Day: January 27, 2019

Had a good solid chat with Frank Hayes about being a good toastmaster and as always he was both wise and kind and I’m on the right path I think.

So apparently – this from Paul, who’s currently at a soaring club AGM and will be back at the con shortly – Frank started singing Never Set the Cat on Fire last night (I had pumpkinned at midnight and was upstairs by then) and when he paused in search mode, Paul, who does not actually consider himself a filker, helpfully supplied the lyrics.

Not a filker, my ample dimpled bum. He stayed up to 2 am singing and playing with Kathy Mar, too;  he is so a filker. Kathy’s got a new album in progress and I can hardly wait to hear it.

Good morning folks: this is a song for other people. My own fOlks have hidden their qualms under their loving support, which allows me to write stuff like this.

None of this is directed at you, mOm and pOp. You are the bestest, and if you aren’t or weren’t, strangers on the internet are not going to hear it from me.

I’m just me

Why won’t you live up to your potential
why can’t your report cards be the best
parents pour anxiety torrential
when your outcomes don’t match your IQ test

If they think that you’re a genius (genius genius)
they take it personally (you have no idea)
when all those brains (which you inherited from them)
don’t hit the jackpot financially (you should have majored in something else)

Pause for heavy sigh

Some parents think their kids
to obedience are bred
Do what you’re told, don’t shut down when we scold
don’t you think that you’re too old
for this, whatever this is (looks around the room in perplexity)
It isn’t real life and it’s mostly in your head

Pause for heavy sigh

Why won’t you toe that gender binary line
Why are you judging us we only want what’s best
We never had this stuff in ’59
and look at us we turned out fine
is this….
some kind of sick millennial test

Spoken
If you say one word to complain about people born after 1982 I will end you and come back for your books.

We admit that there are people who need help because they’re sick
this gender nonsense will not stick
it’s just a phase
Statistics and research
and a banker box of trans and enby merch
don’t mean much to us
for what we want is praise

Why are your friends
all more important than we are
We raised you from nothing
and you have taken this too far

Your diet is too fussy
and your hair is always mussy
– nothing about you meets the norm
You say you don’t want kids
well that’s not something that we did
and now we’ll drone our one word song
conform

The child speaks

Your concern
I can’t distinguish it from hate
though it will never be too late
for respectful conversation
Your concern
comes from a place of bigotry
Hey I’m just me
and I’m not here for your placation

Hey bio dad
It hurts me that you’re slow to understand
Hey bio mom
My strangely human ways
were not what you had planned
But family
ends up being where you find it
And I’ll find love where they don’t mind it
If I’m just me

 

 

 

 

later: discussed this with a transman – he wants to set the tune to music…..

Did my twofer today – good grief it is now yesterday -: I sang Elephants – which you will have seen recently, as I just wrote the durned thing, and Lemming’s Twofer, which is a patter song and I’m thrilled to say I got through it without huffing.

Sang Frobisher Bay and 40 Million Light Years in circle tonight.

So: Frank Hayes was in the chaos circle filk room tonight and he sang his entirely marvellous When I was a Boy and THERE WERE THREE followers – the same song with different lyrics.

So the original was a Pegasus winner in 1998. It was the first song I ever heard Tony Fabris play. This would have been *before* the first Conflikt, when the excellent folks of PNW filk fandom were first dreaming about a regional filk con.

The first follower was the x rated version and DAMN we laughed. – Tony sang it.

The second follower was the social justice version, sung as if by the Hidden Figures women from NASA. Fucking awesome, and written by a guy too. (THE FEMINISM, GENDER BINARY POSITIVITY, ACE REPRESENTATION AND ALL AROUND COOLNESS of this convention is fucking mindblowing. SISTERHOOD BE POWER FULL YALL)

The third follower was Tony Fabris’s own filk of it, which he doesn’t sing any more, sung by Kathy Mar, and set in the future.

As the songs were whirling around, Frank Hayes mentioned that the Interfilk Guest (I was an IG once, for GAfilk) Lauren Cox had sung on stage a line “What’s the name of that disease” which is a reference to Frank’s consistent and storied ability to forget his own lyrics. She had HEARD OF FRANK HAYES’ DISEASE through filk fandom and

WHEN

HE

INTRODUCED

HIMSELF

and said I’m Frank Hayes, Lauren said in tones of ultimate surprise.

“I THOUGHT YOU WERE A MYTH”

Ain’t nobody mythical in filk fandom.

Anyway, mOm, we raised over two grand from the interfilk auction and so, soon, some other mOm will get an excited call that she’s getting an all expenses paid trip to someplace amazing to SING.

There are at least 21 former IGs at Conflikt.

What a community, so proud and happy to be a member.