I'm switching my blog to Tumblr.
It's easier, more versatile, prettier (a big consideration), and plus I'm a sucker for shiny new toys.
Henceforth:
gathermeman.tumblr.com
Also the hope is that I can use the new site as a little more of an artistic forum, as well as indulging the journal aspect.
Let me know what you think - most recent Maine posts are there.
Love,
Michaela
Sunday, August 8, 2010
Thursday, August 5, 2010
Quarry Backstory
A video by Paulette Moore, Pavreen Chhetri, and Steven Stauffer, our delightful film crew. Pavreen composed the music for his band back in Nepal. It's a totally different tonality. When the vid was made, the crew hadn't yet captured the show's audio -- quite a stretch between this soundtrack and a steel drum calypso. I love it. So the video is not the show promo proper, but a way for the dancers to get a line on their own work, and audiences to have an intriguing glimpse of it. It's been great working and playing with the film crew. Lots of wasabi peas, coffee ice cream, quote gathering, band name bartering and children's book reminiscences. The product of their late nights at the dining room table:
Quarry Backstory from Paulette Moore on Vimeo.
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Show Day
Today is the first performance of Q2: Habitat - Alison is still making last minute changes, which suits me just fine. We had a very productive rehearsal yesterday after a topsy-turvy Sunday of show changes, most to allow the piece some breathing room. Not only was it coming in short at 30 minutes (rather than the requisite 45), but the events, musical cues, and entrances were piling on to such a degree that there was no clear arc or stage picture. When everybody arrived at once: porcupines, seagulls, the excavator, birdwatchers, UHaul - their relationships didn't show up. The spaciousness of the new beginning really allows the audience to settle into the natural world of the Quarry before its augmentation and disruption through the human elements. So I was pleased! Also pleased that the community members accepted big changes and created something cohesive and clear out of them. They caught on quickly and were all about investing in the piece and seeing it thrive -- so I feel like we're doing something right. A little bruised by the subsumation of my circus vocabulary into the (far better) creative vocabulary of one of the community members, I got the necessary reminder from them as well as Alison: in a project like this, it is all about teamwork -- the generation of ideas that are improved upon by others, and may ultimately be perfected and performed by someone unconnected with the original thought.
The idea of community responsibility for art (and art's reciprocal responsibility to community) is central to what Alison and Mia have tried to accomplish with Q2, but for me it is better embodied in the process we've taken to get here. There's an added layer every time a new person jumps in. Right now, Paulette Moore, a documentary filmmaker and educator, is staying at the house and filling my head with restorative justice, art in research, and this big web of people who are doing creative vital things in the world. She pointed me to a colleague, John Paul Lederach, who recently spoke on the "Art of Peace" for Speaking of Faith. I pointed her towards some readings for her class on media and culture, most culled from Shevchenko's great syllabus in Memory and Identity. Delightful symbiosis begins anew.
Also, Tupelo Press's This Lamentable City was featured as one of the "Books of the Times" in the New York Times last week. More excitement in my expanding world of independent arts!
Dependent, in fact, on a special blend of circumstance and choice -- today, for instance, we're doing the sun dance to ward off downpours on our natural amphitheater. Add your soft-shoe, and check out some pictures and words from the Quarry, via the Bangor Daily News.
The idea of community responsibility for art (and art's reciprocal responsibility to community) is central to what Alison and Mia have tried to accomplish with Q2, but for me it is better embodied in the process we've taken to get here. There's an added layer every time a new person jumps in. Right now, Paulette Moore, a documentary filmmaker and educator, is staying at the house and filling my head with restorative justice, art in research, and this big web of people who are doing creative vital things in the world. She pointed me to a colleague, John Paul Lederach, who recently spoke on the "Art of Peace" for Speaking of Faith. I pointed her towards some readings for her class on media and culture, most culled from Shevchenko's great syllabus in Memory and Identity. Delightful symbiosis begins anew.
Also, Tupelo Press's This Lamentable City was featured as one of the "Books of the Times" in the New York Times last week. More excitement in my expanding world of independent arts!
Dependent, in fact, on a special blend of circumstance and choice -- today, for instance, we're doing the sun dance to ward off downpours on our natural amphitheater. Add your soft-shoe, and check out some pictures and words from the Quarry, via the Bangor Daily News.
Sunday, August 1, 2010
Incidentally (Pt. I)
-- The Chases all swear very gently (except when they swear very violently). The most common word in the household is "shitskys."
-- Whenever I put my hand in the fridge, it comes out smelling like fish. This applies whether I am reaching for grapes or grabbing the skim milk. All to do with the constant conditions of a Downeast refrigerator.
-- The Brooksville market doesn't sell "Morning Glory" muffins; it sells "Glorious Morning" muffins.
