Back in high school English class, I once dropped the word “phantasmagorical” into an essay, proud of the D&D flourish it gave the page. My teacher saw it differently. In red ink, she circled her comment, “Don't make up words!” punctuated with an exclamation that carried more authority than I could hope to ever argue with.
I never dared to use it again, the word shelved for good, outside of occasional retellings of the moment like in this post.
But Friday night, watching The Jett Girls, that long-buried word finally returned, shedding its miasma of shame and demanding rightful use. Their performance was an amalgam of definitions found online, “Full of fantastic, changing, and often bizarre imagery, like something from a dream or created by the imagination, characterized by wild and shifting appearances deception and illusions.”-ish.
In other words, Phantasmagorical.
To call their set anything less would feel cliché and tired, or worse, insincere. So “phantasmagorical” finds its new home here, reborn as the truest, most ridiculous, and most sincere praise I can give, as I've run out of accolades to drape over this group of artists I'm happy to know. The Jett Girls transmogrified an inky red, elliptical mark of doubt into a constellation, a three-pointed star where a word at last belongs.
That's right, Mrs. Nardini. Transmogrified.