Sunday, February 28, 2010

The Street Seemed Very Clean At First


SO, the day after snow and soup found the streets to be very, very clean. It was surprising to go to bed one moment with the wind crying outside my windows and wake up the next with a clear, bright Maine morning sneaking into my apartment.

It was funny to see the Porta-Potty in this pic, there, on the left - it was on its side the night before, chasing me across this lot, driven by the wind gusts, siding on the water.

I've envisioned my death from several causes, varying in degrees of rationality or creativity. I can safely say w/out fear of contradiction that "death by Porta Potty" was not one of them

And so now, a day later - actually, two days if you go by the calendar and the clock - I'm thinking about the scene in the streets just now, tonight - walking over to "Grace", the new restaurant built out of the shell of the Chestnut Street church.

There was magic breaking loose, 11:30 at night and a damp snow was falling. It's supposed to alternate wind/snow, clear/rain. Hard to tell - I sspect we'll just go with whatever we get.

Stil, it's hard on the trashcans.

Thursday, February 25, 2010

Bee-yoo-tiful Soooouup ....!


Waiting for some restorative Campbell's Chicken Noodle Soup.

Socks are soaked, jeans passable but will trade shortly for a fluffy bathrobe.

An amazing evening - temps in the 40's but gusts up to 65 mph ....

Got in several minutes ago from a rehearsal for "Inuk and the Sun" - teaching music, creating new parts of the score after chatting with actors who have been revolved to new roles.

Took the long way back from Gorham, the home of the University of Southern Maine, coming through the back end of Westbrook, along the edge of the Presumpscott River. I didn't actually cross the bridge but I rolled my window down for one face-blasting moment ... and could hear it roaring from two blocks away.

The soup is perking away nicely and I'll let it simmer down just for a few moments more.

The day has been busy, work strangely busy at first and then quite quiet (for us, anyway) for most of the day, picking up as I finished up to leave for Gorham. Had to go have copies made at Staples.

The Inuk score is taking shape now - starting to think about how we're going to support the singers. It won't be a "piano and five" type of show - I think we're going to be banging on the set and pounding drums and shaking chickens to create the sound world we want. There is a kind of no-holds-barred attitude I find quite fun.

As I came down into Portland I was stunned to see a bright purple flash light up half the sky. It was in the forested Woodfords area and I drove past blocks of houses that were quite dark. I'd bet that a transformer blew because of the wind.

There were large, large branches down in Deering Oaks. I had to forgo my usual scenic shortcut and back out of the park. Wound up parking directly in front of my old digs on Deering Street. The wind felt like 65 MPH.

So now the soup is ready and I want to sit and listen to the roar of the wind between the buildings. It's fascinating to hear, dramatic to watch.

Almost the hour of the wolf. Don't know if I could handle a wet wolf at my door.

But if it's really cold, it would be welcome anyway.

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Basement Laundry Studios


It has been quite a busy day.

I'm writing this while waiting for "Countdown" to download and prep.

It's a rainy night out, cold, windy, not very pleasant. People are hurrying along on Congress Street below.

Tango practica was a little sparse but still a good place to work on technique. My partners have given me feedback on the work I did with my tango teacher, JR. It seems to have taken and I think, once I've got in better integrated, it will make me an even more expressive dancer.

The time between work and tango was spent doing laundry and trying to record vocal tracks for "Inuk and the Sun". Since the laundry is in the basement - and the basement has such thick walls I packed my laptop, a mike stand, pro condenser mike and headphones downstairs to try to record the "Seals" first song so the singers could have a reference recording.

This building was build as a hotel - an hotel? - around the turn of the last century and the foundation walls are very thick. No vibration from the street.

So I set up outside the laundry. Plugged the power block into the fire alarm and propped myself up against the wall, put on my phones, got up, put the towels in the dryer and then started recording music.

It's actually turned out quite well. The major sound glitch was the fact that the elevator would go off and the Elevator Control Room was just over there. So there was a click - more like a thud - of relays and the elevator would roar from floor to floor.

There was no way to avoid sound contamination. So I suppose the whir of the elevator motors will serve to suggest the surrusus of the waves ( did I spell that right?). At least I got the damned thing done - still have a bunch of songs to conceptualize - then the final arrangements have to be created as the stage action is developed.

It's a fun process. I just didn't think it would play out while the towels were drying and people were trying to make their way by me - gingerly, but gamely.

OK - I admit I kind of like it.

Sue me.


Tuesday, February 23, 2010

The Lord High Kitty of Congress Street


You see, I have this cat.

