Palmetto Pointe Project - Guest Blog

Local photographer captures spirit of ballet dancers amid Columbia’s landscape By Rebecca Krumel

(Special to What Jasper Said)

Jason Ayer is a Columbia native and creator of the Palmetto Pointe Project which will be highlighted starting this Friday at Cool Beans Coffee Shop on College Street through  October 30.  His unique and captivating photography collection showcases local dancers in unconventional settings far from the confines of the dance studio.

When asked why he chose to photograph dancers, he laughs and says, “Taking pictures of beautiful women is never a bad thing!” But, the father of two added jokingly, “If I were twenty years younger I’d do it for the women; now I do it for the art.”

Ayer’s interest in photographing dancers began as a high school student in Charleston. He did technical work for the Youth Company in Charleston, and moved back to Columbia in the 1980’s and tried his hand in theatre by performing dance and musical roles at Workshop Theater for a decade. “I did a little bit of everything--singing, dancing, and acting.” Now, Ayer is the photographer for the USC Dance Program as well as the Coquettes.

At first glance, the Palmetto Pointe Project is reminiscent of New York’s Ballerina Project which has received widespread recognition from the Wall Street Journal to the Australian ballet blog Behind Ballet. Quite popular on Facebook, The Ballerina Project is inspiring photographers nationwide, although Ayer says his aim is not to mimic the successful venture which focuses on photographing dancers amid elaborate cityscape. His artistic vision spotlights the dancer rather than the setting. “In The Ballerina Project, the landscape often overpowers the dancer,” he says. Ayer prefers to match the setting to the dancer by drawing out their personality in each image, or for a more bold approach, taking them out of their element. Ayers’ process for a  typical photo shoot involves meeting with the dancer at a location in the Columbia area, and then focusing his lens as her inner creative spirit is revealed through choreography and movement.

Ayer seeks to get the dancers involved in the creative process as much as possible. “What ends up on the canvas relies on them.” He says dance photography is about capturing the personality of the dancer, and oftentimes this is achieved by placing them in settings that may contradict their personality or challenge their creativity. Not only do the dancers drive the photo shoot with their artistry, they are given the final say on all the photographs. Ayers will not display an image that the dancer has not previously approved. “If the dancer doesn’t like it then I’m not going to use it.” The dancer also shares in the profits of any images sold in which they appear.

Ayer and his ballerina subjects are making something unique to Columbia. His photographs are site-specific and therefore nostalgic for Columbians. Palmetto Pointe Project is uniquely South Carolinian and true to the artistic setting and lives of the dancers it portrays. His slogan is, “See some familiar and not-so-familiar places in Columbia through the eyes of a dancer.” While he seeks out niches of Columbia for his backdrops, the dancers are central to the art. Each image is named for the dancer and not the place. Most of his subjects are performers with the USC Dance Company, but Ayers is interested in expanding the project to include other local dance companies as well.

Goals for the project include a website (already underway), a  calendar, and you can check out Palmetto Pointe Project on Facebook now. Friday’s opening will offer the public a chance to meet Ayers, purchase his prints, and meet the dancers featured in his new photographic works.

Jasper has been busy

Jasper has been busy and we'd like to take a moment to share what we've been up to with you, our loyal readers.

To start with, we released the inaugural issue of Jasper Magazine - The Word on Columbia Arts in print form last Thursday night at a lovely party, hosted by one of our favorite places for imbibing, Speakeasy on Saluda Street in Five Points. It was a grand night, and we were overwhelmed by the kindness and support of the arts community. Thank you all so very much for your kind words and your presence at our birthday party for Jasper. Thanks also to Speakeasy for hosting us and Josh Roberts for entertaining us.

The Jasper staff and family has been busy distributing magazines throughout the city. But if we haven't gotten to you yet, not to worry -- we're diligent and we still have more than half of our inventory on hand. That said, we're happy to take your recommendations of spots where you would like to see Jasper distributed. By week's end, we should be all over the Columbia metropolitan area, including Camden, Chapin, Prosperity, and Newberry. And soon, you'll be able to find us in Greenville and Spartanburg, as well.

