Merry Pranksters

Why do the children no longer listen to me?  

Have I done something wrong,

or have I done something right?

Another Lesson in Storytelling

At the university, sophomore year, I signed up for a 300 level labor relations class.  I wanted to be interested in that type of thing. The professor was a tough old man who, the slowest of us slowly realized, was a famous expert in his field. The reading list was long and extensive and included the professor's seminal book. He didn't assign specific readings, wanting us to read out of curiosity and thirst for knowledge rather than obligation. Unfortunately, I was curious about other things and thirsty for experiences not found in those books.

We were required to write a 30 page paper and make a presentation. Two days before I was scheduled to give mine, I was playing ultimate and got a hard flung frisbee smack across the bridge of the nose. So when I stood in front of the class, I explained that I didn't want everyone wondering how I got a broken nose and two black eyes instead of listening to my presentation. So I told what had happened. Professor Hill sat with an attentiveness he had never given me. But after I explained, his shoulders drooped and his scowl returned. "I was hoping for something a little juicier than that," he mumbled.

And then we all struggled to pay attention to my feeble presentation.

Herbert Hill 1924-2004

Homage to Bret McKenzie

Sign Here

I got a bite from a publisher

Who refused to grant me copyright
(among other necessities)

So I declined to sign.

I wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt
To believe that their intentions were wholesome
Two young women poets
Heading a literary non-profit.

But then it occurred to me
Even though this is who they appear to be
Maybe they are not
Why do they tell me things that are not true?

Are they ignorant?
Or are their intentions more sinister?
I'd like to think it's the latter
If someone wants to screw me over
Then maybe the work is good enough to land a proper publisher.



Thank you Uncle Norm for all your expertise and insight.

Here Sign

I hang the clothes thinking about my first garden. The rabbits are eating everything. Except the pumpkins, Roseanna reminds me. She planted them, and they are doing fine. I try not to lose heart. Instead I dream up an episode showing us making a meal out of rabbit. I'm afraid I don't have the chutzpah to pull it off. Andrew just laughs at the prospect. But the neighbor is immediately on board. He gets a trap from his garage. I film him bating it with an apple and setting it in our yard.

Then, we go to a friend's house for dinner. The friend asks how episode 8 is coming along. I tell him I just started filming, that I'm primed to get it done this week, confident we have a good start. I excuse myself to use the bathroom. While pulling up my pants, my camera lands in the toilet. Have I stepped into a Charlie Kaufman movie? I reach in. My instinct says, "Rinse," so I do. My instinct says, "Try turning it on," so I do.  I rejoin my friends and sit in silence waiting for the courage to tell what happened. The first thing Jim says, "Whatever you do, don't try turning it on." Already done. A dozen times. Jim says, put it in a bag of rice anyway. That was Saturday night. Still no sign of life.

Maybe it's a portent, that I need to upgrade my equipment.

Though I know there are some who would prefer I see it as a sign to forget the videos altogether and return to something more reasonable.

This morning, the apple is gone from the still set trap. What more sign do we need than that?

Photo taken with the neighbor's phone.

Discovering Shockrasonica

There is a woman I know nothing about except that she lives in a house on East Mifflin Street, 

and that might not even be true.  

But it is there where I shook her hand and saw something of myself, 

had I made different choices, had I been less full of wanderlust and more full of resolve.  

She asked how I found out about the show.

She was genuinely surprised to hear that I read about it in the Isthmus. 

I never was too good at playing it cool,

 and I went around the house telling everyone how thrilled I was to discover that we are not alone, 

that Tad just might be right about the 2020's being the age of Improv. 

Here was a house full of people experimenting with sound

and listening.

Here were musicians touring the country,

the world,

with their noises and ideas.  

How many other discreet venues exist?  Is there one in my neighborhood?  

*Joel Shanahan @ Shockrasonica 6/14/13

This is how it feels to find a key to a house that resides in a dream.  

This is how it feels to realize that there is a rumbling underfoot,

A movement in the making.

This is how it feels to finally stumble upon something

I've been looking for

that I had no idea was real.

Two Women

One woman had a mother who didn't seem to care what her daughter did or didn't do. The daughter grew up determined to prove that she could be successful anyway. She pushed herself and worked very hard and had a good salary to prove it. But still she was always unsatisfied with her achievements. If only her mother had pushed her to do great things, then she would have become someone truly important, like a doctor or a senator. So when she had her own daughter, she decided it was imperative to push her to achieve great things, things she could have achieved if only she had been pushed to achieve them.

