Monday, May 25, 2009

Tales of the ChocoBunny and the Perfect, Perfect Day


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First off, I have to say again how lovely today has turned out to be.  I have an even greater appreciation because I spent most of it indoors at the Orchard.

The demands of family life forced a colleague to offer a shift - and before I realized it I was missing all Memorial Day action.

This was the first time in over 23 years that I have missed some kind of participation in or witnessing of such a civic event.

I love a good parade - have done my share as a director and as a performer.  This wasn't an occasion for sadness - it was an occasion for reflection.

RIght now it's very windy; bright sunshine is streams from a cloudless sky.  I'm at the NorthStar for tango night, taking some time to get caught up.  A lot of new opportunities have descended on me.

The last week or so has seen an increase in my time at the Orchard - part of this is going in to teach more lessons - part of this is taking up shifts to help my friends out.  I've finished a new tango for a friend's birthday - it seems like the kind of piece I've been trying to write for quite some time now.  There may be some adumbrations in earlier work but this, this piece seems to work more easily, its emotional expression is more facile, than any other piece I've written before.

Friday night it was little more than a shattered phrase over a chord progression and a shiftefelli rhythm.  I had tried to force it to work as a bellydance/tango and had no luck.

But there were four good measures in it.

Sometimes that's all you come up with despite a long tonne of work.  I've learned that you take what you're given and you're grateful for it.  Four measures of good music out of a mound of crap is still four measures you can use.

With that done - or more precisely, having acknowledged my meagre victory - I went to work, ending my day at the Gazebo at the Eastern Promenade overlooking Casco Bay.

There was a wedding waiting for us - I had been afraid that some kind of legally-registered event would ace us out of the Gazebo and it happened.

I admit to feeling sunk and morose, taking it all personally.  I hate thinking that I failed to be organized or cognizant of all the possibilities.  It's one thing to make a mistake - it's quite another to not go as far as you could in organizing an event of some kind.

Actually the wedding seemed quite nice, if a little mundane for my taste.  It was a bit of a shock to see a cake leave the back of a car and make its way  to the Gazebo.  The "reception" lasted only 30 minutes of so - we were dancing shortly after sunset.

The evening was lovely, just cool enough.  Quite a crowd came along, including Javier Rochwanger and his girlfriend Chieko.  

It was a lot of good dancing.

I left it in the hands of others - Saturday was a work day, both at the Orchard and my piano.  More writing on the the new piece.  Took the thing out back of the toolshed and put it out of my misery.  But those four measures - oh, those four measures were fecund seeds.

Sunday I got off.  Did a good bike ride around the city.  The "season" is on for fair - even though I couldn't (and still really can't) get my head around the idea that Memorial Day was arriving.  Just seemed only days ago we were watching the last snowpiles fade into the gutters of the streets.

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There were ferry boats crammed full of people heading out to the islands - along with their cars.  The bars were all full at 11 in the morning - breakfast at the local Hilton - my one indulgence - was accompanied by a pasty-skinned, pale crowd in shorts, Hawaiian shirts and long-lensed cameras.

I'd forgotten how scary they could be as well.

Along the train right-of-way I found a single blossom overlooking the entrance to Back Cove, by the ruins of the old Grand Trunk bridge.  It was odd to see only one white flower blooming so strongly against a wall of rich green, but there it was.

A couple of boats rotated in the estuary.  Lobster and sail - work and pleasure, both in the same place.

I felt a kindred energy on account of both writing and work at the Orchard.  There are times when it's hard to tell the two apart.

I like that.  It's a new place to be - the warmth of the day, the challenges of work - all of them seem more real, more worthwhile.

We went to go see Star Trek at the drive-in last night.  It was fun to sit in lawn chairs watching on a slightly-stained screen and munching popcorn (I did a great job on the popcorn).

Finally today was busy.  Covering a shift left me inside on the best parade day of the year.

Still, it was worth it.  Not the least of which was seeing the Lindt Chocolate Bunny Car up close and personal.  That was strange but worthwhile.

It's in the late afternoon - which would be stone dead dark on this date in December - that the shadows begin to reclaim the ground.  They are etched strongly into the grass by the strength of the light.  The trees are whipped in the wind.

