Stage invasions are uncommon in our line of music, and Tyrone and Lesley just had our first.
Performing music live is a great pleasure, and the emergent relationship between you, your collaborators and your audience is always different and sometimes surprising. At times they participate, moving along, or even singing, which is especially satisfying if you’re playing original music.
At a small venue called The Bug (Brisbane Unplugged Gigs) at a bowls club in New Farm, Brisbane. Tyrone and Lesley were towards the end of a set in which we’d premiered about 8 new songs, playing them all in a row. This is our version of risky behaviour.
When you’re playing music live, there’s a lot going on. Mind, voice and body are responding to each other, the shimmering exchange with your musical collaborators and the sights and sounds of your audience, out there in the dark. The Bug is a ‘listening audience’ in the folk tradition – you won’t find them talking through your song.They’re there for you so you’d better be there for them. The new songs went over well, mistakes and all – you know you’ve got a good one when an audience sings along to a tune they’re hearing for the first time.
To finish up, we’d returned to some more familiar material, playing a song called String, from our album of the same name. This song contains the lyric ‘String together out of this maze’, a passing literary reference to Ariadne’s role in Theseus’s escape from the labyrinth and resident minotaur. Nobody’s ever noticed this before, but tonight maybe someone did.
I noticed a bright dot in my field of vision, illuminated by the stage lights. I wondered if it was something on my glasses. I kept playing. I looked again, then looked at Samuel/Lesley to see if he’d seen it too. And he had. I looked at the audience – had they noticed it? Perhaps not yet.
A spider, like a tiny, glowing red pearl with legs*, had dropped in from the ceiling of the venue, on a gossamer strand and hung there in the lights. We finished the song. Applause. She stayed there.** The front rows had seen it too, I think, so I took a moment to gesture towards its position, and comment on its presence so people further back could see why the gig had suddenly become unusually still.
Don’t wipe your screen – there it is, under the right hand side light.
Live performance, especially music, can be like this – when unexpected events however small remind us that we’re all in each of these moments together. They can be held for a moment before the next one comes along, then goes where all the other moments go.
We were due to finish, but an encore was requested, so we did another song.
The spider stayed at eye level, about a metre away, in mid air. Applause.
Indicating each other we bowed. We indicated the spider. It did not. Why should she?
I said some gig-ending stuff and off we went. As we turned away, the spider spun more silk, left the light and descended to the floor, where it was no longer visible. The venue lights came on for changeover. We packed up our instruments and headed offstage too.
Tyrone tours NZ next week. Thanks to Mal at The Bug for the photographs, and the green arrow.
*The spider was possibly a Red House Spider (Nesticodes rufipes) very common in Queensland, and harmless.
** apparently spiders appreciate classical music (Bach) more than other styles, so I took its decision to stay as a compliment.
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