Another woman had a mother who was determined that her daughter be wealthy and highly successful. The daughter grew up resentful of her mother's unyielding pressure.  She quit school and joined a commune and found a form of happiness that her mother never understood.  Regardless, she always felt an underlying sadness caused by the disappointment she detected every time she talked to her mother.  So when she had her own daughter, she decided it was imperative to allow her the freedom to be whoever it was she wanted to be.

Both women wanted to have a better relationship with their own daughters than they had with their mothers.  Neither woman did.

My First Garden, Episode 6: "Hokey Dokey"

My First Garden, Episode 5: "Just Some Cockamamie Idea"

'

My First Garden, Episode 4: "Willy Nilly"

My First Garden, Episode 3 - "A Diagnosis"

Is This What It's All About?

Words don't come as easily as they once did.  And when they do, they arrive fragmented, not because over time they have deteriorated, like those ancient papyrus papers that hold the fragile remains of Sappho's poetries, but because they are born that way, fragments of thought, bites of ideas, slivers of images, all fragile in their newborn way.  Maybe I can teach myself to write again, to rediscover the patience required to sit and sit and sit, to not jump at the slightest distraction, to not become discouraged by silence, to retrain myself to rearrange the fragments, to accept what comes as it does, to learn how to sew again.

Where is the need born, to stitch the random events of our lives into stories?  Why are certain story arcs satisfying, while others make us frustrated? Why is it cruel to end a story before its proper conclusion? Why is it so unacceptable to end without some glimmer of hope or change in a character's disposition?

These are things I've been thinking about, the things that keep me from making a single clear and uninterrupted statement.  Words don't come as easily as they once did.  How easy it is to believe that with practice we become more competent at what we do, how hard it is to accept that this is not always true.

Have I forgotten what it is to play?  Why do we do the things we do?  Does it all come back, as I've heard it said in a film I once saw on public television, does everything we do revolve around reproduction, of patterns, of cycles, of DNA, of ourselves?  Do our stories mirror our desires, the simple desire to love and be loved, to open ourselves up like flowers to the sun?  Does the story arc exist in this form because it mimics sexual encounters?  After all, I've heard it reported once long ago on public radio that when we listen to stories told, our brains release the same chemicals that are released during acts of love which we learned at some point, whether from a book kept under the bed, or a conversation overheard, or a film strip in a shuttered grade school classroom, we learned at some embarrassing point that all of this grows out of an aching need, out of a primal desire, an unalterable indefatigable microscopic drive towards reproduction.

These are the things I've been thinking about, the things that keep me from making a single clear and uninterrupted statement.  Please excuse me.  I've wandered far from where I thought I was going.

My First Garden, Episode 2

Note:

If you are one of the lucky few who receive blog post announcements via email, it has been pointed out to me that videos appear as black boxes.  If you would like to view the video hidden in the black box you must visit the blog site.  I realize this is not always easy.  I appreciate your patronage.

Bigsley and Bernadette: Welcome Home

Believe me, Bernie, it's not what it seems.

I just sat down to relax five minutes ago.

My First Garden: A Study in Perseverance

Miss Toklas Always Does That

According to Janet Malcolm in her book Two Lives, "It is generally agreed that without Alice Toklas, Stein might not have had the will to go on writing what for many years almost no one had any interest in reading." And apparently with Alice, Gertrude was like a child, completely incapable of taking care of her most basic needs.

The walls of their Paris apartment were covered with art work by Picasso, Matisse, Cezanne, Renoir. They threw many parties attended by Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Joyce, Pound, Wilder, as well as Matisse and Picasso. Gertrude presided over the parties, while Alice presided over Gertrude.

When Gertrude Stein got tired of not getting any recognition, she set out to write a best seller. Gertrude  wrote a novel posing as Alice writing her autobiography. In it, Alice is always going on and on about what a genius Gertrude Stein is.

Gertrude wrote (according to Mabel Dodge in Intimate Memories) "automatically in a long weak handwriting - four or five lines to the page - letting it ooze up from deep down inside her, down onto the paper with the least possible physical effort; she would cover a few pages so and leave them there and go to bed, and in the morning Alice would gather them up."

Alice

Tad Neuhaus, bass

Joanna Dane, vocals

Gertrude Stein, words

Thoughts About Music #38,574X

Thoughts About Music #8509H

Thoughts About Music #579T

Bigsley and Bernadette: Pelican Sighting

It's about time you guys showed up!  You know we can't start spring without you.