I've mentioned him before, Sebastian is his name. He came to me as a furred consolation when a relationship - the only time I've tried to live with someone who wasn't myself - didn't work out.

I suppose I should have known better - as many of my close (if that's really applicable to me) friends can attest I often have quite a problematic time living with myself as it is - much less another human being.

But this extraordinary cat seems able to tolerate me.

There is a counter-melody in my first published anthem that he generated by walking on the keys of my old PC88 - it took a little fettling but the piece sold so I guess he's pulling his weight. His share of the kitty litter comes out of the royalties.

I pay for my own part of the litter we use.

He has adapted quite well to the new digs. The pad you see in the pic is a special electrostatic (so says the pack) one that attracts dander and loose hair. It seems to work and he took to it with surprising ease.

It's a much smaller place that my old one and I try to let him wander in the hallway when I can. He prowls the hall, not scratching because he has a big chair at home to scratch up (I consider removing a cat's claws a form of abuse).

A lot of the time - especially at night - he roosts on his pad in the windowsill, watching the traffic, the people and the birds go by. I think if the window could be opened - and it can't - the lucky passersby below would look up and see a blur of black flying out of the window to crash onto hapless seagulls flying harmlessly down Congress Street, thence to thud onto the street and wander off in a daze, while in the distance, by the elevator back to the fifth floor you'd see a black streak and hear a cackle of high-pitched meows ....

Banzai Kitty. Just to mess with the seagull's heads.

Or at least that's what I imagine he's imagining. Hard to tell with some cats.

"Feed me" is pretty clear. He's a very vocal feline. Good one for a composer to have. I remember him barking at squirrels through the window when we lived down by Deering's Oaks.

Didn't know he was bi-lingual - damned smart cat.

So it does a misanthrope like myself good to sit and try to imagine what's going on in another creature's head. So many imaginings we have of the interior lives of others is just a projected reflection of what's going on inside of ours.

The saving grace is the ability to know that what we are seeing is a reflection - not a reality. It's fortunate I can know the difference. It sometimes takes me a while to admit it but I was raised with too much respect and desire for Truth to ignore it successfully for very long.

I learn so much from other people.

And from cats.

Sunday, February 21, 2010

Loco Locavores


I met BG, my dancer friend who builds costumes designed for ease of removal, downtown and we headed over to the latest sign of the apocalypse, the Portland Indoor Market.

It's taken a while for all the permits to come through. Why there were any issues is beyond me, but there it was, opening on Saturday, yesterday.

Basically it was the old Choi Institute of Self-defense, a location on Free Street across from the Civic Center.

I'd had a friend who'd taken Thai Boxing lessons there - she missed it when it closed late last Summer. I'd remembered it as an interesting window to walk by while walking on one of Portland's less interesting streets. Lot's of feet flying around, shouts muffled by the thick glass on the street.

Now it was full of tables covered with all sorts of winter produce.

Lot's of carrots, parsnips, free-range meat, cabbages, jars of jam.

Oh, and there was a box of tomatoes. And a goodly number of potatoes.

These last were problematic for BG. She really enjoys potatoes (one of the few dancers I've ever met who has any kind of relationship at all with starchy foods - most avoid them like the plague) and still was conserving a batch given her by her sister some time ago.

In fact, so long ago that she was worried they might not be worth using - hence the fatal attraction of the bags of fingerlings and other tuber-types populating the darker reaches of the room.

The two pounds of beef I purchased are now transformed through the magic of crock-pottery into a rich chili, carrying it's own heat in the fridge. Also have some beets.


Between us BG and I ran into a small phalanx of friends and acquaintances. A lot of time was spent chatting, watching the box of tomatoes empty out.

I must say it was fun, and I'm very glad we'd arrived when we did. As I noted you could watch the really good stuff go away within minutes.

We managed to escape after about 30 minutes, making our way over to Mousse for brekker , my usual Wednesday hangout when the Market is outdoors.

My schedule is such these days that I don't really get to fix a complexicated breakfast - often some fastidiously engineered oatmeal does the trick. Besides which the smoke detector in my new apartment is so sensitive that it's almost impossible to cook my old breakfast of sausage, eggs and rice with out being beeped out. Resetting the damned thing has always led to overcooked eggs - so I've reverted to oatmeal, which has yet to set it off.

So breakfast at Mousse was nice.

By the time we'd returned the piles of local produce were gone, picked clean by locavores. I'm not sure what this means and I admit to mixed feelings about it. A sizeable crowd was still milling about, asking questions and taking notes.

