16th Annual Spirit Walk

For the fifth year, I'm going to get up on the boards, figuratively speaking. I've ascended to the primo location for characters who perform for the Spirit Walk, the Historical Society's annual fundraiser: the interior of the Albemarle County Courthouse. I'll be playing the Commonwealth Attorney from 1853 with four other actors. It should be a blast. If you're in the area, get a ticket and do the tour.

COME JOIN US FOR THE 16TH ANNUAL SPIRIT WALK!

The Spirit Walk is a guided evening tour of Historic Downtown Charlottesville and Maplewood Cemetery. What really makes the Spirit Walk unique, however, besides it’s being at night, is that along the way, you actually come across and interact with ghosts from Charlottesville’s past.  In fact, each tour is led by an actor in full costume representing a spirit from Charlottesville’s history!  The Spirit Walk is the number one fundraiser for the not-for-profit Albemarle Charlottesville Historical Society whose goal is preserving and nurturing appreciation of local history.

WHEN:

October 22^nd, 23^rd, and 24^th.  …. One weekend only!

Tours run every 15 minutes.  On Friday the tours start at 6 and the last tour leaves at 9:15.  Saturday, 5 to 8:15.  Sunday, 4 to 7:15.

PRICE: 12 for Adults…8 for children under 13 years old

Get your tickets online at:

WWW.ALBEMARLEHISTORY.ORG

Or call:434-296-1492

Or Stop By!:

200 2^ND STREET SE…ACROSS FROM LEE PARK, BEHIND MAIN BRANCH OF LIBRARY

Hope to see you there!

"it's only a shed"

So we were told. I can hardly wait until the painter gets done with this baby!

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For those who care about the process: there are approximately 30 cuts per section of two square panels. Two of us spent at least a day to get all the way around this thing with all the x-es. (It looked better without them.)

The other notable condition about this structure is the material(s) that comprises the outer layer: Hardi-Plank siding in 4 x 10 sheets, and Azek polyvinyl chloride trim in various sizes. Both materials are intended to last forever. This intent appears to have been achieved. The problem is the waste. Azek is fairly obnoxious stuff to work with - we didn't become carpenters in order to be plumbers, which is what it feels like now that we're building with PVC - and the sawdust will eventually get into the ground and the water system to everyone's detriment. PVC is made from guess what? Imported petroleum, of course. Wikipedia says worldwide production is expected to reach 40 million tons by 2016. The off cuts go to the landfill, and will eventually decay, breaking into small particles that will leach into the water system. One hundred years from now, they're not going to appreciate our desire for "convenient longevity."

But it appears to fit right in with the "Post Modern Condition" of the original structure, which I originally wrote about here, when we started this project.

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15th annual Spirit Walk

Once more, I participate in the annual Historical Society fund raiser. This year's Sprit Walk, during which groups of patrons are guided along a tour of the historic areas of Charlottesville and encounter well known locals of the day, portrayed by volunteer actors, will take place October 23 - 25. This year I will try to find something of the character of Benjamin Franklin Ficklin, born in 1827, rasied in Charlottesville, and buried there next to his parents, with many an adventure in between.

post modern condition?

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This is my addition to Mauro Thon Giudici's category - also satisfying a co-worker's request for images of the current work site. Despite it's publication in the April 1986 issue of Architectural Digest, this small dwelling's appearance is one much debated amongst all who visit during this phase of reconstruction - surely the first that has ever been done to this house. Say what you will about its design, all workers are agreed upon the lack of a touch with reality exhibited by the architects. We're convinced that designers should be forced to live with the results of their labors. This one has an appalling lack of practiical detail concerning the roof. After twenty plus years, there is an unusual amount of rot in the sheathing. Not throughout, but certainly in large areas that should not have had any problems if it had been designed and built correctly the first time.

The wilderness could stand to be cut back some to permit the house to exist.

versatile

WARNING! HUMOR ALERT!

