It's a Perception Thing

HOW WE LOOK:

HOW WE SEE OURSELVES:

HOW OTHERS SEE US:

You will be asking me, I know, how I can state this so definitively. Well, my people, let me tell you. For the last two days, my depositions have been held at a hotel in Burlington. That very same hotel has been home away from home for umpteen hundred female barbershop quartet -- and who knew THIS even existed? -- barbershop chorus members.

FREAKS!  The gathering was titled...

"Show*ers of Har*mony." 

We won't even ponder what Freud might think about that.

A fucking FREAKshow! And it wasn't just me who thought so.  It was unanimous in the room. We started the deposition today and it was being videotaped. After ten minutes, we were all about ready to spontaneously combust. We couldn't stand the cacophony (singing?) out in the hallway and at the huge conference room across the way. We had to request that we have another room far, far away from it (in another city, perhaps?), as we could not concentrate to conduct our business.  Their music and their voices were SO ANNOYING to us. UGH-LY!!!

But when I looked at those people, I could tell they were having a BLAST. They were having the BEST.TIME.EVER!!! They could not have found more happiness.  Anywhere.  The smiles were ear to ear.  I could just feel the fun they were having together -- together with kindred souls, people who all shared the same interest. When I left the hotel, I never saw so many vanity license places from different states in my life with one variation or another of:  "SING" or "LUV2SING" or "SINGER." 

It left me to ponder what we must look like to "outsiders."

Freaks. Teehee.

Comments

[sandy, the doe]

Yup. Freakshow, indeed. I guess it's the whole "we're having fun, who really cares who is watching, I don't get out much" syndrome!
xoxo
love the conehead shot.

[Melissa]

I often wonder that myself, as I sit and knit with my friends at Borders, or we pull out hank after hank of hand dyed yarn in a restaurant. I am most certainly not a conehead though! NO WAY, NO HOW! Maybe from the planet Ork, but not a conehead... hee hee hee

[Sandy]

Uh, oh dear. I was so looking forward to it all. Tainted!

;-)

[Carole]

Oh hey now. We don't really look like coneheads, do we?

[Ryan]

One time TMK wanted to join me at Ferals, which I said was fine as long as she understood that she was going to spend three hours with people who were really, truly, honest-to-God going to talk about nothing but knitting for that whole time. Even *I* started to sound weird to myself at that point!

[Lauren]

Dude, where did that picture from Claudia's come from? I didn't realize people "there in spirit" could take photographs :P And capture almost all of my tiny leg.

[Imbrium]

*laugh* Come out here and I'll take you to a role playing convention. You think knitters and barber shop singers are freaky? You ain't seen nothin'.

[Cara]

If being a freak is wrong, I don't want to be right!

[Silvia]

Okay, knitting unlike singing is quiet.

Reminds me of a hotel in Seattle when I was still sexy stew-ing. Crew checked in after a LONG day coast to coast style and we entered the lobby of WESCON or some such thing. It was thousands of people dressed up in costumes or a space theme or freak theme or something. It was a convention of people who you've met in life that you wonder what happened to...now I knew...

[Debbie]

It's funny because it's true!! You have a couple of pictures of some of us at a post-Stephanie book signing dinner. It was a mad house, a MAD HOUSE! (ooh, I channeled Charleston Heston for a second) I can't even imagine what fellow diners made of us. But I do know at one point we were clapping for Carole's ever-clever husband for coming up with a great name for a finished object. This is after we'd been there for a while and people at OTHER tables started clapping with us. They had no idea why they were clapping, but we were so all encompassing, they couldn't help themselves. We must have looked like a bunch of loonies, making all kinds of noise and running around.

But the Barbershop Chorus? Freaks, one and all. ;)

[rock chick]

Takes one to know one.

[S.Kate]

Coneheads, skeinheads, hankheads, nostepinheads...
Drink to mass quantities, yo ho!

[Sneaksleep]

This week an author came to our local SnB to research a book on knitters, which will be part of a series on American subcultures. We are totally weirdos, if you think about it. We even have our own language.

[Faith]

I went to SnB last week at a B&N and there were a couple of guys browsing the books nearby who had to do a doubltake because they couldn't quite believe there were a dozen women sitting there knitting and chatting.

Yeah, coneheads, with pointy sticks.

[pippi]

haha. sometimes i *do* see myself as a conehead.
more often than i see myself as jennifer aniston.

i'm glad you didn't wind up fleeing into the lake or something!

[Faith]

er... "doubletake"

[Lucia]

We are quiet, and we are armed. 'Nuff said.

[Dave Daniels]

HA HA HA FUCKING HA HA HA HA! I wanna be Joey, ok? HA HA HA HA HA CONEHEADS HA HA HA HA Ask Carole about the fashions at the Librarian Conference a short while ago.

[Angelia]

I guess you're right - I'm sure we do seem odd to others. That's ok though. Because I'm at the point in my life where I really don't care what "they" think, as long as I'm doing something I enjoy, with people I enjoy being with. :-)

[--Deb]

Brilliant. I LOVE the pictures you picked, and yep . . . it's all about individual passions, right?

[Kathy]

So true!

[Vicki]

Super freaky -- and proud of it!

[Steph VW]

Norma - can you adopt me?

