My friend Stef grew up in a small North Carolina town thirty minutes away from me. (She lived in the superbly named town of "Advance," which is locally pronounced with the stress on the first syllable, and with a slight drawl on the second syllable: AD-vayunce. I lived in Lexington, a town I would idolize until I saw it much later, with adult eyes.)
Stef and I wouldn't meet each other for another 15 years, but back in 1984, we were already in the same headspace -- pining for the members of Duran Duran, just like a million other little girls at that time. I was too young to see them in concert, but once, when a live show was broadcast on the radio, and I recorded the whole event on cassette, thanks to my brother's assistance. As Simon's voice was being etched into the tape, I stood close to the boom box, singing along with all the songs, and keeping careful watch to make sure nothing went awry. I listened to that tape relentlessly, memorizing the banter to the point that I half-expected to hear the same deviations in the studio versions of the songs.
I never got to see the band during the '80s, back when I would've exchanged my Cabbage Patch Kid for tickets to their show, but I did see them perform in 1999, when they were made up of only two original band members. My interest had waned some, and I hadn't planned on going, but for some reason my office was given free tickets, and I took the opportunity. It was at an outdoor venue, and my friends and I got drenched with rain, but it was unbelievably fun, and I remembered why I liked the band so much as a kid.
A few weeks ago, I went to my second Duran Duran concert, this time at Summerstage in Central Park. Stef (who now lives near me in Brooklyn) joined me in the sea of ladies in their 30s and 40s, as Duran Duran (now nearing their well preserved 50s) mimicked earlier versions of themselves. (These days they have four original band members.) It was fascinating -- they still moved the way they used to, they still made the same guitar faces, and they still played their music as well as they had on my tape. I kept thinking that it'd be pretty cool if we could all instantly be 23 years younger, just for that hour -- Duran Duran would be in their prime, and we'd be a sea of girls with our heads exploding, passing out in disbelief and excitement. (I picture my 9-year-old self as being frozen solid with eyes wide like saucers, rather than being a screamer.)
In between the moments of singing, picture taking, and shrugging with Stef about what the lyrics mean (as if hearing them for the first time), I thought about aging, and how both far away and recent my childhood feels to me. It was strange to think of the men on stage as actual people, and the very same people who wore ruffled shirts and created that crazy Hungry Like the Wolf video.
Also, it's one thing to see a young picture of, say, Mick Jagger and realize that he was actually not always an old man, but it's another to actually being alive long enough to remember someone being young. It made me kind of sad -- not for Duran Duran, specifically, but for everyone. Not that getting older is so bad -- each year of my life seems to only improve -- I guess it's just sad to me that we can't preserve our adolescent impressions, or the zeitgeist, or whatever it was that had made that band, for me, seem almost supernatural.
Instead, as much as I enjoyed the Central Park show (I really did love it), I couldn't separate what I was seeing from the image of them at the beginning of their careers, when they were young and mysterious. It was now clear to me that not only are they human, they are entertainers, and that those guitar faces are probably not natural expressions, but faces deliberately created to make the women in the crowd swoon. While there's something sort of charming about that, it doesn't compare to being too young to analyze such things, and just letting it pull you in the way it's supposed to.
One of the first venues Todd and I looked at, back in March, was a building that housed antique firetrucks. It would've been completely sufficient for a wedding, and the firetrucks were kind of neat, but it only seemed appropriate for people who have a firefighter in their family, or if the couple getting married happened to be two 12-year-old boys. (Todd was more into the firetruck place than I was, needless to say.)
Another place we checked out had a ceiling as fancy as King Tut's tomb. Although the place was lovely, it seemed way too ornate for us, and I figured our less-traditional wedding might look kind of plain and drab underneath its golden beams. (It was also prohibitively expensive, if I'm totally honest. And it was around the corner from the Museum of Sex, whose window display I worried might cause a stir among my relatives.)
We ended up settling on the first place we looked at, a venue called The Montauk Club, which was built over a century ago, and has gargoyles! I was pretty much hooked the moment we stepped inside the lobby; the only reason we even looked at other places is because it seemed like a wise idea to shop around. I love that the building has charming imperfections (like we do!) and that it's located in Brooklyn, walking distance from home. It's a bit smaller than we hoped, so we're not able to invite everyone we've ever known (which is kind of our style), but that's probably for the best in the long run.
Other places one or both of us briefly considered for our wedding: one of New York City's fancy libraries, The Natural History Museum, the aquarium at Coney Island, the High Line, the tip of Roosevelt Island, Prospect Park, and a certain extravagent Brooklyn venue that amused Todd because it's so garish, like some sort of glass castle designed for Victoria Gotti. I'm not sure how serious he was, but Todd suggested that crazy place more than once; I maintained that while I appreciate Todd's affection for the absurd, I'm not sure our wedding should be ironic. It's one of those things that's funny to consider, but not actually go through with -- sort of like the idea Todd had about having a chimpanzee act as our ring bearer (which, I'll admit, sounds pretty good).
Here are some pictures of the winning venue. (The photos below aren't mine; each photo is linked to its source. Thanks, Flickr!)
