Scenes from the Glass Struggle in Gourdes Brain

Scene 1. I am lying in a bed with many people, Eskimo style. Next to me is Donald Trump. We are talking about trivialities, not politics; it is not even evident that Donald is President, or a celebrity, or a sociopath—he's just some guy. Our conversation is friendly. (I believe Brain is trying to tell me it cannot possibly be as bad as all that. Brain lies. But shame on me for waxing editorial so early.)

I roll over to go to sleep, but Donald is in teasing mode: he says, "Why are your hips doing that?" which doesn't make much sense until he starts slapping my upper thigh rhythmically, which causes my leg to go into a sort of vibrating stasis, like a tuning fork. It doesn't tickle exactly, but it feels and looks so weird it makes me laugh out loud. This gets other people looking and they start slapping each other's thighs to achieve the same effect. The entire bed ends up laughing at what their legs are doing.

Scene 2. I am drinking with two guys who simultaneously are and are not Joe and Bill. The evening of drinking is built on a combination of supplies that I had in the house and some additional beer that the boys brought over. It's getting late and Joe has gone downstairs, presumably to scrounge up more bev. I am looking at what I have left upstairs: two beers. They are arranged on a tray with that I take to be empties but really the space next to the beers is itself empty—no content, just a rectangular form. Depending on what Joe has found downstairs (we had thought there was enough wine left for maybe two glasses) we each have either 1 or 2 drinks left (Bill is not drinking for some reason). I wonder what's keeping Joe and I head downstairs to check on him. 

There is a large duffel the lowest riser of the stairs, which Joe keeps moving so as to corral a pet—I realize I have been assuming a dog, but I am not sure whether it's a dog or cat or something else entirely. I step over the duffel and take my clothes off on a whim—I believe Joe is in the easy chair over yonder watching TV and my thought is to surprise him by jumping naked into his lap. But he is not in the chair. I look around and cannot find him. The space is now my grandparents' trailer (Lot 8, Mullica Mobile Manor) from the 1970s and '80s, and I realize Joe is in the main bathroom (his chair and the TV are in what was my grandparents' dining room). 

My drink is now an outsize cocktail glass, like one of those Margarita monstrosities from chain Mexican places. I have set it down on the coffee table; and as I hear Joe finishing up in the bathroom—running water shut off and so forth—for some reason it is important that I have that cocktail glass in my hand when he sees me. I rush back over to the coffee table and barely manage to pick up the glass by its side, with two fingers, as I hear Joe outen the light and slide the pocket door open. There follows an acrobatic flip of the glass, which I catch in my other hand, spilling none of its contents: an amazing cinematic effect that results in my standing there casually with glass in hand when Joe sees me. Presumably I'm still naked but that detail is forgotten. We talk about the liquor situation and about television and movies.

Scene 3. I am in a friend's kitchen (familiar territory in context of the scene but Brain made up the layout and details) and I have been prepping some sort of pesto or tapenade. I am unsatisfied with the result and I decide it needs to be turned into a mousse or meringue or souffle or something. I add dairy or eggs (I say this because it makes sense, but really it's not at all clear what I actually add) and begin whisking. The concoction is really slow to hold together—whatever I have added seriously means to reject the previous pesto ingredients. I have to step the whisking up a notch or twelve. It turns out I can turn up my wrist like an electric mixer to the point where I am whisking maybe 50 strokes per second—and my wrist makes the same sound as an electric mixer, too. This immediately has the desired effect, and maybe 30 seconds later I have the mousse consistency I was aiming for. When I stop beating, my wrist takes a few seconds to gear down. This is clearly a superpower and I had completely forgotten I had it. I go boasting and demonstrating to my friends in the butler's pantry and living room. Who cares whether the foodstuff I just made is edible—look at what my wrist does!

Scene 4. More talk of tv and movies, this time with two people are simultaneously are and are not Roze and Keith. One of us is sharing a DVD case of some recent adventure tale; on the cover is a completely forgettable male protagonist all in black and Judi Dench in radiant pastels. The advert text includes something like "...and Judi Dench from 'Captains Courageous: Idolatry'" (ok, probably not "idolatry" but it did begin with an "I"... insurrection? Insipidness?). Roze and Keith and I lament the epidemic of theft of literary brands by making up wholesale plots and adding ": [Unrelated thingummy]" to the title. 

I mention Helen Mirren (because if you talk about Judi Dench you then have to talk about Helen Mirren and vice versa) and ask R&K whether they have seen the incredible litany of stuff Ms. Mirren has been in lately? I have a whole list of movies and BBC series roles she has done—really good work, I tell them. 

And indeed, here she is now! We actually appear to be watching a live performance all of a sudden, with Ms. Mirren performing the opening of, perhaps, a one-woman show: my thought is of Beckett's Happy Days but in retrospect it is more akin to the opening of The Skriker by Caryl Churchill. And she is singing her performance, at which I realize (a) I know the text better than I thought I did; (b) the musical setting of the text is brand new and contrasts with a much more well-known and celebrated setting; and (c) Ms. Mirren set the text herself. It's not spontaneous musical invention, though it rather sounds like it might be. Rather it is clever and rhythmic, actually kind of cool-jazzy without being overt jazz singing. Ah! We loves her!

A Day at the Rences

I could swear to have seen this spectacle with actual dogs, but maybe it's just déjà vu. This morning, the the entire parking lot, as far as the eye can see along the rolling hills, is filled with people pantomiming holding dogs up to the windows of their vehicles so as to lick them. Everyone looks remarkably silly doing this.

Perhaps this is just a practice run and all the dogs are still in their cars: or perhaps management has banned dogs, which would rather defeat the purpose of this group exercise, which celebrates "Dog Days" (or some such), during which human companions attempt to reciprocate their canines' unquestioning love and fierce loyalty. And hey—subjecting themselves to silly mimery is a start. 

In any case, enough of this parking lot. I go into the actual Renfest, where, through the miracle of editing, some unspecified time later I find the sort of musical act I always want to see—always vainly want to see—at Faire: folks playing actual Renaissance music on period instruments. Think Baltimore Consort or Julian Bream. Jenn and I settle in to listen and, given our comprising the entire audience, sing along. The singer (a curious young girl) delivers a ballad of a curious young girl (the forerunner of Ogden Nash's Isabel, no doubt) who encounters an ogre or some such on the road; as the verse proper ends she is sorely menaced until, at the burthen, she produces a feather and tickles the monster into giggles. 

I realize I've heard this song before and join in on the burthen to sing about the feather. I recall that all the verses similarly set up some kind of predicament that the burthen then makes simple work of. But I cannot remember the "solution" of the second verse, which is all about NASA. Yes, that NASA. Renaissance NASA. The singer takes a few steps away from the stage and lifts what looks like a manhole cover, though she makes easy work of it with one hand; underneath is the NASA logo and some flag icons (the U.S. flag is not among them). Somehow the verse's predicament has to do with the arrangement of these specific flags—perhaps it's a détente thing. I cannot remember how this verse comes out but I venture a guess that one of the flags isn't a flag at all but a random conglomerate of bits of colored cloth that the wind blew into the dissemblance of the flag. My guess is wrong. 

The band and Jenn and I chat between songs. As expected, this enormously talented (and musically authentic) consort are always ill attended at Faire; all the audiences accrue to five-a-penny bawds belting out, with barely governed voices, drinking songs from the late 19th century that they have festooned with "thou"s, or filks of even more recent music. We commiserate. The band has moved from under a tent out into the thoroughfare to try to attract more attention. Surely they perform much more music but I don't remember any of it; if waking history holds, this is because I am increasingly drunk.