Sunday, September 23
"So Ross, you're kind of the man, huh?" John Fort said to me last night, after Ben and I stood up on a wall and shook our booties at the crowds during "La Guitaristic House Organisation." "The DJ is the shit!" shouted a group of people I didn't know hanging around towards the end of the evening, as I was attempting to wrap the party up. "The best string of music I've heard at a Swat party," remarked Chang this afternoon at the library. "Remember, Swat doesn't have good parties" said Priti in the Olde Club e-mail (she also said the Sigur Ros are on a major label.) "This music gives meaning to life" said Joel when he came back from the Sigur Ros concert, pulled me aside, and ranted for many minutes about how incredible the experience had been, unable to form complete sentences. "You missed heaven." Maybe, but last night was as close to heaven as I've been in a long time.
The day started off right. I lay awake in bed listening to the tired sounds of the Stars of the Lid. The minimalist swelling chords were interrupted by a ring from the kitchen. Alyssa called from Kyoto, approximately 9:30pm her time. It was so good to talk to her, especially after missing so many of her calls. Maybe my letter won't arrive, because I didn't write the full address. I'll send her another one with the party posters and a clipping of my Phoenix review once it comes out. I want to make her another mixtape too. She had taken precepts the previous night, which included vowing not to "misuse sexual energy." She didn't shave her head though. Someone called for Rebecca a little later, so I woke her up, but the other four people in the house were still asleep when I left for the wsrn training meeting (Drew and Priti monotonally explaining that they didn't know how to work the phone patch-in.) Eventually they woke up, and we ordered sushi, and made plans and lunch and read and discussed the fate of the revolution. I tried to get some Moby reading done but didn't accomplish much. Listened to Lloyd Cole's "The Negatives," which Ester liked once I told her that Jill Sobule was on it. I'm not sure where the rest of the day went.
At about 6:45, after some confusion about where he had disappeared to, Rob Cox showed up with his expiatemobile to take us to Genuardi's. He and Ben both seemed quite tense, as demonstrated when the former drove off without Rebecca and me because he was worried that Genuardi's was about to close, or when the later ran around the car to check on our six monster trays of sushi after I had assured him that they were okay. We went to Target, which, although they do carry semblances of Chinese rice-paper lanterns, makes it impossible to find them. We did find a nice string of blue bulbs, 120-minute cassettes for taping radio show, and some lightbulbs which turned out to be the wrong size for my light, as well as an animated moose. We didn't buy that last one, but we have designs on it for the next party ("DNCPRTY003: Animated Moose"). Watch out Swat.
I collected all the extension cords, rope-lights, paper lanterns, and lemons I could find and took them to clothier, where the speakers had been left unattended. Rattech operatives showed up shortly to set up the rest of the gear on the flat area of the walkway alongside Tarble, speakers on the wall facing the IC. They also brought an immense green extension cord, which allowed me to use a socket in the IC (the space is not well designed for outdoor electricity) to hang a lantern from the tree in the corner. Ben showed up with a turntable and a punchbowl, and, as I was stringing the blue lights above the benches below the subwoofer, so did three bouncy freshman PAs. They were confused about what to do, but I set them to work duct-taping power strips to the inside wall of the cloisters, so as to hang another lantern in one of the arches. People started showing up and asking for sushi, and I told one of them (Alex Brennan) that he could get it himself, so he went to the barn and returned with Rebecca, Ester, and five of the six trays (one of winds up as dinner tonight). I popped in some Mint Royale, Dimitri from Paris, Plaid, Walter Wenderley, Fatboy Slim, and Grandmaster Flash. Then Chang, who was hanging out and smoking with a group on the sidelines, requested "Policy of Truth" (I thought he said "Posse"). It wasn't an immediate response, but within a half-hour, the party did indeed become lively, to an unexpected, unprecedented degree.
At first it was just the PAs dancing (and Pert Joanne, who can shake her hips like nobody's business), but as word of the sushi spread and the Paces party started to overcrowd, people began pouring in: ex-Danawell residents, conventional freshman girls, my tango and swing partners, googly-eyed freaks, athlete types, J-popsters with glowsticks, Lodge Four, basement kids, Bryn, Kate, Heather, Rabi, Nick, Marc, Jolly, Jennifer, Jessie, Jessica, John, Jedd. People I knew, people I didn't know, people who mooched alcohol from Paces, people coming after the broken-up Olde Club concert, or the transcendental Sigur Ros concert, people who requested J-house, jungle, swing, the Bloodhound Gang, the New Deal, Madonna, people who know how to dance, and I mean get seriously down. Way way way more people than the sixty-people limit that I honestly expected to be reasonably within, and I was anxious the whole time about the arboretum. I danced with Alison, Rebecca R., Jessie, Bryn, Claudia, Alana, Lela, Eric Martin, and Liza, who is fascinating. She was at tango and the poetry slam. Her poetry, dancing, and demeanor bespeak a sort of wondrous childlike spirit. Also, she's an awesome dancer.