Lenza Jolley, our web maven, has also been hard at work building our brand new website. If  you haven't had a chance yet, please visit us at www.jaspercolumbia.com. We hope to make jaspercolumbia.com an extension of the print version of Jasper Magazine. To that end, please find more music by Josh Roberts, more art by David Yaghjian, more poetry by all of our featured poets, well ... more of everything, we hope, at our new cyber home.

As you may know, Jasper comes out in print form once every other month on the 15th of the month. If the 15th falls on a weekend, then look for us on the Thursday prior to that date. Our next issue will release on Tuesday, November 15th, for example, but the following issue will release on Thursday, January 12th -- and yes, we plan to celebrate every single issue that hits the streets! But the reality is that Jasper wants to see his arts buddies more than just six times per year. That's just one of the reasons we will be coming to you on our off-print months with various projects and events.

• On Wednesday, October 26th at 7 pm, please join us for our first ever Pint and Poem Walk. Look for more information on how to sign up for one of only 25 spaces on this one-of-a-kind walk in the coming week at jaspercolumbia.com.

• On Monday, October 31st, Jasper will host our first ever Ghost Story Salon as part of 701 CCA's Halloween Night Costume Bash. We're busy gathering all the great tellers of tales of ghosts and ghouls from around town to entertain you, via candlelight and creepy tunes, upstairs in the Olympia Room at 701 Whaley CCA.

• The first stage of our first ever Coalescence Project is well underway as photographers throughout the midlands are submitting their work to Jasper Magazine Coalescence Series - Volume 1: Photography and the Word (http://jaspercolumbia.net/blog/?p=357). October 15th is the deadline for photography and which point local writers will be invited to come try their hands at creating 500 word or less stories to "illustrate" the photographic images. The completed project -- Photography and the Word -- will be unveiled in December.

Finally, we have moved into our studio office downstairs at the Tapp's Arts Center on Main Street and we are in the process of tidying up and making pretty. Please join us for a little open house on Thursday, October 6th as Jasper Magazine happily becomes a part of the First Thursday Arts Crawl community. We'll get back to you before then with more information on the treats we'll have in store as we welcome you to our new creative home.

Until then, thanks for reading Columbia. And thanks for giving us so many good works to write about.

Cheers!

(Photos courtesy of Jasper associate editor Kristine Hartvigsen)

Jasper has a thing for the work of Ron Rash

Jasper is not afraid to admit that he has a bit of an addictive personality. He gets a little taste of something and has trouble letting go. Sometimes it's a yummy bourbon -- Woodford Reserve has his attention these days -- and other times it's a great choreographer or director. (Case in point -- our recent post on David Mamet.) Lately we've been almost overcome by our hunger for the writing of Mr. Ron Rash. One of our own, Rash was born in Chester, SC and raised in Boiling Springs, NC. He Went to Gardner-Webb University and then to Clemson, and now he serves as the Parris Distinguished Professor of Appalachian Culture at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, NC.

Although we had read many of Mr. Rash's short stories in the past -- actually, one of our short stories was included alongside one of Mr. Rash's in a 2001 anthology  (Inheritance, edited by Janette Turner Hospital and published by Hub City Press) -- we hadn't picked up any of his novels until this summer. Serena changed all that.

Set in the North Carolina mountains of 1929, Serena is the story of a badass female protagonist, as malicious as Simon Legree and more capable than most men then or now. Although decidedly sexual, Serena does not use her sexuality to bestow her brand of evil on the people and land she exploits -- Rash has too much respect for her as a villain to make her formulaic. And though he affords us glimpses into her history, he doesn't invite the reader to justify her immorality by casting her as a victim. She's just bad -- and from an odd angle of feminism, that makes us happy.

Our next foray into Rash's novels was Saints at the River, a book Jasper is campaigning for as the next One Book, One Columbia selection. The story is set in the upstate but the main characters are a writer and a photographer from Columbia, who often return to our neck of the woods when not actively investigating an environmental conflict in the upcountry. We won't give much more away here lest we step on our other committee members' toes or let the cat out of the bag or some other cliché. Suffice it to say that we are confident enough to recommend Saints at the River to several thousand of our closest friends.

