Temple of Fantasy

I'm happier today than I have been in a while.  Maybe content is the word.  Fully comfortable in my own skin.  No doubts anymore.  :-)

I had a really great day today.  Jan and I went to the Temple of Fantasy, the fantasy fair (Ren fair) that was held this weekend at the Pieterskerk.  We were there when the doors opened at 11.  Everyone was dressed up, and there were tons of vendors selling their wares.  Jewelry, books, clothes, candles, statues, POI!  :-)  

There were also bands playing.  I'm generally really picky when it comes to music, especially live music.  And I'm particularly skeptical when the genre is referred to as "Neo-Pagan."  Not to say Pagan music is bad as a genre, it's just that when it's bad, it's BAAAD.  There were two bands today:  Rapalje and Omnia  

The first was a really solidly great Celtic band.  Lots of flute and drum and bagpipe.  Wonderful vocals, hilarious antics.  Good times.  I'm definitely going to look into them some more.

But truthfully Omnia was the one that sort of blew me away.  As I said, I was extremely skeptical at first, especially when I saw the lead singer.  He wore a long black coat, black pants, a long brown loin cloth made of leather, a top hat, with long red dreds and brown feathers falling down his back.  I thought, "Meh, just another Goth kid who wants to be noticed.  This might suck."  But I was wrong.

I'm not a fan of the "Goth" look generally.  It tends to reflect a certain lack of self esteem, I think, and I'm just plain annoyed with people who refuse to see anything but black in life.  But these guys wore it well.  They weren't trying to be weird, not trying to be something they weren't.  They just WERE weird.  Haha.  And they weren't dark; they actually had an amazing sense of humor.  Hilarious.

In the end though, I was really impressed by their musical talent.  They didn't just look cool and make noise, they were tight.  Their voices were all beautiful, and flexible, and their harmonies were spotless.  Musically their songs were complicated and interesting.  There was no Gothic Black Fluff here.  These guys were talented and made what I can honestly call music!

The lead singer, Sic, even recited The Raven by Edgar Allen Poe to music.  Frankly, this poem has ALWAYS gotten on my nerves.  I don't like the meter, and the repetition has always grated on my nerves.  The whole audience sat down, and I thought "Oh, here we go.  Dark black, raven, death, blood, gloom."  But I was absolutely mesmerized by him.  The poem comes to life when recited to music.  It works perfectly.  And Sic brought it to life.  It wasn't just the over-dramatized gasping of a man with too much eyeliner.  This was truly art!  I was literally breathless by the end.  :-)

They just take you by the core and shake you around.  The music takes them over, and they send it deep inside you and you can't resist it.  And you don't want to.  I haven't heard such a talented group of musicians in a long time.  

So, yes, that was the day.  Jan and I wandered the booths looking at all the little trinkets.  He found a really amazing ankh necklace for me, but then was haunted by Egyptian stuff.  Ankhs kept jumping out at him at every booth.  I played around with all sorts of different types of poi, and finally decided on some nice flag poi.  They look like wings when I spin them!  They're red with black trim.  Normally wouldn't have been my very first choice (I personally loved the lapis blue with green trim) but they'll look so cool with my belly dance costume that I just had to.  Now I have two pairs of poi (I have some hand-made ribbon poi that Robert got for me at a Fantasy Fair in Spain not to long ago) that will look amazing if I can ever perform.  :-)  

Jan and I had an amazing lunch of bread, pesto, some sort of Croatian sauce, olives (for me) and soup (for Jan.)  Jan bought a flute and we got some tea and he played around with it.  We watched the bands.  We danced.  (Jan won't admit it, but he's a good dancer.)  We wandered around again.  We spent 7 hours there, and didn't want to leave!  I got an Omnia CD and the whole band signed it for me.  We chatted with them for a bit, made another round, and left. 

When we got outside we found that it had snowed, so we had a mini snowball fight, and took pictures of the street.  Now I'm home, listening to Omnia and Faun, and rather enjoying it all.  I used to love this sort of stuff as a child, and have slowly moved away from it.  I miss it, and it feels good to come back.  :-) 

Open your eyes and you can see

They can steal the land but your spirit is free

I belong to me, I belong to me

They can steal my land, but my spirit is free

I belong to me, I belong to me

They can break the land but they can't break me.

Death! Are you ready to die?

Make the fat cats rich to support the lie?

Mulit-media games of war

Multinationals keeping score

All of this don't mean a thing

Cause we still dance and we still sing

Democracy, plutocracy

They can break the land, but they can't break me.

--Omnia, Dance Til We Die