The band starts. The friends are greeted. We talk about how we have seen this first act before at a CdV event months ago. The songs are just as good. The set up is different and yet I am moving. I know I’m watched. I act like I’m watched even if I’m not. (That way, there are less surprises.) A text from my daughter. The picture is beautiful. I share it. The phone reached connection calms me, the young one knows. I feel her “pulling for you mom” energy even if it’s all in my head. I dance with all my friends. How many have I made in the last…

Sit down. She does, at the bar. There are six stools in the place? He can’t see her. She can’t see him. But she knows he is just on the other side of the sound system platform behind her. What does she do? Phone out like cigarettes in a much older age, she scrolls, texts, acts busy. The coke she ordered happens to be nice. It is cool to be at a venue when no one is there. You get the sense of the place without the human energy inhabitation. But this venue already has habitation… painfully aware is what you would say but really jitters, not pain is what…