Brian is teaching the lesson right now - only a couple of people are taking it - either the raw beginners are all out cooking hotdogs (likely) or with Valerie's tango class being finished all the folks with a modicum of training are waiting for the D.J. and the TML parts of the evening to arrive.

Either way it's a nice way to end a day full of thought and incident.

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Reopening For Business


Well, for good or ill - mostly for good, I think - the Farmer's Market in Monuments Square is back open for real business.

I missed last week's gathering, I think I was working on videos.  But now I'm camped out in front of Henry the VII's sandwich shop and the Dixieland band is setting up over to my right, tuning and running scales before striking up for the lunchtime crowd.

Most vendors are selling plants.  People are putting in their gardens, decorating their lawns, trimming their houses - plants and sprouts are in very high demand.

Still, there is a surprising amount of fresh produce available - simple things like honey, Pastor Chuck's Applesauce (with the avuncular Pastor Chuck ministering to customers himself) and lot's of wondrous baked goods to be had.

A lot of artists have set up on the fringes of the Market - you can buy small handbags, brooches, paintings and simple jewelry.

You can buy wonderful bunches of paper flowers that compete with the colors of real flowers in vases and hanging baskets all through the Market.

Meanwhile the tuba player of the Dixieland band is quietly belting out the theme from the Godfather ("Speak softly, love...") while the sax player - a tenor - is playing some Parker licks - sounds like "Cherokee" - j'approve.

This is only an adumbration of what this place will be like in a month.  It's still very much a local crowd.  

Come to think of it I can't quite bring myself to accept the idea that this weekend is Memorial Day weekend.

I think back to where I was - even just reading the posts takes me back to some horrible places - a year ago and the changes in life and heart have been remarkable.

The next thing you know the annual Zombie Kickball game will be in progress and Summer will be in high gear.

There is just so little destructive pressure on me these days.  I was thinking early this morning that I was sleeping almost all through the night, waking only when the cat knocked over the broom about 3:30.

J'accuse - it's taken a full year for me to accept what a really bad job I was doing in so much of my job - I know I'm a really, really good teacher but was unwilling to be even minimally organized or responsible.

The nice thought is that I didn't ruin the programs I was involved with - and I know there are students (I've heard from them) whose lives were changed - or at least broadened - by my being there.

So now the Market has livened up.  People are coming on their lunch hours - chairs are filling up (I should probably leave this one so Henry the VIII's can have some real paying customers.  

The band has struck up.  "You Are My Sunshine".  Voices and lot's of eyes.

I should probably grab some lunch.  People are seated on the ledges of he Soldiers and Sailors monument - otherwise known as Our Lady of Victories (the statue at the top of this post).

It's really a very pleasant way to spend a late morning.  The reset of the day will see me trapped at my piano working on a new tango for Adira, whose birthday was just this weekend past.

Another friend who is a great excuse for write music.

I think I'll go plunge into the day.

Monday, May 18, 2009

Monday In the Park With Jim


I have been remiss - again - with keeping this updated.  Popular wisdom says you should post 3-5 times every week.

My return from Oklahoma saw me being launched into the deep end of a very large fund-raising pool.  The first video interview I'd conducted led to either editing or filming 5 more - plus preparing DVD's for general sharing and fund-raising purposes.

In all, thirty minutes of work had to be prepared in 8 days.  This was in addition to working more hours in the Orchard and taking more tango classes - or helping out at same.

So, with a lot of this behind me I can stop for an hour here in Post Office Park.  The weather has turned fairly nice - pleasant enough in a grey sort of way to let me have a cup of soup and relax outside O'Naturals eatery.

Sitting here has already produced a small parade of people I know - a District Court Judge whose sons I taught, a couple of actors I've worked with, people like that.

I hear the sound of a clarinet busking around the corner.  He's not using his register key and so it's all in the chalumeau register - only low notes, but it's got a kind of jazzy, bluesy - and ballsy - sound.  He's got some good licks going.  It's a nice counterpoint to the seagulls dive bombing the hot dog stand across the way.

