09.30.2003 - 4:05 p.m.

At one point this weekend I was at a Celtic festival, sitting in a huge red and white-striped tent in one of those precarious foldy chairs. There was a woman on stage with an electric fiddle the color of metallic blueberries, and sounds were coming out of that thing that must have been stolen from a guitar, or maybe a siren. (The Greek kind, not the emergency kind.) The space in front of the stage was full of bodies and bobbing heads and arms waving to the beat; the people seated at the tables all around were clapping and tapping and stomping their feet.

Except me. I was sitting absolutely still, except for the invisible movement of my toes inside my shoes and of my fingers hidden in the sleeves of my coat. I was enjoying myself so quietly because I�d been asleep less than an hour before, and although I�d had a meal and a coke to wake me up, I also had a boyfriend periodically poking me, telling me to �smile,� and �get into it.� I was awake, but I�d be damned if I was going to let him see it.

It reminded me of an assembly we�d had once, in middle school. There was a band that came in and did covers of �Unbelievable,� �Good Vibrations,� and a bunch of other songs that were in at the time. The kids were all seated in rows according to the classes we�d come from. For this particular class I�d been sitting next to my crush, who was singing along, half-dancing in his seat and (of course) ignoring me; I was leaning back in a sad attempt to be too cool for the music.

In the red and white tent full of blue electric fiddle, I had that same underlying suspicion that I was missing out, but one�s priorities are often just not in line after eighteen hours of waking and driving and walking around in hard sun. So instead of dancing I watched, the way I haven�t watched in years, with an almost scientific introversion.

I watched the members of the dancing blob. One was a woman standing right against the row of amps on the edge of the stage, dressed in a halter top, jean shorts, and big hair, holding her arms out and swaying. Two were mother and daughter, holding hands and attempting a layman�s Riverdance. A group were men who stood mostly still, bobbing their heads and waving beer mugs around. Couples moved against each other, toddlers danced in their father�s arms, and everyone sweated and smiled and generally behaved inexplicably.

The woman with the fiddle was playing jigs and reels, and I thought it was too bad that nobody there knew how to jig or reel or riverdance, even if everyone danced their own way, in their own primal and slightly ridiculous place, in tune with the fiddle and the drums and the striped roof breathing high above. But then, it was also too bad that I was too stubborn to join them.

-stonebridge

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