in our progress and our industry / may we grow better still
Gosh, I'm just spamming LJ today, aren't I? WHOOPS.
So, hey there, internet. Again.
On Friday, mcwonthelottery was kind enough to accompany me to a Dar Williams show. I know this is a monthly occurrence, but this one was special because this was the Dar show where I gave her ~*the letter about my feelings*~. As a refresher, at the last show, when I totally ran from Dar in a panic when we passed her in the hallway, Becca suggested that I write all my feelings down in a letter. The reason, in like, fifteen years, that I had never spoken to Dar was because...well, at first I didn't really have a chance and as the years passed, there was just so much history and so many feelings that I didn't know that I could have an actual conversation with her? idk.
Anyway, so we bought tickets for her next MA show and I wrote a letter and we drove up to Newburyport for the show on Friday. Becca promptly decided that Newburyport was like a town in a movie and we needed to move there and live in a movie. She planned our whole movie life, from our local drinks place to the three-legged dog that we were apparently going to have.
The show could NOT have been more different than the last show we went to. We saw the Old 97s in Cambridge a few weeks ago and the crowd was loud and obnoxious and in a club that we don't think was up to fire code. This show was literally in a big meeting room on the second floor of town hall. It was like seeing Dar in a high school auditorium filled with old bourgeois hippies.
The kid who opened for her sounded like a crappy MySpace singer/songwriter. Becca expressed that thought out loud after his set and we only later discovered that the people behind us were in some way related to him. WHOOPS. But, yes. He was local, so whatever. It was just weird to see her with an opener in general? I mean, I feel like 90% of the time I tend to see her without one and she just plays like, thirty songs.
Set list
Newburyport Town Hall - 3-22-13
Light and the Sea
Beauty of the Rain
I Am the One Who Will Remember Everything
I Have Been Around the World
The Ocean
The Babysitter's Here
The One Who Knows
Mercy of the Fallen
Family
Buzzer
Storm King
If I Had a Hammer
Christians and the Pagans
Notes!
So I cried DURING the show, which is par for the course, and then I got a little misty on line to speak with her. I was freaking out a little. ::cough:: Becca was a trooper and didn't abandon me or tell me to man up, so there's that. But eventually I gave her the letter and explained why I wrote it and Becca claims I sounded very human and not crazy, which is nice. And then we hung around and talked and Becca explained the whole story about wanting to request "Buzzer" and we talked about how cute Newburyport was and also Lowell? And other things. Pretty much the whole thing was a blur. But I did it! No crying! No puking! No embarrassing declarations!
And then we drove home and it was late and we went to bed. But. Yes. It happened. And I feel a lot better like... as a person, I guess? To get rid of all of those feelings. Like, I feel like a big stumbling block to ever talking to her before was the fact that I felt like I knew so much about her, that I had this relationship with her music that was long and storied and intense, but that she obviously knew nothing about? So I didn't know how to talk around that. And, obviously she's not going to remember me and know all that just from reading a letter, but some of that weight is gone.
idk. BRAINS. They don't make any sense. The point is...I'm glad I did it. And I'm glad Becca made me. ♥
So, hey there, internet. Again.
On Friday, mcwonthelottery was kind enough to accompany me to a Dar Williams show. I know this is a monthly occurrence, but this one was special because this was the Dar show where I gave her ~*the letter about my feelings*~. As a refresher, at the last show, when I totally ran from Dar in a panic when we passed her in the hallway, Becca suggested that I write all my feelings down in a letter. The reason, in like, fifteen years, that I had never spoken to Dar was because...well, at first I didn't really have a chance and as the years passed, there was just so much history and so many feelings that I didn't know that I could have an actual conversation with her? idk.
Anyway, so we bought tickets for her next MA show and I wrote a letter and we drove up to Newburyport for the show on Friday. Becca promptly decided that Newburyport was like a town in a movie and we needed to move there and live in a movie. She planned our whole movie life, from our local drinks place to the three-legged dog that we were apparently going to have.
The show could NOT have been more different than the last show we went to. We saw the Old 97s in Cambridge a few weeks ago and the crowd was loud and obnoxious and in a club that we don't think was up to fire code. This show was literally in a big meeting room on the second floor of town hall. It was like seeing Dar in a high school auditorium filled with old bourgeois hippies.
The kid who opened for her sounded like a crappy MySpace singer/songwriter. Becca expressed that thought out loud after his set and we only later discovered that the people behind us were in some way related to him. WHOOPS. But, yes. He was local, so whatever. It was just weird to see her with an opener in general? I mean, I feel like 90% of the time I tend to see her without one and she just plays like, thirty songs.
Set list
Newburyport Town Hall - 3-22-13
Light and the Sea
Beauty of the Rain
I Am the One Who Will Remember Everything
I Have Been Around the World
The Ocean
The Babysitter's Here
The One Who Knows
Mercy of the Fallen
Family
Buzzer
Storm King
If I Had a Hammer
Christians and the Pagans
Notes!
- The Ocean ♥ ♥ ♥
- I've seen her so often during this tour that none of the stories were really that new.
- One in particular that WAS new was about how she was asked by one of the mothers of the Newtown victims to sing "Family" at a memorial service. She explained this BEFORE singing the song and you could practically hear the audience ugly crying.
- At one point she asked for requests and Becca turned to me and said that she wanted to request "Buzzer" (which, for those who don't know, is a song about the Milgram experiments) but she was afraid she'd sound like a freak. Well, a couple songs later, she had the opener kid come up and explained that she always asked her openers if there was a particular song of hers they liked and wanted to sing on and he surprised her by picking "Buzzer." So, Becca won the concert because her two favorite songs ("Buzzer" and "I Have Been Around the World") were both played.
- Dar is just the cutest and the best, okay?
So I cried DURING the show, which is par for the course, and then I got a little misty on line to speak with her. I was freaking out a little. ::cough:: Becca was a trooper and didn't abandon me or tell me to man up, so there's that. But eventually I gave her the letter and explained why I wrote it and Becca claims I sounded very human and not crazy, which is nice. And then we hung around and talked and Becca explained the whole story about wanting to request "Buzzer" and we talked about how cute Newburyport was and also Lowell? And other things. Pretty much the whole thing was a blur. But I did it! No crying! No puking! No embarrassing declarations!
And then we drove home and it was late and we went to bed. But. Yes. It happened. And I feel a lot better like... as a person, I guess? To get rid of all of those feelings. Like, I feel like a big stumbling block to ever talking to her before was the fact that I felt like I knew so much about her, that I had this relationship with her music that was long and storied and intense, but that she obviously knew nothing about? So I didn't know how to talk around that. And, obviously she's not going to remember me and know all that just from reading a letter, but some of that weight is gone.
idk. BRAINS. They don't make any sense. The point is...I'm glad I did it. And I'm glad Becca made me. ♥