grinning like the proverbial fool

Last night was awesomely fun, full of Ani and drag kings and happy people. The Ani concert was actually mostly slow, somewhat depressing songs, and she kind of made fun of herself for that, saying things like "So here's another upbeat number..." but she encored with Little Plastic Castle so everybody seemed happy. The drag king show was pretty cool as well, involving a "carnival" atmosphere so there were snake dancers and contortionists and whips and things. I had this huge stupid smile on my face the whole night, I think I was in overload. It was also the best people-watching night ever, at both venues. Good times, in other words, were had.
I wrote down the Ani set list, so here it is:
Knuckle Down
Your next bold move
IQ
Swim
lagtime
napoleon (was fucking awesome, incredibly powerful and she sang a part with no guitar and it was just this amazing energy and anger and sorrow, my favorite piece I think)
? (a new song, presumably)
?
Margins (unrecorded song, but the lyrics are on the Danah site)
Two little girls
?
Parameters (described as "paranoia girl in the car on the way to being a joyful girl")
Welcome to
Clip Clop Clack (unspoken but printed-in-the-cd-booklet poem from Educated Guess)
Studying Stones
Manhole
Animal
Gravel
Little Plastic Castle (encore)

i'm so excited...

Ooooh, tonight is the Ani concert, and we're going straight from there to a drag king show! Talk about an overload of excellent things on one night. I'm going to have a crappy time today trying to be productive because I'm psyched about later on.

lack

I feel at a loss for words lately, hence my lack of regular posting. I feel like there are words and words and words bubbling inside of me, but nothing is quite ready to come out into the open. When I myself feel blocked off, I feel so much more emotional about other people's words; I feel more acutely because I cannot say anything myself. Along those lines, here's an Ani song that I had never heard until recently, that made me pause and feel full of that longing/lack for a moment. Mostly just the first six lines or so, but all of it a little bit.

she says forget what you have to do
pretend there is nothing
outside this room
and like an idea she came to me
but she came too late
or maybe too soon
i said please try not to love me
close your eyes, i'm turning on the light
you know i have no vacancy
and it's awfully cold outside tonight
the rain stains the brick a darker red
slowly i'm rolling out of her bed
the rain stains the streets a darker black
i dress my face in stone
because i can't go back
i feel her eyes watching me
from behind the curtain of her hair
and she says i'm sorry
i didn't mean to stare
i say i think i really have to go now
but oh baby, maybe someday
maybe somehow.

In other news, I mailed off some zines today (finally!) so whoever wanted one and gave me an address should be getting one sometime pretty soon.

???

I just saw an ad in my yahoo email account about Arizona, from the tourist council. It was all these slogans, like "There's sun all around. Soak it up." And pictures of men on horses riding around like cowboys. There were also lines about how there was "water all around" and "energy everywhere" which there are not really, certainly not as much as in other places probably. The water one particularly irked me. There was a picture of the Colorado and then a fucking fountain. And the energy is, if you want to get real technical and talk about power energy and not people energy, from a dam that filled a lovely canyon with silt. I know that's not what they meant, but that's certainly what I think of when they discuss water and energy in the same breath. What can I expect from the tourist council, really?

(jitter)

Off to the audition! Actually, I'm not really jittery, mostly just glad that it's almost over and I can stop worrying about the damn thing.

lag time

I just got the new Ani cd, Knuckle Down, from Anna for our one-year anniversary. Yay Ani! I've been revisiting my Ani obsession, probably in preparation for the concert in two weeks, so I'm excited to have something new to listen to along with all the old stuff. I like the cd pretty well at first listen, and I assume that in about six months I'll probably be obsessed with it. It seems like the old albums excite me immediately and I love them right away, but every successive new album has to sit for a while before I truly get excited about it. I wonder if that says something about the music or about me? Dunno. At any rate, I feel like by the time I'm an old lady I'm going to have a huge cd case full of nothing but Ani. She produces such an amazingly large amount of music, it will be interesting to see what the future holds. I mean, seriously, can you imagine how many cd's she'll eventually have if she keeps up the same production rates? Damn.

late nite

It's very late here, but I am feeling only moderately sleepy. I don't need to get up early tomorrow, but I should get up at a decent hour and practice, so I'm not terribly keen on being awake a whole lot longer. That seems to be my eternal problem.

dorkiness

Also, here's my quizilla quiz if anybody wants to take it:

http://quizilla.com/users/altogirl/quizzes/which%20piece%20of%20feminist%20writing%20would%20you%20like%3F

Gaaaaaahhh!

Last semester I had so much free time, and this semester it seems like i will never even have time to buy toilet paper again. I am auditioning for the Civic orchestra next Tuesday (kind of like a student version of the Chicago symphony, a very big deal), and I have a lesson on Thursday that is totally not ready. Tomorrow is going to be hard.
In other news, I just read Edward Abbey's biography. Interesting, and I'm not sure if I like him as a person more or less for having read it. But I think more.

...

I found this statement in a quizilla quiz, with the question being how do you describe yourself:

Causing anarchy and rebelliousness while still being an exceptionally nice person.

If I'm not like that, that's at least how I think I might like to be.

Whoooo!!!

I just finished my first issue of the Crafty Beaver, my latest zine endeavor. If you don't think I have your address and you'd like a copy, just let me know. I'll start sending copies as soon as I make them and buy a stapler.
I went to a panel on transgender issues tonight, and found out that there is going to be a class next semester about performative masculinity, taught by a drag king! Damn, I am so there.