 

Pamela Seymour Smith Sharp

Willoughby Sharp in 2006

From the NY Times obit of Willoughby Sharp, I've learned of the death of the respected and loved conceptual artist who was a writer, educator, curator, performer, publisher, video visionary, and more. Read this article to find out about several of his infamous pieces, such as Stay, a performance with a seduction, a gunshot and a broken video feed at a crucial moment, and Full Womb, in which he tumbled in a dryer with a baby bottle for fifteen minutes.

The online version of his obituary was altered slightly from the printed copy which first caught my attention. The latter gave Mr. Sharp's profession as "Avant-Gardist." Without casting any aspersions on Willoughby, and knowing that his is a tall order to fill, I think I've finally found what I want to be when I grow up. It's taken a long time, but better late than never. Avant-Gardist. Yeah. It's going to be a stretch, but WTF it's a new year and these are the kinds of things one can decide independently.

Sorry to say I never knew Willoughby.  My sympathies to his family and friends. But at least now I know what to do with my life.

the scary mind

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After an extremely rough tech rehearsal Thursday evening for the annual Spirit Walk, and a loud and scary start Friday, I eventually settled down into a much more natural performance style that included more gesture and less bluster. This may not be exactly what Custer embodied, but how is anyone to know for sure? With smaller groups I'm finding I can tone it down and tell more story with complete confidence. The text is in there, I know the words and all the variations possible on the words that have been chosen, so all I have to do is relax enough to let them out. There is this perhaps irrational belief in the power of words that propels me to order them exactly as written on the page. It's more attention to detail while striving for perfection. I've spent a fair amount of time choosing the words while writing the script - as presumably all writers do - so as a performer I want to recite those lines word for word out of respect for the effort the writer expended.

But the performer inevitably finds gaps in the writing that need to be covered. And I'm getting comfortable enough that an additional word here and there for clarification purposes adds to the natural flow. Along with an occasional swapping around of words throughout the text doesn't totally destroy my concentration.

Probably the more amazing effect, which of course is the reason why people perform "on stage" in the first place, is the transportation effect. During one of the interviews in the excellent 2008 Scorsese film Shine A Light, Keith Richards speaks about getting into a state where he feels he's floating several feet above the stage while playing. At other times he can play things that amaze his conscious mind. In a similar vein, there are times while reciting lines that I'm observing being observed by audience members, wondering what they are thinking about the performance, assessing how it could be modulated for greater effect, as well as wondering about their judgement of the historical accuracy of the text, all in the split seconds between the utterance out loud of the prepared text. This truly is multi-tasking, or surely as close to it as I'm likely to achieve.

There is a photographic analogue. One makes instantaneous decisions about technical details while trying to determine the meaning and context of a particular image, whether viewing prints in a book or especially while on location with a camera: the thousand stimuli that are present in the natural world must be sifted and selected. When we really get in the photographic zone, we are definitively multi-tasking.

14th Annual Spirit Walk

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The annual Spirit Walk fund raiser for the Albemarle Charlottesville Historical Society happens next weekend. More info here. Groups of ticket purchasers are led through the town by famous Charlottesville characters of the past. Along the route they encounter a number of famous and not so famous real persons from the past who have passed through or lived in Charlottesville. As actors and performers, we get to research and write our own material, as long is it is kept to about two minutes long. This will be the third year of my participation. It doesn't get any easier learning lines, but at least this year there is plenty of material for my character. It's a kick performing literally on the street, and by the end of the 45 or so 2 minute perfomances/monologue, I'm ready for a new character.

For those of you not able to attend, here's my text for this year, from a man much maligned in our revisionist historical times:

Well well well... Tis true, my dear listeners, that the Rebels deceived my men into flight back across the Rivanna from Rio Hills in 1864.* But let me tell you the rest of the story that snake out back didn't tell you.

I was back one year later, in March 1865, we crushed General Early's army in Waynesboro and turned towards Richmond. Charlottesville stood in our way. When we reached this rather pathetic village, leaders of town and University pleaded with me, on their knees, to spare their dear little college from the same torch that consumed VMI. Some 10,000 soldiers descended upon the town for three days, like a plague of locusts. I won't deny that the townsfolk were badly abused by the occupation. But the boys must have something for their efforts, or surely they will leave me.

