures involving my key not working right and me sitting in the lobby inking and grumbling about the fact that I wasn't in bed -- I was able to slip into blessed slumber, Friday all measured out in coffee spoons and songs.
I love this convention.
But, y'know. No pressure or anything.
(And really, there was no pressure. I was overjoyed when I heard that the song had been nominated, and even more overjoyed -- and also honoured -- when Talis said she'd be happy to have me perform it in her stead. I love that song with a scary sort of passion. I first heard it at OVFF, on the weekend where Talis and I met in flesh for the very first time. Singing it in the Pegasus Concert was oddly like bringing it home.)
Still, the Pegasus Concert is a fancy sort of event -- not as dressy as the Pegasus Banquet has slowly become, but definately the sort of thing I don't like to approach in jeans and a T-shirt, unless I'm singing something that suits jeans and a T-shirt. (In 2006, I wore a hootchie little black dress and a labcoat. Oh, and I did a strip-tease. So you see, my idea of 'fancy' is exceedingly variable, depending on the situation. Kate is probably feeling unaccountably proud right now, and will have no idea why until she reads this.) So as the afternoon wore on, I went back to my hotel room, to change.
My attire for this year's concert had been chosen as much for 'simple to put on' as it was for 'looks attractive', because, well. Herniated disks, table for one. I had brought my long brown velvet dress (comfortable and stylish, and it pulls on over my head), my pretty slip-on ribbon shoes (which Erin later took a picture of, as she found them as adorable as I do), and the gold and orange clone necklace that Spider made for me a few years ago. (I love this necklace beyond all sense or reason, I really do. Also, please note that the dress was a gift from Kate. So this outfit, as a whole, is a lot like wearing a bunch of hugs from people that I love.) Add a borrowed hairclip of Merav's and my Seal of Rassilon earrings, and I became quite presentable. Cute, even, which was the goal.
Grabbing my cane, Interfilk donations, and bag of sketching supplies, I went hobbling out of the room and towards the programming space. Now, the universe having a sense of humour and all that, our room -- 229 -- was, of course, just about as far from the con space as it was physically possible for a room to be, being located at the opposite diagonal end of the hotel. To make things worse, I am a creature of habit, and over the past several years, it has become my habit to take the stairs whenever possible. So I kept finding myself midway down a flight of stairs, realizing with faintly irritated dismay that I really should have taken the elevator. Sometimes, blonde are dumb. Luckily, blonde is usually equipped with a horde of people* dedicated to keeping her from hurting herself in any really lasting manner.
(*Like any good evil overlord, I believe in the value of minions. And this convention, my minions were even helpfully labeled, as the lovely Debbie G. had made buttons reading 'Fierce Protectors of the Blonde' and passed them out to people who were willing to stand between me and such convention water hazards as 'people who like to hug', 'things that need picking up', and 'staircases'. It was fascinating to watch the buttons make the circuit of the con, and a great many people wound up wearing them all weekend long. To which I must give a great and hearty 'thank you'. It actually helped a lot just to know that people were there, even when I was trying to do simple things, like carry my art supplies, by myself.)
The Mad Hatter's Tea Party was cheerfully swinging by the time I made it down to that end of the hotel, questing for the elusive Brenda Sutton. This is where I footnote again: you see, up until three or four days before the con, we weren't expecting the fabulous Amy McNally to actually make it, since she's in the process of moving, along with her husband Benet, to Wisconsin. People who are in the process of moving to Wisconsin rarely take the time out to attend filk cons. As a consequence, I'd tried to build an arrangement for 'Still Catch' that wouldn't suffer from the lack of her blazing fiddle, and had asked Brenda to play bodhran for us. And then we found out we'd have an Amy, and suddenly our arrangement looked to be made entirely of awesome. One thing leading to another, however, meant that we'd never actually run the whole thing. This seemed a bit too likely to be a recipe for a disaster, and I was on a Quest For Brenda. Take no prisoners!
Brenda had last been sighted in the Mad Hatter's Tea Party, so that was my first stop. Now, technically, you're not supposed to enter the party without a hat of some sort. Very few people make pained-looking women leaning heavily on canes and moving like they're being pursued by really slow velociraptors stand on technicalities, and so I made my way into the room. I did not find Brenda. Instead, I found Rand and Erin -- always a pleasure -- and Erin promptly handed me a Plague Bat (tm) of my very own. Hurrah for the Plague Bat! (Technically, it's a Halloween Beanie Baby bat. But it's flat-out adorable, and given my abuse of Erin in the Plague Bats strip, I choose to believe that my new bat buddy is just waiting for the proper time to start spreading Marburg across the globe. All hail the Plague Bat.)
As I still lacked Brenda, I slipped Plague Bat into my art bag and went hobbling off. Erica was in the main concert room, doing the usual pre-concert flutter as she made sure everything was okay. Still no Brenda. I stopped at the Interfilk table to drop off the unusual chocolates I'd procured for the auction, and made the offer of a comic strip commission/cameo for the voice auction, which Persis happily took me up on. I love being able to support Interfilk with surrealism. But there was still no Brenda.
In the hall...Brenda! Hurrah! I confirmed when we would be appearing in the concert line-up, and had almost managed to wrangle all my musicians when we heard the announcement that the concert was starting. Whoops. So there would be no final run-through for us, and we would simply have to trust that Brenda's professionalism and sublime musicianship would be enough to save us from disaster.
...oddly, I wasn't all that worried.
