Friday, April 30, 2010

The One Who Can Be Many Places At Once




....which for those of you with a particularly genre-centric mindset is another term for the Kwisatz Haderach.

Hope I cleared THAT up.

Writing from above the Market House - using the two-fingered technique that seems to work best for me.

It is dramatically different than the last time I was here - then Monument square was draped in snowy blankets - now it's bright, sunny, almost warm (if you ignore the sea breeze).




Last week I drove to Wells to visit an Indian store on route One. It's been there for what seems like generations,filled with that strange, evocative air that old stores full of strange objects can generate.

I was buying gifts - mostly $1 arrowheads and other trinkets - for the Inook cast. The day was bright, sunny, somewhat cool. On the way down I noticed a railroad viaduct over a stream, on the right while southbound.

Made a note which I acted on by stopping to walk along the railroad track on my way back north.

Not sure which rail line it is - don't know of a passenger line (the only one being the Downeaster - and that runs through Old Orchard) in the area.




Still, I've been a sucker for trains and trainyards since childhood - blame my Uncle Louis Benge, who was a brakeman on the old Midland Valley line back home. It was fun to walk up to the big steel bridge, then along a right-of-way that had obviously once been a two-bed line and now only served one line, accompanied by snowmobiles.

The actual stone-arched viaduct was almost invisible from the tracks. I had to spot it by looking at the stream. My first thought was to film it from the safety of the tracks (assuming no trains came blasting through).

Looking at it closer - the flinty ballast of the trails, the thick granite chips that supported the built-up right-of-way - made me decide to gingerly pick my way down the slope to the stream.




It was a rewarding risk.

I suppose that now, a week later, the sprouting greenery, the soggy runoff plain it covered, all would be closer to an impassable mess, full of trippings and feet plunging into mud, ankle deep.

But a week ago we were just that much closer to the slumber of Winter and the growth had not awakened enough to impede me - much.

The water was moderately deep, moderately swift. There were trees fallen, either by weight of snow or movement of earth, into the water.

Don't get me wrong. I'm very glad the days are warmer and I need to work on my tan as much as anyone else - well, kinda anyway ....




But I do miss the way you see the bones of the land when they're laid bare by Winter. There's an austere beauty to it that is appealing. That and the anticipation of change.

So I got out safely, unscratched, one brand-new sneaker not so branded anymore. There are all sorts of little urban faux wildernesses all around here and I love them.


-- Post From My iPad

Monday, April 26, 2010

The First, Last New England Boiled Dinner in Portland




I don't spend as much money eating out, as much as I spend time. Having lived in this graceful city by the sea for more than half my life - which is a daunting proposition right there - I've got a good handle how to get the maximum amount of social interaction for the smallest amount of money.

This means, basically, that I spend less money on expensive booze (saving it up for my occasional single-malt scotch) than I do on regular beers or glasses of wine.

The occasional slice of pizza. It's all good.

I like to watch people talk. I like to listen to them move. It's a huge amount of fun to sit in a crowded room and try to follow half-a-dozen conversations at once.

There's a line in the stage version of "Amadeus" where the precocious genius Mozart floors his hidden nemesis Salieri with a description of the unbelievably complex, yet coherant first act finale of "La Nozze de Figaro" that says "I'll bet that's how God hears the world".

God can handle the world. I've got my brainfull with a dozen people. Still, I love it.




Down on Marginal Way, by Interstate 95, is a wonderful relic of a lost age of community interaction, the "Miss Portland Diner". It's a genuine Worcester Diner, dating from 1949 and it's been a fixture in that part of town for over 60 years. Check them out at www.missportlanddiner.com.

It works out that last night, after visiting with friends, I wound up taking an impromptu dinner there. It was their first Sunday evening being open and I had the whole place to myself for almost half an hour.

It was also the last hurrah for the season of the New England Boiled Dinner.

I'd actually never had one before - came close on several occasions but never seemed to manage it (rather like my record with getting married, come to think of it).




Since there was no WiFi in the place - and I'm not that sure the experience could be improved if it had it - I was left with my camera to entertain me. That and "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" on my iPad reader.

It was a good meal, filling and very healthy. I would call it comfort food if I'd grown up eating it instead of chili.

Still I felt happy to sit in such a wonderful old space, full of dark wood and polished chrome. The food was equally colorful.

So, all told, it was a quiet, tasty way to end a weekend that actually was full of miracles, from the opening of "Inuk" to sitting with a friend's year-old daughter in my lap on a bright Sunday afternoon.

Perhaps that's how God hears the world.



-- Post From My iPad

Location:Congress St,Portland,United States

Sunday, April 25, 2010

Tickets To Elysium

It's a quiet Sunday night after a hectic weekend.

Friday night saw the opening "Inuk and the Sun" at USM.



