Becky Stark and Lavender Diamond celebrate unfinished film 'Imagine Our Love'
The band hosts a happening called 'Psychedelic Healing Visions' at the Silent Movie Theatre.
It's hard to say when exactly "Psychedelic Healing Visions: A Celebration of Lavender Diamond's Film 'Imagine Our Love' " got started Tuesday night at the Silent Movie Theatre. Even the band's frontwoman, Becky Stark, wasn't sure when her own "show/concert/party/celebration/festival" began, although she had been holding forth on the mike for several minutes.
There were so many disparate elements for Stark to discuss -- the 3D Cosmic Visions Booth, the raffle, the photo booth with beet juice makeup, the silent art auction upstairs, the existential fortune telling booth ("No one wanted to be the fortune teller, so you're in charge of your own fortune") -- before conceding "maybe we've already started the show."
By the time Eleni Mandell took the stage in a long, black dress (one of many fetching frocks on display), the evening took its shape -- guitars and languid harmonies from the likes of Mandell, the Chapin Sisters or Mia Doi Todd interspersed with Stark's loopy storytelling.
Ostensibly a movie night, the film itself only made a late cameo appearance in the form of a bucolic music video excerpt set to Lavender Diamond's song "Garden Rose."
Eventually, "Imagine Our Love" will feature wall to wall music from Lavender Diamond's debut album of the same name, paired with visuals of tea parties, lady samurai warriors, a cosmic mothers council and possibly one Chinese factory. But for now, it's only about one-third complete, estimates "Imagine" director Maximilla Lukacs.
Sipping a Tecate and wearing a dried mushroom floral arrangement in her hair, Lukacs explained why the rush to unveil it. "We've been working in a vacuum," she said. "We just wanted to have an event and tell people we're doing it. This was a way to bring it to the community."
And the raffle during which Stark handed out dresses from her own closet for only a dollar or two? "It was a way to add a participatory element," Lukacs said.
The capacity crowd took that cue. Couples commandeered the 3D Cosmic Visions/Kissing Booth and 4 1/2 -year-old Bebel Matsumiya, chaperoned by her mother, Moonrats keyboardist Aska Matsumiya, stepped up to man the fortune telling station, quickly amassing an enthusiastic following. "I look into the globe, and I work my magic," Bebel explained.
