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.