Friday afternoon I installed my office in the Farish family homestead down on East Jefferson Street. Later that evening a rough sort of laborer was brought to me by scouts who thought they had captured General Early out of uniform. A spy! Thought they. The man's real identity came to light when one of the Farish girls cried out, "Mama, they've got Papa!" Alas, he was Captain Thomas Farish, with a three day furlough and thoughts of aiding his family. General Sheridan determined the man should hang as a spy, eh? I was set up in the man's parlor, how could I see him swing from his own oak tree? Phil Sheridan eventually agreed Farish was doing what we all would have done under the circumstances: trying to protect his family and home during hateful times. I took pity upon his life. I'll never forget what he yelled the next day when I departed for Gordonsville to chase after some Rebs, "Custer, I hate you as an enemy, but I love you as a brother!" Barely a month later Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Court House and the great conflagration between the states was ended.

I never pretended I wanted people to pass me by unnoticed. By God you'll remember my name eh, George Armstrong Custer, youngest general in the army of the North. Now be gone, I am sorely weary.

* Reference to the previous character who tells audiences about the "battle" of Rio Hills when the Union cavalry was confused by their own men in the smoke of the gunfire from their attack.

almost fallen by the wayside

 

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No doubt there should be some kind of "post op for the workshop." If I was more prolific there would surely be something of consequence to say. Since that's not the case, and not much has transpired photographically, perhaps it's time to write about other media.

Without meaning to pile on the bandwagon, I've still got to comment on some recent reading. It's been both non-fiction and fiction, by the same writer: David Foster Wallace. The man is scary he's so good. Two weeks ago I was reading Consider the Lobster, a collection of pieces that originally appeared in periodicals such as Atlantic, Gourmet, The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, and others. Despite his tendency to run-on and lose the reader in the convolutions of his asides & footnotes within footnotes, he has a remarkably democratic outlook that never fails to illuminate. Whether he's writing about Porn star awards, dictionary wars, Rabid Right Wing talk show hosts, the McCain2000 campaign trail, or lobsters, his sympathetic outlook inevitably expresses some universal thought, but in a much more eloquent and clearly defined manner than anyone else is able to put it.

Now I'm into a more recent collection of D.F. Wallace fiction in the book Oblivion. His language tends towards jargonese, but only that used by the characters he's writing about. The opening piece "Mister Squishy" is a fascinating and damning deconstruction of advertising and the use of focus groups and statistics to "give consumers what they want." In the midst of his instructions to the latest focus group giving feedback on some snack cakes called Felonies, the facilitator manages to range through a vast internal commentary that might be best expressed thus:

...no no all that ever changed were the jargon and mechanisms and gilt rococo with which everyone in the whole huge blind grinding mechanism conspired to convince each other that they could figure out how to give the paying customer what they could prove he could be persuaded to believe he wanted, without anybody once ever saying stop a second or pointing out the absurdity of calling what they were doing collecting information or ever even saying aloud... what was going on or what it meant or what the simple truth was. That it made no difference. None of it...

In the end, Wallace's revelations are ones we've considered ourselves - albeit in abbreviated form - whereas his mind and imagination fully details them for our edification. He's a master at telling us what we already think for ourselves.

by clw

What Is Inspiration? - Sonnet (homework)

I am standing here, beneath the gray clouds,
Hid by the shadow of the rain. It seems
That I had come here to escape the crowds,
But every drop soaks me and flows in streams.
My ears are filled with the thuds as they land,
Blending into a dull roar around me.
A thought occurs as I hold out my hand,
Which splatters the droplets that surround me:
Being alone is harder than you think.
Even in dark, there is something waiting
To turn on the light, even the black ink
Is made of colors. Here I am, stating
That I am alone, when I have the rain,
The sky, the music, and nothing to gain.