Lena was performing a fragile ballad. This was Ruggie’s Cafe in August. Two minutes in and the espresso machine erupted like a subway train deciding also needed to see the show. Her song was obliterated, but Lena didn’t flinch, “I pretended the machine was part of the arrangement. A hissing dragon exhaling under the melody.” Some say the job of consciousness is to deny reality. You know make airplanes, x-ray machines, deep sea diving “Do I look fat in this?” No, not at all dear. That is also how performances become magical because if musicians accepted the literal world, the broken monitors, the shouting of drink orders during the quiet part, the sound technician adding delay – music would then collapse under gravity. Instead, we warp it into playability. Insisting the world is more meaningful, more attentive, and more beautiful than it often is, and occasionally, miraculously, it becomes so.