The nominees for 'Best Song of Home' were first up in the concert lineup; I settled myself and my art supplies in the back row of the concert hall, where I wouldn't be a distraction if I had to get up and move around, and worked industriously on the pencils for my Current Secret Project (tm). This was the category in which Vixy and Tony's song, 'Emerald Green' -- basically a hymn to the wonders of Seattle -- was going to be performed. The competition was pretty steep, including Ookla the Mok's 'Home', Playing Rapunzel's parody of same, 'Go Home', Anne Passovoy's 'Lullabye (Home Is Wherever)', and 'Will Ye Come Back Home?' by Mike Richards. But...well. Vixy loves Seattle the way very few people love the places where they live, and it shows when she sings that song. She's showing you where she keeps her heart, and it's hard for any good instrumentalist to not respond to that. She set herself on fire for that song, and Mary and Tony followed her lead. Gorgeous.
Next up were the nominees for 'Best Dorsai Song'. All five of the entries in this category were, of course, fabulous, although I'll admit, having little actual interest in the Dorsai as a fannish 'thing', I was less emotionally involved than I might have been. (The Dorsai never really reached the West Coast, at least not that I noticed.) I was in the OVFF concert hall, surrounded by friends, drawing, while people made music. Blonde at rest, blonde at peace. Somewhere during this category, I moved myself up to the front of the room to sit with Erin and wait for the break between the two halves of the concert to occur. Also somewhere during this category, Melissa Glasser came over to ask if I minded changing the order of 'Best Classic Filk Song' (the category in which both she and I would be performing), as there had been a medical emergency at her vet practice, and she needed to go. Of course I didn't mind, and so the set list shifted to put 'Elf Glade' at the front of its category.
Ten minute break. Various announcements. Deep, measured breaths. Vixy and I had both made half-wistful, half-joking comments about performing 'Still Catch the Tide' on the Pegasus stage, starting just as soon as we'd heard the rough recordings. And now, because the universe is kind, we were going to have the chance to actually do it.
About midway through Melissa and Daniel's rendition of 'Elf Glade', my hand started to shake.* I willed it to stop. It seemed to listen. Yay.
(*My hands start shaking when my neurodepressants start wearing off. So shaky hands = an early sign of pain to come.)
Melissa and Daniel left the stage. The six of us -- myself, Vixy and Tony, Mary, Brenda, and Amy -- took it. (As a footnote, this lineup included every single North American nominee for 'Best Performer'. So if people wanted to see how we performed, well, this was definitely their chance.) The sound crew, which is very professional, very awesome, and very tolerant, brought us about a bajillion microphones, and we made the usual assortment of 'turn it up, turn it down, turn it into a pony' requests, because we really, really wanted to hit this one out of the park.
I don't have a recording, unfortunately, although I really, really hope to acquire one. Picture the recording on Stars Fall Home. Instead of walking into the song with harp, do it with light, eloquent piano. Bring in the guitar exactly where you'd expect it...but underneath the guitar, layer the broken heartbeat of the bodhran, played with an expert hand. And then bring in the voices, bring in the lyrics, and halfway through the second verse, bring in the fiddle, crying like a seagull, crying for the sea. Can I assess how good a performance it was? No, because I was in the middle of it. But can I say it was perfect? Yes. Because for me, it was.
Talis, I treated your baby good.
About midway through the song, my painkillers wore off like a lightswitch being flipped. This was an interesting experience, and not one that I'm in any real hurry to repeat. I finished the song without any really visible change -- a few people who know me well noticed my expression shift, but otherwise, it was fine -- and once off the stage, fled the room with the assistance of Amy and Merav, who carted me back to my room, and my painkillers. So I missed the rest of the category, which made me sad, but stopped being in screaming agony, which made me happy. YAY FOR PAINKILLERS. They make the universe endurable.
Since I wasn't going to make the run to the hotel room twice if I could help it, I changed into my evening clothes as soon as the painkillers kicked all the way in: black shorts, green and orange legwarmers, and an orange T-shirt with a camo turtle on the front. (I have a tendency to spread my arms and declare 'Behold the turtle of enormous girth!' when wearing this shirt. This is a Stephen King reference. Also a distraction, as it's a fairly tight shirt, and the turtle spans my bustline. Oh, well.) Merav most helpfully agreed to carry my songbook, which was good, as my songbook could be used as a murder weapon in the wrong hands. Like, say, mine.
We returned to the main concert hall just in time to catch Tom, Rob and Will performing 'Rich Fantasy Lives'. Since this was Will's first OVFF, this was made of awesome. I stayed in the back of the room, breathing and letting my medication levels settles down, and thus concluded the Pegasus concert.
I ended up in the circle around the Grand Piano -- where we'd rehearsed 'Still Catch the Tide' not all that long ago -- with Tony, Vixy, Amy, Rand, Erin, Adam, Will...oh, heck, I can't list everyone that was there, my brain would explode and I would die. That would make me Sad. Vixy, Amy and I did 'What A Woman's For' after a lovely run of monster songs. Tom damn near killed me with a song about dying in video games, and Rand and Adam -- not to be out-classed -- did a song called 'Evil' that actually made me stop breathing. Mary and Tony conspired to make 'Paper Moon' happen with her on the piano, and we actually performed it that way, which was just fabulous, given that Mary's piano was the original reason the first verse repeated at the end.
I sat and I drew and I listened to wonderful music while surrounded by wonderful friends, and eventually Will and Jon escorted me back to my hotel room, where -- after some funny adventures involving my key not working right and me sitting in the lobby inking and grumbling about the fact that I wasn't in bed -- I was able to slip into blessed slumber, Friday all measured out in coffee spoons and songs.
I love this convention.