Third on our list of Rash books was The World Made Straight, which may be our favorite thus far. It's a story of a boy and a field of weed and an unlikely mentor, but most of all it's a story of guilt and how we can inherit it just by being born. One of us at Muddy Ford wasn't even able to finish this book before her fellow traveler started reading it himself.

Luckily, One Foot in Eden, another of Rash's novels is already waiting on the nightstand upstairs. After we're through with it, we may have some problems though -- we'll let you know. In the meantime, here's a Ron Rash essay we nabbed from Amazon. Enjoy.

The Gift of Silence: An Essay by Ron Rash

When readers ask how I came to be a writer, I usually mention several influences: my parents’ teaching by example the importance of reading; a grandfather who, though illiterate, was a wonderful storyteller; and, as I grew older, an awareness that my region had produced an inordinate number of excellent writers and that I might find a place in that tradition. Nevertheless, I believe what most made me a writer was my early difficulty with language.

My mother tells me that certain words were impossible for me to pronounce, especially those with j’s and g’s. Those hard consonants were like tripwires in my mouth, causing me to stumble over words such as “jungle” and “generous.” My parents hoped I would grow out of this problem, but by the time I was five, I’d made no improvement. There was no speech therapist in the county, but one did drive in from the closest city once a week.

That once a week was a Saturday morning at the local high school. For an hour the therapist worked with me. I don’t remember much of what we did in those sessions, except that several times she held my hands to her face as she pronounced a word. I do remember how large and empty the classroom seemed with just the two of us in it, and how small I felt sitting in a desk made for teenagers.

I improved, enough so that by summer’s end the therapist said I needed no further sessions. I still had trouble with certain words (one that bedevils me even today is “gesture”), but not enough that when I entered first grade my classmates and teacher appeared to notice. Nevertheless, certain habits of silence had taken hold. It was not just self-consciousness. Even before my sessions with the speech therapist, I had convinced myself that if I listened attentively enough to others my own tongue would be able to mimic their words. So I listened more than I spoke. I became comfortable with silence, and, not surprisingly, spent a lot of time alone wandering nearby woods and creeks. I entertained myself with stories I made up, transporting myself into different places, different selves. I was in training to be a writer, though of course at that time I had yet to write more than my name.

Yet my most vivid memory of that summer is not the Saturday morning sessions at the high school but one night at my grandmother’s farmhouse. After dinner, my parents, grandmother and several other older relatives gathered on the front porch. I sat on the steps as the night slowly enveloped us, listening intently as their tongues set free words I could not master. Then it appeared. A bright-green moth big as an adult’s hand fluttered over my head and onto the porch, drawn by the light filtering through the screen door. The grown-ups quit talking as it brushed against the screen, circled overhead, and disappeared back into the night. It was a luna moth, I learned later, but in my mind that night it became indelibly connected to the way I viewed language--something magical that I grasped at but that was just out of reach.

