And then Jim joins the fray, long arms a freckled pinwheel, backside a splash of white against the taupe turmoil of the Barenaked Ladies’ annual Ladies Night. Are they fighting? Fucking? Engaging in post-Nitschian performance art?

“All three,” Anne Murray explains to you softly. “Or none. The point is that their actions can’t be so easily categorized, and neither, by extension, can any actions. What I’m about to do to you, for example.”

The Ladies have obtained knives now. Beg her not to do it.

“Sorry, little bird,” she smiles, “time to fly,” and shoves you into the greasy melee.