Pondering Circles and Time, Music and Friends
This last weekend was great. It did my heart good to hear live music---particularly when it was the Martyrs and 3/4 of the Vertebrats. Ahhhhhh. We loved having people over for brunch too----thanks to everybody that came and ate and brought food and drink and flowers and worcestershire sauce and good cheer. I missed lots of good pictures....I should have made V'ron come down! And evidently the stars were aligned as it turned out that one of our guests is a walking mine of Lego information. My beloved Annette accurately named him 'The Lego Whisperer." Leo, Eamon and Simon were very happy. Thank you Todd for your kindness and patience!
Since there were no pictures of Kenny in my Friday night roundup, here are a couple from Saturday night. The song Kenny wrote about Van pretty much tears me up. You did good Kenny. Really, really good.
At the Highdive the other night I felt a little wistful sometimes as I looked at the lineup of four Brandabur siblings together. I'm envious. And watching Matt and Kenny and Jimmy---or the four Martyrs---it also feels as though you're watching a family. My sister Debbie and I feel so small as a family now. The loss of Judi and my parents, coupled with the loss of a friendship that had given me a sense of extended family has made me much more aware of those familial (whether based on blood or not) bonds. And perhaps that's why I treasure even more the circle of friends I have.
It's interesting to watch.....years ago there were all these little related circles of friends that made one big circle. As people drop out of those individual circles, it's as though we're forming a new, smaller and tighter circle as opposed to the big circle of old. Does that make any sense? I think that accounts for the bonds I feel with some people that I never really knew that intimately before....I guess it's the shared history that creates that intimacy.
On Sunday I asked Kent how often he and the other Martyrs had gotten together to prepare for these shows and I was amazed to hear that they hadn't spent a lot of time playing before this because they sounded incredibly tight. As he said though, they spent so many hours learning and playing together years ago that it just came back. "Muscle memory", as Paul Budin added. I guess that's what we are all feeling....
And I gotta say....I heard 999 do this song at Mabel's WAY back in the day and I don't think they did it any better than the Martyrs did....