-- I know more about this neighborhood than I do my own, in some respects. As we drive around - and we drive for hours every day - Alison points out homeplaces, shops, and local lore. I know the house of the woman who has early-onset Alzheimer's at age 50. I know the wine shop of the former high-school music teacher who had an affair with the superintendent's wife, and the circumstances of its revelation. I know the drama of the Deer Isle/Stonington Elementary School (what necessarily happens when two communities are nearly indistinguishable - a radical attachment to distinguishment).
-- Whenever I put my hand in the fridge, it comes out smelling like fish. This applies whether I am reaching for grapes or grabbing the skim milk. All to do with the constant conditions of a Downeast refrigerator.
-- The Brooksville market doesn't sell "Morning Glory" muffins; it sells "Glorious Morning" muffins.
-- I know more about this neighborhood than I do my own, in some respects. As we drive around - and we drive for hours every day - Alison points out homeplaces, shops, and local lore. I know the house of the woman who has early-onset Alzheimer's at age 50. I know the wine shop of the former high-school music teacher who had an affair with the superintendent's wife, and the circumstances of its revelation. I know the drama of the Deer Isle/Stonington Elementary School (what necessarily happens when two communities are nearly indistinguishable - a radical attachment to distinguishment).
Friday, July 30, 2010
Hitting the Trail
I have never liked the phrase "going for a run," because it seems to imply that there is some sort of Platonic ideal, a run that is out there waiting. Likewise, I've always thought of "going running" as an intimidating activity requiring advance preparation -- the procuring and donning of runners' shoes and runners' duds, maybe even a special watch or water bottle, and probably some sort of public announcement: "Going for a run!", as the runner, hair up and already jogging, heads out the door.
Last summer, I was at Middlebury for seven weeks. Middlebury, VT, for those of you who don't know, can completely elude the eye if you're not watching for it. The landscape goes something like: pasture, pasture, barn, cow, woods, pasture, Middlebury, woods, pasture. What that means is that walking off campus in any direction lands you on a trail within 5 minutes, and these trails are beautiful, through fields and by falls. I was lonely; I hadn't access to my mother or my mother tongue, so I started taking long walks -- 1 hour, 2 hours, sometimes 3 -- every day after classes. And what started happening was that, on certain of these ambles, I'd feel a sudden urge to go faster. At these times, I would, casually and without advance preparation, begin to run. When I no longer felt like going fast, I would slow down. And I had an obvious but late realization (what I call an elevator moment, when you finally think about the phrase enough to get that an elevator is called an elevator because it elevates you): You can run whenever you want. You can stop running whenever you want.
For the past three mornings, I have run, and walked, on the Breezemere Rd. and on a beautiful trail down to the coast. And I plan to keep running every day. I never thought I'd be "a runner," and I still don't think I am. But I have a little bit of the high that also gets peculiarly ascribed to that group -- and I'm feeling new appreciation for a way of being that, as it turns out, is less about the Platonic ideal than the need to go just a little bit faster.
Last summer, I was at Middlebury for seven weeks. Middlebury, VT, for those of you who don't know, can completely elude the eye if you're not watching for it. The landscape goes something like: pasture, pasture, barn, cow, woods, pasture, Middlebury, woods, pasture. What that means is that walking off campus in any direction lands you on a trail within 5 minutes, and these trails are beautiful, through fields and by falls. I was lonely; I hadn't access to my mother or my mother tongue, so I started taking long walks -- 1 hour, 2 hours, sometimes 3 -- every day after classes. And what started happening was that, on certain of these ambles, I'd feel a sudden urge to go faster. At these times, I would, casually and without advance preparation, begin to run. When I no longer felt like going fast, I would slow down. And I had an obvious but late realization (what I call an elevator moment, when you finally think about the phrase enough to get that an elevator is called an elevator because it elevates you): You can run whenever you want. You can stop running whenever you want.
For the past three mornings, I have run, and walked, on the Breezemere Rd. and on a beautiful trail down to the coast. And I plan to keep running every day. I never thought I'd be "a runner," and I still don't think I am. But I have a little bit of the high that also gets peculiarly ascribed to that group -- and I'm feeling new appreciation for a way of being that, as it turns out, is less about the Platonic ideal than the need to go just a little bit faster.
Sunday, July 25, 2010
Lazy Sunday...
Never.
Last weeks's "day off" was full of sailing and a late dinner (preceded by the frustrations of failed communications media). Nothing to complain of the day's activities -- just full motion and full company. Today, the dancers are invited over to the Chases' (the many Chases, Nigel this time) for a cookout on the point, with sauna and kayaks. We're about to go grocery shopping. Last night, we heard Paul Sullivan jazz (why do they seat people for this kind of thing?) with a big black woman wailing and a gawky 15 year old with an overdone operatic tone, but a nicer, looser swing once she got rolling. But after coping with a peevish and aggressive primo donno newly introduced to the cast, sitting lumpishly in the quarry with nothing to do or running around covered in a felty piece of turf, labeled an "ideal community member" (that's a big insult), and pulling 13 hour days before finally sitting down to family dinner at 9 and figuring out how to exit (not so hard, they're kind and I can yawn)...well, I'm ready for some down time. I'm ready to be with my family, to fly to Oregon, to catch up with Dara, to head out to the middlest nowhere of this middle of nowhere and sketch, alone.
