It's been a while since I last dressed up, but it's like sliding on an old pair of slacks you used to wear a lot. The suit is a much more vibrant color than I used to be used to, a soft teal vest and tie, and an ultramarine coat and slacks. F-holes embroidery on the lapels, delicate filigree designs on the vest and tie.
"Looks good," you say, hand to your mouth with a cigarette cradled between your fingers. I can't concentrate. The ridiculous white ears on your head are distracting. Never mind the asymmetrical long sleeved flannel shirt that was half gray and plaid on each side. "Late" emblazoned on the white shirt underneath. A pendant made from an old pocket watch.
"Stop staring at my ears," you chuckle as you blow a thin stream of smoke out. "You some kinda furry?"
"I don't want to ask you to explain that," I snap. I'm too busy trying to tear my eyes away from the costume and concentrate on loading the right samples for tonight's dance easy.
"Ask Fade."
"I'd rather not."
"It'll be funny. Her hands'll prolly sign something hilarious."
"Can you move? I need to load these onto the decks."
"So business-like. You're not a very easy Alice to lure."
Ah. So that's the idea. I didn't even think twice about putting on something Fade would hand me, though she was half the time the source of your amusing pranks or ideas. I'd seen Balance in a most piecemeal outfit with a giant top hat and over the top make up, gluing secondhand cups together in crazy angles, and Fade in another lacey and frilly dress with long rabbit--or rather now that I think of it, hare--ears trailing down the back of her head.
A Mad Hatter and March Hare, I assume. I haven't read Alice in Wonderland in its entirety. There were a few old symphonic and stage performances they teach to Traditionals, but as a Rothbart, I only made cursory looks into it. But of all the things for Bass to suggest for a theme, I suppose this might've been worse.
Why wasn't Fade Alice? She'd look so much better in the dress. Yet, you handed me this colorful suit and I rolled with it. I suppose I've always been that passive about these kinds of things.
Balance is doing last minute checks of her animations, with Fade checking code for the displays. Our plan isn't as extravagant as other dance-easies, using a single projection screen, and a pair of simple laser machines. Maybe a fog machine, I'm not sure. These aren't my foray.
As you sometimes say, "Our role is to look pretty and play music; the girls make the music look prettier."
I really don't understand that.
We set up quickly, a few hours later. Basement of one of many abandoned hotels in the city, the edge of town. Hilltop Suites. There were plenty of those across the country; shells of a bygone era, when we had so many more people in the world. Before the war took so much of that away.
Before Music became a weapon. A time you wished you could have seen. I think a time you would have thrived in.
And yet a world I wouldn't exist in.
It's a modest easy tonight, but it's for a special clientele. Gemini set it all up to entertain a few of his friends. I'm sure Django will show, or maybe some people in his network. So, it's not just anyone attending, humble as it is. But it's been long enough between gigs that our performance seems to be special on this chilly October night.
Balance is beaming, her eyes are excited as she starts the pre-show screensaver, an animated repeating loop of Alice walking to a tree, hopping down a hole, landing next to the tree, only to do it all again. A tired, repeating routine, endlessly looping. It reminds me of the years in the Corps. Mindlessly repeating our routine until one day, you broke.
Maybe you were meant to be the White Rabbit, leading me away from the world I used to know. But in that moment, I was the one who pulled you down the rabbit hole, not knowing what lay at the bottom for either of us.
Perhaps Wonderland was where we always meant to be, even when I wasn't ready for it.
You joked about wearing the helmets and demonstrated with the ears barely hanging onto the slick red surface of yours. I vetoed that before you had even put it on. If I have to wear something under your idea, I'm at least going to make sure we both don't look foolish. Or maybe you expected that. You wave to the audience as I start organizing our start up. You've always had a flair for the theatrical, a people person, the party person.
Made to be a DJ. Forced to put them down until we fled. Tonight, I'm full of memories of the past, without really thinking too hard. Are those Alice feelings and thoughts? Did she want to leave Wonderland right away? Or did she just get lost, led by curiosity until she finally returned?
The music is fun tonight, lively, exuberant, whimsical. Even I enjoyed it, stealing glances at you as you work the crowd, hyping the next drop, hopping around like a namesake behind the decks. Its mesmerizing. The girls are also enjoying themselves. And for a moment, I forget about the past and am ensconced in the present. Lead by a musical white rabbit, all of us are Alice falling to Wonderland.
I don't think I want to leave, frankly. And neither do you.
--Dio (10/30/24)