The calendar is so full. So full and yet so empty at the same time. How is this possible you may ask? And the answer is probably... 

Ravens. I'll explain later. It has NOTHING to do with Baltimore.

We've got our weekly Live from the Lair webcast coming up tomorrow as we continue to recover from the 4th of July, and a sci fi convention that's gone virtual at the end of the month. Read on dear listener, if you'd like to know more...

Every Wednesday : Live from the Lair from the Porch (rHK).

Wednesday Night Live from the Lair from the Porch. (rHK).
Every week we get the sound a little better, the stream a little nicer. We frighten the groundhogs a little less. I'm hoping that once we've got the STAGING truly solid, we can chase down a couple of the bucks in the field behind Heather's house, paint'em glisteny white and do some patronus cosplay, but that might just be me.

Trio show with acoustic guitar, electric cello, eclectic percussion and three voices folking their little hearts out. Heather's been throwing her heart, soul and back into giving us a home out back of her house, and we're going to make it loud. (the neighbours have poked their heads around the corner... they even came back with lawnchairs... it's a thing!)

Tune in at facebook.com/ilyaimy at 7pm ET.

Our Awkward Plea : ilyAIMY hath lost all their gigs. If you've got some digital currency burning holes in your digital pockets, we've got physical merch at ilyaimy.square.site and digital merch at ilyaimy.bandcamp.com - and of course we'll happily accept donations at paypal.me/ilyaimy and Venmo @ilytips.

Fri 7/24--> Sun 7/26 : C'monfluence 2020.

Saturday 7/25 - ilyAIMY at C'monfluence 2020.
Schedule TBA, Music all weekend (via Zoom) | $25 suggested donation
I was so excited about this. ilyAIMY's first sci-fi con! Covid put a stop to that, almost as if we're fated to forever be the be'ih and never the be'ih's maid. Or something like that. Klingon doesn't actually have a word for bride and I'm somewhat at a loss. I know.

This is probably why we've never played a con.

In any case, though the majority of the 2020 Confluence event (scheduled to take place in Pittsburgh, PA) has simply been rescheduled for 2021, the music and some other easily-translated portions of the event have been moved online for a free (but donations are encouraged!) placeholder event.

Open filk song circles, mad libs, Tim Griffin, Tonks and the Aurors, KIVA and more. ilyAIMY's tentatively scheduled for 2pm on Saturday the 25th, but I expect the event to be evolving a LOT in the next couple of weeks. 

More details here : https://parsec-sff.org/confluence/ 

Ravens? Yeah. Ravens. 

There was a giant black bird as we performed a socially-distanced, be-masked show on July 4th. It eyed us suspiciously, but they're clever animals, corvids - and though I feel they've been showing up frequently, mistaking news about a covid epidemic as a call to action in the corvid community, they're absolutely planning something.

And I think they're messing with my calendar.

I bought a new keyboard recently. One that wasn't as shiny. My friend Susan has birds and I worry that they're smarter than us. They like to chew the keys off her keyboard. The like to peck.

And so I've bought a matte grey, dark keyboard in the hopes that the hidden corvids do not peck my keyboard at night, that they do not add things mysteriously to my calendar. That they do not delete things as I sleep.

Truly, we call it a CONSPIRACY of ravens for a reason, do we not?

In all seriousness - Mark H Rooney and Kristen Koyama (#randomactsoftaiko) and ilyAIMY performed an outdoor show on July 4th. We were nervous about it. We didn't advertise it. It was a porch event in College Park advertised with posters and local web postings reminding people to wear masks, to respect one another's space, to be mindful of the fact that we have an epidemic a'foot. We had the conversations about what to do if the audience was problematic. Lines of retreat were drawn and there'd be no discussion. If anyone was uncomfortable we'd break down and be done.

But we were impressed. Despite the dark-winged harbinger of doom* the afternoon went smoothly and sans any sort of tension at all. People didn't remove their masks, they didn't crowd. 

We might be looking at a massive re-imagining of how physical shows work going forward, at least for the next year or so, and showing that we CAN have nice things when we cooperate was really, truly good for my soul.

Thank you to those who came out (not that we actually told anybody!) and if you want to see the show, check it out online. 

*This is unkind to ravens. Truly, the only harbinging they've ever done in MY Life is to foretell the coming of the leaving of my sandwich if I take my eyes off it for five seconds. 

-rob
ilyAIMY
Baltimore, MD (FOREVER!!!!)
www.ilyaimy.com