(no subject)

[avevale_intelligencer]

There are two ways you can remember someone who's gone, and both of them can be good. One, you can stop the world, bring everything to a grinding halt and drape it in black while with measured phrases and solemn expressions you make it clear to everyone around you that something irreplaceable has been ripped out of your world and nothing can ever be the same again. Or two, you can go on exactly as you would have, but with an added zest and meaning lent to everything you do by the fact that this life in which we all swirl about and occasionally bump up against each other is such a cruelly temporary thing and so easily taken away by the stupidity of a moment.

Duple Time, the twenty-fourth British filk convention, should have been Keris's con. He masterminded the bid, was Chairbeing and practically sole member of the con committee, apart from his sister Hilary Ann, whose title was Official Nagger, and Soir whom I apologise for forgetting. For many of us it would have been the next time we saw him, if only from a distance as he moved from room to bar to main hall, quietly, efficiently keeping the wheels turning. Concom are always busy, and he would have been doubly so having to be in charge of tech as well. We might have thought to ourselves "Well, I'll ring him" or "I'll email him" or even "maybe we'll get a chance to chat next year." I don't like to think of the number of people I've said that to in the past three days.

And then some fool, whose name I shall never know nor seek to know, decided that they were in too much of a hurry to slow down for another vehicle emerging from a junction, pulled out round the bonnet of the other car and took him away from us in one smashing blow. And for a little while the convention hung in the balance. It would have been easy to let it go, drop it for this one year, break the unbroken succession of filk cons since 1989 and leave a gap in honour of his memory, an empty space draped in black. Maybe there would have been one next year.

But Hilary Ann and her heart-sister Donna are wiser than that, and the rest of us did what we do when we are at our best and stepped up to offer our help. Mike Whitaker, Paul Bristow and Rika Koerte (and Azakir who also escaped what passes for my mind) joined the committee, Simon Fairbourn, Deborah Crook and Rick Hewett took charge of tech, and we all decided to make this con the second kind of memorial, the best damn con it could be in his honour. And I think it worked.

I'm not going to list everything that happened, because for a start I wasn't at everything, so these are going to be general notes. The hotel was the Ramada in Grantham, which despite the portrait of Thatcher in the lobby (understandable, I suppose) is rapidly becoming "our" hotel, the one we come to every February as German filkers return to the Freusburg in the autumn, and where we know the welcome will be warm and the breakfasts good. One member of staff I spoke to said that he always looks forward to our weekends; that feeling is entirely mutual.

The British guest was Lissa Allcock, and if you had mentioned to Lissa Blackburn twenty or so years ago that one day she would be singing in her own guest of honour slot in front of a hundred appreciative fans I think she might have been openly derisive. Lissa has been a mainstay of filkdom for at least that long, soliciting memberships and donations to the Filk Fund with quiet determination coupled with a wicked laugh and a Willow smile it's virtually impossible to refuse, and in recent years she's come out from behind her drum kit and displayed a voice of remarkable purity and sweetness. She showed this off to great effect in her two sets, and I hope she will continue to do so for many a year.

The American guest was a revelation to me as well. I've heard about Mary Crowell quite a lot in recent years, but we don't get to American cons that much, so I'd never actually heard her sing. She's a doctor (of musical composition; thanks, howeird) from Alabama, and when I saw and heard her for the first time my mind immediately flashed to the old stereotype of crinolines and fans (the other kind) and cotillions in great plantation houses, but any cotillion this lady might attend would swiftly turn into something far less formal and more fun (possibly a shindig), and the fan would be hiding a truly evil grin. She plays the piano in a jazzy-bluesy style that made me want to be able to do that (not that I ever could) and her songs are beautiful and funny and raunchy by turns. I went and grabbed her album "Courting My Muse" from the dealer's room as soon as I'd heard her first set, and so did pretty much everybody else.

Our Footloose Filker this year was Sebastian Kinder, son of Bine, who apparently wants to kill his parents with a chainsaw (but not all the time). I didn't catch all his set, but from what I did hear he's good, and his Sam award for the chainsaw song was well-deserved.

