"Do you feel all right?"
"Yes, I feel all right!"
Jeff Giaquinto, leader of the amazing Brass Liberation band, called and we responded as we danced in the street yesterday. It was perhaps the most unusual Moving Sale ever held. We didn't know who would respond to our ads and emails that announced our move away from the East Oakland site we've occupied for two years. But we set up our Garage Sale Shop, were thankful for all the donations to sell, and hoped.
About 10 musicians dressed in black pants and bright red shirts stood in the street and on the curb out front, sending passionate music to listeners in upstairs windows and passing cars. An actual tuba. Trombones. Trumpets. Drums. Clarinets. Saxophone. Someone found an old, bent lavender umbrella decorated with streamers and pom poms, connecting us to New Orleans and the Katrina hurricane anniversary.
Neighbors and friends drifted in and out of the sale at Opera Piccola's headquarters on MacArthur Boulevard, finding great deals packed onto tables and boxes overflowing onto the floor with secondhand and new stuff. We sipped coffee, chatted, snacked and unearthed treasures from other people's lives. The sun shone on strangers getting to know each other. A woman held her baby on her porch behind the band. Another woman pulled her car up to the curb, ran across the street waving her handkerchief and joined the dance.
Our small, determined company is moving to a new and unknown location in order to share resources with another non profit. "I wish I'd found your place sooner," sighed one shopper, acknowledging how we can neighbors for months, even years, and not even meet. "We're still here, just not sure where," Corrina Marshall, our E.D. said.
We floated on the euphoria of throwing out doors wide and welcoming in the unexpected. This could be practice for the next phase of our existence in a changed world. Under the late summer sun, we practiced embracing uncertainty and it became a party.
Monday, August 30, 2010
Monday, August 23, 2010
Wedding
The creative mind is one that takes risks and discover new things, transforming old models for new situations. Having been involved with the arts since I was a child singing songs or reading novels every minute I could, I've formed the habit of re-making. I can't help it!
Our older son got married a week ago, at San Francisco City Hall. Since only a few family members could attend the ceremony there (along with hundreds of other brides and grooms waiting their turn), we celebrated with friends afterwards. How many ways can we bless a loved couple starting out in marriage? We didn't have a year to plan; actually, not even a month. This was my first time being mother of the groom, and I was unsure of my role. However, I talked to our younger son, the Best Man, and friends of the couple, about making toasts at the dinner in keeping with tradition.
Then, aha! Idea. "Eureka, I have found it," to use Archimedes' famous term for the right brain getting a sudden solution. I looked up South Korean wedding customs because the bride's family was unable to attend from so far away. One of the customs grabbed me. We should give carved wooden wedding ducks to the bridal couple. Not only that: at the wedding, the groom's mother throws one of the ducks to the bride, who tries to catch it in the apron of her traditional South Korean costume. If she catches the duck, the first child will be a boy- so the custom says - and if she misses the duck, the first child will be a girl. The City of San Francisco doesn't allow things like this to be inserted into the brief ceremony on the palatial steps of City Hall. So... I decided to bring this custom to the wedding dinner.
After some searching, I found a beautiful wooden duck at Folk Art on Piedmont Avenue (okay, it was carved in Malaysia, not Korea). I could only afford one duck, but it was a start. The gathering at the dinner was shocked and thrilled when we announced the custom. Since the bride wore a shiny short white strapless wedding dress, not a traditional costume, she grabbed a white linen napkin from the table. "Ready?" I said. Amid cheering, I threw the duck (underhand, I'm not a pitcher) toward our nervous, beautiful daughter-in-law.
"Oh no!" the crowd cried when she missed. "Oh yes!" cried we feminists, who wanted the baby to be a girl. Since we'd already established a non-sexist approach to marriage by my son asking both my husband AND myself for permission to marry, my son hopped up and insisted on trying to catch the duck. "Hooray," cried the crowd when he caught it, although after all the food and drink I suspect they were unclear why we were cheering. Did this double catching effort mean fraternal twins? Then both bride and groom held the napkin at each end, together. They caught the duck! All this activity under a blessing of bubbles, the advertised "eco friendly" alternative to rice throwing.
The concluding Reception Remix Toast? A dramatic reading of an adaptation of "The Night the Bed Fell," by James Thurber. Since my husband and I met while rehearsing the opening scene of "The Marriage of Figaro," in which Figaro measures the room to fit a bed, and since the day before the wedding my husband had spent hours helping our son put together the couple's new bed from IKEA, we figured that beds and weddings went together. It was a stretch. But that's what we do. We risk, we stretch and explore. We seize metaphors. We re-make.
