Last night was the Sneak A Peak for the Calgary Stampede. To many people, this is what the world knows about our city. (That and the ‘88 Olympics, anyway!) From living here for the past 6.5(!) years, I’ve come to suspect that while most Calgarians will grumble about the start of this week and a half fair, I think that they secretly like it.

I like how the city dresses up. It’s like a big party. Guys in suits and cowboy boots, girls with straw hats and plaid, straw bales on every corner. I love how the whole city seems to get into the spirit, from the decorated windows, to the Stampede Breakfasts in every quadrant. Sure, the traffic really stinks. Sure, there are loads of overindulging folks roaming the streets. And I sure don’t want to be anywhere NEAR downtown on parade day. But it’s cool living somewhere where a summer rodeo is big enough to take over the majority of its’ 1,000,000 residents.

So, last night was the unofficial “first night”, and we went down to the grounds to check out the Western Showcase… where the knitted things live! I had entered two projects this year:

My Charisma sweater, in the textured/garment category.

And my Pecan Pie beret, in the colourwork/accessories category.

The cool thing? Each won second in their respective categories. I am truly an “award-winning” knitter.

Make One Yarnies really represented. Marilynn won best of knitting, along with a lovely 1st for her Phoenix Rising Year of Lace shawl. Leanne took second in the same category for her bison Heartland Shawl, and Michelle won first for her lovely cabled socks in texture/accessories. My friend Leslie also won for two felted purses.

But seriously, folks, you have to enter something next year. It doesn’t cost much, it’s a kick to see your stuff “in public”, and we really need to make a better showing. Two glass cabinets for a city’s worth of knitting and crochet? I don’t think so! And lest you think that you need to craft the ultimate masterpiece to enter, fear not! One of the other entries was a simple dishcloth. And there was a lot of acrylic.

So make it a goal for 2009, ok?

In other news, I enjoyed not only Beef on a Bun last night, but a small bag of Mini Donuts. And to the girls at the shop, they so do have funnel cakes at the stampede! I can’t believe y’all had never heard of them! After wandering around a bit, we went to Nashville North for beers and country music, but the music wasn’t all that great. I think we’re going to try to return when Aaron Pritchett is there, or Emerson Drive. We had the opportunity to see Aaron back at the Gay Rodeo four years ago and he was really a great live performer. Plus, there’s always the coolness that a country singer takes a gig at the Gay Rodeo. There’s still a lot of homophobia in that business, as well as among the fans. But, I believe it’s changed a lot since K.D. Lang came out. Hopefully.

So, I have some pictures to show you but can’t find my camera cable for my little sony. Getting a small digital camera that fits in my pocket has truly changed my world. No more lugging around the big guns for every day occasions. On the other hand, I feel like I’m drowning in photographs.

Off to shower and then to shop. Must. Have. New clothing for work on monday!

You could go back through my life and document it with indigo girls songs, for the number of times a particular song has meant a particular something to me. Here’s a brief and non-comprehensive list:

“Romeo & Juliet”, from Rites of Passage, cover of the Dire Straights Song
circa 1993

This got me through my breakup with my first boyfriend and subsequent stalking by someone I thought was a friend. It meant a ton to me until the stalker started quoting it about me and him, and started driving an hour and a half to get to my house “just because”. Oddly enough, I got over that association and promptly started loving it again the second I heard Amy Ray sing it at a concert a few years later.

“The Wood Song”, from Swamp Ophelia
circa 1996

I remember laying in the top bunk of the dorm room I shared with Melissa our sophomore year. I don’t remember now what I had the Angst about, but I had the Angst. And big time. Not the words, but the music, really got me. When I was alone, I played it on repeat for about two weeks. Good times.

“Shame On You”, from Shaming of the Sun
circa 1998

Ah. Coming out of the closet. Along with country music, this album got me through that summer in the Twin Cities when I discovered this new and interesting thing about myself. I was 20. I was on a summer internship. I spent a lot of time to myself, driving around the city. Pretty much every song on this album reminds me of that time, but none other reminds me of the excitement I felt about this new world opening up. Too many times, we focus on the negatives of coming out to yourself; telling family, friends who may not understand, the social stigma still present everywhere. There’s also another side to it; a joy, a greater understanding of all the possibilities open to you. I wrote to a friend recently, describing how my first relationship with a girl that year still contains similar sweet memories to my first little boyfriend in high school. Something new. And fun. And innocent. “Shame on You” is a joyful song, about not caring what people think, about being yourself and enjoying life. And it’s one of the first songs I heard with a moment of unabashed lesbian lyrics; “The beautiful ladies walk right by, you know I never know what to say.” Now, imagine hundreds of women shouting this out during Lilith Fair and you’ll get an inkling about how I remember that summer.

