Kaylee was one of New Zealand’s periodic ‘pop ingenues’ from our vast and booming ‘manufactured pop music’ sub-industry. She covered ‘Broken Wings’ and for about two weeks it was inescapable. Then it was gone.
I loved that track. Her voice was so damn fragile and unprofessional – almost fit to shatter in the high bits – that it communicated more than proper-singer-type Hayley Westenra ever could, no matter how much she furrowed her brow. Of course, Hayley would have been trying, whereas Kaylee couldn’t help sounding like that. I didn’t care. (Still didn’t buy the single though.)
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So we took Chuck to a Ceilidh on Saturday night. Great fun. Held in an old stone church (NB in this country, ‘old’ and ‘stone’ are redundant descriptors for a church). You pay yer money to get in the door, and push through a curtain into the darkened shell of the church, with a stage up at the altar end and tables all around the periphery. The entire bodylength of the church is the dance floor.
The bar runs all night. A band strikes up the rhythms from the front, sometimes old-time traditional, sometimes (as this time) throwing in plenty of modern-rock/pop flourishes along the way. And everyone gets out in the dancefloor and dances.
The band usually call the dance in advance, walking everyone through it, but almost all the locals know almost all the dances. They’re the traditional dances, handed down through generations. Usually you’re in sets of four or five couples, sometimes all the couples are together in one big circle. The music strikes up and you’re off, spinning and moving in and back, ducking under linked hands and through arches, whirling each other around, moving from partner to partner. It’s awesome fun and great exercise.
If you watch the men in kilts carefully, the ones who *really* know what they’re doing, you can answer the question of what they wear under the kilt. At least, that’s what Cal told me.
And to finish, of course, Auld Lang Syne, all holding hands, starting sentimental and getting progressively rowdy until it’s basically a giant folk-mosh. Then out, grinning and turning into the chill night, and away.
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Caroline/Cal is my girlfriend. Or, according to certain medical personnel, my “partner”. Just by the way.
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My last ramble produced a lot of commentary. Which is always good. I’ll try and make some sense of it here. As usual, thinking this up as I go, so I might contradict myself and be just plain wrong. All part of the fun. All of this in the full entry…