Ben took care of the food (sushi every half-hour, and gummies, mang gong, wasabi peas, rice crackers, lemon water) and the mailing list, and DJed almost as much as I do. His forte is remixes of his dance-music pantheon (Bjork, Beck, the Beasties, Moby, Madonna), and he had some great techno stuff that I haven't figured all out yet. His best transition was laying the chill-out Rhodes intro of "Where it's At" over the frantic speed-dance wind-down of "Feeling so Real." Mine was slipping the funky guitar intro to "Kiss" repeatedly over a Soul Coughing remix, which matched it perfectly for speed and key. Some early standouts: a P5 song from "Sound of Music", the Carribean Sunshine remix of "Freaking You", the schizo mix of "Just Can't Get Enough", Ben's "Alarm Call" mix.
The apex of the evening, when the courtyard was packed beyond recognition with dancers jumping up and down and going more and more crazy with each song I played, went something like this: "Better off Alone", "Sci-Fi Wasabi", "Circles (Propellorheads Remix)", "Kiss", "Wannabe", "The Bad Touch (Eiffel 65 Remix)" (Joanne's request), "The Light" (for Claude), track three from disc two of "The Roots Come Alive," "911 is a Joke," some other hip-hop thing Ben played, "Material Girl," "Music," "Cassius 99 (Remix)," "U Don't Know Me", "Rockafeller Skank", that silly Clinton song with "oohy-ooh," "Honey (remix)", "Heroes", "Like Humans Do", "El Platanal de Bartolo," then I think "Feeling So Real," "Where It's At," "Here I Am (Come and Take Me)," "Cold Sweat," and the final run of "Eurodisco (LRD mix)" "Around the World", "Another One Bites the Dust", "How About the Boys", "Ideoteque." (love me for my consistency of punctuation.) After that, despite pleas that I continue, I slipped in "Y Los Cubanos Postizos" and began cleaning up.
Rebecca and Ester waited obediantly on a bench while we cleaned up and gathered our gear and we took it Ben's room, where we sat for a while with Alé and Gerrit, the latter high and thus even more amusing than usual (he identified Ben's poster of Marx, Engels, and Lenin as "the Three Holy Stones, or no, the Dwarves of Jesus.") Then the four of us (minus Bester) sat in my room for a while, listening to Aphex and Godspeed and Gerrit talking about subs. Then I slept. It was about 4:30am.
The day started off right. I lay awake in bed listening to the tired sounds of the Stars of the Lid. The minimalist swelling chords were interrupted by a ring from the kitchen. Alyssa called from Kyoto, approximately 9:30pm her time. It was so good to talk to her, especially after missing so many of her calls. Maybe my letter won't arrive, because I didn't write the full address. I'll send her another one with the party posters and a clipping of my Phoenix review once it comes out. I want to make her another mixtape too. She had taken precepts the previous night, which included vowing not to "misuse sexual energy." She didn't shave her head though. Someone called for Rebecca a little later, so I woke her up, but the other four people in the house were still asleep when I left for the wsrn training meeting (Drew and Priti monotonally explaining that they didn't know how to work the phone patch-in.) Eventually they woke up, and we ordered sushi, and made plans and lunch and read and discussed the fate of the revolution. I tried to get some Moby reading done but didn't accomplish much. Listened to Lloyd Cole's "The Negatives," which Ester liked once I told her that Jill Sobule was on it. I'm not sure where the rest of the day went.
At about 6:45, after some confusion about where he had disappeared to, Rob Cox showed up with his expiatemobile to take us to Genuardi's. He and Ben both seemed quite tense, as demonstrated when the former drove off without Rebecca and me because he was worried that Genuardi's was about to close, or when the later ran around the car to check on our six monster trays of sushi after I had assured him that they were okay. We went to Target, which, although they do carry semblances of Chinese rice-paper lanterns, makes it impossible to find them. We did find a nice string of blue bulbs, 120-minute cassettes for taping radio show, and some lightbulbs which turned out to be the wrong size for my light, as well as an animated moose. We didn't buy that last one, but we have designs on it for the next party ("DNCPRTY003: Animated Moose"). Watch out Swat.
