[LEMONS] 5.16.2003
Take That Ani
Last night, I went with Harper and my mom to go see Dar Williams at the Fillmore. I've seen Dar before. Twice, actually. I always have a good time. I'm not exactly way into folk music, but I've always like Dar a hell of a lot. She's got a great voice, writes spectacular thought-provoking lyrics, and is a hell of a songwriter. She's also quite a storyteller, and typically introduces her songs in grand fashion. (Even better, she doesn't tell the same old stories all the time.) Dar even tends to rock out, and now has a full, straight-up rock and roll band backing her. All of which is to say (fellas) it ain't Lillith Fair. You should check it out.Anyway.
We're at the show and I'm sort of looking around for Brooke the whole time. We'd seen Brooke at the Dar show at Bimbos (and then there's the Dar interview she did for Mother Jones) and I generally expected she'd be around. Brooke's my old boss and a friend who I haven't seen in a while. She was allegedly going to show up at Jared's birthday, but failed to appear thus disappointing everyone and making us cry and wail and sing dirges and rip out our hair and chew on our veins and all that. You would have thought she would have showed up. Or at least called and said "hey, I can't make it," or "yo, I might not make it," or at the very least "gee, your hair smells terrific."
But no.
Where was I? Oh yeah. So I'm looking around for Brooke anyway. Keeping an eye open, really. So when Dar says something about her friend Brooke, me already having Brooke on the brain, I wonder if perhaps she's talking about the same Brooke I'm looking for. Who knows?
Harper, who looks forward to Dar shows much in the same way I look forward to smashing the state, had gone downstairs to wrestle her way through the scrum and moon at Dar from the front row early in the concert. I stayed upstairs with Mom, who needed to keep a seat (*). Not long after Dar made the Brooke comment, I went downstairs to find Harper. (Which turned out to be remarkably easy. I'll say this for the Dar crowd, they're damn polite. Instead of the usual shoving and pushing and bludgeoning that's required to get to the front, I found that a simple "excuse me" would cause people to apologize and then yield the floor. It was utterly crazy. I had a real Moses moment when I accidentally said "excuse me please" and the crowd opened up all the way to the stage. Several people immediately left to go work in a soup kitchen as penance.) I ask Harper, "do you think Dar was talking about Brooke Biggs?" We wondered.
I headed back upstairs, and had my question answered when Dar again stopped the show to give Brooke another shoutout, and proceeded to spend the next 45 minutes pimping Brooke's new book. She starts carrying on a conversation with Brooke, who's in the audience after all. They got together and did a dramatic reading from the Illiad. They made punch and jam and didn't invite anyone else to join in. They wrote notes to each other and passed them back and forth without letting anyone else see, giggling the whole time and pointing at us. They dipped our braids in inkpots and locked little Laura Ingalls in the root cellar.
So how cool was that!?! I mean, they stop the rock show to talk about your book. Your book? Herve Villachez wept.... I've never. Never. (Although I did hear about the McSweeney's/They Might Be Giants show in Berke-town.)
So here's the deal Dar (because I know you read my site). Brooke's great and everything. A Sojourner for the modern era. A hammer in the cogs of the machinery of man. Or something. Just don't ever make plans to meet her at Lucky 13...
*Mom and I were sitting up in balcony at the Fillmore, but in one of the tables against the wall without a view of the stage. Since this was the first concert my Mom had been to since 1994, I was, you know, kinda hoping she might be able to see. But she's not in the best of health, so I didn't think 3+ hours of standing on the floor was a good idea either. So I go up to one of the users, succinctly explain my situation and (for the first time in my life) offer the user a $20 to let us sit in some of the empty reserve seats. No luck.
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