You hear and see different things here than at my usual locations and now that the weather has turned a bit more pleasant I'll have to haunt them more often.  Set aside the inevitable cigarette smoke you put up with by sitting outdoors and it's a very pleasant way to pass time.

I suppose it would be more fun with a glass of Absinthe or Scotch but to be a boulevardier  you have to have a boulevard - and the closest one only has runners on it.

Scotch I can get anywhere.

Well - more stories of Post Office Park as they occur.  Right now I have to go write music.

Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Seeing Forward By Looking Back While Catching Up With Fairies


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Strange to think that a week has gone by since I drove to Manchester to fly out to Tulsa.  I got back into a whirlwind of activity  that hasn't stopped.

This is not a bad thing except for the paucity of time to think things out.  I need to take some time off to think through the things I experienced on my time off.

Most surprising - and strangely connected - is the closing of one of my favorite bookstores just across the street from JavaNet (in whose window I'm sitting).

Books Etc. was run by one of my Cumberland music families.  This knowledge didn't get me any discounts but it did get me a smile and occasional recommendation from the owners.  I remember the "Common Book", a large bound blank notebook kept on a table in the doorway.  People from all over the city would comment in it about all sorts of things.  

Long conversations would happen between strangers who would leave anonymous epistles in the book for each other - often separated by days.  The only rule - well, there weren't any real rules, only conventions - was one of an implied respect for everyone who wrote in it.

I wish it was still there - it went away, as many of these things do, because some folks decided to use it to exhibit their lack of class by being vulgar and insulting.

The reason I mention this is to remind all of us that changes come for all sorts of reasons, good and bad - but that changes come, whether we will or not.

This reflects my experiences in Tulsa.

I walked in Woodward Park - sat in my seat in the Sunken Garden behind it.  The voices, fairies, if you will, still spoke to me, welcomed me back to where I had spent so many stolen Summer nights as a Junior High student.  I had snuck out of my house - I'm sure my parents must have known, though perhaps not.

I had been afraid that perhaps I had changed so much - become so "worldwise" or "cynical" or just so ossified in my imagination and experience of the immediacy of life that I could no longer hear their voices, or listen to their songs.

Well - it doesn't look like it.

You could sit there for a decade and not hear anything but the pleasant soughing of the wind through the trees surrounding the Garden.  It's really very pretty.  Even at this point in the Oklahoma Spring there is life and the start of a riot of color that won't come to full life for a month or more.

But it is so much further along than New England is.  It made for a nice break from the austerity that surrounds me - but that austerity will lead to a richer experience as well.

Oh - fairies.  I think we find fairies - or perhaps the fairer voices of our true natures - wherever we our most ourselves.  I hear them here in Maine when I'm walking in the Oaks, along the shore, even in the Orchard, sometimes.

So I'm a little torn about making this current series of posts a diary of my travels - I suppose some narrative is germaine to my apprehending the meaning of it all.  A little bit of the past will help give me perspective on where my future will lead.

And it was a great trip.



Friday, May 1, 2009

Observations on an Oklahoma Rain


Camille's used to be Sipe's supermarket.

15th. Street is now called "Cherry Street".

Fire Station #5 is a parking lot.

Breakfast can come with a mimosa if I choose.

There's a high steel fence surrounding the Philbrook art center.

But rain, thunder and lightening can still sneak up and pulverize you where you stand, soaking you to the bone in seconds, wind blowing you to the side of a building with shattering force.

And then suddenly ease to a gentle pattering.

It's not that "everything has changed".  I expect things to change, I expect to be amazed, shocked and confused, to feel both delight and disappointment in equal measure.

I also am not surprised by the changes in myself, discovered by measuring against the changes I've seen - and the similarities.

No, I think, for this moment, as my eggs grow cold and my toast disappears, I'm surprised at having a sense of place inside myself - that looking at where I've been and comparing it with where I am now - and the paths that got me there - has opened a window in my own soul, letting in greater understanding and acceptance of where I live - me, my true self, regardless of location.

The true home we always carry, no matter where we are.

Home sweet home.

The rain has stopped and I have places to visit before the day is out.  Like the ghost of Christmas present my time grows short.  I said this a year ago - I can't wait for what happens next.