thirteen ways

Our season officially ended tonight at 10.15pm with the conclusion of a concert at the Governor’s School in Erie, PA. Our season-ender was their program opener.

High school aged students (typically rising juniors or seniors) from any educational institution (public, private, home-schooled) receive scholarships to take part in this 5-week-long summer program at beautiful Mercyhurst College. The program puts an emphasis on multi-disciplinary cross pollination, so the 60 music, 60 theater, 30 dance, 30 art and 20 writing students must room with someone not from their own field. At the beginning of our show the poetry professor talked briefly about Wallace Stevens then recited the poem that inspired our name, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird.

In typically bizarre 8bb fashion we celebrated the end of a very long, complicated, often frustrating, sometimes uniquely satisfying, and overall incredibly successful season by eating ice cream. 

Strangely, no beers were harmed in the course of the evening, no champagne corks were jettisoned, no bourbon was poured. We all craved something sweet, creamy and fatty. Upon find DQ dark, we cruised the picturesque strip malls of Erie until we came upon a Bruster’s, home of the…well, home to cheap, crappy ice cream.

“What is a Blast?”

“It’s like a Blizzard.”

“….um, what’s a Blizzard?”

“Bloody Aussie. It’s like a McFlurry.”

“Well then!”