Cantiga: Michelle's Blog

Bob's Land

Texas is really starting to grow on me. Chigger season is over, and the misquitoes aren't bad on Bob's land. I've adapted to the 90-100F temperature; I take refuge in Bob's shady holly grove by the creek bed, and practice my fiddle there. I've even learned to walk differently in Texas-- you've got to lift your legs a little higher and stomp a bit, so your ankles don't get caught by blackberry brambles and so you warn snakes and critters that you're approaching (they'll get out of the way). I've even learned to live with the fireants via the "ring of death": uncooked grits make ants explode when they eat them.

I like taking my shower at dawn as cardinals fly through the open-air shower house, and while I'm shampooing, I can look out at the misty forest in the dim yellow ochre first rays of daylight before boiling some Kashi cereal and coffee over a bottled gas grill. Now I even have electricity, so I can keep food cold-- camping in the heat for months on end without electricity really, really sucks. My friends all think I must be saving a lot of money by camping, but actually, you spend a ton of money on gas and ice and food because you need to go out every single day and buy more ice, and all the food gets wet so it goes bad in a couple days anyway... unless you have electricity, and most Rennies don't.

On Nondays it is traditional to visit the local diner for breakfast. I don't mind that people stare when I come in; I know I look strange, in my brightly colored vintage dresses from the 60's and 70's amidst all the t-shirts and cowboy hats... and I'm always the only one sitting in the non-smoking section. But everyone I meet is so nice. I love the way the waitress calls me "Huuuuuney" in that slow lyrical drawl of hers as she pours me more coffee-- I never have to ask in Texas; everyone seems overly eager to be of service. And today, while I was eating watermellon at the diner, a nice older man came up to me with a box full of donuts and insisted that I take one. I tried to refuse, but he wouldn't have it, and nudged one of the extra chocolatey nut covered ones towards me. I've only been in the south for a couple weeks, and already I can feel my stomach bulging. Yeah, I could really get used to this life.

The Audition

Two hours before we had to leave for our big Cirque du Soleil audition, we still didn't know what to play. It had been 3 months since we had all played together as a group, and Charry, Martha, Bob and I had not been all together for a month until that weekend. With the exception of Max and Charry, we had just barely gotten off the road in time for faire after a marathon of driving through most of the US (me from MA and Bob from PA), with just enough time to set up camp before a busy weekend in almost unbearable weather conditions. And to top it all off, we mourned the fact Jamal could not audition with us that day. It seemed to be the worst possible time for an audition.

Everyone was calm, although there was an intensity between us that affected every word we spoke and every note we made. Criticisms were delivered harshly and decisions were reached quickly. I wasn't happy with one of the songs we had chosen-- I didn't have the melody completely under my fingers and had to think more than usual about the notes. But as we jammed on the tune, it became clear to all of us that although perhaps the music would not be perfect, there was a freshness and an energy that could not have emerged had we all been rehearsing it into the ground. The music was wild, unpredictable, hovering dangerously between success and failure. Anything could happen, and that's how we wanted it.

And the strangest thing happened, something that had never happened to me before at an audition; I had a darn fun time. Claude the Cirque du Soleil Music Director was absolutely beaming as we ripped into "Martha's Dragon"! Rick the casting director took us aside afterwards and said "OK guys, you're in". Max and Jamal also auditioned seperately, as soloists for the sub-list, and they're in too! Special Events... It turns out this is incredible glitzy parties in Montreal which Cirque du Soleil is hired to put on. Wow I can imagine us at a Winter Olympics gala in amazing Cirque du Soleil costumes- surrounded by acrobats and jugglers- maybe a fire eater! Of course, they haven't promised us anything. So, we'll see...

A Recording Session to Die For

Bob and I just completed a recording under the strangest of conditions. The "studio" was actually inside "the Dungeon" of the Pennsylvania Rennaissance Faire; as Bob unbolted the doors, maimed manikins tortured by various Rennaissance and Medieval accoutrements met our gaze. We rehearsed in this space, trying to make beautiful music in the most foul of places.

When it was time to record, I entered a small door witha gargoyle that bore the sign "Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter Here." It being a dungeon, the room clearly had not been designed with the recording musician's comfort in mind. Foam and padding suffocated the small space, and microphones poked at me from above and below. I had to be very careful not to move while I played, or my bow could hit one of them and mess up the recording... and my bow. My friend Doug (from the Don Juan and Miguel Show), one of the producers of the project, helped me into the headphones before shutting the door behind me.