The show was very theatrical - and went pretty much as I thought it would. The visual component was very strong but I was stunned to hear - or not hear - some of the music cues I'd written. Especially the seals. Apparently the background tracks were thought to be too thick. I spent my time before bed on Friday re-scoring them .... All to no avail.

I should have gone to the dress and could have gotten them teched into the show - but even though the music for the Northern Lights is very, very NewAge and over-produced the show is locked.

Which, ultimately, is my own fault. I should have taken more time - but that is the price of being so busy and not planning better for the execution of the show.



Still, all told it's ultimately a real success. Sometimes you don't get everything you want - and forget that when things work it can be magic.

I smuged the set and the cast before the opening - so I gave them my blessing and can't take it back.

Saturday was a long, long day.

SNAP workshop at 9 - my call was 8:30. Four kids, three specialists. Good odds. Then I worked till 7:30. Which made for a long work day.

And then I attended Atomic Trash's burlesque show with a Naturopath friend. Nice to have a friend willing to accompany one to see strippers.

We managed to make to the intermission. The show has really bumped up in presentation, both in showmanship and brio. I liked it, the sheer (pardon the expression) fun of it.

Oh, the naked ladies were nice too.

So today I've been relaxing, spending a lot of time re-working my birthday tango for TML - if I get the thing organized it's going to be a really good little piece. As it is it works well.

I'm writing this at Enzo, listening to people talk at the bar, watching people stop into the adjoining, attached pizza shop - Otto - walking out with wedges of crunchy, cheesy goodness.

Maybe, at the end of the day, that's all this weekend needed to be. A lot of hard work and goodness at the finish.

For which I am very, very grateful.

-- Post From My iPad

Thursday, April 22, 2010

With Bright Shining Faces


I could get to like this thing.

Working at the Orchard means you have to keep up with the latest and greatest ... Especially if you're going to teach it to folks, justifying the investment of their hard-earned money.

Probably should not have gotten this thing (I'm typing on it now) ... The iPad, I mean. It was what I call a "planned impulse". Still it seems to be working out and it does make blogging a little easier.

"Inuk" is now running on its own ... I went to the final tech two nights ago and was astounded at how intense and theatrical the show is. A good 70% of the music has been revised - or deleted - for pretty good reasons, most of them structural, some of them performance-based.

I'm playing hooky from the final dress - hiding out at Enzo with a roomful of people - barely inside my tolerance level but doable if I stay focussed on writing.

If you take the show on its own terms it's astoundingly theatrical and moving. If you don't then you will get lost in the details of the show and only see what is in front of you and not what is in your heart.

It's an important distinction and one that will make or break your experience of anything more complex than something like "Three's Company".

So I am intensely interested in how the audience reacts. If the kids in the show understand and believe - or even just believe without understanding - then it will be a sight to see.


I'll let you know how it all turns out.


-- Post From My iPad

Monday, April 19, 2010

The Next Cover For the Cookie Jar


Truth be told I do have my share of strange habits. Most of them serve some kind of purpose.

My best friend, EH, tells me that obsessions often grow out of some kind of protective behavior, behavior that protects one from a desperately unpleasant truth.

If one is foolish enough to expect 100% - and works hard, earning 90%, well, that can seem like failure. You try for 105% and achieve 95 - still failure.

It's like the tortoise and Achilles - no matter how hard you try you can never catch up. The only way out is to totally reject everything you believed in that forced you into this absurd race in the first place ...

... or ...

... you compensate by doing little things that you CAN get right - like checking the windows every night - or arranging the dishes just SO or lacing your shoes a certain way....

... And suddenly what started as a little habit loses its connection to compensation and takes on a horrid life of it's own.

Thus is birthed the common, or, garden variety, obsession.

So, somewhere between Heaven and Las Vegas lies a street and I'm crossing it.

As a child I was well trained to respect the cops, help little old ladies and be a gentleman when I could.

Because of this it's really hard for me to do simple acts of defiance, like crossing the street against the "wait" light - even in the middle of the night.

I stride up the the lights, mostly at the corner of High and Congress, arguably the busiest one in town, set my balance and tap the "walk" button with my toe, usually on the left.

Like my post on the joy of observation I love to see the looks on people's faces as they try to process it all.

People pass me by, some with a look of vague malevolence, or a facial shrug that practically screams "Asshole!!" because I'm dumb enough to actually care that the "walk" signs are there for a reason and we should obey them, as good citizens.

I think the word "obey" has kind of left our collective conciousness - that doing something purely because one is TOLD to do it is as alien as buggy whips and lager beer in buckets.

At the same time it's kind of cool to wait as cars turn by you. A pedestrian following the signs kinds of throws off the flow of traffic, it disrupts the flow by going with it.