In first grade, I began learning that loops and lines made from lead and ink could be as communicative as sound. Now, almost five decades later, language, spoken or written, is no longer out of reach, but it remains just as magical as that bright-green moth. What writer would wish it otherwise.

~~~~~

We're building a new website

but until we do, please visit us at

www.jaspercolumbia.com

American Whiskey Brother Gun Plow Revue Preview

Sometimes the best places to go see live music are the least likeliest of venues. Case in point in the crazy Southern soiree going down in Rosewood Sunday—over a half dozen acts associated with a practice space off of S. Edisto are going to be throwing down starting at 3 in the afternoon. Performances will be both inside and outside the space, with a down-home atmosphere that will see Plowboy leader Tom Hall grilling burgers, a keg of beer being tapped, and a donation jar getting passed to help raise money for the performers (suggested donation is $5).

Groups like Say Brother and the Plowboys will play rollicking acoustic music that fits right in with the lazy Sunday vibe of the day, while singer/songwriters Noah Brock and Will Pittman will also be playing in between full band sets. Whiskey Tango Revue will be delivering some of its rough-hewn outlaw country (the group has just put out their debut full-length, Seersucker Soldiers, and should have some copies for sale), while some of Jasper’s buddies in American Gun will be trying out some Afghan Whigs covers in preparation for their cover show on Oct. 15^th, in addition to some of their more roots rock-oriented material.

The party will also feature one of the first live performances by the new Columbia band The Fishing Journal, fronted by ex-Death Becomes Even the Maiden drummer Chris Powell and featuring some energetic, Superchunck-inspired tunes. These are the kind of bands that everyone can love, and the loose vibes and casual atmosphere should make this humble musical bash the place to be this Sunday.

-- Kyle Petersen

Jasper loves vintage spaghetti westerns - a guest blog by August Krickel

Jasper loves vintage spaghetti westerns. But would you believe...a paella western?

By Saturday, you may already be worn out after attending the Jasper Launch Party, openings of three plays (at Workshop, the USC Lab Theatre and the Trustus Black Box) and the new H. Brown Thornton exhibition at if Art Gallery.  So before you head out to the Greek Festival or the USC game, you might be looking to relax with a good ol' fashioned movie to watch on tv.

AMC runs the Charles Bronson-Toshiro Mifune film Red Sun at noon on Saturday 9/17, and yes, we did say Bronson and Mifune!  Technically an Italian/Spanish/French co-production, the movie was shot in the Andalusia region of Spain, but in English, with an almost entirely European cast, by a British director, and released overseas in 1971 as Soleil Rouge.  And did we mention Toshiro Mifune turns up as a lethal samurai warrior?

It's unclear exactly how this film came together, whether the story was the brainchild of its four credited screenwriters (most with backgrounds in American television including westerns, and one, William Roberts, who co-wrote the screenplay for The Magnificent Seven) or if the producers simply had some available international stars and a location, and started from there; Ted Richmond was a veteran American producer of westerns, who had recently done Villa Rides and Return of the Seven, and went on to produce Papillon with the same French partner as this film.

All of that said, the international cast actually works very well. Bronson - who wasn't quite enough of a pretty boy in his youth to be a big leading man in the US, but made a fortune playing Americans in European films - portrays a traditional, loveable bad guy named Link, on the trail of an even badder bad guy, "Gauche," played by French actor Alain Delon. A reference is made to Gauche (i.e. a French version of a cowpoke named "Lefty") being from New Orleans, but it's unclear if he's supposed to literally be a Cajun or Creole, or just a Frenchman who has come to America. Either way, he dresses as more of a slick, refined gambler, while Bronson has more of the traditional cowboy look, and so it works just fine.  Along the way they interact with several ladies of the evening, played by French temptress Capucine and Swiss beauty Ursula Andress. Again, it makes sense for foreign girls to be working as prostitutes in a new nation of immigrants, and Capucine has a fairly Latin look anyway, so honestly, you assume she's Mexican (her character is called "Pepita") and the nuances of her accent don't matter.  Many of the supporting cast are clearly Italian, with names like Barta Barri, Guido Lollobrigida and Gianni Medici.

(You can just imagine that pitch to distributors:  'We've got Lollobrigida!"  "Great!  Gina?"  "Errr...no....Guido Lollobrigida.")

Since only the leads and a very few supporting cast members have any lines, and since the scenes alternate between regular "desert" scrub brush, snowy Rocky-ish mountains, and some really convincing tall grass (I mean convincing as in "wow, we have grass just like that in Missouri") you really would assume this was shot in the US. It's directed by British filmmaker Terence Young (best known for Bond films like Thunderball, From Russia w/ Love and Dr. No, which introduced the world to Andress a decade earlier.)   Mifune turns up when visiting Japanese dignitaries are robbed, and he vows to avenge them.  If you think he and Bronson may cross paths, fight, engage in several clashes of culture, and eventually develop respect for each other, you know not just Hollywood, but film conventions in general.  Both were in their early 50's when this came out, and it's interesting to note that it's the only time that a member of the 7 Samurai and one of the Magnificent Seven did a project together.

