I looked in and saw an oddly dressed company, indeed
I'm so tired I could do a faceplant on the table. But before I forget:
I went to Necronomicon just for the day today. It was lovely despite the fact that the overall convention was sold out when I got there, and so first I went for a walk over College Hill and snarled at myself about my frustration with my own poor planning, and then I thought about turning around and going home, but it seemed like a shame to spend all that time in the car without even getting to talk with anyone. So I rode with the mocking and friendly ghouls on the night-wind returned to the con, went to the dealers' room and the free/open events, and did HallwayCon. I'm very happy with that decision. Things got better almost immediately.
I had some fun conversations in the dealers' room, enthused together with a woman who shared my interest in Cahokia, petted some severed body parts (NSFW: realistic gory severed body parts), got a selfie with a camo-green insect stilt creature, bought a Tanith Lee book, and attended excellent live shows including an Innsmouth-themed all-filk chantey sing.
The chantey sing included a limerick contest, with a "small prize" for best entry.
I won. This was my limerick:
There was an Innsmouthian mammal
Who knew of anatomy damn-all.
She said that a dude
Looked "quite bactrian" nude,
But "bactrian's" just a damn camel.
People laughed like anything, and I received handshakes from the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society members who were present and leading the filk sing. It was tremendously cheering and encouraging. To be sure, I've had a talent for making up lewd doggerel, off and on, all my life. But it felt fantastic to do a tiny poem in a short time, and amuse people with it. Their laughter was very rewarding.
The reward was very rewarding, too. It's a copy of the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society's album The Curious Sea Shanties of Innsmouth, MASS., with an accompanying scholarly monograph from Miskatonic University Press (1927). The monograph is by Albert Wilmarth* and Carlton J. Connolly**, and it is a marvel of research. There is a bibliography. There are footnotes. There are references to actual folklorists like Colcord who existed and published. The last time I read a traditional song collection edited with this much care and thought, it was Norman Cazden's Folk Songs of the Catskills (1983). This is a quiet and elaborate joke that will only be noticed by nerds, such as, for example, me, and I love it.
Conclusions:
--I need to start committing a full weekend to conventions that I really like. It always takes me a while to warm up to people and start enjoying myself and relaxing, and going for one day doesn't feel like quite enough anymore.
--Likewise, I gotta start buying memberships and tickets ahead of time for things I really want to attend. I think I have the urge to leave my options open till the very last minute, just in case I feel like bailing on the actual day. But the reality is that if I commit to do something, I can trust my own judgement that I'll enjoy it when the time comes. The struggle is to let myself do the fun thing: allot enough time to get there early, and enter into it fully. The only bad move would be not to play.
--Tanith Lee is an underappreciated genius, and I now have her Tempting the Gods, so I need to take the T more often this week to make sure I have more reading time.
--Singing is fun, and I need to do even more of it in the future.
*note for those who aren't into Lovecraft: Wilmarth is the (fictional) scholar protagonist of The Whisperer in Darkness
**I've never seen this name before; possibly a real person, but who even knows?