Mambo Taxi

Last night, Laurie Anderson gave a concert at the Perimeter Institute. Much to my surprise, I was able to go [1] and so I offer this brief review.

I guess the atrium of the Perimeter Institute has improved a bit since the first concert I saw there, the Bang on a Can All-Stars, which featured very uncomfortable lawn chairs. This, this concert had real hard-back chairs. Not that I got to sit on one- I had a standing-room ticket, upstairs. Mezzanine. The whole 2nd floor was open, and there were only 40 standing-room tickets, so we each got a fair bit of space to ourselves.

Pluses: Unobstructed view: at the beginning I was standing less than 10 feet from Laurie Anderson. Straight up.
Minuses: We weren't allowed to lean on the glass railing, which I kept forgetting. And the top of a performer's head turns out to not be as exciting as seeing the front of her face. Also, I saw her glance upward once and realized it might actually be disconcerting to have audience perched just over-top of oneself.

So I moved back to 20 feet away, where I stayed for the rest of the show. It wasn't bad, even standing, and there was lots of room for me to sit on the floor, which I did for a while.

The acoustics were fine; possibly slightly less amplified, but that wasn't a problem. Fortunately, I also didn't find there were any annoying echoes in the big space.

The concert was 90 minutes. She started with her signature pitch-bended electric violin (which in the late 70's was a "tape bow violin"- with recorded magnetic tape as the bow, and a magnetic tape head as the bridge; though I don't expect that's still how it works). She alternated between instrumental-only pieces, some which I liked quite a lot, and spoken-word over instrumental and keyboard loops. Some of her spoken-word was pitch-bended into her trademark growling bass voice, which she has called audio drag or "the Voice of Authority." That voice matched her appearance- she was dressed up way butch, with spiky hair, a thin tie and dark suit, though the Voice didn't really say things of much authority- and she had a perfectly commanding presence with her own voice.

Lighting was quite dark: there were mood lights of various primary colours, and candles on the stage. She told stories. Very modern stories, simply told, many of them compelling, though I didn't feel like they hung together as a whole (more on that at the end). This is apparently the start of a new tour, "Another Day in America," which started last week in Calgary, and we were lucky enough to be the second city on the tour. I imagine it will evolve as it goes.

She spoke about the National Defense Authorization Act which Obama just signed on New Years Eve, which allows indefinite detention without trial of American citizens in military prisons. She noted that this piece of law centers on a redefinition of "battleground" to include all of the United States. And what does it mean to choose to bring the battleground to one's home? "We've been waiting a couple hundred years for the enemy to show up, and since they never did, we decided maybe it’s us."

She spoke about how annoyed Darwin had been with peacocks- "what could possibly be fittest about a giant bright blue tail?" and jumps to how the Catholic church has been afraid of science- and what if the Church was most afraid that we'd find many worlds, with other popes? Which pope would be the real pope? Perhaps one with the brightest, bluest tail?

She told about visiting one of the many tent-cities in the US which started during the housing crisis, which collectively have housed thousands of Americans over the last years. I have to say I thought she'd veered to the fictional, but google and wikipedia tell me the camp she visited is exactly as described.

Her beloved rat-terrier Lolabelle died this spring, on Palm Sunday; she told how the Tibetian Book of the Dead says when a living being dies, it will spend 49 days in a place called the Bardo, before it is reincarnated. And Lolabelle died 49 days before Anderson's birthday. She goes on to say that when Lolabelle went blind a few years ago, Anderson began teaching her to play the piano, and to paint; and then she shared a dozen of Lolabelle's paintings, and a video of her playing the keyboard (wagging, and barking in joy as she did so).

The last time I saw her, in Ithaca in 2006, she had just spent time as NASA's first (and last) Artist in Residence. She also had stories about Lolabelle, one which has stuck with me, about a walk in the woods when a hawk dive-bombs them and the dog realizes there's 180 degrees of the world she had never imagined could be dangerous- which turns into a parallel story about the US post-9/11. Really sharp stuff.

So, on the whole. I wish this concert had tied together more. I could feel the authority with which she was speaking, and maybe it's up to the listener to pull things together, but the way it was structured, I didn't find myself able to do so during the concert. Perhaps some of that pulling together can happen when I'm in Quaker Meeting this weekend.

I'm quite glad the PI was able to get her here- they have been trying for years. Perhaps she will be back! I would not mind that, no.

[1] So, how I got a ticket. If you are allergic to twitter, you won't want to read this. Just sayin'.

I found out about the concert from someone tweeting about it on Monday. I tweeted an "Aw, how come I just found out about this sold-out show?" After a bit of whinging to friends, I forgot about it. I had a faint hope to show up at the venue and see if there were unclaimed tickets.

But on Wednesday evening, I checked twitter and noticed somebody I didn't know had specifically sent me a message asking if I needed a ticket. I replied, but it had been 6 hours after he had asked, and he had also gotten re-tweeted by the Perimeter when he previously if anybody needed a ticket. ... and yet, somehow, nobody had; all of his friends who would have jumped at the chance lived in Toronto or New York or elsewhere. So Thursday morning, he came to my office and sold me his ticket at-cost! How cool is that?

I think my profile mostly dates from about two years ago. I was just jolted to realize how wrong it is for me right now.

I'm an easily distracted linux consultant [Not much any more, though I could be again] ...

I'm a geek who doesn't role-play, watch anime [I've enjoyed anime for quite a while] ...

