act one.

five hundred people stand along the avenue awaiting entrance to the Paradox. There is much concern about getting in, especially at the back of the line.

act two.

an incredibly skinny orange-bewigged and masked sprite squinches past the line and peeps outside. As concertgoers are admitted they are stamped on the wrist ("VOID") and handed a 7" clear-blue vinyl record with pictures on the labels of the northern lights and the southern cross. in the record is a small sheet of paper with an edition number and a bit more info on it. It's dark in the theater though so I did not read mine until after the show.

act three.

The sprite appears on stage and winds up a cranked Victrola, which plays the immortal hit "Welcome all True Lovers". The sprite puppeteers a small stage which features Death's charismatic lead vocals, and the Vegetables, providing backup harmonies.

act four.

the white faced backup zombies begin clanking and caterwauling, building from quiet to loud in a spooky amelodic vein. A shovel-wielding maniac high-steps it through the crowd to the stage where two or three energetic shouters get things rolling.

after the first two songs, everyone in the theater is somewhat startled to hear LOUD chanting from outside the theater, where a crowd of people is unhappy about not being admitted. They are chanting "Stand UP! Stand UP!", a voice from the back of the room informs us.

after the next song, the same voice asks the front of the audience to stand and move forward, which Jason reiterates. They do, the last few come in, and we are off.

For the next two hours, Jason performs his music and theater with satisfying effect. I believe I heard two songs that I'd not heard before (a line from one, or a close approximation: "You've never met your father, so you don't suppose you'll ever meet your son"). Interspersed, naturally, are the inspired bits of silliness and wisdom that I enjoy so much, including a bit about the zombie's cucumber that introed a certain very-popular halloween-themed hit of the 1980s, and what I believe to be a truly amazing thing.

Jason has been playing with the Smurf theme song lately at concerts, but I'd not seen him use it more than as a toy to amuse the audience with. Last night, he got the audience to sing the song a bit, and then reflected on the nature of Smurf reality, in which they faced evil and darkness with, well, Smurfliness. Jason was able to draw a metaphor between the Smurf's collective "Tra-la-la-la-la", and our own fears and concerns about the events of the past few weeks. He turned a childhood memory of the simplest song imaginable into a collective expression of fear, grief, defiance and joy. Remarkable.

Near the end of the show, he introduced the band, and Ishan was shy. Someone in the audience cried out "Biscuits and gravy!", which Jason then encouraged the house to shout. This was a reference to Ishan's old job at the Globe Cafe in Capitol Hill, where he'd no doubt heard that phrase many times over.

act five.

the lights are turned off. there is activity on the stage. candelabra are lit, and we see that the giant white puppet leaning against the back stage wall has attendants now. The puppet has a round head with branch-antlers, a clock for a left hand, and a ruler for a right. flanking the stage and the candelabra are two tall rectangles, white, with small square mirrors scattered over their surfaces, the one on the left topped by a clock; the one on the right marked as a ruler up its left edge.

Jason begins to sing: "One morning, the snow began to fall, and slowly, inch by inch, it covered up the earth; till finally, the top of the tallest building was lost beneath the powdered sea as quiet as a shadow's grave..."

a few lone lighters appear in the audience, but it doesn't take hold. When the end of the song is nearly reached, the music is lowered, and over it Jason reminds everyone to put on their coats. the audience begins inching out the exits, and the drummer picks up the outtro to the song: "igga-di-igga-di-igga-diggidup", and the audience, as we've been trained, picks it up too. The singing continues until the crowd comes outside, where we gather around Jason.

Eventually the ghost towers and the measuring puppet appear. Torches have been distributed to the crowd, and right down the Ave we go, drums beating, fragments of the crowd singing this song and and another fragment another song. The crowd at points is about two blocks long, filling one lane of the Ave.

All the way down the hill we go, some bystanders joining, others just watching with varying expressions. Eventually we come to a park on the waterfront, and we all gather around Jason once again.

He sings another song, I'm sorry to say the name escapes me, and at a lyrically appropriate point, the towers and the puppet are set aflame.

Act six.

Jason may have sung another song (the fire and giant glowing cinders I was dodging predominate in my memory). When the fire dies out, the ghost towers reveal that inside them were two giant corrugated metal hands. The Ruler Puppet is demolished.

Jason then suggests that this might be a good time to make a wish, and that there are about 160 available to the crowd. As he's speaking, he holds a small paper boat in which he lights a candle. He makes his way to the water's edge and puts the fire-lily in the water. Others follow suit, and soon there's a garden of fire on the surface of the water. The giant hands are used to push the candles away from the concrete wall to which they cling. Someone drops their record in the water.

In the distance in the moonlight from the direction of the high bridge a small boat with a figure dressed in white on the prow appears. It's a beautiful woman with long black hair; the boat is rowed by a figure muffled in dark cloth. The boat is archaic, entirely of wood, with a single small mast but no sail other than the figure of the white woman and her parasol. She makes mysterious gestures in silence with her hands, her parasol, and her candle-lit lantern.

The crowd is totally silent.

The boat approaches through the floating lights and pauses at Jason's feet. The woman gestures to him and he hesitates, finally declining her invitation. The boat reverses course and begins to pull away. Jason then reverses himself and plunges into the water (well, hops, but it was the same). He wades to the boat and climbs in, which them begins to pull away, toward the bridge in the night city. As the boat passes the crowd, we see that the woman is caressing and kissing and disrobing him. People in the crowd are speaking again, to the figures in the boat. "Thank you, Jason"; ""Give us a song, Jack." The person standing next to me throws his mask into the boat.

That same person begins to sing "Goodbye Forever, Once Again", which is quickly taken up. from the other end of the park, a different "Goodbye Forever" has started; they have the drum so we eventually come around to their way of singing. As the boat drifts away, the figures wave; then the drummer calls for the crowd to sing it one more time, "loud enough so he can hear it out there", which we do. I thought that I heard Jason's voice returning to us, which is true, whether or not he actually sang with us that last time.

apres show.

The crowd disperses at varying rates. Happy Birthday is sung to a young man with no excess of judgement who loudly proclaims that for his birthday he wants "just one car" turned over. For me, and for others, that indicated it was a good time to go. I have my rubber bullet scars already, thank you very much.

As I waited for the bus I noticed one young man carrying one of the smurfboards that had been used as props in the show; he ran to sit, back to a tree in the median of Campus Parkway NE, and began furiously writing on the back of the carboard. He wrote for a good twenty minutes and got up, running as he'd come.

I'm sure that there are many details I've overlooked and outright inaccuracies in my account, but that's what I recall from last night. I have a bunch of pix (from the walk and the park, I was waaay in the back at the show, so it was find of futile to shoot there) I'll be posting shortly and will publish the URL here and in the guestbook.

I also noticed literally tons of cameras, both still and video - it seems we all learned from last year. I suppose we should try to track all the subsequent web galleries down and centralize access. I also noted in one of my shots from the Paradox, a young man carrying a minidisc recorder. Let's hope he wants to share.