"Music is a kind of sex"

spookyfruit's birthday celebration was tremendous, a perfect confluence of incredible food and wine, warm and interesting people, and first-rate musical accompaniment that left me vibrating with a delight. It took a while to build to that point, however. Things were only getting started when monshu and I arrived, but soon it was too noisy to really enjoy Congress of Startlings (who I haven't stopped raving about since seeing in concert) or hold a conversation with more than two or three persons at a time. My cordial conversations with pleasant near- and total strangers felt stunted and incomplete. I retreated downstairs, where it was calmer, but shortly after the multitude was herded there for a deeply enjoyable slide show of spookyfruit's life. After that, the crowd began to thin, the '95 Sauternes began to flow, and I found myself sunk into a comfy couch with spookypip's wife draped over me like an elegant wrap as the band began playing songs everyone could sing along to like "Psycho Killer" and "Wish You Were Here". When they solicited requests, I called out "Car Girl!" for purely selfish reasons, but it soon had my neighbours gushing about its sweet brilliance and more than half the room on their feet cheering whole-heartedly.

They played Flaming Lips, they played "Solsbury Hill", they took a break, and suddenly tiredness set in for all of us. I wandered about, tempted by an avalanche of desserts I knew I really shouldn't touch if I ever wanted to get to sleep tonight, and then jumped into the train of the last great exodus before I felt my high evapourate. Standing at the corner felt so refreshing I ignored the first couple cabs that swung by and was rewarded by a driver with enough character for a one-man show. He greeted me with an enthusiastic torrent of words that I was fortunately drunk enough to take in stride and assembled a grandiloquent compliment on my personal appearance before resuming his pep talk with a friend on the phone. He held me spellbound with his words for another five minutes after we reached monshu's before I knew I had to make a break for it. Like an intriguing student I met years ago, he drove a taxi as much or more for the conversations that for the money and was not shy about telling me so.