No. It’s not the name of a band. It’s a fancy fabric that reflects light, and–with the right computer system–makes the puppeteers invisible. Of course, the fabric is coated with tiny glass beads and so also acts as a mini-greenhouse. Did I mention that there can’t be any breaks in the fabric? Like for eyeholes?

Anyway, it’s new technology and today was the first time we used it. I was one of the lucky guinea pigs, but there was only one full suit. So we were trying to do it with me hiding my head behind the other puppeteer. That didn’t work, so they threw an old hood on me with a couple of pinpricks, literally, poked in the mask for vision.

I did crap puppetry with that get-up. It makes me very unhappy to do work where I feel like I’m destined to fail.

The rest of the day was okay.

I saw the Northern Lights for the first time last night. No pictures, sorry. Jodi called me about ten o’clock and told me to go outside to look for them. He had to describe what I was looking for, because they were fairly pale.

If you imagine a night sky with vertical folds of quartz projected faintly against it, and have the folds undulate slowly then you might get a vague sense of what I saw. There’s light pollution in my area, but I imagine the lights seem much brighter out of the city.