| June 27, 2004 | Music | Recipe Calendar | Archives |
A morning bike ride up the Waning Road, up the three sharp hills, then winding around and coming down Quaker Hill. A bobolink escorted me down 202 on the power lines until I was out of his territory. Whorls of grasses and wild flowers at the road's edge, sheets billowing on clotheslines (I regret the decline in use of the notched pole that lifts the line high into the breeze), the occasional cloud of balsam scent. This tree collage caught my eye on the corner of Guber Lane, Guber being one of those character-building names. I was at 18 miles when Melissa picked me and the bike up in the truck because we were showing the commercial space in 93 Main at 10 am. For the second time in a week I found myself in a social setting that had me thinking "screen play" and looking around to see who was writing the dialogue and directing. The potential tenant we were showing to was a woman opening a health food store; she had brought along her Feng Shui advisor. We are going to rent it to her and the lease signing will be Thursday, the day before the full moon when the energy will be right. See what I mean, who was writing that stuff we were saying?
The other screen play occasion was last Sunday when we had a birthday lunch at Peter's camp for Melissa's mom, Shirley. The nine people there included Shirley's surrogate grandchildren and their mom Jana, who make these occasions so much more fun, and Peter's friends Randy and Linda who are in some ways conservative central Mainers.  So in the cast so far we have the gay daughter and her partner (that's us), the surrogate daughter whom Shirley would love to match up with Peter the batchelor but Peter is having none of it, two lively bright children, and one Maine furniture builder who has not had much exposure to alternate social arrangements and his partner Linda who shares a birthday with Shirley. I would love to have taped the occasion then edited it. I would have sharpened up Randy's part a bit, making him a bit more conservative. I would heighten the potential romantic comedy aspect with Peter and Jana, and give myself the kind of lines that the women's studies professor daughter had in Something's Gotta Give, which was obviously the source of the idea of reality as a screen play. This compositional meta thinking about reality could be a distraction from participation or could lead to manipulating participants in media res toward your ideal screenplay. Or is that what we're doing all the time?
I've spent some of my time lately being Jean the Promoter. So far the performers I've lined up include Lucy Kaplansky, Eliza Gilkyson, Rani Arbo, and Kenny White. If you're not a big time folkie like me, you've probably not heard of these performers. But I am thrilled to be getting them to perform in Unity. Email is a great negotiation tool. All parties have in writing all discussion and offers. My first performer is Kenny White on July 15. When we had the B&B, we were often in charge of care and feeding of performers; we're doing the same thing with my promotions, only we're using the green rooms at the theater. Other performers I'm actively working on include Corey Harris, the Be Good Tanyas, Vox One, and Catie Curtis. |