Sunday, December 14, 2008

Lava and Toshi Reagon

Last night, I had two amazing experiences on two ends of the color spectrum: one involved warm, smooth brownness and the other cold, glittery whiteness.

I drove to North Adams to see Lava perform at MassMoCa. If you ever get a chance to see "Lava" perform, you should take it. Six female dancer/acrobats, performing feats of incredible strength and agility, while Toshi Reagon's amazing music throbs loudly.

The hottest woman on the planet is, without doubt, Toshi Reagon.

She's butch, smooth satiny brown skin, shaved head, a voice like an angel, soft sensuous lips and a beautiful thick body. Even her speaking voice is melodic - I could listen to her for hours. My two friends and I were sitting in the front row, so there were occasions when we lived in fear of our lives from the tumbling acrobatics, but even that added to the overall thrill. Plus afterward there were Q and A and I sat RIGHT OPPOSITE THE GODDESS HERSELF!! I had seen Toshi perform recently at the IMA in Goshen, MA with Staceyann Chin just a few weeks ago. After the performance, she was hanging out awkwardly next to the table where her CD was being sold. Even more awkwardly, I introduced myself to her and told her what a big fan I was. (My friend, MM, told me that the only reason I wore a scarf was to catch the drool from sitting in such close proximity to Toshi all night!) So, last night, trying to find a pretext to talk to her, I had to go and tell her that I loved her new CD...and she looked at me like I was a wild-eyed stalker. I suspect that she's actually quite shy when she's not on stage. At any rate, I think I'm done stalking Toshi. She's not taking too kindly to it and my usual comfort with talking to people completely disappears when I'm in her presence and I just look like a fat, drooling, crazy-eyed old white woman, with a lecherous lear and unattractive spittle running down my chin.

While it was an experience of a different kind, the drive there and back was spectacular. As those of you who don't live in New England may have heard, parts of Massachusetts were just hit with an amazing ice storm that has taken out power for thousands of people - apparently one million at least in Western Massachusetts - ...the devastation from the ice was incredible! I'm living in a relatively sheltered part of the valley and we didn't get hit too hard by the storm: but driving along the Route 2 corridor last night was just stunning. At higher altitudes the ice was 2 inches thick on slender tree branches. Huge maples bent over to meet the ground, weighed down by the weight of the ice. And, it was a full moon, so everything sparkled eerily by moonlight. We drove slowly because of downed tree limbs and wires, but also because we just couldn't NOT drink in the beauty of the darkly glittering ice. If you've ever driven down the Route 2 corridor down into North Adams you'll have some picture of what that might look like. When you're down in the valleys, the towering hills rise up sharply either side of the road..and last night they looked like one huge icicle. When you're up on top of the Florida mountain, it felt like you were on a huge iceberg...everything coated with thick ice as far as the eye could see. Not snow...ice. A vastly different experience than seeing a snow-scape.

Anyway, goodbye Toshi. I'm letting go of my crush and moving on.