EL CAFE

As if you weren't sick of it, but it is my summer project, no?

I've spent the last hour reading the guestbook, laughing and getting teary eyed, wondering what the hell happened to Ellis Paul and Don Con. I pretended that it was research for the start of my writing project, which I am starting to think it's unnecessary altogether because I could just publish the guest book, and it would tell the story better than I ever could. But what the hell, I've got nothing to do this summer but rearrange words so I will do my best to come up with something spectacular and perhaps steal from all of the hooligans who filled up the pages of this book.

It's not just all in my head though, there is some kind of magic here, I found it in this book right here. I don't think that we can take the credit for it really, but these vagabonds find some great comfort and homeliness here, and I only hope that I make my homes half as homely for whoever happens to wander in. My attachment to my home is not the building itself, though it seems that way. It is the people, but I know that once this building is gone, once we don't have this same set up the people will stop coming and our lives will be a lot lonelier. The american folk-music scene is small, tight knit, and rather lovely. The music itself is about the same. There is something so warm about it, and that is the best way to describe it.

To live in a place that so many people call home is the greatest, and I am sure the main source of my constantly nostalgic heart because it always feels like someone is missing. I always try to bring people home, to check out the place for themselves, but I am never quite sure if they quite get it, or if I ever quite get it, so I want to dedicate a portion of my summer writing to figuring out how to describe it. I keep wondering if it will even be interesting to anyone who is not associated with el cafe. People are easy to love and hard to forget.

I am not the only one who thinks that these walls are always talking (silently), "there are angels in the doorways" .

To sum it up: "this place is a wildlife refuge" DJD/ "this is the best homeless shelter I've ever been to"

We've always been happy to take in the strays, because perhaps we are all a little bit astray and we all need a place to call home. Because I was raised on love from these strays and from some of the more permanent fixtures in this place, I sometimes suspect that I have never known such a things as sadness, though my heart tells me otherwise. I love it here, not in a selfish narcissistic way, but in a communal sort of way.

Perhaps this is all the reason i never really think of my places as my own, why I am not over protective of my room, my bed, my spaces, only protective of my meals (because there was never any need to share your food around these parts).

EL CAFE

I only mention this because I had a nightmare, probably up there on one of the worst nightmares I've ever had, and it was about losing El Cafe. No one fought for it except me. No one. I woke up crying, and fell asleep again, still crying. I know it can't stay the same forever, but I will fight as hard as I can to try. I am not sure how much of my own life I am willing to give up for it, but probably a lot of it, because it is the most important place. I know that these things will fall apart if the Carpe is not around. I know that we will all be a whole lot lonelier. It isn't just MY home. I don't want to just see these people once a year when we have an annual reunion party. This place has more love than I have ever seen, anywhere. I hope that it's love can keep it alive.

The Carpe is something I talk a lot about, I know. But it is MY place. It is my home, in the strongest sense of the word. People always says that it is not so much the place, but rather the people that make a home. I am not sure I can stand behind that fully. And with the Carpe, it is different. Even if it is the people that make the place, if we lost the place, we would lose a lot of the people. Most of the people. Places have spirits. I don't know why I believe that, but at the Carpe, when I am downstairs listening to folk music, watching the lights dance off the guitar I look around the room and I know that it is alive. Perhaps it is the love that is made when a group of people hears something perfect. The room just holds this love, keeps it. I don't want this to be taken away. I don't want someone to come in to my house, OUR house, unless they know it, unless they LOVE it the same way I love it. I have never found a place that so many people have felt so instantly at home.

I know that I have a strong sense of family largely because of the Welches. But the Carpe has passed on this sense of family too. It is in the way the Dennis sounds happy to hear my voice when I call from school, and Scott gives me a hug every time I come home. It is the way I feel as comfortable around these people as I do around my family, because they were there when I was growing up, not just intermittently but everyday. It is why I never know what to call them when talking about them away from home, employees? no. Friends? no. Aunt's and Uncles? It's the closest I can ever really get to, though it is not quite right either. It is the way I want everyone I love to come home to meet them, want to tell them, but never do "this is my family."

I wish that I could tell you everything. I know I can't, but I will try.
The warmth of the back room when everyone is listening to an amazing show. The people that come here really know how to love music, and you can feel it.
The regulars we are always acquiring. Because El Cafe is filled with so many lovely people, it often ends up taking in strays and making them a part of the family. I had always known this, but noticed it more when I went to school and would come home only to find there was some new person that everyone was talking about as if they'd been around forever.

I can't do it. I can't tell you right now, not without ruining it. This is something that takes time. But maybe there will be a book someday.


THIS IS UNDER CONSTRUCTION.