Some Feelings on Baltimore Round Robin: Feet Night

The Baltimore Round Robin has caused some heated and even somewhat rabid discussion on the interwebs today about the difference between the Detroit scene and the Baltimore scene. I have nothing else to say about that.

To be honest, reading these territorial pissings on the blogs started to make me forget how much fun I had over the past two nights. So screw writing a few thoughts on Feet Night. I’m going to try to write a few feelings on the night. That’s where the event really got me, anyway. It was a party for the soul, not the head.

1. I felt giddy and excited to have the opportunity to go nuts and sweat it out on the dance floor with a bunch of strangers, which I haven’t really done at a show in awhile. Sometimes I was up front and had enough room to do more than just jump around–you know, maybe move my hips and slide my feet a bit, do a little hand motion thingy, or a half arm-to-shoulder wave motion maneuver. Other times I was in the middle of a crowd thrashing and jumping about pushing and shoving, and could feel the sweat soaking through people’s shirts when tossed up against them by others in the crowd. I felt a punch to the earplug that sidelined me for about 10 minutes. I felt strangers’ sweat falling on me, and it felt not bad.

2. The visuals: Some of the projected videos playing over the musicians had so many hilarious images and ideas that they caused me to nearly belly laugh a few times. That video with the falcon zooming up and down, then with an Evil Lynn looking lady walking the middle, turning into a skeleton after a few minutes, with little pterodactyls flying around on the left and right of the lady, or something like that. Seriously, I was mesmerized. I was thinking so little and enjoying so much that I can’t remember the whole thing. I just remember the parts described above and being wowwed.

3. When Dan Deacon stopped the music and turned on the lights and asked everybody to get to one side of the room, then got a couple of people to join hands up in the air to create that human tunnel, and we started joining in and created a tunnel that took us out of the building, onto the street, back into the museum and back onto the dance floor, I felt kind of uncomfortable at first holding someone else’s hands and waiting it out until everybody got through and it was my turn to run through again. But then I just started to dance with the person as people were running under our arms, and that was fun, but then my arms got really tired, so I tried to dance through the tunnel when it was my turn again instead of running like some of the others were because I thought that it would rest my arms a bit and knew I’d be one of the last ones to continue the tunnel to the end. I was. Third to last. But it felt good to be the anchor, I guess, and it was definitely one of the coolest things that’s ever happened at a concert. I’m glad I didn’t sit that one out.

4. When Benjamin Franklin Beast of Showbeast gave an opening speech before showing his film, he talked about how we have to be like Kevin McCallister fleeing from the Wet Bandits of our lives, or something like that, and at that moment I forgot about any of my ambitions or my stress at work or my inability to effectively communicate with the people I love, or my self-consciousness when I write, and how I’m always afraid of offending somebody and not very courageous, and how I don’t generally do a very good job of dealing with the world or the people around me, and thought that maybe I should revisit Home Alone and try to learn some new life lessons.*

5. When “Funny Clown” came out in his red leotard and stood right next to me sitting on the floor (really, really close next to me), I felt a little bit uncomfortable, but ultimately, ok.

*^{And yes, I know, this was a thought, not a feeling.}