When I arrived, the lights were up the ink on the banners had faded, the pigment in the photos vaguely captured history, the chairs were stacked, the microphone was unplugged, busboys cleaning up, balloons floated down in the cavernous hall, each one popping at the end of its fall, there was no clinking of flutes, no strumming of strings, the air was filled with pregnant silence, a tomb of memory, adrift in a care not world.
