![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
capri0mniI'll post a f'locked entry, about all the emotional baggage that goes with going-home-without-really-going-home, later. This is just the review of the Art Garden evening itself -- Now, with added commercial plugging of another long-time Art Gardener (three of the twelve songs on her new CD were originally written for the Art Garden)!
Umbrella Review: This was the lowest turnout of any Art Garden, in its 20+ year history, because the theater was booked for the weekend when we usually have it (last weekend in April). And the Editor/MC was forced to have it on a day that conflicted with all the highshcool graduation ceremonies in the area (and there was also a free poetry reading in town [Art Garden tickets are $10], at almost the exact same time). So, for the first time, Irene owed the theater money, instead of the other way around. Still, she insisted that the writers keep their pay, because she lives by the principle that if you value something, you pay for it -- especially the Arts.
OTOH, many of the people there said this was the most powerful Art Garden ever, in part because of its intimacy. Still, we decided that next spring, we should do a topic that would really draw an audience: Naked!
Disclaimer: This is just discription of what the different pieces were, to give you a sense of the variety; I can't describe the feel of the evening. You have to be there, for that.
The program for the evening went thusly:
There! Most of these people are "the regulars." So now that I've written this up, I won't keep drawing a blank on their names, the next time I see them...
Oh, and along with being a caberet singer, Cat Guthrie is also a sometime actress in indie horror films (playing the blonde screamer, I think). At the after party, she said she's now working on two films, both filmed around Cold Spring (where I used to live) -- one going direct to DVD and one to open in theaters. I forget which one this is, but one of them is titled (as of this moment) "Zombie Kung-Fu." I thought that might appeal to at least some on my friends list... ;-)
Umbrella Review: This was the lowest turnout of any Art Garden, in its 20+ year history, because the theater was booked for the weekend when we usually have it (last weekend in April). And the Editor/MC was forced to have it on a day that conflicted with all the highshcool graduation ceremonies in the area (and there was also a free poetry reading in town [Art Garden tickets are $10], at almost the exact same time). So, for the first time, Irene owed the theater money, instead of the other way around. Still, she insisted that the writers keep their pay, because she lives by the principle that if you value something, you pay for it -- especially the Arts.
OTOH, many of the people there said this was the most powerful Art Garden ever, in part because of its intimacy. Still, we decided that next spring, we should do a topic that would really draw an audience: Naked!
Disclaimer: This is just discription of what the different pieces were, to give you a sense of the variety; I can't describe the feel of the evening. You have to be there, for that.
The program for the evening went thusly:
- Meditation -- Giom Grech
Every Art Garden starts with a meditation on the theme of the evening, so that writers and audience members can get into the 'right frame of mind' to listen to all the pieces that follow. I have mixed feelings about composed "guided" meditations -- on the one hand, they can be very beautiful. OTOH, I find that for me, often, the specific "suggestions" offered by the "guide" distract me with a new image right when I'm beginning to see my own images. But then again, a lot of people seem find them helpful, so...
- Beaneath The Skin -- Ann Magill
OMG! I have never been virtually first, before! I've been last, or close to it, far more often. In many ways, it's a real ego-boo to be given 'The (almost) final words' on a subject. But the piece I did does ask the reader/listener to be aware of the Wilderness in every point in the present, so it is a logical follow-up to the meditation. And it was nice to get it over with, so I could just relax and listen to all the other writers.
- Wilderness! Ah... -- Doug Cole
He used to be a professional radio announcer, so he's wonderful to listen to. And he's also a wonderful writer. This piece was about how, as a boy growing up in New York City, he always longed to live in a place of real wilderness. When he finally got to have a cabin near a lake in the Aderondacks, he realized that the woman he thought was the love of his life was really not that compatible with him, based on their different beliefs about what it means to "go for a hike in the woods" (for him, it was meant to be a philosophical stroll, for her, it was a form of athletic pursuit).
- Cousins in the Swamp -- Brydan Fitzgerald
What it says on the tin: Brydan's memory of when she was a child, visiting her cousin one summer, and their exploration of the nearby swamp, early one morning, how the two of them reacted differently to the experience, and what it said about their respective personalities.
- Six More Days of This -- Tracy Strong
Another installment in the Adventures of The BWISBies (Big Women in Sports Bras) -- friends who first met as teenagers in a wilderness experience camp, coming back each yearas middleaged adults to re-experience it, and celebrate their friendship now that they have the maturity, and do it for fun, rather than as a "Growing experience challenge."
- The Downfall of Eagle-Eyed Jack -- John Pielmeier
A spoof heroic poem about an old Alaskan prospector who used to be a crack shot, but is now nearly blind (the punchline is that he's now Seagull-Eyed Jack).
- Uh Oh (I'm in Trouble Now) -- Cat Guthrie
A Rap-Caberet crossover song about the dangerous wilderness that is trying to raise a teenager in today's society. She is a wonderful singer, and she got the audience to do the beatboxing. She's also got a new downloadable CD out at CD Baby Go! Download, so you can hear at least some of the company I keep when I go on these Art Garden trips.
- Body as Landscape -- Cecile Lindstedt
For Cecile, Haiku are long form poems, so I can quote her entire piece for you, verbatim:
If people live in our hearts, the mind is wilderness.
- Thoughts on the Diagnosis of ADD Late in Life -- Vay David
About how her mind has always been like a jungle, and she a monkey leaping from tree to tree.
- There/Dare the Wild -- Giom Grech
A free-form poem about how we are always at the edge of wilderness, physically, and psychologically.
- Mountain-Water Picture -- Jorie Latham
A memoir of her time in a modified Outward Bound program as a Freshman Orientation at Lake Powell, especially her Solo Experience -- three days and nights in the desert alone, with water, but no food.
- Dead Reckoning -- Frank Ortega
From his time in an Adult Outward Bound Program, sailing off the Florida Keys; a poem he wrote on his nightwatch, the day he was acting as diarist for the ship -- about how finding our way in life is like navigating in the dark, by the stars, when the coastlines of islands around you are barely visible.
- Oasis -- Steve Lindstedt
Another of his childhood memoirs. This is one of the few that did not begin with "Life was simple then, in El Cerido, Califonia." It started with finding the old family Bible, and the proverb that his father had underlined: "It is better to live in the wilderness, than to dwell with a contentious woman." It then went on to describe how Steve's mother forced his older brother to break up with his girlfriend, how outraged she was when he later started dating a black girl in college, and how all of that led to Steve's father to walk out and get a divorce; later to remarry the girl he'd been in love with, in high school, and forced to break up with (by her father).
- Off the Grid -- Irene O'Garden
A short one-woman play/character monologue about an elderly woman who drives a tour bus in Alaska, as she waits for her adult sons to arive by single-engine plane, for a visit.
- Cabin in the Wilderness (of my Heart) -- Mark Rettman
The closing song; I'm not sure how to catagorize it: lullaby ballad, maybe? About the struggle to find comfort in a world of grief -- a peaceful place, where there is no need to cry, anymore.
There! Most of these people are "the regulars." So now that I've written this up, I won't keep drawing a blank on their names, the next time I see them...
Oh, and along with being a caberet singer, Cat Guthrie is also a sometime actress in indie horror films (playing the blonde screamer, I think). At the after party, she said she's now working on two films, both filmed around Cold Spring (where I used to live) -- one going direct to DVD and one to open in theaters. I forget which one this is, but one of them is titled (as of this moment) "Zombie Kung-Fu." I thought that might appeal to at least some on my friends list... ;-)