The payoff comes when the light turns to "walk" - and it does so for all four lanes of traffic. I can stride across like I own the street, because, for those 15 seconds, I really do own it.

I can stride, hop, funky-chicken my way across, be totally myself and there's not a single damned thing anyone can do or say about it.

For those15 seconds I'm a late-middle aged Native-American frakkin' GOD and there not a Goddam thing anyone can do about it.

It works out just right, because, frankly, I'd hate to be a God for any longer than 15 seconds - just thinking about the amount of email you'd have to answer freaks me out.

I mean, you could only answer, say, what, 95% of it?

...and THEN where would you be?


-- Post From My iPad

Location:Congress St,Portland,United States

Saturday, April 17, 2010

My My My My My Boogie Shoes....

So. Tomorrow is my 54th birthday. By God I've earned it.

I wish I could say portentious things but I've just got too damned much to worry - no, think - about.

Inuk is going really well. Still some last-minute fixies to do, had to re- write another song - again. As we approach this week's opening it's starting to look more and more like a show.

I like it.

A lot of the action of the play is driven by the needs of the human characters. The often throw themselves on the mercy of the divine ones.

This idea of "mercy" is either lost on these kids or, more likely, is so far outside their direct emotional experience that it's almost impossible for them to operate from it.





When driving me across the scrubs of Southeastern Oklahoma once, on the way to grad school in Louisiana, my dad pointed out a road, that arrowed West from the main highway.

He told me that there was an Indian School about 20 miles down the road and that he had been consigned to it after his parent's divorce.

Still the need to be with his father (my grampa Sam) was so great that he jumped the fence of the school and walked the 20 miles to get the state highway that would lead the 70 miles north to Tulsa/Sand Springs where his Father - seperated from his wife - lived.

He pointed out the road - which seemed like it led straight to Nowhere's armpit over the horizon - and said that when he stood there a farmer came by in his truck and "had mercy on him", giving him a ride up North so dad could be with his Dad.

As I think about it I cannot escape a profound feeling of respect, of understanding fierce need and depth of feeling that would drive an eight year old boy to undertake such a perilous risk.

I also have a lot more respect for the potential of eight year olds as well.

So often I have been defined by the extraordinary grace and strength of my Mon - that I forget where so much of my strength and power of affect come from.

No point in not loving if the opportunity presents itself.

Happy birthday, indeed.




-- Post From My iPad

Location:Congress St,Portland,United States

Sunday, April 11, 2010

The Very Many Spring Day

Sadly I don't have the pics to prove it but the major activity of the day has been to march in an Afro/Cuban Pagan Springtime parade down Congress Street, up Munjoy Hill, appreciatively behind a phalanx of writhingly dancing women, led by a man in dressed in an African fertility costume covered in straw.

It was striking enough to chase the Evangelical Methodist churchfolk back inside their church as they strolled out during our passby.



I took a lot of shots. Sadly, as noted above none of them actually were taken as I'd left the damned card on my desk.

Trust me - it was a blast.

It was fun - and both the types closest to my heart.

The joy of participation:

I told a friend earlier in an email that I tend to find myself participating in a lot of things like this. I love performing and being part of an ensemble. The intensity of listening and following - or leading, on occasion - really clears out my soul, connects me with other folks.

And the joy of observation:


The rest of the day was a shower and a nap - followed by a late afternoon trip across the river to take pics at Bug Light.

I take a lot of pleasure when watching two streams come together. That's the place where the prettiest waves happen. It's where things are created, like Venus rising from the foam of the sea.

So it was a fun afternoon, a "good stretch of the legs" to quote John Ford (late of Portland himself).

I hope we did him proud.

-- Post From My iPad

Location:Congress St,Portland,United States

The Best I've Ever Had and Then Some


Not quite sure where this post is going to go.


Saturday night in fabulous Portland.


I'm back at Boda, the new Thai place down from my apartment. It's a warm(ish) evening out and I'm just about done in. Didn't sleep well, though, now that I think of it, I know I spent most of it asleep.


I started at the Orchard later than usual and took time to sit out front and edit pics from last week's iPad launch. The day took off and was an interesting mix of lessons, study, dead time and general hanging out.


We were very busy but we still seemed to have time to chat, smile and tell knock-knock jokes.


So now I'm having a Rosemary Manhattan and asparagus spears wrapped in bacon.


I think this is the first bacon or bacon-like food I've had in quite some time. I don't really cook eggs and sausage and rice scrambles for breakfast in my new apartment. The cuisine in my previous place caused my pots to be so dirty that the first time I boiled water for tea in the new place the fire alarm went off.


While I was trying to make tea. A fire alarm.


So, properly shamed, I find that I eat less fatty meat, fix a lot of crock-pot wonders, tuck into a lot of fruit.


Tomorrow is a day off. With the laundry done I'm torn between going upstate to visit friends and just sleeping the whole day away. Probably some combination of the two.