I wish I got out more, and I wish I socialized more. I wish I knew more people with a similar intersection of interests to mine. [Nope, nope. Aaaand... nope.]

I know that two years ago I wasn't unhappy. Though, I was still missing the connection to local friends that d. and I had in Ithaca, five years earlier; strongly enough that I wanted to write that last bit of wishing. Well, as of now, all three wishes have been fulfilled.

And it's not tough to understand, or wishing on a star, either. It's mostly been getting to know people. Here, elsewhere. Developing shared history. Two years is a long time, and as an instant, too. I tend to generally feel lucky for my life, but just now, seeing how wrong my profile is, I feel at least twice as lucky.

...Except now I'm compelled to write a new profile. Foo. :)

As a bit of leavening to this layer-cake, here we've got two years and 6 days ago, when I wrote about the Elora Festival, the first time we were in Grambel Barn for an awesome Patricia O'Callaghan concert. And geekery with Asterisk (some things don't change). And meeting quingawaga (& mccorpsecorpse) and bats22 each for the first time.

Back home from lee_ellen & flydi's house. Opening my laptop I had a moment of severe disorientation- the browser was showing this page, which happened to be the last thing flydi pointed me at last night. I didn't quite think I had taken her mac laptop home, but almost. (Shades of the Far Side cartoon with Santa and some random person swapping big bags at the laundromat).

We might've stayed later in Ithaca but dan's giving a guest lecture at 9am tomorrow. Overall the trip was great, if a little short. The Quaker meeting had its Christmas Pageant this morning, and I have to say it was well done even if I don't go for the schmaltz. The kids did a competent job at Bible readings, there were requisite cute toddlers in animal outfits, and dan started snickering when a shepherd's stick almost took out someone's eye when the kid forgot to keep it vertical.

On the road at 12:45, home at 5:45. Not bad time, considering there was rain around Buffalo.

Car thoughts (partly credited to Dan, partly due to me, partly just... yeah):

"Tina Peel" would make a great porn-name. Instead, she's a Buffalo radio DJ.

Christmas displays often include Santa, Frosty the Snowman, and Rudolph, right next to Mary, Joseph, and Jesus. Was Santa one of the three wise men? Rudolph one of the barn animals?

Dan came up with a real zinger, but I'll let him post it.

I'm quite hopeful that lee_ellen can come visit for New Years. She's home alone with the dog (while flydi is still visiting family).

We're at lee_ellen and flydi's. melted_snowball already wrote about his clothing, Wegmans, and such. I miss our friends.

Killer Bunnies is a great game. The most novel bit is that you have to set up two moves in advance, and things change pretty quickly. So, say, unleashing a Small Black Hole (which wipes out most bunnies in play) then doing a replay on it to mop up the remaining ones, will make everyone lose a turn or two as their previous strategies go all to pot. Heh, heh. Even still, the game went to flydi in the end, because I wasn't able to grab the last free carrot and end the game before everyone else got new bunnies into play. Great game.

The rest of the morning is likely to be lazy, with a stroll on the Commons. After lunch we're playing games with a small group and then I'm taking d. out to dinner at Maxie's Supper Club on a birthday date.

This morning was frustrating, for work reasons including a canceled meeting and a long fire-alarm that left me with a headache from the sirens. I was headed for one of those work funks that was going to last all day. So instead of booking the afternoon off, I took part of my lunch hour to work on my Canadian Citizenship Application.

Yes! It's time; I've been a Permanent Resident for long enough that I can apply. I could've applied a month ago, but I wanted to leave lots of leeway because they count all the time I'm out of the country between four years ago and when my application is filed.

By the end of filling out forms, I actually felt better. I got my photos taken (in the adjoining plaza. The guy who works at the photo shop is a character. He doesn't remember me, but he's taken all of my immigration photos, over the last four years and two attempts to become a permanent resident). I paid my application fees online, which was reasonably painless, and I printed forms. They'll go into tomorrow's mail.

Today made a particularly symbolic date to have on the forms.

Tonight is also the tenth anniversary of when melted_snowball and I first decided we were a couple. (Not our first date, a semi-formal where I went home with someone else. That's another story.) Ten years ago was a drive in the country followed by star-gazing in some farmer's field near Ithaca. There was a total lunar eclipse. You can look it up.

Six months or so later, we were living together with two other people; the next year with one other; the following year just the two of us.

Five years ago, plus a month, we moved to Canada. And the first full day we were here, we sat in the HR office where we filed paperwork for the University's health insurance, and the HR person asked what our marital status was. Well, since we were now living in Canada, and we'd been co-habitating for more than one year, we were common-law. She checked the box. She left to copy the forms and we said to each other, hm, that was a bit anticlimactic, wasn't it?

Anniversaries aren't such a big deal in our household. I'm bad with dates, and dan's anti-sentimental. So, marking our twice-five anniversary with bureaucratic forms seems oddly perfectly appropriate.

Forgive me a bit of introspection, but that's life. It's the days that roll by to become years, to become a decade. And I had so little idea ten years ago where I'd be today. But I can't help get a bit emotional about how damn lucky I am. Tomorrow is just as unknowable as ten years from now. We could get hit by a car. The world could end. God willing, there will be a good long series of tomorrows with us together in them.

So, I was thinking about this as I got on my bike to come home, and I glanced down as my bike's odometer rolled over again from 999.9 to 0.

Yes.