Layla is cousin to one of our Los Angeles friends and has been living in Nashville the past year trying to make a go of her music. She came West to visit a friend she met at camp twelve years ago and to perform for a gathering of thirty-two pot-luck-bearing folk at the home of her friend's parents.
Our friend and her husband flew to Oakland and stayed with us the weekend in order to visit with us, have lunch with the cousin on Saturday, and to support Layla in her music career by attending the event and bringing guests.
For my honey and me, it was an opportunity to see San Francisco with old friends, hear some inspiring music, and meet new friends.
We spend far too little time getting to know our new digs. San Francisco and Oakland both have so MANY different and charming neighborhoods! I wish I knew the name given to the area where the house concert was held, but I was paying attention to the road while driving the four of us around, and not paying much attention to the nuanced changes between the ups and downs of passing neighborhoods. Topographically and economically, I assume that up is up by both measures. The concert house was on a very very steep hill and had a phenomenal view looking roughly West. Golden light suffused green hills that merged with the foggy gray-blue of the Pacific.
Before the concert, we met Layla for a tapas lunch at Cha Cha Cha and walked around the not-much-changed-since-1967-Haight/Ashbury district. Then Layla Frankel went her way by Lyft to prepare for her 6:30 concert while my honey and our two friends drove forth to Golden Gate Park to take in the beauty of the Conservatory of Flowers until we were due at Layla's friend's parent's home.
San Francisco's Conservatory is iconic. The filigreed central white dome houses rainforest plants and is replete with recorded birdsong and frog croaks, while the two lower ceilinged side rooms each house lowland or highland tropical flora. I don't think there were real animals (other than what may have been caught by the Venus Flytraps) in the mix, just realistic sounds of damp-digs critters. What a world apart, to be able to visit with friends in the warm and humid orchid bedecked beauty.
Several prom couples were gathered outside the Conservatory for photos. I had to wonder how, on this 52 degree afternoon with brisk winds tugging at satin and chiffon dresses and tousling hair-dos, the photographer was going to edit the photos so the girls' exposed flesh didn't look frankly blue - no matter their natural hue. Guys seem luckier in these scenarios... long-sleeved shirts and tuxedo jackets and slacks, even cummerbunds provide a modicum of warmth. Poor gals with strapless, side-slit, or backless gowns with silvery sequins and icicle crystal beads adding mercilessly to the cold! Brrrrrr! The awkwardness of high-schoolers is just delicious - or heart-breaking - depending on how we view it. My observing was tinged with both - relishing how dear they are and feeling empathetically sorry for them.
OK... House Concert was delightful! Layla's singing voice is rich and rangy from solid low notes to ethereal highs. Her steel-string mastery is impressive, and her subject matter from You're a Heart Steamroller to I'll Be Your Creature of Habit was delicious in a different way from those petrified prom people.
Her images: "can you hear the wind colliding with the stars?" and, telling of desert travelers, "all they could feel was the dust in their veins" stuck to my heart's ribs.
After her set of about a dozen songs, and urgent audience requests for another couple, I bought a copy of her only CD and schmoozed with the dessert crowd until it was time to drive us all back over the Bay Bridge to our own dear neighborhood and be reminded, as we passed our daughter and granddaughter's neighborhood, that we moved here because theirs and our 'hoods put the OK in Oakland for us!
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