Canandaigua Lake

We -- that is, Eir, Fuzzy, Elizabeth, and myself -- set out on a long drive to Canandaigua Lake, NY that almost never was. Yes, I'll skip the detials, but no I won't slip on thru without recognizing my (our) debt to Brian Pennington who generously allowed the use of his plastique.

And we were off: Sheetz tuna sub then new Mould CD then hi-flown hrs on I-79 north then conversation then Spoon (older and newer) then God I smoke too much then medieval shanty towns near Grove City then conversation then Death Cab then a change in landscape then Burger King then the Damned then a talk with Fuz about the history of DC hardcore then upstate downscale supermarket at sunset then to snaky NY highways then some gas then Cuba then cellphone catcalls to Ben and Billy then Lungfish then the massive lake then we were there.

And 'there' was the Miami Hotel, which could have been designed by John Waters, which is to say it was fantastic: pink flamingos, baskets of candy, mirrors, fixtures. Box wine in the fridge. Bad (good) TV.

Me'n' Eir bunking with Billy and Sam(antha). Gave her the glittery Sid T-shirt I'd promised.

Quick change then it was off to cocktails, which meant Black-and-Tan, which also meant Ben-n-Sandra, Chris Turco, Sara Doyle, Chad Sine and scores of others. It also meant a walk to the dock behind Sandra's parents' cottage.

Back at the hotel with Turco in tow. SLF blasting at inhuman levels. More substances. Then 'private time' with Eir then the best sleep I'd had in ages.

Next day: fetching guitars from Roman Wheels. Practice with Turco, he learns the song quick and we run thru it two more times. It'll be alright, yeah. First time I've ever been nervous about playing music in front of people in upwards of a decade. Trip to town. Amazingly well-kept old buildings and businesses. And people.

6:30PM. And here's where I'll slow down. We arrive at the site, lakeside with black and white umbrellas, hanging lanterns, an i-pod. Wine Spritzer. Beer. Kebabs. Salads. Messages to the couple typed in red ink on 30s-era typewriters. Billy's steel drums in front of a tree, about a yard away from where the wedding ceremony is to take place. Here's where I'll really slow down. I swear. The ceremony is in the Quaker tradition, which means that the congregation forms a circle around the couple, who stand in silence for about fifteen minutes, then say their vows.

It's an intense fifteen minutes. Later I'll tell my pals that I had been chopping onions. The silence is broken by what sounds like an vocoder voice reading a poem (but it was an actual person, who I actually met later), then a woman reads Shelley, and I think about when I first met Ben in 1988, a gangly teenage mess of thick shoes and blonde frightwig, and how he's the sweetest, most talented man I've known. I really start weeping. Another reader, another poem. Chris signals to me, and we sit down on a rock with our guitars and play The Gathering Storm, an ancient Appalachian folksong. My voice breaks, then I'm thru it and it feels like something else is playing the song but using me as an instrument yes an instrument and the song's playing me which only happens once in a great while and when it happens it really happens.

And we finish and Billy starts playing a beautiful Tom Waits song on his steel drums and I'm thinking a million thoughts at once, but mostly I'm thinking about how I've been to dozens of weddings and how maybe three of them have felt this right.