I collected all the extension cords, rope-lights, paper lanterns, and lemons I could find and took them to clothier, where the speakers had been left unattended. Rattech operatives showed up shortly to set up the rest of the gear on the flat area of the walkway alongside Tarble, speakers on the wall facing the IC. They also brought an immense green extension cord, which allowed me to use a socket in the IC (the space is not well designed for outdoor electricity) to hang a lantern from the tree in the corner. Ben showed up with a turntable and a punchbowl, and, as I was stringing the blue lights above the benches below the subwoofer, so did three bouncy freshman PAs. They were confused about what to do, but I set them to work duct-taping power strips to the inside wall of the cloisters, so as to hang another lantern in one of the arches. People started showing up and asking for sushi, and I told one of them (Alex Brennan) that he could get it himself, so he went to the barn and returned with Rebecca, Ester, and five of the six trays (one of winds up as dinner tonight). I popped in some Mint Royale, Dimitri from Paris, Plaid, Walter Wenderley, Fatboy Slim, and Grandmaster Flash. Then Chang, who was hanging out and smoking with a group on the sidelines, requested "Policy of Truth" (I thought he said "Posse"). It wasn't an immediate response, but within a half-hour, the party did indeed become lively, to an unexpected, unprecedented degree.
At first it was just the PAs dancing (and Pert Joanne, who can shake her hips like nobody's business), but as word of the sushi spread and the Paces party started to overcrowd, people began pouring in: ex-Danawell residents, conventional freshman girls, my tango and swing partners, googly-eyed freaks, athlete types, J-popsters with glowsticks, Lodge Four, basement kids, Bryn, Kate, Heather, Rabi, Nick, Marc, Jolly, Jennifer, Jessie, Jessica, John, Jedd. People I knew, people I didn't know, people who mooched alcohol from Paces, people coming after the broken-up Olde Club concert, or the transcendental Sigur Ros concert, people who requested J-house, jungle, swing, the Bloodhound Gang, the New Deal, Madonna, people who know how to dance, and I mean get seriously down. Way way way more people than the sixty-people limit that I honestly expected to be reasonably within, and I was anxious the whole time about the arboretum. I danced with Alison, Rebecca R., Jessie, Bryn, Claudia, Alana, Lela, Eric Martin, and Liza, who is fascinating. She was at tango and the poetry slam. Her poetry, dancing, and demeanor bespeak a sort of wondrous childlike spirit. Also, she's an awesome dancer.
Ben took care of the food (sushi every half-hour, and gummies, mang gong, wasabi peas, rice crackers, lemon water) and the mailing list, and DJed almost as much as I do. His forte is remixes of his dance-music pantheon (Bjork, Beck, the Beasties, Moby, Madonna), and he had some great techno stuff that I haven't figured all out yet. His best transition was laying the chill-out Rhodes intro of "Where it's At" over the frantic speed-dance wind-down of "Feeling so Real." Mine was slipping the funky guitar intro to "Kiss" repeatedly over a Soul Coughing remix, which matched it perfectly for speed and key. Some early standouts: a P5 song from "Sound of Music", the Carribean Sunshine remix of "Freaking You", the schizo mix of "Just Can't Get Enough", Ben's "Alarm Call" mix.
The apex of the evening, when the courtyard was packed beyond recognition with dancers jumping up and down and going more and more crazy with each song I played, went something like this: "Better off Alone", "Sci-Fi Wasabi", "Circles (Propellorheads Remix)", "Kiss", "Wannabe", "The Bad Touch (Eiffel 65 Remix)" (Joanne's request), "The Light" (for Claude), track three from disc two of "The Roots Come Alive," "911 is a Joke," some other hip-hop thing Ben played, "Material Girl," "Music," "Cassius 99 (Remix)," "U Don't Know Me", "Rockafeller Skank", that silly Clinton song with "oohy-ooh," "Honey (remix)", "Heroes", "Like Humans Do", "El Platanal de Bartolo," then I think "Feeling So Real," "Where It's At," "Here I Am (Come and Take Me)," "Cold Sweat," and the final run of "Eurodisco (LRD mix)" "Around the World", "Another One Bites the Dust", "How About the Boys", "Ideoteque." (love me for my consistency of punctuation.) After that, despite pleas that I continue, I slipped in "Y Los Cubanos Postizos" and began cleaning up.
Rebecca and Ester waited obediantly on a bench while we cleaned up and gathered our gear and we took it Ben's room, where we sat for a while with Alé and Gerrit, the latter high and thus even more amusing than usual (he identified Ben's poster of Marx, Engels, and Lenin as "the Three Holy Stones, or no, the Dwarves of Jesus.") Then the four of us (minus Bester) sat in my room for a while, listening to Aphex and Godspeed and Gerrit talking about subs. Then I slept. It was about 4:30am.
