Monday, August 29, 2011

Donna took me to dinner again: cheeseburgers, frenchfries, coffee and Stevie Nicks Live in Boston



After dinner we arrived at the concert an hour early to hear Ms. Nicks performing a sound check on stage, during which we heard her speaking voice and the beginning of Standback. We were priviledged to a live rehearsal version, which consisted mostly of her talking into the microphone in preparation. Donna asked, "Is she talking now?"
While Stevie Nicks was on stage, I watched Donna sing Dreams, Leather and Lace and Landslide. We had spent the hurricane together and when we woke up together at its onset, my thinking that the winds would increase, which they really didn't, it seemed that the storm was real, not just a tropical storm warning- in short, as a couple, we are improving on things that we accomplish together. Stevie Nicks announced on stage that we were lucky the flood didn't cancel the show. It was held in a section of Boston that Donna and I hadn't been to before as a couple, so to be honest, I told her that the bus ride through a concrete tunnel was just enough to make things seem new before her and I visit the ocean on Cape Ann next week.
Stevie Nicks ended the show with a ballad and The Edge of Seventeen, her improvising the line, "I know what it sounds like." I did, in a solitary way, happen rise from my chair to get on my feet and applaud when she announced the name Waddy Wattel.
Donna had said "I love you very much" as the show began. She had to go to the lavatory in between two songs, only to find out it was the beginning of Rhiannon, which too worked well. She said "Oh, I love this song." and I watched Stevie Nicks perform the beginning of the song while waiting for her and we briskly returned to our seats, directly, walking together and finding our seat despite that it was the first time both of us had been there together. During the concert it was easier for her to see in the seat that I had, so I stood in back of her with my arms around her.
The intellectual causes of Stevie Nicks: (do your own thing is one archaic perspective- apparently she gets into benefits for the USO) rather than the enviornment she postulated the song "Soldier's Angel", which Donna and I talked about after leaving the concert area, and mentioned that she doesn't know what a "dot org is". Not all of us over 45 dismiss the internet that readily, but think, she meets alot of people, which itself is valuable, to her and to us. Is her art essential and, is it important that we embrace the internet because we will only be here on earth for a limited, if not short, time? Probably. But her art- its value may be inestimable whether you see that immediately or not. Her voice was trademark: one or two long held notes every now and then that seemed ethereal. There was some visual art-light and color patterns and it included some gothic motifs. She was in black during most of the concert, while dancing freeform, wearing gloves I believe; she was dressed in white with images of doves as the concert was to conclude.
In regard to our marrying, we didn't say very much about it, other than that that morning she had ebulliently said that if she could get back to a weight of 124 she would be more than glad to marry me, and I had mentioned that there wasn't much time before the concert. At the concert, she mostly said that I was the cutest male at the show, her having it mentioned it three times, and yet there being little mention of us marrying. (Or that Stevie Nicks had just performed the ceremony at a love-in).
On stage, she said, "I was hit in the head by the microphone. I'm ok". I turned to Donna and said, "Did you hear that?"
Toward the end of the concert I felt a fondness for the performer, the word legend having come to mind. Mostly during The Edge of Seventeen. I stared directly toward her, thinking that her and I had not "laid eyes on each other before". Then she began to twirl and I felt a softer emotion for the singer that I have listened to for years.

Scott Lord