Studies Show

Visions of Sappho

Sappho takes us down to the creek
Where she eats the magic flowers
That allow her to hear
The voices of the ancestors.

Who can believe such a thing?

Until we hear her sing.

We sink into her banks,
Weeping and howling,
Bound by her haunting calls.

Who else has she already spun under her spell?
The boys from down the street?

I ask, but the others just laugh,
"Someday she will be famous!"

But they say that about any pretty girl
Willing to feed them flowers
And sing to them love songs.

Tad Neuhaus, guitar

Joanna Dane, vocals

and gold chickpeas were growing on the banks

Sappho, Fragment 143

What's Cuter, Puppies or Babies?

The poets for hire sat three in a row on Frenchman Street.  

Two had typewriters.  

Two wore hats.  

One wore leather suspenders.  

They all puffed on cigarettes.  

How do we choose? we asked.  

The one without a hat said he was despondent.  

The one wearing suspenders said he was happy.  

The one on the end wrote by hand.  

We chose the happy one in the middle. 

What subject? he asked.  

My husband suggested, 

"What's Cuter: Puppies or Babies?" 

Because my brother had been pressing us on the question all day.

My brother says puppies.

The Woman of His Dreams

Her face, he knew would be beautiful because, she said, modestly, that others had always said that about her. He had no reason not to believe her. He had had so many conversations with people all over the world. He was not naive. He was college educated, a professional. He made good money and wore a suit to work everyday. He told her so. And it made her happy.

It started very casually, but quickly, they discovered that they had so much in common and got along so well. They had exactly the same sense of humor. He felt comfortable telling her everything, how he dreamed of buying a little house with a front porch and a fireplace, a house where they could eat together and sleep together, a house by a lake where they could take long walks together holding hands and laughing. Maybe they could even get a dog, though he didn't like dogs very much, but she did, he knew. And it made her very happy.

She told him things that made him very sad. She had had a complicated and hard life and many people, maybe because she was so beautiful, had tried to take advantage of her, and it made his heart hurt to hear these things. His heart had never hurt like that before. And he promised that her life with him would only be full of joy and ease, that he was a very simple man, that he liked his coffee however it was served to him and that he went to the movies once a week no matter what was playing and that he ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches everyday for lunch. And she laughed, "Haha!" and that made him smile :)

Sometimes they went for hours without communicating and that would make him think about her even more, and the dreams, vague at first, started to fill with more and more details that he could never wait to share with her. Finally, he had found the woman of his dreams, finally he could be happy and never lonely. Finally she could be safe and free.

He began to believe in things he didn't know he believed in, like fate, and the power of positive thinking. He was grateful for each and every thing had that had ever happened to him, even his mom throwing out his entire t-shirt collection which had stung for so long, which he swore he would never forgive. But he understood the butterfly effect and knew that if it wasn't for every single thing that had ever happened to him, then he never would have met her. He tried to explain this all to her, and even though he wasn't very good with words, and English was not her best language, she got it ;)

He knew it was for real, finally, these feelings he had always hear other people talking about, but never had experienced for himself.  Something had always gotten in the way, like bad breath, or a horribly loud laugh, or incessant talking about old boyfriends. But she was so perfect it took his breath away and nearly made him cry when he had to say goodbye each evening.  XOXOXOXO.  He knew it was real because it was the same feeling he had when he watched a really great movie. 

The day finally came when she said that everything had been arranged, that she could fly the very next month to meet him. He sent her the check because it was cheaper for her to buy the flight there and included some extra money to settle some affairs that needed settling before she could leave. He was ecstatic. Everyone at the office noticed, and it made him blush like a kid. It was the happiest day of his life, the day she told him that she got the check and bought the ticket. He had two weeks to prepare.

He spent the entire weekend cleaning his apartment and bought a set of peach colored sheets and matching towels and a new see-through shower curtain. He made reservations and then canceled, at three different restaurants, because he couldn't decide on which she would like best. He mulled for hours on whether she would prefer just to go back to his place and order take-out. He practiced his best laugh and greeted her a thousand times in the mirror. He bought a new shirt and had it laundered twice. He got a haircut and a shave at the barber and had his car professionally cleaned. And in a final moment of brilliance, he bought ten scented candles for the bedroom and two dozen roses which he carried to the airport.

He was confused at first when she was wasn't there. But then, the confusion turned to concern. Something terrible must have happened. But as the days turned to weeks without hearing another word from her, he grew angry and then bitter, though what persisted was disappointment shadowed by clouds of embarrassment.