How To Disappear Completely

we build our walls with aluminum, we fill our mouths with cinnamon

Colin Meloy told me it was election day. I am glad I have people in my life like Colin Meloy to remind me of what is going on in my country. I voted by absentee ballot and promptly forgot when everyone else would voice their say in how the government should run itself. I should remember these sorts of things, but perhaps excitement over my birthday cancels out all other events. Yes, I still get excited about my birthday. I suppose it is the ritualist deep down inside me. And my birthday was four days ago, so I really should get over it, but I was just thinking out loud. That is what blogs are for. That is why I blog. Because I feel I have no voice when I cannot. This is not true, but it is the way I feel.

November 6 at 8pm, after panicking my way through downtown Toronto, calling my dad and having him navigate me via his talented internet mapping skills, I found myself at Kool Haus to hear The Decemberists. The stage was decorated with red Japanese lanterns, in honor of the band's latest album, The Crane Wife.

Alasdair Roberts and his band (from Glasgow) opened with some celtic rock and a few Scotch-Irish ballads. And I wondered as I listened to the songs about home and places and family and dying. I wondered about heaven. Nostalgia is such a common element across so many different genres: could it that a longing for home is in fact a longing for Home? C.S. Lewis probably said that somewhere.

In between sets, Peter and the Wolf by Prokofiev played over the stereo. When I heard The Decemberists in Boston with Linnea last fall, this orchestral set also amused us while we waited for the band. And again the people behind me didn't realize what it was till it was practically over.
"Hey! That's like the Peter Pan soundtrack!"
"No, it's Peter and the Wolf. By Prokofiev." I felt compelled to correct a perfect stranger. That's what I do when I go places alone. Instead of keeping my snooty knowledge to myself and my friends, I inflict it on random passers in the immediate vicinity. Fortunately the man on the other side (who looked amazingly like John Holberg) knew what I was talking about. He'd been to more concerts than I had. "I think they always play Russian music," he noted. "One time it was the Russian National Anthem." "Oh yeah..." I realized. "Because of their name." The Decemberists are named after the Russian revolutionists, in keeping with their psuedo-historical image, sound, and lyrical content.

To prepare us for the entry of Colin and the gang, a British accent requested us over the PA system to introduce ourselves to our neighbors in ten words or less. I thus found out that the Mr. Holberg clone was named Tom. Then we were instructed to imagine ourselves on the edge of a purple canyon, to close our eyes and to feel the breeze as we looked over the precipice. And as we imagined, the band entered the stage. "It is so good to be in Toronno-drop-the-T-not-ToronTo," Colin assured us. They started out with "Crane Wife 3" and then moved into a "greatest hits" segment to get the crowd singing full voiced along: "July, July" (great call-and-response number, by the way), "We Both Go Down Together," "Engine Driver," and "The Gymnast High Above the Ground." A fan asked Colin to wave his fingers in the air in a certain way. "I would rather die," said Colin in his dry tone (I often think that if Dr. Morton had, in another life, started a band, he would have been Colin in the Decemberists). "Okay. That's going to get annoying really fast. Look, no one else is doing this. You are being cool all by yourself. All right, now I am going to stop giving you attention....Hello everyone else..."

Then came the Crane Wife segment: "The Island" (a retelling of The Tempest in three sections, Come and See, The Landlord's Daughter, You'll Not Feel the Drowning), "The Perfect Crime #2," and "Yankee Baronet." The latter one involves the singing talent of Laura Veirs, who, Colin informed us, suffered from a cold that night. "I have a cold, too!!" screamed a fan. "Oh, isn't that great," returned Colin. "Watch all the people around you edge slowly away. Yes, soon you all will have colds together." Then Colin played something that I really can't remember because in the middle of it, he invited us to have a dance-off contest. And I tried my very vain best to get to the clearing to dance-off with some wild souls, but the crush of the crowd was too great. All I got out of it was the loss of my up front position. But I had already taken some pictures, so when I have a chance, I will post those later.

Then followed "O Valencia," "The Legionaire's Lament," "16 Military Wives," and "The Crane Wife 1 & 2." Towards the end of "Sons and Daughters," Colin reminded the audience that it was election day in the States tomorrow. Forgetting about New York entirely, Colin told us to sing over the border to Michigan: the whole crowd joined on the closing refrain "Hear all the bombs fade away." And so the band faded off stage. But off course the crowd couldn't just let them go. We cheered them back on. "In Montreal, they yelled louder," said Colin. After increased enthusiasm from the crowd, he recinded his opinion: "Ah, now I see. Who's the better Canadian?" And considering the audience, those are pretty much fighting words.

They performed "Red Right Ankle" and another song that had been cut from Crane Wife, "The Culling of the Fold." Colin wrapped himself up in the mike chord and mimed hanging himself. Then, because no one could really go home after that spectacle, Colin made one last gesture to the older days of Decembering: "And now we will just let you in on the secret of why you were all treated to this spectacle tonight" and we were treated to "I Was Meant for the Stage." As the tension and enthusiasm gradually wound down through this song, we felt ready to leave. The concert was over. How could one follow with anything else.

And so we filed out and drove home. And I remembered that today is election day.

Posted by funke at 7.11.06 23:16 | TrackBack | Posted to