I don't know why I can't give others the credit for dropping by to get some fresh food - though Hannaford's and Shaw's actually have better stuff for less. Maybe it's just the contrived cleverness of it all. Now that everyone knows you have to get there for the limited pickings right at 10 a.m. I suspect it will become much more successful and much less pleasant.

We shall see.

Saturday, February 20, 2010

The view from five stories up


Friday night.

Actually, Saturday morning.

Thirty degrees outside. Shredded clouds tease the eye with glimpses of crystal stars - odd for being in the middle of a town.

Nestled in the window seat. Fresh, cool air flows in through an inch-wide opening, traffic sounds, the occasional voice from below, raised in celebration of a Friday night.

Actually, Saturday morning.

A mug of green tea marks the end of an eventful and routine day. I had interesting lessons to teach to interesting people - and no one came to my workshop on Parental Controls. Shared a pizza with a friend, obliged by her dog to scratch his muzzle while trying to watch Keith and Rachel.

I see people walking by on the sidewalk across the street, collars pulled up against the wind that blows between the buildings. I smell snow in the air but the weather forecast calls for continued clear skies.

There should be more snow on the ground, we should feel more immediate drama from Nature at this time of year. One week of clear weather doesn't make a climate - but it does seem odd to have it be so enjoyable - well, relatively so, anyway.

During the day I am high enough to watch seagulls fly by below me - I watch them from an overhead viewpoint, soaring between these buildings. Fascinating.

I do not plan on dreams - but perhaps tonight they will come. Perhaps this is one now.

Monday, February 15, 2010

So, what the hell WAS I doing last night?


It all started with the picture on the left.

No, 'lemme 'splain ...

All I was doing was coming home from helping a friend out in the early part of the evening. Sometimes a crisis or issue arises and you just get up and go.

So, with all that settled and a plate of cookies in my pocket - courtesy of a friend's two year old - and my car parked in the garage I was headed home to continue the seeming-endless job of unpacking and editing my poor life.

This took my by Geno's - my favorite brick and beer rock-and-roll bar. Big Bob the Bouncer was smoking by a sandwich board - "Love On the Run - A Valentine's Burlesque".

There is a lively - if rather basic - scene of "burlesque nouveaux" here in Little Paris By Casco Bay. I've been to some small productions held in various garages and on various street corners around the town - the Gothic sideshow and Excuse-Me Sir-cus are also attached - if not by the hip, then with lashings of imagination.

I admit it - I like looking at women who enjoy being naked - and, frankly, at anyone, male or female, who flat out knows that everyone is having a good time.

If someone does not like being naked it shows - pardon the expression.

Big Bob is persuasive - that's probably why he went into bouncing in the first place.

I bounced on in - and was aghast at how large the crowd was already. More importantly, no seats were free at the bar. Fortunately I found a free wooden barstool under the jukebox (the "iMusic" box, god help us...) and pulled it up.

The show was obnoxious and loud. Mostly the plot - with fewer threads than most of the girl's costumes - concerned two madams on the run from the law. This was conveyed through vignettes, mostly based on country (no pun intended - Shakespearean or otherwise) songs that served as motivations for the girls to get their kit off.

It was in the middle of all this madness that I was accosted by an old friend - BG - a dancer who had taught with me back in the early days in Cumberland. She's an accomplished modern dancer and a whiz with special-needs kids. She also helped glue-gun roses to one of the costumes and I know she did a great job doing it because those roses stayed on the costume when it hit the floor of the stage.

And it hit damned hard, too.

So it went. Since her friend was dancing in the "finale" - which was a thinly veiled (get it?) rip-off (get it?) of the cornfield (really get it?) joke-fest from the old "Hee Haw" show we had to stay for the evening.

I admit that what I could see from my vantage point by the bar - and behind the crowd - was hard to make out, except for one song - to the tune of "Dueling Banjos" - that started right ON the bar - which is when I took the pic above.

It made for a great, if tiring, evening and I'm actually glad I stayed to watch.


It was also fun to catch up with BG - she's a talkative, likeable person in a very difficult professional educational field. When the show was done I offered to walk her back across the entire West End to her flat as it was after 1:15 in the morning and not only was it the gentlemanly thing to do it was fun to see what that end of town was like so late in the evening.

Once BG was safely indoors I could turn my full attention to the incredible sound of the West End late in the night - after 1:30. It's not quiet, not in the least. As your hearing attunes you can hear motors going by on the freeway that borders Deering's Oaks. The longer you listen the more your ears adjust, the way eyes adjust to the dark.

