Caprice

Posted 11:51 AM
I love being a part time musician (if there is such a thing). I'm going to work today with 2 dresses in my backpack and a pair of very shiny black shoes. I work behind a counter doing everything from fixing a PC to serving drinks. Tonight I step on a stage (or hardwood floor/short carpet/concrete, depending on where you play) with my fellow singers and throw on the dash of glamour. It's like being in a secret society or a part of something more glamourous than what 9 to 5 can offer me. A life where I have more than a steady job and a steady place and a steady anything at all.

It's became almost a yearly tradition to do a gig at Dunville. I can't remember the last time I did this but I think the last one was in June or early in July; it was warm, but not hot. I didn't bring enough clothes with me so I wore this mismatched piece - a red Chinese halter top and a fuschia satin skirt. The lights were amazing, and we had fog machines. The stage was a flatbed truck with holes that you could fall through so we put planks over those, the stairs to the stage was made up of a picnic branch and assorted concrete blocks. The audience danced in jeans and whatever they felt like wearing. There was a bar serving beer in little plastic cups, a hotdog stand just outside the place and some walking their dogs. All this happens in an airplane hanger in tribute of the shows during the war.

My friend Sophie hated it. She said it was the worst gig ever. It's full of mosquitoes and we had no place to change - there's a makeshift bathroom inside and some "rooms" with plastic wraps for walls. For some reason I find it strangely romantic. There's no pretense, no velvet curtains and ballon cadillacs. There's no glamourous people and helium balloons with gold strings tied to them hanging over the dancefloor. There is the music that we've done in a million places yet everytime we've done it different and for Dunville I felt as a starlet under the lights and the fog, and I sang like it was a stadium.