The Easiest Way to Do This

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

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.

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.

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).