Our older son got married a week ago, at San Francisco City Hall. Since only a few family members could attend the ceremony there (along with hundreds of other brides and grooms waiting their turn), we celebrated with friends afterwards. How many ways can we bless a loved couple starting out in marriage? We didn't have a year to plan; actually, not even a month. This was my first time being mother of the groom, and I was unsure of my role. However, I talked to our younger son, the Best Man, and friends of the couple, about making toasts at the dinner in keeping with tradition.
Then, aha! Idea. "Eureka, I have found it," to use Archimedes' famous term for the right brain getting a sudden solution. I looked up South Korean wedding customs because the bride's family was unable to attend from so far away. One of the customs grabbed me. We should give carved wooden wedding ducks to the bridal couple. Not only that: at the wedding, the groom's mother throws one of the ducks to the bride, who tries to catch it in the apron of her traditional South Korean costume. If she catches the duck, the first child will be a boy- so the custom says - and if she misses the duck, the first child will be a girl. The City of San Francisco doesn't allow things like this to be inserted into the brief ceremony on the palatial steps of City Hall. So... I decided to bring this custom to the wedding dinner.
After some searching, I found a beautiful wooden duck at Folk Art on Piedmont Avenue (okay, it was carved in Malaysia, not Korea). I could only afford one duck, but it was a start. The gathering at the dinner was shocked and thrilled when we announced the custom. Since the bride wore a shiny short white strapless wedding dress, not a traditional costume, she grabbed a white linen napkin from the table. "Ready?" I said. Amid cheering, I threw the duck (underhand, I'm not a pitcher) toward our nervous, beautiful daughter-in-law.
"Oh no!" the crowd cried when she missed. "Oh yes!" cried we feminists, who wanted the baby to be a girl. Since we'd already established a non-sexist approach to marriage by my son asking both my husband AND myself for permission to marry, my son hopped up and insisted on trying to catch the duck. "Hooray," cried the crowd when he caught it, although after all the food and drink I suspect they were unclear why we were cheering. Did this double catching effort mean fraternal twins? Then both bride and groom held the napkin at each end, together. They caught the duck! All this activity under a blessing of bubbles, the advertised "eco friendly" alternative to rice throwing.
The concluding Reception Remix Toast? A dramatic reading of an adaptation of "The Night the Bed Fell," by James Thurber. Since my husband and I met while rehearsing the opening scene of "The Marriage of Figaro," in which Figaro measures the room to fit a bed, and since the day before the wedding my husband had spent hours helping our son put together the couple's new bed from IKEA, we figured that beds and weddings went together. It was a stretch. But that's what we do. We risk, we stretch and explore. We seize metaphors. We re-make.
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Deep
"What do you see?"
"What do you think?"
"What do you wonder?"
Last week was busy. Among other things, I took an intensive class in arts integration offered by the Alameda County Office of Education Art is Education program linked to the California College of Art in Oakland.-- Arts integration is a fancy term for the art of connecting the arts to everything else you can think of. And yes, art does. This field of study results in amazing intellectual bursts, aptly demonstrated by the talented leaders of the course.
I have too much to do to make this blog entry a detailed report, and anyway, that would be done more effectively by the printed handouts from the course, taught brilliantly by Tana Johnson and Julia Marshall. I just have a few kind of sidelong impressions as I look back at the week.
The three questions at the top of the page are part of it, but not all. Those questions are a short way of reminding me to stand back from what I'm doing or experiencing and respond like an observer or scientist. Or artist. Or learner. I want to live my life "in the moment," but some of those moments I want to expand on, by knowing what I'm seeing, thinking, feeling, wondering.
But something else is going on here. Part of the structured activity was creating our own avatar or mythological creature with special abilities/powers. When it came to creating a graphic story (cartoon to my generation), after all the preliminary steps, something happened in my heart. When I looked at the one page I'd created, with figures and dialogue bubbles on blue and purple backgrounds, I thought someone else had looked into my psyche and interpreted it with Jung standing by. To my near-tears amazement, the "comic" was about a mother avatar and her little girl avatar, who was thirsty and had to wait for dream time. A mythical blue sheep appears in the final box, alongside a tilted little avatar, who says, "ummm. (Sigh)" The metaphors in this simple activity reached deeper than I can say without telling you my life story. Soul deep.
"What do you think?"
"What do you wonder?"
