In Twilight Regalia

An insanely cranking day…
InSANEly.
A wake late, speed there,
Fly through six involved projects when I usually do three,
Right down to a crashed Outlook in the crunch day.

Drive an hour through traffic trying to get my voice back to normal.
Arrive tired.

More work:but at least I’m no supermom.
Cooked the rest of a dinner I’d started prepping yesterday.
finally got to eat it,
cleaned up.

Still not complete,
Start to pull out the bowl for the crowning ice cream.
Reach for the thin green bowl with the nick in it.
Notice under the surface of my thinking — that I don’t want a nicked bowl.
Reach for the smooth new white Korean bowl, delicate, cool, hand painted.
A gift half of only two.
Hand pulls away. Too nice, I shouldn’t. I should keep it. for someone.

Keep it for who?
Pull the bowl off the shelf and put the ice cream in.
That I shouldn’t have too much of, but I choose it. I take it, it’s MINE.
Ymmmmm.
Wait.

Why food?

I reward myself with the food without a thought.
But the bowl is too good for me?
Ok to be self-indulgent in secret, but not good enough for my own good china?

Never transmit anything unworthy of perpetuity to children.

People who have blown me off:

1) Audrey and Katie
2) Deanna
3) Almost every boyfriend I ever had: long list.
14) Patricia
15) my sister
16) Yasue
17) Chelsea
18) my landlord in Oakland
19) my landlord in Seattle
20) my mother
21) my father
22) Lilly
23) Joan
24) Lynn
25) Wendy Waldman

People who have never blown me off:

1) My first husband
2) Quentin Chin
3) Guy
4) Norman
5) Dave
6) Chuck
7) Anna Robert
9) Mary
10) Loran
11) Tom Arnold
12) Robert
13) Loran
14) Scott

Now what’s the difference between the two lists. Hm.

The lower list fall into two categories:

1) People who are naiive first and foremost about all things in life and frequently get walked on for it and are somehow never the ones who interested me and I can’t place why other than that they are supremely unimpowered and don’t stand up for themselves; and

2) People who are simply sterling.

The people on the upper list, I liked or loved as much as I possibly could and had serious vested interest in for various reasons.

They all screwed me over.
What’s up with this??? Why does that happen so often?

Why should the people I most value be the most destructive toward me?
and worse,
Do I deserve it?

I asked him if I had bartered away my validity.
The rest of my life has been “alright.”

It’s been what I feared most:
Easy enough,
but no shining vistas off the peaks,
without reward,
without challenge,
with no remembered name,
and with no need to ask whether it was worth doing,
because that was a moot question.
The easier way as expensive as the difficult.

on my achievements:
I’ve created nothing anymore, I said.

My good friend Robert
with a load of problems over his head,
with a tedious job failing yet again to pan out,
with life’s true calling still calling for him and
still yet no one paying him for it, and
with nowhere to live after January 14,
This man, who all these years has still not had a break,
with no wife,
no children,
and no girlfriend,
and a dog long passed away,
and not one sure prospect,
said to me in utter clarity of wisdom,
in an instant
with the character I knew he possessed ever:

“But, It’s what you THINK that matters.”

Is it? I said. Not so sure anymore. Wanting to believe.

“Yes.”

he said.
Not the Yes of experienced survival,
but the fresh, untainted yes of youth,
Still present within him.

It keeps him good company.
and he warms us all.
if we allow him.

WILTERN THEATRE, 12/1/06

Women who are sole vocal entertainers have a precarious line to walk, generally. They might languor on the side of ephemeral feminine muse, with delicate waverings and ornamentation a la Joni Mitchell through Sade all the way to Dido.

Or they might punch their way into a scene dominated by men with a sort of goddess-machismo — say from Patti Smith or Chrissie Hynde all the way through Madonna and on to Fergie. They can dabble in the frills of femininity once in a while, but have no problem whipping out the hip-high stiletto boots and telling you who’s boss.

In the reviews I’d read, and listening to her punchy, almost belligerently belted out lyrics from her first album iMegaphone and her second with the collaboration FrouFrou, I thought I’d spy the girl from her tune “Glittering Cloud” — bitter, snotty, in your face, strong-winded, multi-instrumental technican, commander of the IMAGE of sole woman performer, thank you very much.

But got… not at ALL what I was expecting!

(I had a hint of that when I saw the stage set: Floor lamps made of pink and red womens’ bustiers standing about the equipment and a clear lucite “piano” on stage decked out in pink and red silk roses and light strands. But I hadn’t heard her, Yet.)

