Aduentureƒ from ye Torrent Engine 18 end-of-ye-World partie
I was at the benefit for Torrent Engine 18 on the 21st of this month. I had only known that a certain level of donations would get you into the show, whatever the show happened to be, and also an equally mysterious personal theater experience which, the Kickstarter page promised, would somehow involve burlesque, or burlesque performers, or some sort of business like that. The whole thing had sounded equally secretive and exciting, so pretty much completely on a whim, I'd donated. And there I was.
The performers in question turned out to be Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer (or Amanda Fitzgerald Palmer, as I am led to understand is her preferred sobriquet)* - I'd not really had a lot of exposure to either in a live setting, though I've read and liked things by the former and seem to have a fair number of friends in common with the latter (this might only seem like namedropping to those who are unaware how very, very small is Boston). Good for me, then, I thought. Money to a good cause and I get to see a show. And a personal theater experience, which is where the relevant anecdote happens.
We happy few, we band of donors. We were called up in front of the stage to sort of stand and be thanked for our Generous Donations (and gawked at a bit), and then shuffled off to the back room where there were chairs and artwork and red light and a huge tarp on the floor. This thrilled me, because any personal theater experience which requires a huge tarp on the floor is the sort of personal theater experience I am always excited to have. There is one notable exception, but I had not seen Gallagher anywhere in the building (I'd checked, as is customary; you can never be too careful when it comes to Gallagher).
We sat, about ten of us, and then three Ladies of the Burlesquerie came in and sauntered and vamped while they waited and we waited (for what, it wasn't yet clear, because I had no idea what to expect), and here Ms. Palmer entered and strummed her ukulele and went around saying warm hellos to the people she knew - this turned out to be literally everybody in the room but me. The venue was warm and intimate. She said it was sort of hard to think of which song to play. She asked if anyone had any requests.
If not for reasons cosmological, then certainly owing to the accumulation of psychic energy caused by mass expectation, December 21st 2012 was sure to be a night marking an end to some things, and consequently a beginning to others. For instance, it was a night when, for maybe the first time in my life, I managed to stop a thought on its way from my brain to my mouth. That thought - owing to the fact that I tend to listen to this song a lot in late December, so it was on my mind, and I wasn't sure how many songs she was going to do, and having never been to this sort of event before I was not certain of The Done Thing, and anyway it's just a really nice song - was to ask if she knew Mele Kalikimaka.
Which she might, for all I know, but it would probably have come off as a strange request. Instead someone asked her to do a song about the house she grew up in, and she did, and it was quite lovely. Later there were more performances in the main ballroom. Palmer sang and Gaiman read poetry and then also sang and altogether it was the sort of experience my life needs more of. Teenaged Me would probably have recoiled at the notion of his older self enjoying himself hearing Neil Gaiman read poetry, but Teenaged Me read Anne Rice novels, so Teenaged Me can go screw.
Oh, the personal theater experience? An exhilarating, intense, Dionysian sort of affair. We were anointed with pomegranate juice, and there was love and murder. A more mythic winter solstice I cannot imagine. The world did not end, as far as I can tell, though this may all be a dying hallucination. If it is, I'd have to say - looking out at today's rain-sodden, gray Boston - that at least Owl Creek Bridge seemed to have a nice view and some singing birds.
The lessons here: Spur-of-the-moment decisions to attend mysterious events tend to lead to wonderment more often than not. Also, it's never too late to learn a little self-control (if only a little), and you should always be willing to demand more from your dying hallucinations.
* Alternate joke (please select only one): Amanda Friendly Palmer