Oh, and did I mention that Comanches attack, and everyone has to band together to fight them off?  There's a really neat climactic battle scene in the middle of that tall grass that's extremely well shot and edited.   Music is by Maurice Jarre (The Longest Day, Lawrence of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago, Ryan's Daughter, even Fatal Attraction) and is excellent. Parts are the very familiar "western" type theme we hear in so many films, with swooping strings, punctuated by French horns and trumpets. But at other times there's an intriguing jazz score, much like the Planet of the Apes theme, with primarily percussion, possibly a little bass, I think some percussive banging on the very lowest keys of a piano, possibly even some xylophone in there, but all sharps and discordant notes.

According to Mifune's IMDB bio, "Even though Mifune worked hard to learn his English-speaking roles phonetically, his voice was always dubbed in the American films in which he appeared."  If that is indeed the case here, it's an excellent dubbing job; Mifune was speaking every word, and matching them with appropriate emotions just perfectly.

Red Sun, aka Soleil Rouge, airs this Saturday (9/17) at high noon on AMC.

-- August Krickel

Just What the Doctor Ordered

Hmmm. What to write. You stare at the keyboard. Gaze out the window. Contemplate a snack. Pet the dog at your feet. Finally, you tap out a few words, pause, then backspace over them. Repeat. And … repeat.

Crap.

I can’t say I’ve experienced serious writer’s block, but I’ve certainly had my share of what I would call creative slumping. These are times when I feel like nothing original or of good quality issues from my cluttered brain. Nothing flows. It’s all crap.

When this happens, I’ve found one of the best remedies is to shut down the computer and head out to a local poetry reading. The Columbia area is full of great talent. There are so many diverse, creative voices here, and fortunately not everyone is slumping at the same time. In fact, many are bursting at the seams with good stuff, and it makes you hopeful that you may be able to write well again. If you pay attention, ideas, themes, and images seem to magically come to mind. It could be a poet’s well-crafted turn of phrase that launches a particular creative thought process for you. I suppose you could call it harvesting − carrying with you the energy that is coming out of that microphone and the people at the reading.

I was in such a slump a few years back when I attended an open mike reading on Café Strudel’s back porch. One of the readers, a regular at the time on the local poetry circuit, would bring his work scribbled on all sorts of crumpled bits of parchment thrown into a repurposed plastic Wonder Bread bag. That alone sparked intrigue in me, and it led to the following poem, which ended up as a SC Poetry Initiative Single Poem Contest Finalist this year:

Tebe

appalachian poet carries his insides around in a plastic polka-dotted bread bag an elegy whispered through lips moistened by fiddlesong he scribbles on napkins, receipts any medium can become a gum wrapper haiku tall hunching wordsmith the smell of woodsmoke in his hair shuffles feet, shuffles papers reads without accompaniment simple flapjacks on the griddle plucks what he can to season the iron

This turned out to be one of my favorite poems, an unexpected joy. I hope you like it. And don’t forget that a local poetry reading may be just what the doctor ordered if your brain is feeling a bit anemic.

-- KH

It's a Boy!

It's a little after noon on Wednesday and I'm holding my cell phone in my lap, waiting to answer it as soon as it rings. Todd Kelley, our rep at R. L. Bryan called me this morning to say that the book was being saddle stitched as we spoke. He said he would call me as soon as it was ready -- sometime just after noon, he said. So we're waiting.

It was seven weeks ago today that we at  Jasper Magazine held our first staff meeting out here in the woods at Muddy Ford. Neither Mike nor Ed nor Kyle could make it, and we were sorry for that, and Mark Green hadn't come on board as photography editor at the time. But we had most of the newbies -- the folks who hadn't been with us at our previous project, and we were thankful for that.

We took some time to talk about the vision for Jasper -- to brainstorm and share ideas. Here are the most important decisions we made either that night or prior to that night during the five days since I had left my last project:

Jasper would be a word-oriented magazine. Design would still be very important -- but we would focus on the strength of the written word by providing editorial content by the best local writers we could find.

Jasper would be something of a populist publication. Yes, we would still be selective, but we would also try to be more things to more people, both arts lovers and artists themselves.

Jasper would be a platform upon which members of the different arts disciplines in the Columbia area could gather to better come to know one another's work.

Jasper would be supportive of the arts community, without pandering; and discriminating, without being snooty.