Other new albums at this con included Talis's "Queen Of Spindles", about which more in another post, and my own rehashed "Filk Of Human Kindness," about which I've probably said far too much already. My fellow Cosmic Triflers, Chris, Valerie and Silke, kindly helped me out in my set on Sunday morning, in which I sang some of the songs from my next album "Owls" (due out in June with a following wind) which seemed to go down well. Other sets, most of which I missed for various reasons, were given by (among others) Valerie, Steffi, Mike Richards and a new heavy metal band named Castrophony, who seem to have a lot of energy and made us laugh. Sadly, Lissa's first guest spot on Saturday night was also the swan song for Phoenix, who were the first actual filk-rock band in Britain and paved the way for all these youngsters and long-haired fellers. I'm not worried, though. I know a thing about Phoenixes and endings. That James Whitaker is a dashed good drummer, and young Jared Walker sounds uncannily like his dad, as he proved when they duetted on "Superman's Sex Life Boogie." (But can he play the plumpet?)

There were many more highlights, about which better writers than I will doubtless tell you. And of course there was sadness, the "Absent Friends" chair next to the tech desk a sobering reminder that more than one beloved filker has gone on ahead to make sure the great Con Hotel in the sky has enough mushrooms for breakfast. So next year, when we return to Grantham (and please gods we all will) for Quarter Tone, the twenty-fifth anniversary con, to hear FanTom and Cat Faber and all our brilliant and talented friends again, don't be saying as you stand around in the lobby on Monday morning "Maybe we'll get a chance to talk properly next year." Make the time. Talk. Hug. Jam. Be in the moment, with friends you love, and treasure it. Because the best memorial of all is to make new memories.

Thanks to pola_bear for pointing out some of my omissions. I also left out the suave and charming Franklin as MC, the scarily talented Nat whom I want to do arrangements for (if only so I can work out what the rhythm in that Changes song should be), Doug whose set I also missed, and so, so much more. I can only apologise. (If there was paid work in apologising I'd be made for life, I tell you...and yes, I've thought about politics, but there are limits even to my abilities.)

Comments

[legoline.livejournal.com]

don't be saying as you stand around in the lobby on Monday morning "Maybe we'll get a chance to talk properly next year." Make the time. Talk. Hug. Jam. Be in the moment, with friends you love, and treasure it. Because the best memorial of all is to make new memories.

I guess this is the lesson we all bitterly learned this year. Last year at Freusburg I was too ill to do the Kazenjammer songs in the circle, so I told him we'd do it in Grantham or at DFDF. I'll regret that forever, even though it's such a stupid small thing to regret in comparison to the loss other people have suffered.

[pola-bear.livejournal.com]

*lots of hugs*

I just want to point out that Soir was always on the concom with Keris and Hilary for the con, and worked hard and Chris Smith also joined the back up committee and did a great job on the publications.

Thanks for saying we made you laugh, it was hard to be sure from stage. I am so glad we went through with it, even as I think I had be storing up some of my grief in order to be able to get through and perform it without him and that has been coming out since. If that makes sense.

This is a lovely report, thank you for writing it.

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

You were great. And I still think you should do Persuasion with Peter as Garitan accompanying himself on the kick drum. "LISTEN ONLY TO ME (BOOM!!)..."

[howeird]

Thank you for a touching posting. Fandom, especially filk fandom, knows how to keep the memories alive in the best ways. There were some kind words for Keris during the filk circles at Seattle's Conflikt con two weekends ago.

One minor semi-hemi-demi correction. Mary's doctorate is in music composition. Her husband Wesley is the medical doctor. She does have all the Southern charm you read of in the story books, a very warm human being.

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

Thanks. I didn't catch her subject, so just put "doctor."

[deborah_c]

Simon and I had both realised how much Keris had taken on as soon as the bid was announced last year, and separately taken him aside for a Quiet Chat, so he wouldn't have had to run the sound desk this year, at least!

[seticat.livejournal.com]

[hoists a shot of Tulley in memoriam, knocks it back and thinks fondly of 'Absent Friends']