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Olas at Common Street Arts, September 22, 2012

9/23/2012

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Something's happening in downtown Waterville.  Something wonderful.

Saturday night, Olas brought Arabic-tinged flamenco dancing and singing to downtown Waterville.  Gathered in the intimate space of the Common Street Arts gallery, we witnessed amazing musicianship and dancing.  I do believe The Magic Portal was opened once again for a span of two hours. 

One of the first things that caught my eye when I entered the gallery was the lute-shaped music case on the floor that housed an oud.  It is the ancestor of the lute.   I was stunned to see one in person, since I had built a fake lute as a prop for Winslow High School's Production of Once Upon A Mattress last year (a lute, I might add, that did not get the billing or stage time it deserved, given the creativity and time consumption of my design - but I digress).

Prior to the performance, audience members visited and took in the photographs and paintings on the walls, of the current gallery show.  

Olas quickly created a fantastic synthesis of three disciplines.  I've never quite witnessed such interplay between instrumentalist, singer, and dancer.  At times the oudist (is that the right term?), Tom Kovacevic, was staring intently at dancer Lindsey Bourassa, and it seemed his instrument was actually a remote control by which he was controlling her body movements.  At other times the multi-part clapping rhythms required the musicians to observe each other intently to ensure each part fit perfectly to create an overarching gestalt rhythm.

The oud sounded ancient and exotic.  Kovacevic was an intense player, seemingly melding with the instrument, at times hunched over, staring at his own fingers flying up and down the fretless neck.  With something on the order of 14 strings, he had ample room for expression.

Singer Chriss Sutherland's voice was powerful and exotic, sometimes reminiscent of a muezzin, sometimes a soft falsetto.  There were growled dark passages,  as of a half-drunken mournful man, and half-spoken repetitive mumbles like being at a table with a with friend confessing something.  His rich and expressive voice conveyed joy and sorrow with undercurrents of Iberian grandeur.   Iberian grandeur?  Tom, what the heck are you talking about?  Well, watch the videos below  (but keep in mind, my little iPhone microphone doesn't really do justice to the nuances of Chriss' voice).

And of course the most dramatic element of the evening was dancer Lindsey Bourassa.  I myself am a bit shy about dancing in front of others unless the room is dark, I've had a couple of Colorado bulldogs, and preferably everyone else has too.  But she was not daunted by the presence of spectators mere feet from her, and danced with conviction and boldness.  I have a pretty good idea boldness is a mandatory element of flamenco dancing.  The creative multi-color finish-plywood floor of the gallery provided the perfect surface for her percussive footwork.  Rapid tapping with stomping punctuation commanded the attention of the viewer and emphasized the patterns and rhythms woven by the musicians backing her. 

My favorite moment was when Lindsey was in the center of the room, accompanied only by the clapping of the band members.  She was in full flamenco mode with rapid footwork, skirt flourishes, clapping, snapping, and elaborate posturing.  Outside the large glass windows of the gallery, I could see some people emerging from the darkness of Castonguay Square.  Revealed by the light from the gallery, I could see expressions of wonder and "what the...?" on their faces.   They had just exited an event at the Waterville Opera House across the square.  They were drawn to the nearer sidewalk.  I saw some of them take a few steps back or sideways to scan the windows and door for signage indicating what this amazing place was, where a woman was flamenco dancing in a small art gallery.  Good publicity indeed.  

When Lindsey's dance ended, the spectators outside joined in the enthusiastic applause.   Artistic Coordinator Kate Barnes stepped out and invited them in for a better look, and several entered before the next song and stood along the gallery walls to watch.  They were rewarded with several more amazing numbers, and seemed quite content to stand right there, captivated.  At the conclusion of the evening, the audience rose to deliver a standing ovation.  The performance certainly revitalized my spirit after a day of rainy gloom, contemplating the labor of dismantling my above-ground pool, and other foiled plans.  


As I have joined the advisory committee for the formation of the Waterville Arts Collaborative (read more here), I especially loved that Saturday night there were in fact competing cultural events going on, and all downtown.  And I hope that moving into 2013 we can create even more of these wonderful moments.
MORE:

Olas' music is wonderful, the dancing is beautiful, and they are raising money to produce a film they have made about their music.  More information is here:  www.olasmusicanddance.com/ 

Common Street Arts is in it's first year of giving Waterville a big shot in the arm of art and culture.  It is beginning to accomplish a goal that I share - to make downtown Waterville the kind of place to recommend to visiting friends and relatives.  They are currently fundraising to keep this momentum going in 2013, and the best way you can help is by becoming a member, here:  www.commonstreetarts.com/become-a-member/ 

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At What Point Does Facebook Become A Public Utility?

