Dear A-holes,
You came in to the Dakota Jazz Club and Restaurant on Saturday night and the three of you were seated across from my fiance and I. One man and two women. You all appeard to be about 60 something, upper middle class. The conversation was mainly held between the silver haired man and the reddish brown haired woman. Fiance and I couldn’t catch everything you were saying. But bits and pieces floated through the ether and it became apparent that you were vigorously discussing how to fix this broken country, and that item one on the list was to get rid of the poor people problem.
The woman: “I just don’t understand why so many people don’t pay taxes. Zero. They get rebates back from the government.”
The man: “And why do we keep paying unemployment for so long? It’s like free money for doing nothing! I could go out and get a job by Wednesday that pays $2000.”
This was the gist of what you were saying. You appeared to also dislike the tea party, Obama, and so on. I hoped that by the end of the dinner, your brain trust would solve everything, and we could rest easy and be honored to have been there when the deficit was eliminted by your conversation.
We tried to ignore you for the first 10 minutes, but considering who we are and why we were there, sitting next to you, it was hard not to stop talking to each other and crane our necks.
You see, we were there to celebrate fiance’s new job. She interviewed for a position last week, and was runner up for the job to someone they already knew. The guy said she made the decision very difficult. After despairing for an hour, hugging each other, wondering what we could do next, as her temp job was not going to do it for us, she decided to call him about the adjunct position he offered. She said she would love to, but needs to have something full time with benefits, and that she had applied to a writing center position at their college. He said he would work something out, to have her work 40 hours at the writing center plus teach a class or two.
This comes after about 200-300 applications over the past year and a half. A dozen interviews. Watching our finances go to crap as we tried desperately to hang on to something, anything. The time after an interview was always the best, there was hope in the air. But the rejection, with nothing on the horizon, sent us tailspining. We went to dark places. Very dark. Every week we hear another story about how the economy is on the mend, but no jobs are to be had.
But on Friday, after months and months of despair, hundreds of rejections, something clicked. Something finally worked. Without unemployment, we might not be here today. So please, asshole, don’t knock the people who have to use the system they paid in to just to get across the chasm of joblessness to the next foothold in their career.
I’m glad you could get a job by Wednesday, and I so wanted to just come over and ask you to do so for me to make our transition easier. But the night wasn’t about me, it was about Fiance, and eating a $140 meal that we can’t afford because for once, Fiance has a future. Hearing you complain about poor people while eating a three course dinner for what most people could feed a family of four for a week on makes me hate you. A lot. I could bring up the fact that in the next 10-15 years, baby boomers like you will be taking up $3 trillion a year of our national budget, but I don't like to pin my problems on groups of people like that.
Class has a few different meanings, but I rather think we should quit using it to discuss someone’s weath or status. Class comes with thinking about and treating others like human beings.
But the thing is, at 8 p.m., you quit mattering. Davina and the Vagabonds came on the stage, and all became right with the world. I’m not speaking to you anymore. You no longer exist. That’s how wonderful the band was.
Fiance and my story has Davina and the Vagabonds weaving through it. Our first encounter was three or so years ago at Rice Park in St. Paul during one of their winter carnivals. Ice sculptures were up throughout the park. Davina and the Vagabonds were playing as Fiance and I walked around. It was a cold, winter day, and they rocked, which I will discuss more of shortly. Fiance and I bought a live CD of theirs.
There are a few videos on youtube of the band. While awesome, they pale in comparison to their CDs and live concerts. This is my favorite video minus the first 20 seconds of title cards:
We listened to the CD nonstop. I sing along when driving alone. Later, we decided to get married near that same park, and when we sent out our engagement announcements, I made a DVD with pictures of us announcing our engagement with nothing but Davina singing “Daydream” by the Lovin’ Spoonful as the soundtrack. If we could afford to have her at the wedding, we would.
So when we were going to the cities to check out apartments and see caterers this weekend, we knew we needed to celebrate. Davina tweeted that she was going to be at the Dakota Club. We got tickets.
She opened the night’s set with “Daydream” and it was like she knew.
Davina was dressed in a black and white polka dot dress and had red dyed hair in honor of Lucille Ball’s birthday. Fiance said she wished she could find that dress. Davina sat at the piano, facing away from the audience, but she made up for that by giving us a good view of her playing style. Her hands jumped around the piano, slinging blues, ragtime, and awesomeness. She bounced in her seat, peering back and forth, left to right, to watch the crowd as much as we were watching her. She bounced at times like a five-year-old girl, proud to show us what she could do. She played like someone who’s been emoting through a piano for the last century. Her soul played.
Her voice broke, soared, bounced, and flitted from note to note, stretching out to each person in the Dakota Club. She threw herself into each song, alternating between sad, aching songs that made me feel like if I looked down, I would see my heart being clobbered on the table in front of me, and upbeat, glorious tunes that would pick up my heart, throw it back into my chest, and make me feel glad I made it to this point, through all the shit that life has thrown at me, because a world with this music has a lot to offer, so keep smiling, hug your Fiance, and why the hell aren’t you dancing?
This isn’t even touching on the Vagabonds, a trumpet, trombone, bass and drums that match Davina note for note, keep things bouncing, take over to give her voice a break for songs and, in general, rule the place. This video doesn’t have all the current band members, but it’s a good idea of what they do.
I said to the Fiance that along with Adele and Sharon Jones, I would be putting Davina on my list. Fiance vetoed, blackballed it. “But it’s just a made up list!” I said. “But it shouldn’t have people that you can concievably talk to,” she said. She then said Davina was on her list, next to Adele, Jason Varitek, and Drew Barrymore.
Oh well.
After five songs, I had to take a cig break outside, not because I needed it, but because I knew I would break down in a room of 300 people if I kept listening. The enormity of the fact that we may finally be escaping Fargo and what little it has held for us as a couple was hitting me. I came back in just in time to hug my fiance as Davina sang “Dream a Little Dream.”
Davina, fully aware of how devastating her songs could get, would comment from time to time. “Wow, that was sad, how about we pick it up a bit.”
After the second set, we had to find our way back to our friends’ home to crash for the night. We were emotionally spent after two roller coaster days of a bi-polar life (wherein even my car died, to add that to the mix). Fiance walked up to Davina near the bar and said “You’re amazing.” Davina, much shyer in person than she is onstage, said thank you and asked my fiance if she was having fun. It was a short interaction, but it ended Fiance’s day on a high.
Davina and the Vagabonds are going off on tour to Switzerland soon, but it’s nice to know that we will most likely be settled in the cities when they returns to catch them again.
For more on Davina and the Vagabonds, visit http://davinaandthevagabonds.com/
i dont know who you are, but i like you.
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