hathor's hallow (Patreon)

We threw a Halloween party last night, and it went well. I'm still processing it, but it feels pretty good. Nobody got hurt (except for a minor hot glue gun incident), and I'm pretty sure everybody had a sweet time.

Sara and I had been talking about throwing a Halloween party back in early September, but couldn't find a venue for it. We had sort of given up in mid-October and started talking about scaling it way down to 6 or so guests for a spooky-music-potluck-thing in my apartment. Then, a friend of ours offered to host a house party, with live music in the garage, and we said "Yeah, ok, yeah."

Most of the first week was rapid-fire conceptualizing, moving pallets to build the stage, blacking out the walls with 42 gallon contractor bags, ordering blacklights, and painting neon on cardboard. I got sick for 3 days while the weather was hovering around 30 degrees. The fresh snow over packed ice on my roads was too slick to maneuver, so I missed a lot of the early work. Sara and April held it down while I stayed home and made a relevant zine (I'll send copies out after I clean my dang house).

I was able to drive into town on Monday, take the zine to the print shop, and stop by work to drop them off, when the starter died in the jeep I was borrowing from my boss. It couldn't have happened in a better place, but the timing was unfortunate. I swapped it out for the 2-wheel drive box van and we kept plugging along. I live up some pretty steep icy hills so we called on April to move the drum set & amps from my apartment the next day. Bless.

(I spent the week parking at the bottom of the hills and hiking home with my headlamp and foot grips. It was pretty beautiful, if unnerving to be wandering the woodland neighborhoods alone at night. I always think of pushing my bike along the trail back from Eklutna lake, 4 miles to go, all alone under the full moon two winter solstices ago when I feel spooked by the quiet of night. I cried mostly because I was alone, and because I was tired, and vulnerable, and cold, and I cried until I decided I didn't want to anymore and I was done, and then everything was still & there was beauty all around me. There seems to be some significant grey area between spooky and peaceful.)

So, we got the gear to the venue, put some screws in the stage to make it more stable & stage-like, painted it black. Sara found a rug at the dump and cleaned it up. We set up the gear, and tore it down, and set it up again. I put glow tape on all the open pallet slats for party-safe-safety. We rested as best we could. I had some scary stuff happen to my body that I almost don't remember. We lost a friend. I think somewhere in all of this we started to need the party that we had previously wanted, and that was good because it was really going to happen. We got a good sound check in on Thursday. My high E string broke near the end of our rehearsal & I took it to Music Mart on Friday to get my strings changed. Things always break when you're trying to do something.

Saturday morning, I packed up my costume, all the cords and dongles we still needed, some strange books, my computer, a small mirror, an obsidian rock, sandalwood incense, my toothbrush, clothes for after the party, a comp book & small legal pad, hand warmers, two headlamps, field recorder & tripod, a spool, makeup box, a large toy soldier, a pair of scissors, and some snacks and hiked it all down to the van. Sara spent the day blacking out the garage door and hanging up black lights and final decorations while I watered the plants at work and printed overdraft fees to shoot out of my money gun.

And then it all happened, like it was always going to, and already has.

At our third live performance ever as Psychic Spychick, we played our longest set yet: 8 songs, plus a surprise 9th. We invited J Brig up to play with us for our last song, then J Brig invited us up to play with him for his last song. We had a costume contest dance-off. The host got to jam on the drums with his favorite guitarist. A man dressed as NATO gave a speech and recited a powerful poem. DJ Paranorma sculpted the vibe while our friends drank and talked and danced and made merry. Our good friends of Dilemma came from their gig across town and closed out the night. I am so pleased with the quality of hang we achieved together in this funky space we built. It takes many hands to do good work. Thanks for being there, even vicariously through this post if you weren't there in the flesh.

Let's do it again sometime. Happy Halloween.