kissed me like I was a soldier/ heading for war

Annie, much to her chagrin, returned my Indigo Girls Rites of Passage cd to me tonight. This is bad for her because if there is one thing that I love doing more than con law (and believe me, there's only one thing) it's singing the Girls' "Three Hits," "Let It Be Me," "Galileo," "Romeo and Juliet," "Virginia Woolf," and "Love Will Come to You"-- in that order -- at the top of my lungs while sitting two feet from my con law book and pretending it's a campfire. (Crucial to this exercise: I play piano, not guitar, so this little mental exercise always involves envisioning the reemergence of Andy Starr as my guitarist/backup vocalist, and/or my cousin Scott. What's going on, Scott?) I sing "Three Hits" first because it's a good settle-down song and I feel like the message isn't important enough that the audience will really miss anything if they're still pulling up their lawnchairs by the time I break into "Let It Be Me." This is important, because "LIBM" really highlights a sense of civic pride and duty with which I identify. Also, it's a toe-tapper and warms my vocal chords enough to let me get the high notes in "Galileo" without sounding like a toad. [Ed. note: If you're asking yourself whether or not I'm singing along and aloud as I type this, the answer is yes. Yes, I am.]

Some bongo drums miraculously appear (Guster? Is that you? Wow, how amazing that you happen to be camping right next to us), and "Galileo" gets under way. "Galileo" is just a rockout folk song, at least for those of us who believe that such a thing exists. (Second shout-out of the evening: hola, Rebecca C. and Remmington Steele.) The faces around the campfire have probably come into focus at this point, and depending on what era of my life I'm feeling particularly fond of at the moment, Jonnie Gou or Joe Arthur or Katrina or Kathleen or Dave N. and his wife or Anthony or Aimes and Jana or Karly or Dan P. or my brother or Mike or the Pauls or any number of people I've met/have yet to meet are encouraging me to no, sing another one...really! Obviously this is a stretch of the imagination, as years of choral singing left me with a bad vibrato that I just can't shake and that no one wants to hear. But, whatever. It's my daydream.

So now the instruments are fading, and I survey the scene. It's time to take the whole thing down a notch: the sun's been down for awhile now, and for some reason I feel like Dave N's dad is just on the other side of my old Toyota pickup trying to retie my bumper or dancing the polka, which was what he always seemed to be doing when we'd go camping. Andy starts in with "Romeo and Juliet," which as you probably know is original to Dire Straits. Everyone sings along. It's kind of cool, except Sheridan's totally off-key and Tara and Emily arerocking out a little too hard after their sixth trip to the cooler for another brew. I notice that my "campfire" says something about differentiating between treaties and executive agreements and launch into "Virginia Woolf," at which time Hillary leaves because, frankly, she's had enough of my caterwauling. Whatever, there's no accounting for taste. And then (okay, right now) Andy lets it all hang out, and we just let it go for awhile and sing our little hearts out (Annie's knocking on the door right now and asking me if this is what banshees sound like) as I take a stab at the melody and Andy picks up the harmony on "Love Will Come to You":

And I wish her insight to battle love's blindness
Strength from the milk of human kindness
A safe place for all the pieces that scatter
You learn to pretend there's more than love that matters

Yeah, you're tearing up right now. So the whole scene gets quiet for a bit and my eyes refocus -- dang it all if this campfire doesn't look an awful lot like Chemerinsky's Constitutional Law -- and unfortunately for everyone within a five-mile radius, I know how to push repeat AND I have another beer in the fridge. You know what happens next. That's right, Bubba: the encore. We've got some options: we can do a little a cappella and take it away with "Closer to Fine," which will leave everyone happy....OR we can finish with "Ghost," which Andy fortunately knows how to play. It's funny how I've yet to be camping in my head like this with a guitar player who doesn't know every single song in my singing repertoire. That's amazing, considering that I have a large out-loud repertoire due to a complete lack of shame. Anyway, I'm a melancholy lady, so "Ghost" wins hands down; and before you know it, there's a letter on the desktop/ that I dug out of the drawer and a stray dog howling along with me outside my window and an angry neighbor banging on her floor and an Annie and Roy weeping with laughter when I walk out my room for a refill.