[Kristen]

Great post! People here definitely look at me as if I'm from Mars when I KIP. Especially on the metro.

[Cookie]

Our grandmothers knitted. How freaky can it be?

Besides the older generation sees me as nonthreatening because I knit. No, really.

Quiet, Dave. :p

[Jenn]

My favorite is explaining to random people about the sheep & wool festivals. The "...you what?..." looks and comments are priceless.

[Isela]

Oh ya! Like I want to be perfect like the Friends folk--no, me likes being a conehead, hahahahah, actually I want to be part of the Galaxy Quest people :)

[Sarah]

Last week in my English class I decided to give a small "presentation" about my knitting. Ya know, they have to give them so I wanted to show them how it is done. So, I started talking about where I learned to knit, blah blah blah - eventually the conversation led to yarn costs, book costs, knitting blogs, knit clubs, WIP's - they were in shock. They said, "No, not in France" - and I said, "oh yeah it is starting here too.." They were baffled. I felt myself getting jittery with excitement when explaining everything - it was weird.

[Rabbitch]

Oh, stop it. We're perfectly normal. All of the others are freaks.

[claudia]

We're from France.

[liz]

Freaks with really nice socks.

Although, I imagine the Barbershop Quartet people don't get many folks coming over and saying, "I've always wanted to learn how to sing old-timey song in four part harmony, but I always thought it looked so complicated. That barbershop quartet stuff is really popular, though. Yesterday, there was a quartet in hear as well. You should have heard them order."

At least with the knitting, other people are nominally interested in the cult.

[Teresa C]

As a singer, I want to defend the freaks, um I mean, the quarteters. Although I have never done that myself, man the high you get singing in harmony with other people. You are right! Just the same as the coming together of knitting souls. If only all people could feel that just for the pure simplicity of being humans on this earth. Together. Breathing the same air.

BTW-you should share a hotel with a La Leche League convention. All of those boobs with babies hanging off them...... Make the quarteters look positively normal, don't you think?

[Katy]

Superfreaks, Superfreaks,
We're Superfreakin', yow.....

[Alison]

Actually I used to sing in a women's barbershop chorus in California and loved it. There's something about hearing a chord ring... And we'd go out after rehearsal to bars and sing in the corners. Looking back, I can see how it would be annoying to non-participants. I think the word "ugly" for the singing might be a tad overstated however.

[carla rey]

You know the truly sad thing is that due to human nature, the convention breaks down into cliques; the cool quartets and the uncool quartets, just like junior high. So finding yourself in the uncool clique at a barbershop quartet convention must be a black hole of dorkiness that cannot be escaped.

[Kim]

I'm laughing so damned hard here, woman....you kill me. Yep, others see us as those freaky sci-fi coneheads, alright. What they're missing out on, eh?

[jillian]

*Giggle* You are so right! But it doesn't matter - they just don't know what they are missing!!

[Tam]

I think this follows the whole crazy people don't know they're crazy logic. As long as we're aware that we might be freaks, we're not really freaks right?

Happy freakin' knitting!

[B.]

Conehead, okay, but it's a cone of YARN, right?

[Bookish Wendy]

Pot meet black kettle.

[mamacate]

There were guffaws. I'm just saying.

At the CT fest today there was a guy on the oxcart ride with me talking about his wife. I sat there on the cart and looked out at the bumper stickers (Caution: Driver Armed with Sword and January 19, 2009: Bush's last day on the same car). I thought, these are my people. Freaks. My people. Hey, we're good with the potluck picnics and we like wool. If that's freaky (yes, I know it is) then a freak I shall be.

[mamacate]

Oops, veered off there--he was talking about his wife and all the wool and how she'd have been wisked off by a pack of knitters by the time he got back. I told him it was a pretty good bet. Anyway...

[margene]

The only normal people I see are at the top of this post. Isn't knitting, spinning and bitching NORMAL!? Or course it is. Hey~ Glad you came back with your sense of humor;-)

[Rachael]

Just so long as I get to be Rachel. Or Rachael. Whatever.
xo

[DeniseLyn]

I like it!!

[Paul]

LOVE the photo comparison! ROFL!

I, too, am a singer. BUT, I do find the whole barbershop thing quite an unpleasant sound - either men or women. I think it's great that they're out there singing, but I really have no interest in it. And I guess it is like a "cult". Kinda like knitting (or dyeing, right Dave...), or scrapbooking, but it's just so much louder...

[melanie]

oh man, someone beat me to singing Superfreak. Bummer. I'll just join in then with my favorite line, since we're talking about singin' groups of freaks...

She's a very kinky girl...the kind you don't take home to mother!

[Kristen]

thank you - thank you, thank you, thank you. I needed the laugh, the chance to read how everyone feels about it and to see the pictures of everyone having such a good time. Your comparison is 100% on, and that'll help me when I get strange looks from here on out...

[anj]

you ran into the sweet adelines?? (the female version of the babrershoppers) My grandpa was a barbershopper and I spent too many hour trapped in a darkened theater waiting to go home. but yes.. they loved it.. you hated it.. fiber people love their stuff.. other people ahte it. It is all relative.

[Beth S.]

I am a knitter AND I have performed barbershop a cappella. With more than three other people. But not since college, I swear.

What a great post. Fan freaking tastic. :-)