Here is a little experience piece. It is unfinished but that doesn’t really matter. Parts of it might be harvested for the final article:
“This place is creepy.” She’s not wrong. The labyrinthine halls of the old mill building keep making unexpected turns and bringing us to stairs that only lead up. Finally we can hear the music. It feels like its right behind the white door but it won’t open. We hear footsteps coming up the stairs behind us. A boy with messy hair and hazy eyes asks “Fuzz Hut?” We shrug “somewhere.”
He is more adventurous, or more likely more drunk, than us. He starts rattling doors marked with the names of businesses until he finds a one that leads to a side staircase. He turns back to us, grins, and disappears down the stairs. Like Alice following the white rabbit we go barreling after him. At each floor he tries every locked door. The music fades and returns as we move through the levels. It’s a level of sound that creates pressure behind the doors giving them the feeling of being bowed out, like the hinges can barely hold on. The floorboards vibrate in a way that feels unstable, like they might give out under us if the band just plays the right note.
We reach the bottom. It’s an emergency exit. He bounds back up the stairs and before we can meet him all the way at the top he meets back up with us. “We’re locked in...” He pushes through the emergency exit, all of us fully ready to have to start all over again. On the other side of the door is a loading dock full of flannel clad hipsters. They don’t acknowledge the three of us pouring out the door but our guide sees his friends and is immediately off to meet with them.
I see the entrance we had come in originally through thick glass. “Oh,” I say “She said to keep right. I brought us left. My bad.” Glennis is not amused.
From the platform we enter a brightly lit room, or another loading dock. The exact purpose of the room isn’t entirely clear. There are more people standing around here and we see someone come from another doorway. We round the corner and are finally in the main lobby of Fuzz Hut. We have made it. Beyond this little hallway of a lobby I the main galley and performance space. Its dark and the band is playing.
We set up against a side wall, too far back to actually see the band, but with a perfect view of the audience. They are the definition of “alone together.” They all stand a foot and a half away from one another. Some sway or dance a little but mostly they stand still and stare, transfixed as the singer throws herself around from one end of the stage to the other.
Her voice is not human. It is the sound of a soul, like an animal. It’s the sound of wolves howling and bison lowing it’s the sound of winter evenings.
The guitar has that funky sound I’ve come to think of as the New Hampshire sound but will always make me think of watching the Dramadies preform in the middle school auditorium my freshman year. In this setting it is perfect.