Last week was busy. Among other things, I took an intensive class in arts integration offered by the Alameda County Office of Education Art is Education program linked to the California College of Art in Oakland.-- Arts integration is a fancy term for the art of connecting the arts to everything else you can think of. And yes, art does. This field of study results in amazing intellectual bursts, aptly demonstrated by the talented leaders of the course.
I have too much to do to make this blog entry a detailed report, and anyway, that would be done more effectively by the printed handouts from the course, taught brilliantly by Tana Johnson and Julia Marshall. I just have a few kind of sidelong impressions as I look back at the week.
The three questions at the top of the page are part of it, but not all. Those questions are a short way of reminding me to stand back from what I'm doing or experiencing and respond like an observer or scientist. Or artist. Or learner. I want to live my life "in the moment," but some of those moments I want to expand on, by knowing what I'm seeing, thinking, feeling, wondering.
But something else is going on here. Part of the structured activity was creating our own avatar or mythological creature with special abilities/powers. When it came to creating a graphic story (cartoon to my generation), after all the preliminary steps, something happened in my heart. When I looked at the one page I'd created, with figures and dialogue bubbles on blue and purple backgrounds, I thought someone else had looked into my psyche and interpreted it with Jung standing by. To my near-tears amazement, the "comic" was about a mother avatar and her little girl avatar, who was thirsty and had to wait for dream time. A mythical blue sheep appears in the final box, alongside a tilted little avatar, who says, "ummm. (Sigh)" The metaphors in this simple activity reached deeper than I can say without telling you my life story. Soul deep.
Monday, August 9, 2010
Live
Ahhhh.. Ooooh!
There is nothing like live theater. Yesterday a play I directed was performed at the San Francisco Theatre Festival: "Cat in a Cell," by Judith Offer, with actors Gift Harris and Tamara Sabella. Some students of mine and Tamara's attended, along with various friends and relatives, and a large drop-in standing room only audience.
The performance took place in a small, intimate space without a stage, and only the living room lamp I brought with me for lighting. Beige masking tape on the gray carpet formed the "scenery." We placed the audience chairs close, in three sides around the performing area, so that we were all very close to the actors. Perhaps due to the intimacy, the students seemed almost to anticipate the subtle interactions of the actors a fraction of a second before they happened. They understood the smallest glance, the twitch of an eyebrow and they made sounds... ooooooooh... and laughed... and listened to the message about life.
The actors took energy from the responses of the students as well as from the warm laughter and rapt silences of the adult audience. The result? Community and fun are words that fall short. Pure magic. Impossible to define for someone else, you have to experience it yourself. Soon.
There is nothing like live theater. Yesterday a play I directed was performed at the San Francisco Theatre Festival: "Cat in a Cell," by Judith Offer, with actors Gift Harris and Tamara Sabella. Some students of mine and Tamara's attended, along with various friends and relatives, and a large drop-in standing room only audience.
The performance took place in a small, intimate space without a stage, and only the living room lamp I brought with me for lighting. Beige masking tape on the gray carpet formed the "scenery." We placed the audience chairs close, in three sides around the performing area, so that we were all very close to the actors. Perhaps due to the intimacy, the students seemed almost to anticipate the subtle interactions of the actors a fraction of a second before they happened. They understood the smallest glance, the twitch of an eyebrow and they made sounds... ooooooooh... and laughed... and listened to the message about life.
The actors took energy from the responses of the students as well as from the warm laughter and rapt silences of the adult audience. The result? Community and fun are words that fall short. Pure magic. Impossible to define for someone else, you have to experience it yourself. Soon.
Sunday, August 1, 2010
transformation
I'm noticing that after school programs are getting into gear for the fall, and they are focusing on tutoring. Students sit at desks most of the day from 8:30 to 3 or later and then go sit some more for tutoring and homework help, until 5:30 or 6. Yes, these are the kind of hours children have academics in other countries, but it would be nice to consider the whole child instead of an academic race to an uncertain "top."
There are things that happened in my drama classes that transformed my students and myself in some inexplicable ways. One class in particular sticks in my memory, at the former Carter Middle School in Oakland. It was a difficult group that met after school; so difficult that two subs who took my class walked out. Most of the first few months, my lesson plan seemed to me to be mostly "snack" and "keep kids from fighting long enough to start an activity." We gathered under the harsh fluorescent lights of the unfortunately named and bleak Cafetorium, which had a small, cluttered stage and tables that unfolded down from the walls like the old Murphy beds.