Not to say that I haven't had amazing experiences. This week:
Monday's pan dance,
Tuesday's live drawing class (my first ever, probably a fuller post on this and other things to come),
Thursday's dancer get-together (hilarious game of "Celebrities," world's best guac, and the cast's good couple: "Don't diss yourself."),
Saturday's bona fide burger and better jazz.
But as you'll see, most of these experiences have nothing to do with my purported purpose in being here. Is that a so what? Or is being seen as less a dancer than anything else a real reason to feel that this is not what I came for? Well, it's not what I came for. I'm focusing more on relationships, and that's been helpful, but it's also dangerous. It's too tied to emotion, too out of my control.
I've made a list of ways I can be helpful. None of them are creative beyond the point of writing PR, but I'm good at writing PR. So I can be helpful. I'm trying to interrogate Alison about ways I can plug in; being active rather than waiting for the thing to come to me. Enjoying small triumphs (oh, but really, do I want to be the girl who's just glad she remembered to pack the emergency peanuts?) The problem is, rehearsal is not the place I'm most useful. And by the end of rehearsal, my plans to write and send a report, figure out all the cues for the dancers, etc. are essentially shot because I can't keep my eyes open, having been on the run from 6:30AM to 7:30PM.
So today (the "day of rest"), is compulsory partying and my own burgeoning to-do list, which has to be done if I am to feel at all useful, imaginative, on-the-ball. It's already rolling away from me ... but there a few causes in which I need to let it roll. To pray, to read, to speak with friends. I can't forget who I am, since it seems the project here is more and more about figuring that out in action. If you've written me, thank you. I mayn't have responded, somnambulist that I am outside the quarry, but it mattered to me, and I will write back soon.
Last weeks's "day off" was full of sailing and a late dinner (preceded by the frustrations of failed communications media). Nothing to complain of the day's activities -- just full motion and full company. Today, the dancers are invited over to the Chases' (the many Chases, Nigel this time) for a cookout on the point, with sauna and kayaks. We're about to go grocery shopping. Last night, we heard Paul Sullivan jazz (why do they seat people for this kind of thing?) with a big black woman wailing and a gawky 15 year old with an overdone operatic tone, but a nicer, looser swing once she got rolling. But after coping with a peevish and aggressive primo donno newly introduced to the cast, sitting lumpishly in the quarry with nothing to do or running around covered in a felty piece of turf, labeled an "ideal community member" (that's a big insult), and pulling 13 hour days before finally sitting down to family dinner at 9 and figuring out how to exit (not so hard, they're kind and I can yawn)...well, I'm ready for some down time. I'm ready to be with my family, to fly to Oregon, to catch up with Dara, to head out to the middlest nowhere of this middle of nowhere and sketch, alone.
Not to say that I haven't had amazing experiences. This week:
Monday's pan dance,
Tuesday's live drawing class (my first ever, probably a fuller post on this and other things to come),
Thursday's dancer get-together (hilarious game of "Celebrities," world's best guac, and the cast's good couple: "Don't diss yourself."),
Saturday's bona fide burger and better jazz.
But as you'll see, most of these experiences have nothing to do with my purported purpose in being here. Is that a so what? Or is being seen as less a dancer than anything else a real reason to feel that this is not what I came for? Well, it's not what I came for. I'm focusing more on relationships, and that's been helpful, but it's also dangerous. It's too tied to emotion, too out of my control.
I've made a list of ways I can be helpful. None of them are creative beyond the point of writing PR, but I'm good at writing PR. So I can be helpful. I'm trying to interrogate Alison about ways I can plug in; being active rather than waiting for the thing to come to me. Enjoying small triumphs (oh, but really, do I want to be the girl who's just glad she remembered to pack the emergency peanuts?) The problem is, rehearsal is not the place I'm most useful. And by the end of rehearsal, my plans to write and send a report, figure out all the cues for the dancers, etc. are essentially shot because I can't keep my eyes open, having been on the run from 6:30AM to 7:30PM.
So today (the "day of rest"), is compulsory partying and my own burgeoning to-do list, which has to be done if I am to feel at all useful, imaginative, on-the-ball. It's already rolling away from me ... but there a few causes in which I need to let it roll. To pray, to read, to speak with friends. I can't forget who I am, since it seems the project here is more and more about figuring that out in action. If you've written me, thank you. I mayn't have responded, somnambulist that I am outside the quarry, but it mattered to me, and I will write back soon.
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Visual Aids
Eric readies the mainsail for my maiden voyage aboard the Freda.
Jessiedog pads through our favorite room.
A remembrance of Thimble Summer.
Primordial in the Quarry: The Seaweed Man.
Semi-blind charcoal sketch from my first life drawing class.
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