9/21/2012

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Popularity can have unintended consequences.  Electricity became really popular.  The telephone became really popular.  Downright necessities.  Or so we believe.  When they are unavailable, people panic.  They riot and loot.  Civil unrest.  Cats and dogs living together.  

People express a great deal of angst over Facebook's constant tinkering with the appearance and functionality of the service.  And Facebook has startlingly more users than any given electrical system, or phone system, or water or sewer system.  That body of users is even international.

Facebook is clearly seeking to be THE INTERNET.  It wants to be where you search for a business.  It wants to replace email.  It wants to take over chat.  Facebook wants to insinuate itself into human society and be important and relevant and necessary.  To foster the communication that drives movements and change and causes...and ends them.

What if they succeed?  What if people start to feel entitled?  What if it causes civil unrest when they switch us to Timeline?  Or looting when the server goes down?  What if Facebook imposes a big fee messaging once the Postal Service is defunct and email has been forgotten?

So, maybe there is a point at which Facebook winds up regulated like utilities.  Maybe they'd have to go before a Board or Commission and beg to be allowed to change the official color to green.  Or to allow people under 13 to use it.

Or, maybe it's more than that.  Because Facebook allows people of many nations to mingle and share subversive ideas, and blend cultures, and corrupt each other governments start to get a little jittery.  Perhaps the U.N. Secret Police so feared by Texas judges show up in Mark Zuckerberg's office and say, "Mr. Zuckerberg, we need to talk.  Here's how it's going to be...."

Actually, I have a sneaking suspicion that the Department of Homeland Security has already demanded a setting that makes it everybody's Friend - a member of everyone's innermost circle. Or maybe Mark is the secret head of DHS and Facebook runs on government servers.

We might need Neo soon.
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Today's Mowing Playlist

9/15/2012

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Yup.  Had to mow (and weed-whack and drive daughters to and from dance) today.  [sigh]  

I know you're immediately dying to know what music ole KennebecTom listened to for two hours.  Okay, drawing from the 4-5 Star smartlist, here's what the iPod served up:

Song - Artist

Brick - Ben Folds Five
Riverwide - Sheryl Crow
Can't Get You Out of My Head - Kylie Minogue
Hands Across The Ocean - The Mission U.K.
Grace - Ruby 
Room At The Top - Adam Ant
Home - Great Northern
Krafty - New Order
Rent - Pet Shop Boys
Dreamer - Elizaveta
Hollaback Girl - Gwen Stefani
Paper Doll - Rachel Yamagata
Birdhouse In Your Soul - They Might Be Giants
If You Leave - OMD
Catch Me If You Can - Outasight
To Whom It May Concern - Duran Duran
Funky Town - Pseudo Echo
Doctor Jeep - The Sisters of Mercy
Feed The Tree - Belly
The Ugly Underneath - XTC
Matador - Los Fabulosos Cadillacs
Full Moon, Empty Heart - Belly
Let's Dance To Joy Division - The Wombats
Just A Dream - Eleni Mandell
Lightnin' Hopkins - R.E.M.
Forever Young - Alphaville
Suedehead - Morrissey
Super Bon Bon - Soul Coughing
Try All You Want - Electronic
Roxanne - The Police
Was It Something I Said - OMD
Raspberry Beret - Prince
Dream Lover - Saint Etienne
I'm Not Sorry - Morrissey
Fascination Street - The Cure
Love Is Dead - The Lovemakers
Hold You - OMD
Intuition - Natalie Imbruglia
Goddess of Love - OMD
I Take The Dice - Duran Duran
So In Love - OMD
Keep Me In The Dark - Arcadia
(Do Not) Stand In The Shadows - Billy Idol
Circle - Sarah McLachlan

I don't know what mathematical algorithm drives the "random" feature on iPods, but sometimes I swear it has actual preferences.  Today, for instance, it went heavy on Morrissey, Belly (Tanya Donnelly) and especially OMD.  Go  figure.