Thursday, April 8, 2010

Enzo and a Thought



Taking time to give time away.

It's been noted that Thursday is my Friday. I cannot tell you how relieved I am to have reached it.

The Orchard has been something more than a souk and less than a madhouse. I've been very busy teaching and studying, learning the in and outs of various electronic devices. I've enjoyed it.

The end of my shift has usually meant jumping into my car and racing to USM for Inuk rehearsal.

No. Jumping into the car and racing to McDonald's - then racing to USM.

We're into the final stages of settling the show. Tonight I am playing hooky (or taking a sanity evening) from a "Lion's Den" for it. It's a designer's run-through. I should be there to see how the music is working but I'm just too tired.

I hope I never lose the sense of amazement and joy when I hear my music performed; hear it with other people making it their own. It's such a fun thing to share...

...no, "fun" doesn't even begin to describe the feeling. It's something between tears and ecstasy. I've always felt it, all of my life, for even the simplest things.

For someone so selfish I really like to share.

So, here I am next to Otto Pizza, in a charming little wine bar called Enzo - whether or not it's related to the founder of Ferrari I have no idea.

It's a bijou little place; white tile with dark wood accents, brass sheeting backs the shelves and lines the space between the doors and the ceiling. I'm not really one for wine but this place seems just low-key enough to be interesting.

I can also see that it can become miserably crowded and hip at certain other time...

Took some pics on my peregrination about the town - with luck I'll sleep the night through and have a full and wonderful day tomorrow....

Some things really are worth planning for.

Monday, April 5, 2010

Special Correspondent to the War of the Roses

OK - this is going to look a little odd at first, but I think it's going to work out all right

I'm typing this on the virtual keyboard of my new iPad. The feel and process are a little new and I may yet find myself moving over to Word Press, which has an app custom built for the iPad but so far I've managed to get it tondo pretty much everything I've wanted it to do.

I may yet wind up switching over to WordPress, which has a custom-built app for the iPad. We shall see.

Meanwhile life goes on.

Tonight being the First Monday of the month I had my twin arts experiences - Naked Shakespeare and the Geek Chorus at Geno's.

The Wine Bar hosted the Bard's group. Tonight was the second annual Shakespearean smack down in which the group split in two and presented dual performances of the same selections. One team was in red - York - and one in white. That would be Lancaster.

After each pairing the crowd voted by holding the appropriately colored - or coloured - sign. Needless to say ( but I'll say it - it was perfect mayhem.

After that the Geek Chorus at Geno's Rock Bar was almost an anticlimax.

Almost.

Excepting that they chose an amazing film called "The Pink Angels" which was about the exploits of a gay gang of bikers. The film was from the very late 70's - the bikers were timeless.

Don't say my life is a rut - pardon the expression...

Friday, April 2, 2010

Walking in Advance of the Landing


I've tried to avoid Starbucks but they're so conVENient and the coffee is so GOOD - even though I'm just drinking a Pellegrino as I write ...

It's a bright, bright sunny day here - I'm going for a walk in a few minutes with EH and his extraordinary son TA, probably out to the beach again. Somehow I think this one will have a significantly different feel than the cold, austere and somewhat drearily beautiful one I had a couple of weeks ago.

TA is an amazing kid - he's dodged a genetic bullet, 23rd chromosome syndrome - with only minor effects, the most striking of which is his size - he's noticeably smaller than his cousins born during the same month (which is another saga altogether). He is very bright, very loving, with merry blue eyes, blonde hair and glasses - two years before I got my first pair - amazing!

Think of Charles Wallace in "A Wrinkle In Time" - that kind of child. Come to think of it, Madeline L'Engle stayed at their house (in what is now the living room with its blue-glass chandelier) whenever she stayed with TA's great-grandmother (which is another saga altogether).

Still very tired from the week's work - both at the Orchard and for Inuk - good grief, I almost called iNuk ...

Pretty much all the music is written - still have to see the dream sequence to figure out the underscore, as well as the shark attack, which is more of an underscare - and set the actual opening.

Though the kids sound great - especially the Seals - I still have no idea what this actual sound of this show is going to be - it's the weirdest thing. How authentic do I make it, given the very limited resources I have - well, the kids are unlimited, the budget is not.

Still, I like what I've written - or what I've written with the kids, because I sat down with each of them as I revised it to make it fit their voices and their parts of the story - they came up with some nice suggestions.

Meanwhile, comma, tomorrow is iPad release day and the energy has been building in the Orchard for weeks. I can't wait.

So today, being a First Friday, I'm going to enjoy this - maybe go out and buy a pair of bright green boat shoes to wear tomorrow.

The other thing will be to take time to really enjoy what's going on around me.

Oops - the alarm just went off on my phone - have to go walk.