We had just managed to start our warm up when Lila, a 7th grader who still had her baby fat, started to scream on the other side of the room. "What's wrong?" I said, approaching her. She lay down on the floor and continued to cry, pounding her fists and feet on the dirty tile. My mind searched for a way to get the class back on track. By a miracle, I had a small tape recorder with me and I pulled it out of my bag, pressing 'record.'
"This is KLOX Radio and we have a young lady crying here on the street. It looks serious. Let's find out what's going on," I improvised. "Excuse me miss, can you tell me what happened?" Lila cried louder after opening one eye in surprise. "Let's ask a passerby," I said.
I interviewed the passerby, who hadn't seen anything. The other students started to get interested. Soon I was interviewing a cast of neighbors from the block about why Lila was crying. Someone suggested she needed to see a doctor, so off we went to the clinic. The doctor's diagnosis produced no results, so off we went to talk to her family: parents, siblings, family dog and cat. Everyone suggested explanations for Lila's crying and possible solutions. Not even candy and cookies helped. Lila stopped at intervals for a minute or two, but then continued to wail.
Finally, just before it was time to leave class, there was a revelation. "Ladies and gentlemen, we talked to everyone in the community, and no one can explain why this young lady is crying. Tune in next week when we return to solve this mystery," I said, wrapping it up.
"I guess she just needed to cry," someone said quietly.
And with that, Lila stopped crying. By a kind of common sixth sense we all knew that something profound had happened. In that instant we breathed as one a sigh of relief and were transformed. Of course. Our middle schoolers came from beyond the freeway dividing the yuppie homes from their low income neighborhood and faced family stress, violence and inadequate resources daily. But more than that, when do we give each other permission to cry, to weep, to wail, even if we don't know why?
Our fractious class had created together an hour and a half improvised play, full of characters from our community, full of humor and pathos, with lines I would have been proud to publish in a script. And we created a play with each student showing concern- even love - for one of their peers in distress. Of course. Lila needed to cry.
There are things that happened in my drama classes that transformed my students and myself in some inexplicable ways. One class in particular sticks in my memory, at the former Carter Middle School in Oakland. It was a difficult group that met after school; so difficult that two subs who took my class walked out. Most of the first few months, my lesson plan seemed to me to be mostly "snack" and "keep kids from fighting long enough to start an activity." We gathered under the harsh fluorescent lights of the unfortunately named and bleak Cafetorium, which had a small, cluttered stage and tables that unfolded down from the walls like the old Murphy beds.
We had just managed to start our warm up when Lila, a 7th grader who still had her baby fat, started to scream on the other side of the room. "What's wrong?" I said, approaching her. She lay down on the floor and continued to cry, pounding her fists and feet on the dirty tile. My mind searched for a way to get the class back on track. By a miracle, I had a small tape recorder with me and I pulled it out of my bag, pressing 'record.'
"This is KLOX Radio and we have a young lady crying here on the street. It looks serious. Let's find out what's going on," I improvised. "Excuse me miss, can you tell me what happened?" Lila cried louder after opening one eye in surprise. "Let's ask a passerby," I said.
I interviewed the passerby, who hadn't seen anything. The other students started to get interested. Soon I was interviewing a cast of neighbors from the block about why Lila was crying. Someone suggested she needed to see a doctor, so off we went to the clinic. The doctor's diagnosis produced no results, so off we went to talk to her family: parents, siblings, family dog and cat. Everyone suggested explanations for Lila's crying and possible solutions. Not even candy and cookies helped. Lila stopped at intervals for a minute or two, but then continued to wail.
Finally, just before it was time to leave class, there was a revelation. "Ladies and gentlemen, we talked to everyone in the community, and no one can explain why this young lady is crying. Tune in next week when we return to solve this mystery," I said, wrapping it up.
"I guess she just needed to cry," someone said quietly.
And with that, Lila stopped crying. By a kind of common sixth sense we all knew that something profound had happened. In that instant we breathed as one a sigh of relief and were transformed. Of course. Our middle schoolers came from beyond the freeway dividing the yuppie homes from their low income neighborhood and faced family stress, violence and inadequate resources daily. But more than that, when do we give each other permission to cry, to weep, to wail, even if we don't know why?
Our fractious class had created together an hour and a half improvised play, full of characters from our community, full of humor and pathos, with lines I would have been proud to publish in a script. And we created a play with each student showing concern- even love - for one of their peers in distress. Of course. Lila needed to cry.
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