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Common Street Arts Grand Opening

9/15/2012

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It was thrilling and energizing to be in a gallery full of exuberant people Friday evening in downtown Waterville.  The Common Street Arts gallery was packed, with a steady flow of visitors cycling in and out.  In addition to the people carefully inspecting the paintings of Gideon Bok and photographs by Gary Green, there were numerous clusters of people earnestly discussing the art on the walls, art in general, development of the arts in Waterville, 
Picture
The crowd doubled later.
and art as it relates to the economic health of the community.  The conversation was a healthy din, and you had to lean in to hear people.  With delicious hors d'oeuvres and small desserts, and beverages of all stripes, the crowd had more to engage their mouths than just talk.  Outside a few people stood on the street talking and sat on the colorful benches outside CSA's beautiful streetside windows.  And inside, there was a drum kit and guitars set up for the small-space rock concert of Ramones music later in the evening.

I was pleased to see Mayor Karen Heck present, numerous members of the Waterville Arts Collaborative advisory panel, of which I am a member, members of the Colby faculty, librarian Sarah Sugden, and many others.  I enjoyed speaking with Project Coordinator Emilie Knight about the gallery's progress and programming.  It's also exciting that people with associations to The Harlow Gallery and Center For Maine Craft were present, and that the event had brought in visitors from other communities.  Word must have spread through the art grapevine.  


I especially had a great time talking with photographer Gary Green about his work.  The inkjet printing process he used for his large-format portraits completely fooled me.  I would have sworn they were traditional gelatin silver prints.  He informed me of the Epson inkjet printer he uses, capable of producing mind-blowing resolution and nuances of tone.  I left feeling excited about photography again - contemplating pulling out and scanning my old prints from undergraduate school; or maybe even picking up the camera with artistic intent again after so many years.  And it was a great to be talking with someone about darkroom processes, papers, digital and film cameras.  I was flattered when Gary introduced me to someone as a graduate of the photography program at University of Arizona with some degree of esteem.  My memories of it are not grandiose, being of poorly ventilated darkrooms squirreled away in a warren of basements.  But lately I realize just how much four years of art education affected the way I think and view the world.  And I'm glad for it.  Those times seem so distant, and much of the knowledge has burrowed its way into hidey-holes in my brain where it is difficult to access, but conversing about matters like film sensitivity and paper tones started to reopen a lot of shuttered windows and let the light back in.
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The Thought Chamber

9/6/2012

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The shower is where I wake up every morning.  The steam clears breathing passages, and slowly I reach the point where I can open my eyes all the way and endure the light and the coming day.

That early in the day, perhaps unrestrained by normal daily concerns, my mind takes off.  Like an engine being over-revved, the thoughts, ideas, problems, and solutions come so rapidly you can almost hear the whine of an engine.  In complete free association, even the categories they fall in are manifold.  The problem is capturing them before they evaporate like the steam from the shower.  I can't take an iPhone or a laptop in the shower with me, paper won't work, and I don't fancy writing on the shower walls with a grease pencil.  So I just have to recite them to myself like a mantra, hoping to remember until I'm out and dry.

Sometimes my mind is ranging so far afield that, at several points, I have to stop and try to remember what's been washed and what's yet to be done.  Don't worry if you have to sit next to me, I always err on the side of re-washing.

Today, a sampling of what crossed my mind:

How about a version of Cyrano de Bergerac wherein the communication aspect is via text-messages?

What would be an interesting study/essay would be to interview a current teenage couple, their parents, and their grandparents on dating practices, communication and interaction frequency and forum, and how it was done in each era - because the current generation's pervasive text-message communications are interesting.

Do Facebook and text messaging reduce teen pregnancy rates because teen couples spend time with each other electronically instead of physically?

The structure and corporate status for Common Street Arts moving ahead.

The Waterville Arts Collaborative acting as an agent or "pusher" to feed events to the MPBN Community Calendar instead of re-inventing a new calendar system on its own website.  Maybe the MPBN calendar could be embedded in the WAC website.

Inviting area businesses to bring their employees to CSA for "art breaks" or retreats or lunches.

That one of the vast spaces in my Gymnopedie project could be a venue dedicated to hosting large art installations and performance artists - possibly one of the few venues around permanently focused on providing a forum for such?

Have downtown "malls" built on the idea of antique malls, but for different products, like local furniture/cabinet makers.  Each would have their own booth, and would still work and sell out of their current facilities/homes, but would also have an unmanned display booth with examples of their product and the information to contact them.  The overarching store space would be coordinated, negotiated, and all the headaches dealt with by WAC, or WMSt. or some such entity.

I should add more video content to this blog and KennebecTom could be something of an Arts Reporter, actually doing visits and interviews and such regarding arts related spaces and events.  They may or may not be in the "wacky fun" motif, with faux accents and such.