So at 9:30 she surprises us, bouncing out all affable arms and legs, at the head of Levi Weaver’s set to introduce him. (At an hour when other lead act players would have been whining over what their manager proffered in the green room.) In her street clothes and mussy hair she told her fans how she just LOVES this guy and had to have him tour with her, and they should all love him as well. All in a sweet Brit voice, and a kind gesture to boot. She came out before Kid Beyond’s set too. Same funny, sweet little asides.

Both her two warm up acts used the same looping recording equipment she uses, creating layered bands of themselves, but for completely different ends: Levi Weaver was a good lyricist, almost folkish, with a simple guitar and a great voice, while Kid Beyond has obviously been doing vocal beat-box music on the San Francisco wharf since the 80s, layering vocal rhythm patterns that turn magically into familiar techno, hip-hop, trance, and house music.

Then it began: Imogen came down through the crowd like a mad queen from Wonderland, arrayed in a Lauper-esque combination of a huge cocque-feathered bouffant mohawk with a pink bustier and multi-flounced crenoline gown covered with chiffon and tiny roses, a mohair pale pink stole around her shoulders. She walked straight through the pit and shook and touched all our hands like a punk princess (ooh! Delicate! I thought, feeling her hand). It was a stunningly glam look, but a bit wacked and fun.

Then she went round up to the stage and gave us the dearest opening banter I’ve ever seen a performer do in concert — starting with kicking off her fancy shoes like a child who’s had enough of dress-up, and trouncing about in her pink tights, introducing us piece by piece to her array of equipment, and what each sounded like, demonstrating them in snippets, talking and winking all the while.

Watching her turn about from her piano to her kalimba to her beat-box and back to vocoder, her lovely British accent lilting up and down knowingly and questioningly, talking to the audience’s hoots, while pink feathers articulated every quick turn of her head — it was rather like watching your dotty old Aunt Mae, a glorious prize bantam chicken, and a mad scientist from an Austin Powers set, all stuck together with bubblegum and strawberry jam. It was at once quaint, disarming, hilarious, and wowing. And you had to admit she was really beautiful as well, bone-beautiful, apart from all the fluff. My husband was even elbowing me with the same face he reserves for when our pet-rats astonish us with antics. “Hahahaha!! My GAWD, isn’t she cute??” She was, just darling.

But, To Work:

She began with I Am In Love With You — which is precisely what I thought she’d begin with — punchy, fun, poppish romp deriding the loose ends of bar-hopping relationships, and went through most of her Speak for Yourself album. Closing in and Clear the Area were a little on the thin side, since she was working without the many strategically layered vocal background parts she records on albums, and actually changed some of the chords underneath to accommodate the stripped-down loop ability she was working with onstage. But her voice was in top shape, both delicate and rich, jumping fourths and fifths with her characteristic break in place and her high range crystalline. It was a lovely bunch of work, even when much different from the recordings.

Her signature of late, Goodnight and Go, was actually a bit on the fast side, but every bit as good. Kid Beyond used his vocal pyrotechnics for the break in the middle of it, and the crowd loved it. Weaver played guitar on several of the tunes, and the set was made richer by a drummer/percussionist and a fabulous stand-up bass and french-horn player (names of whom I missed, sorry), which was just the right acoustic touch to warm some of the more harshly electronic pieces on albums.

Come Here Boy was a dramatic solo piano piece, a lovely persuasive theme she wrote when very young to convince and entice an older man in her life. The Walk started out tense and tight, and finished in a great wave of sound and angst, which was lit and staged beautifully. Daylight Robbery was a closer for the official set, and the stage was green and pink flashes and Imogen everywhere and Weaver hopping up on a stack of monitors, going all rockstar. It was very, very good fun, with videos of her in stylish half-sillouhette and other video images projected behind. But Hide and Seek, her richly vocoded voice a capella, brought down the house.

There seemed to be large parts of the audience who wanted to marry her after that, and said so; particularly several different pairs of girls who looked to be couples themselves. I was particularly happy to see that there were lots of youthful faces — the majority were in their 20s, and also happy to see a good distribution of both men and women. It was a balanced feeling in the audience, that came of the balance she demonstrates between her delicate womanliness as well as the tough, accurate musicianship she writes and performs with.

I came not knowing what to expect, but didn’t I tell you previously that “The Moment I Said It” was her best work?
She must have thought so as well, because she closed her encore with it. Even working without her other voices behind, it was stunning, silently chilling, and a true artwork for the final coup. It was a perfect moment: Watching my favorite song with an obedient audience, Imogen in her prime in every way — physically, artistically, and on the edge of a new wave of good fortune for her.

But to be appropriately British, I’d just say that I was just…. so very pleased.