Party Like It’s 1909
for Halloween…
Jude and I were recent guests of the gifted hosts, (and our very dear friends,) Diane and Howard Coffin. They held a dinner party for 14 at the historic Brandeis Mansion in Omaha, and on a warm Friday evening in October we arrived as directed – just at dusk and in “semi-formal, macabre” attire.
Beethoven was playing softly as we walked through the yard’s gates, up the wide stone stairway and through the two sets of heavy double doors. Inside, we were greeted with hugs, Chambord Kir-Royales, and the spectacle of an exquisitely decorated and ornate wonder of marble, dark wood, porcelain, silver, crystal, and silk.
In keeping with the period of the incredible and opulent 1904 home, (and, of course, with the Halloween season,) guests were invited to secretly prepare and share “parlor entertainment.” After more Champagne, a delicious dinner, and festive punch cocktails, we wrote our names on slips of paper and dropped them into a decorative goblet. When it was time for the performances to begin, Howard and Diane made sure our glasses were full then arranged us comfortably in one of the mansion’s parlors.
A Tom Waits number also inspired the main piece that I performed, (a strange coincidence with what Bob had prepared.) From the opera Alice, co-written by Waits with his wife, Kathleen Brennan, I rewrote and freely adapted the lyrics of a song called Watch Her Disappear. I love Tom Waits, and it is challenging to try improving on his great writing. I was crazy about the seed of the idea, but really needed to change the context of the piece, and to re-set it in autumn for the occasion of the dinner party. I was pretty happy with what I came up with, and I used the beautiful music of the song Barramundi by This Mortal Coil as the background from It’ll End In Tears (1984 / 4AD).
From the opera Alice, with lyrics by Kathleen Brennan and Thomas Alan Waits, and directed by Robert Wilson. Here is my finished adaptation from…
Standing in lamplight before an intricately carved, giant fireplace mantle, Howard announced that he would draw our names to perform at random. In between our individual parlor entertainments, Howard kept things moving along by giving us a few of the spooky traditions and interesting histories of a variety of cultural festivals of the fall and harvest seasons. These traditions have evolved into what we celebrate now as Halloween.
Among the many performances: Some people told ghost stories – our friend Denise recounted an eerie one set in Maine, and our hostess Diane did a wonderfully mysterious reading from C.P. Gilman’s spirit-tinged The Yellow Wallpaper. Friends Bob, Claudia, Denise, and Diane enacted the witchy scene of the Weird Sisters from Act IV of Macbeth. Our friend Steve brought passion to E.A. Poe’s freaked-out narrator, Roderick Usher. Pal Bob conjured a tight and angry paranoia for the Tom Waits number, What’s He Building In There? Jude spoke calmly as the woman Death from the introduction of John O’Hara’s novel Appointment In Samarra. New friends Rod and John donned top hats for their fun soft-shoe version of Dem Bones. Friends Gary and Diane filled the parlor with violent tension while adapting Stephen King.
Together, Bob and I resurrected an old song, written by myself and Pete Acheson, called Rats. It was fun to dust off the lyrics and hear Bob’s guitar version of the song. And it was probably as scary as anything else during the night to hear me attempt singing. To introduce the song, we remarked that it was a tune neither publicly performed nor requested in some thirty years. Since we live in different cities, it was a tune that we had not rehearsed, either. It was a blast.
A Tom Waits number also inspired the main piece that I performed, (a strange coincidence with what Bob had prepared.) From the opera Alice, co-written by Waits with his wife, Kathleen Brennan, I rewrote and freely adapted the lyrics of a song called Watch Her Disappear. I love Tom Waits, and it is challenging to try improving on his great writing. I was crazy about the seed of the idea, but really needed to change the context of the piece, and to re-set it in autumn for the occasion of the dinner party. I was pretty happy with what I came up with, and I used the beautiful music of the song Barramundi by This Mortal Coil as the background from It’ll End In Tears (1984 / 4AD).
From the opera Alice, with lyrics by Kathleen Brennan and Thomas Alan Waits, and directed by Robert Wilson. Here is my finished adaptation from…
Watch Her Disappear
Last night I dreamed that I was dreaming of you
Dusk’s descending pluck and strum
And from a window across the lawn
I watched you undress
Wearing an amethyst sunset tightly woven around your hair
That rose in strangled ebony curls
Moving in a pale yellow bedroom light
The air was wet with sound
The faraway bark of a puzzled dog
The ground somewhere drinking a dark, slow, swirling leak
Your room is so soft and
Fading as it soaks autumn’s last golden heat
A light goes on and the door opens
An amber cat runs out
On the lemon stream of hall light and into the yard
A wooden apple scent is faintly breathing the air
The sunless air goes suddenly cool
I hear your champagne laugh
You wear two lavender orchids in your hair and
A string of saffron carnival lights comes on with the dusk
A tender swaying constellation
Circling the lake with a slowly dipping halo
The wind-washed waves nipping the sand
And I hear a frolicking calliope
And you dance into the shadow of a black poplar tree
And I watched you as you disappeared
I watched you as you disappeared
I watched you as you disappeared
I watched you
* * * * * * *
It was the best party! We are so grateful for our creative friends and the cool idea that our dear Coffins conceived of and …. executed! Happy Halloween…
Laughing With A Mouth Of Blood by St. Vincent from Actor (2009 4AD).
(The Tom Waits version can be found here: Watch Her Disappear from Alice [2002 Epitaph Records]).