Motors become cars and trucks, then station wagons, sports cars, 18-wheelers and bread trucks. Amazing.

I crossed the playground of the school where my friend W. teaches - swings gently, if disturbingly, twisted in the slight breeze. A tree caught the light behind the iron fence.

Lights plainly showing a bulkhead lying slightly ajar. Brightly lit but still a reminder of how late, how alone you are - anything - ANYthing could come out of that crooked bulkhead door.

AnyTHING.

It can reliably be said that I always see things this way - it's the effect of having read so much H.P, Lovecraft as an adolescent.

The temperature was bearable. Keeping at a brisk pace helped, I wrapped my pashmina tighter about me, pulled my hat down closer over my overworked head.

At the end of one stretch was a Cumberland Farms store, gas tanks pumping away, people inside buying large cases of beer in advance of the bar shut-down coming in a very few minutes - and all the stores would stop selling as well too.

Finally I turned the corner at the Cumby's and there was Longfellow Square, glowing bright orange and red in the distance.

I think they're starting to take the lights down now. The artist is of the opinion that such displays should be both public and temporary - we enjoy them for a season and then they go away.

Other art, other installations take their place, but this - this is a One Time Only deal, something that only exists for the one who are lucky enough to see it.

And so it went last night.

I feel lucky to have run into a Scotch, a stage full of (eventually) naked ladies, an old friend, good conversation, zany theatrics, naked ladies (did I already mention them) and all topped of with a walk both sinister and lovely.

I say "sinister" though there really was no more risk that we ever take when walking at such a time and in such place. But also sinister because you could imagine - or even actually feel - the age of the city around you, age that had nothing to do with the bricks, mortar and Mansard roofs of the houses.

No, there was a magic out that night. What it was I think I'll go mad over, if I ever totally see it.

It was all very lovely and very strange at the same time

The lights in Longfellow Square are part of it. I know the were not part of the experience of the City but there it is, called in to being as if by single sorcery, one person setting the trees alight to entertain the statue of Mr. Longfellow.

I suspect the statue gets up to talk at some times.

I wish I could be there to see. I cannot seem to stop the train, no matter how fast I try.

Maybe if I don't think about it - or go at it sideways - I might get it across.

We shall see.

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Under't to Above't while in't


Well.

Well, well, well.

Welcome to my new abode.

Five stories above Congress Street, a rent check for $50 more but saving $70 in the process.

I think Sebastian is completely sold on being the Lord High Kitty of Congress Street, surveying the passing multitudes, free from the distractions of mice or excessive cigarette smoke.

We're now ensconced here at 645 Congress Street. This building started life as a hotel, fell into disuse and was, most recently, used by the University of Southern Maine as an intown dormitory.

From all reports (some of them from my colleagues at the Orchard) this place was pathetically thrashed - fist holes in the walls, butt prints on the ceilings. It wasn't that students (well, most students) wouldn't tear-ass around in any dorm - it was that the University just didn't seem to care all that much, refusing to put the resources into the space to make it worth respecting.

Sadly,I think some things come too easily.

Still, my dear friend E. has been pointing this place out to me throughout its construction. She's been consulting with the builders and owners about how to make it attractive for contemporary intown folks - strange to think that includes me.

The building has one apartment reserved as a meeting/community room - it can also be rented as a guest-room extempore' - if one has company, it can be rented.

E. also insisted on a large bike room, very secure but accessible to the street by electronic key card.

Moving in - most of moving in - was accomplished in three trips. I have to thank my friends the W's, who live just around the corner. They - along with E.H's huge pickup truck - made it easy.

I think I was much better packed this time than the last - there was much less of a panicked air to the process. The last time I had to get rid of 27 trash bags of useless things, dropped off all over the peninsula in the middle of a raging snowstorm.

This time a lot of things went to Goodwill, some to the recycling bins - much neater. The remainder took place over the next 5 days, smooth as catgut.

So now I've actually had a couple of mornings where I could sit in the window seat, a cup of coffee in my hand, Sebastian in my lap, watching the light change on Peak's Island, the traffic build on Congress Street.

Now that WiFi is up it's going to be really perfect.

My first loads of laundry are finishing up - I still don't know where I'm going to put it all now that it's not crammed into trash bags for the quick trip around the corner from my old place.

Still, it's a nice problem to have - and now that I actually have two whole days off in a row - a row! - I might be able to get things done and online.

So now I have a full-time job at the Orchard, a new place where I actually save money while writing a bigger check and a score to write for a play.

Not a bad place to start in the middle of.