Find an image of an underwater river observation station that could be installed at the fish elevator adjacent to the Hathaway Building (I have and it will be on "There Oughta Be" soon).

Holding open art critiques for artists who want honest, critical and challenging feedback (not just endless "wonderfuls" and pats on the back).  The kind of critiques it is hard to find outside the academic arena.  One critic could wear little red horns from a Halloween costume and be the designated "Devil's Advocate", intentionally focusing on challenging the artist to defend their work, and challenging the other critics present to argue against them in defense of the work or in defense of the issues raised or their interpretation of it.

And I'm pretty sure there were a few more that I did forget....
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I.  Ron. Y.   or   Two-Faced Prohibition

9/6/2012

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Bwaa-ha-ha-ha-ha!  Tonight, I juxtapose for you the following two articles from the same night's news (click titles for full articles):

Maine drug agents seize $275,000 worth of marijuana
"Maine drug agents have charged a Massachusetts man with cultivating marijuana after they raided a backwoods clearing in Limerick and seized pot they say was worth $275,000. "


With this:

New liquor contract could bring Maine extra $41 million
"The official who oversees the sale of hard liquor in Maine says the state can bring in $41 million a year in additional revenue while lowering costs to the consumer....Reid said they could use a new contract to try to lower the cost of alcohol in Maine. "

Who's the bigger "pusher"?  And please note that drug #1 above, has a reputation for causing inane laughter, mellowness, fellowship, and inexplicable love of The Grateful Dead and Phish.  Drug #2 has a reputation for causing fatal auto accidents and domestic violence, and was the subject of our last, failed, attempt to ban a substance with concomitant creation of a violent criminal syndicate for manufacture and distribution.

But, hey, I guess I should be glad my government is ensuring I can get even MORE alcohol at a CHEAPER price, while protecting me from a dangerous weed farmer, right?
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Today's Mowing Playlist

9/3/2012

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Recently, on Facebook, I posted a link to my wife's super-killer reading list (she's a high school English teacher and reads voraciously).   I, on the other hand, am a voracious music-listener, as you know by now.  And so, when mowing the yard for TWO HOURS, I require the most excellent of playlists, served up by Borg, my 80GB iPod.  Here's what shuffled up from the 3,994 song 3-5* Playlist today:


Song-Artist
Zambra - Willie & Lobo
Change of Time - Josh Ritter
In Today's Room - Squeeze
Home - Sheryl Crow
Wild Honey - U2
Close To Me - The Cure
No Big Deal - Love & Rockets
How The West Was Won And Where It Got Us - R.E.M.
Breathless - The Corrs
Jump - Madonna
Happily Ever After - He Is We
Here I Stand And Face The Rain - a-ha
Man In The Paper Hat - Eleni Mandell
Dark Is The Night For All - a-ha
Let's Hook Up - Stimulator
San Francisco - Vanessa Carlton
Kiss And Tell - Bryan Ferry
Ask - The Smiths
I Don't Love Anyone - Belle & Sebastian
The Waiting - Tom Petty
La Femme Accident - OMD
Broken Promise - New Order
Let's Go Forward - Terence Trent D'Arby
East of the Sun - a-ha
Leave - Katie Todd
Waiting For The Night - Depeche Mode
Small Town Witch - Sneaker Pimps


It was a pretty good mow.
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Site Development

9/2/2012

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I have been energized, nearly obsessed, of late to get this site up to snuff. I suppose that means getting all the things I already have fully drafted or visualized in my head out on the web. Then I'll feel "caught up" so to speak. From there out, blog posts can be more frequent. The past two weekends have been about organizing a lot of photos, choosing a whole new theme/color scheme that I like better, and revamping Gymnopedie into its own page to facilitate conversations and presentations about that concept. I'm going to be ticked if someone buys it to develop yet another elderly housing project before I can get something rolling. Fortunately, it's not well-suited for that.

Also, I had a new kayak adventure, and on the same day got photos of the stage at Fort Halifax park for the Impresario page. And I had to do maintenance on the Winslow Performing Arts Boosters site. So things have been pretty webby lately and my eyes are worn out.

Everyone's kind words and encouragement have been appreciated and inspiring. Thanks.
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    The Daily Consternation 
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    Tom lives on the east side of the Kennebec River and works on the west.  He relocated from Arizona to Maine, by pure choice,  in 2001 and loves music and history.  He may change any viewpoint expressed on this site at will and without warning.

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