“Galileo”, from Rites of Passage
circa 1998

God, I was obsessed with this song that fall. I had come out. I was studying fiction writing with Phillip Graham, and I’d found myself with two really great writer friends, Dave and Kristine. We did everything together at first, eventually, Dave and I found ourselves to be the closer ones. I spent this semester - and the next - writing and revising a short story I called “Galileo Dreaming”. It was about first love, and it was awful. (I know some of you have read it - please don’t comment - it was truly awful!) Part of the problem is that my fiction (and probably any author’s) is never all that good when you try to use reality as a basis for the story. This is a valuable lesson for me to have learned. Poor Phillip had to read about a dozen iterations of the same story that year, and I think he was pretty fed up at the end. A lot of this song relates to that questioning part of my life. “How long til my soul gets it right?” evokes such a gut reaction from me even still.

“Johnny Rottentail”, from Stag (Amy Ray solo album)
circa 2001

I met Jenn during an Amy Ray show in San Francisco. It was a small, dirty, crowded club and I was pushed up against the stage. She was chosen, probably for being a loudly and proudly Canadian, to come up and play the cowbell. It wasn’t during this song, but this is the one I remember the most from that show. Amy generally performs it solo, just her and her mandolin. As the song gets more intense, she speeds up, pounding her leg into the stage to keep the beat. I remember being enthralled by her during this performance, the energy, the passion, the anger. There’s a lot of anger in a lot of Amy’s songs. And, like many of her songs, it’s not a fraction as good on the recording as it is live.

“Let It Ring”, from Prom, (Amy Ray solo album)
circa 2007

Seeing Amy perform this live on the Olivia cruise January 2007 will probably rank in the top 10 experiences of my life. The auditorium only holds about 650 people, and the acoustics were brilliantly perfect. The whole show was a treat; I’d never remembered hearing them sound so good. (Outdoor shows and small clubs aren’t known for great acoustics.) Amy introduced this song as one off her recent solo album, and I kind of groaned, not really having listened to it much. But with her first few words, I was entranced. The song is about bigotry and hate. It’s an incredibly brave, incredibly intense, statement of individual freedom. Hearing her sing that in a room filled with many women who had struggled through much harder times than I’d ever experienced, hearing her sing so strong she was almost screaming, well, I’ll never forget that.

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These days, I find I go in cycles with their music. It either makes sense to me, almost as if it’s a part of me, or I find I listen mostly to other things. I don’t have a song “du jour”, but maybe in a few years, I’ll look back and find that something really did resonate with me during that summer of 2008. Who knows.

As most of you know, indigirl comes from the indigo girls. It was the name of my computer terminal back at Cray Research in Minnesota, and it’s stuck with me ever since. Before I had a blog, indigirl.com had a lot of stuff on it about the indigo girls. Really geeky stuff. Just short of fan fiction.

There are many reasons I love them, but one of the biggest is how, sometimes out of the blue, one of their songs feels just perfect for my life. Yesterday I was listening to a car cd I’d made recently and “Fill It Up Again” came on. I’ve known all the lyrics for just about forever, and it’s on the store stereo all the time. The weird thing yesterday is that when it started playing, I was instantly back in this place I was a few years back. As I sang the words, it felt exactly like I was reliving some of the emotions from that time in my life. And I remembered exactly how I felt when I realized, at the time, that the song could have been written by me; it was that true.

I love how music has that power, to transport you someplace else, or to make your life feel all that much more vivid. This song, back then, had the effect of empowering me to find myself again. I got lost for a little while. I thought that the answer to every mess I’d made so far in my life was to get as far from it as possible. I even remember so clearly the first time I really heard this song. Sure, I’d had it memorized for months, but it didn’t sink in until the folk festival that year. I remember sitting on the blanket with Sandra, alternately getting stuck inside my head and talking things through with her. And they played this song. And every word made sense to me.

So you can probably understand why I was more than a little disturbed when I had that sense of deja vu yesterday. It threw me off for a couple of hours. And I’m in such a different, and very very happy, place these past few years.

Maybe we have to go through a proper grieving process when getting over our pasts. And maybe this song resonated with me yesterday to remind me of how much I can accept and feel at peace, in contrast to that earlier chaos.

I don’t know if you all have gone through a time of personal crisis, or if you even knew that I went through one. My blog posts from that time were erratic, but then, they generally are.

It’s not fun. I refer to that point in my life as “when I was crazy”, and it makes my mother really mad. I wasn’t clinically nuts. They wouldn’t commit me, although I did try for a few days. (How easy would it be to have no choices whatsoever when you feel like that? To have everyone else taking care of you?) Midlife crisis a few years early. I don’t know. And who knows why it even happened? Maybe we all get to a point where we either bend or break. I broke for a bit. And then I got better. And then everything got a lot better than it had ever been.

Looking back, I can appreciate that it gave me the opportunity to really choose my life. To take stock in what’s important and choose how to go forward, rather than just be pulled along in the ebb and flow of life. I can value this now in a way I never could before.

So, if “Fill It Up Again” still makes sense to me, it’s in a way that reflects my history and not my present (or future). And I’m perfectly ok with that.

This is one of the most revealing - and personal - posts I’ve ever written. If I decide to take it down, I hope you’ll understand. It’s weird talking about bad times when you’re no longer in them, isn’t it?