This was not at all what I had in mind when I set out to play music for a living...

Back Home

It's weird to be back home... last night, I went to some cliffs on the beach to watch the sunset, thinking it was a nice place to go to be alone. Then suddenly people from faire started popping out from hiding out of the waist-high grass and motioned for me to follow …. EVERYBODY was there, sitting on a cliff, watching the sunset and singing… like magic someone had a fiddle for me to play along with saxophone and guitars and a whole chorus of voices and laughter and dancers silhouetted in the moonlight.

When everyone had left, I spent some time lying on a bed of tall grass, watching the meteor shower and listening to the surf, the crickets and frogs in the soft mud... and woke up with a thick layer of dew on my blankets and the first pink light of dawn. I realized one of my sandals had completely disappeared… maybe by accident or maybe as a joke… and walked through the woods and sharp rocks with one bare foot. Painful as it was, I couldn’t believe all the different textures of the ground I had never experienced or paid attention to… the way the ground gets more rocky and how the stones change shape and feel as I got closer to the shore, the soft grass and squelch of the mud under my toes or the rubbery feeling of mulch... though I luckily avoided the occasional dead fish….

It's just so hard to go back indoors after that!… but all the romance of the outdoors comes with a price— my feet and ankles are still covered in countless welts from mosquitoes, even through several layers of clothing/blankets…. It’s so nice to take a break from being part of the food chain, if only for a month!

Merry Christmas Everyone?

After huddling around a book of Christmas carols/Hanukah songs drenched in the pouring rain and swatting at misquitoes with about three dozen Rennies singing "let it snow, let it snow, let it snow" in the middle of the summer, I've only now realized that I've completely neglected to mention the variety of silly traditions that occur in Rennyland. In fact, it's only now-- five months after I joined this crazy band-- that it's truly sunk in that my life is very different from most Americans, who don't have to shoo frogs out of the shower before they get in, or pass by camels on their way to wash dishes-- in New York.

Christmas in July is just one item on a list of strange things we do, and it's a tradition celebrated exclusively by this particular faire (in Sterling, NY). It started when enough people decided they would rather celebrate the winter holidays in July since most of us are alone in December. Odd as it seems, it's been going strong for several years now, and it's taken seriously enough that no rehearsals or gigs are scheduled during "Christmas" or the day after. So we decorated a tree, sang carols, put on a holiday-inspired Commedia, ate fine chocolates and had ourselves a good time... without the encumberance of gift-giving or card-sending. Instead, many of us opt to send secret-santa love letters, an event that begins on Christmas week and continues until the last weekend of faire is over. Everyone who wants to participate randomly picks a name from a basket and has a to write a love letter to that person, then deliver or recite it to them at some point during the faire weekend... it's very exciting, especially since you never know when the letter is going to come and what surprises might accompany it. The week before last, a girl stopped me on my way to the stage, gave me an orange soda and a bag of homeade pickles, and recited a beautiful poem! The following week, in the middle of a show, I realized someone had annonymously slipped a juicy letter in my fiddle case while I was playing!

However, Christmas in July is just one facet of silly yet essential annual traditions... there's also the Funky Formal, a must-have at the end of every faire throughout the country, in which everyone dresses either formal or "funky" and puts on a grand themed dance party which always involves a high level of silliness, surprises and live animals. And then there's the Rennie tradition of random free communal meals-- like the 300 LBS of crawdads that one Rennie bought by the truckload to feed the community... and the annual traditional Weenie Roast by the Scurillious Monks, (who aren't real monks, yet are somehow are an established recognized group of wise elder Rennies who do silly and generous things... our very own Martha is among them) which, like most things that happen here, is just too difficult to explain, but it involves a guy dressed like a picnic trying to outwit an evil zucchini man who tries to disrupt the free hotdog eating extravaganza with magic saran wrap wrestling moves and his disarming vegetable charm.

I think Martha said it best when she turned to me at Funky Formal with colorful feathers in her hair waving in the night breeze (and I told her that her pet bird is going to have a crush on her) "I just love how much effort goes into doing silly things!" Yes, we decided, it's all these silly things that bring the community together and have kept it going strong for over 30 years.

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