return_to_nola | Entries tagged with ivy bell

Doing work on someone else's apartment was inherently less tedious and more fun than working on one's own. It was why Violet hadn't hesitated to offer her assistance to Ivy, hoping that together they could get some of Ivy's art framed and displayed instead of sitting in a drawer or rolled up in the small poster tubes it had been mailed in. She was well-rested, she was caffeinated, and she was raring to go, as evidenced by the way she launched into talking as soon as Ivy opened her door. "I have two different measuring tapes, a notebook to write down measurements, and more energy than is good for me, I'm ready to go." Violet paused. She was forgetting something here.

"Oh! Right. I'm Violet."

nola_willow

Ivy's gig at the Phoenix Effect felt more significant than ever this time. The last time she'd played there, after all, she'd met Mina: her phantom, her opera ghost, the woman who bafflingly, wonderfully, felt like home.

Was it any surprise that Ivy's set was full of love songs? Most of them were covers, but not all of them. Each original was new, and some of them felt maybe a little too raw, but they were bursting with feeling, like prayers or spells. Mina, Ivy knew, was shy, so she didn't name or point out the object of her love songs. Instead, she would say, "I fell head over heels for someone lately; I wrote this for her." And that was more than enough.

After the set, Ivy felt exposed -- more than she usually did when she performed -- but it was good, and it was world away from her tech life, from her weird corporate life, and it reminded her of things long forgotten. Lingering over last sips of tea with Mina, Ivy smiled and reached out to play with the fingers on one of Mina's hands. Touching just to touch.

"You have the cutest hands," Ivy said, studying these wonderful fingers.

nola_taramaclay

Breathe. Just breathe. It was, weirdly, easier to remember when it was Ansel's voice in her head telling her to keep breathing instead of her own. Katie's voice chimed in sometimes with otherwise helpful and reassuring words, ones Mina had tried to hold onto all through putting on the dress that Katie had helped pick out, but it all came back to that one very important reminder: breathe.

The opera house was relatively quiet. Mina had picked a time when as few people as possible would be around, only small rehearsals in progress. Most of her family was nowhere to be seen, and Ansel had promised to do everything in his power to keep it that way. Mina didn't usually advocate violence, but she expected him to use body blocks or tackles to fulfill that promise if necessary. Because this was special. This was verging on something, she could feel it, and she needed the space to figure it out. To let Ivy figure her out.

Despite all the reminders, she still forgot to breathe that first second when Ivy walked in. While she waited for Ivy to see her looking as ethereal as one would expect from a ghost--pale colors, washed-out makeup, hair down so that ti could frame or hide her face from moment to moment. Her hands twisted together nervously, but she managed a warm, if shy, smile. "Hi."

nola_willow

Ivy's mind was hardly ever still, hardly ever compelled to act on instinct or gut or something higher than relentless logic and ruthless intellectualism. Systems, math, computer, languages: they came easily to her, but it was exhausting in her mind. The only thing that ever really seemed to transcend, so far in her life, was music.

And because she was great at math, she had managed to teach herself to play guitar, and because she was good at languages, she found she could put words together enough to write songs, and because she was big-hearted and gay and shaped by everyone she had ever met, she was never lost for inspiration.

For her sets, because of course Ivy didn't have any kind of real following, she was just some white-collar worker with an acoustic-folk heart, Ivy played more covers than originals. Queer anthems and uptempo pop transformed into ballads and whatever else made her feel like she was watches leaves gently fall from a window.

Ivy wasn't much of a performer, but she loved to perform; she didn't have to worry about the audience when she could feel them listening, when she could close her eyes and sing and let her fingers tell the story of her music.

The set flew by, and everything felt warm and welcoming at the Phoenix Effect, like this was where she was supposed to play.

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Entries tagged with ivy bell

Ivy

Mina

Ivy - at the opera house

Mina

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July 2019

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