While it seems self-evident to say that the Jasper staff would be catalysts for the magazine itself, there's actually more to the story. Too often, a magazine -- and really any kind of art project -- can wind up being more about the worker or workers  -- the editor, designer, painter, musician -- than the finished product. We don't want that to happen to Jasper. So, if sometimes you hear us refer to Jasper in the third person, and maybe you think that's a little silly, well, that's a chance we're willing to take. We think that by creating Jasper as a benevolent entity -- a trusty, old, art-wizened, probably-gay uncle who only wants the best for and out of his brood, he'll be bigger than all or any of us. He won't be just ours -- he'll be yours. That's why we made him.

So, here we sit by the phone. The birthday cake has been ordered. The invitations issued and generously answered by more supportive friends than we could ever imagine. We have prizes for tomorrow night -- a lovely door prize as well as a prize for a person to be randomly chosen from the folks on Facebook who have "liked" us. (If it' s before 5 pm on Thursday the 15th, by the way, it's not too late to have a chance at this prize. There's wine. And coffee.) We're just waiting now. Waiting.

And there's the phone.

-- cb

Get your groove back via Cassie Premo Steele

It happens to all of us, whether we're artists or artisans (two decidedly different classifications) or amateurs. Sometimes we just get stale. We can't find our groove. The juices aren't flowing. We freeze up. For those of us who build with words, we call it writers' block -- and it is the scariest, most frustrating sensation in the world. Other times we're plodding along just fine. Cranking it out. Meeting our deadlines. Getting the job done. And our work is fine. Just fine. Nothing special, nothing innovative, nothing earth-shattering. It's fine.

If you're a writer and you ever find yourself in either of these two situations, it's important to keep your head about you. Your world probably isn't coming to an end. But you may, in fact, need something of a tune up. Luckily there's someone in town who has perfected the art of stimulating creativity -- poet, author, academician, and creativity coach, Cassie Premo Steele.

Jasper has had the pleasure of both attending Cassie's creativity workshops and hosting them, so we're taking this opportunity to spread the word that another series of workshops will be taking place soon. It's nice to take a moment now and then and just tend to one's creative core. It's sort of like tidying up your desk -- it needs to be done anyway and, in all likelihood, it'll help you work better. Jasper recommends it.

We're bold-faced copying and pasting info about Cassie's upcoming creative writing class below, as well as one of her lovely poems below that. If you decide to sign up for one of her classes, please tell her Jasper sent you, and let us know how it worked out. We'd really like to know.

Here's the spiel in Cassie's own words --

In October, I will be offering a lunchtime Creative Writing Class on Tuesdays from 12:00-1:00 at The Co-Creating Studio in the Forest Acres area of Columbia.

We will cover the fundamentals of poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction, and the primary focus will be to help you generate new material and stretch yourself to write with greater emotional depth and clarity. Also covered will be the fundamentals of revision and how to... submit your writing for publication.

The cost is $100 per month to be paid at the first class of the month or $30/ per class.

Class size will be limited so everyone can get individual attention, and spaces are already filling, so if you are interested, feel free to email me at cassiepremosteele@gmail.com or call or text 803 420 1400.

All best wishes, Cassie Premo Steele

For those who don't know me, I am the author of eight books, a Pushcart nominated poet, and a writing & creativity coach with two decades of university and community teaching experience. You can visit my website at www.cassiepremosteele.com for more.

And here's one of Jasper's favorite Cassie poems --

Sometimes at night I dream I am pregnant again*

Sometimes at night I dream I am pregnant again but with a book,

not a baby, and my stomach extends not roundly but with four

corners, sharp edges and the fear of splinters, cuts and wood.

When I wait in the rain before dawn for the rest of the world

to awaken, I imagine the eggs still within me are pearls.

What I hold is a jewel of beginning again, something softer

than scarves and more precious than music playing in the dark.

Sometimes I rise and go to the window and make myself take

a look.  The baby is there, and the book, looking down from the moon.

They sing me a lullaby.  Their words say there is always enough time,

enough space, more than enough room.  I fall back asleep in this world, dreaming of what is

beginning in me to the sound of this tune.

(*A certain member of Jasper's clan has been dreaming lately that she, too, is pregnant, though she is far too old for another child. We're wondering if the dreams will subside after Jasper debuts in print form on Thursday night?)

Notes from the Road

When Bruce Cockburn introduced the final song of his show Friday night in Charlotte, he mentioned that he’d written the tune in 1968 but only got around to recording it for his recent album, “Small Source of Comfort,” which was released earlier this year. The song is a beautiful little one-verse ballad called “Gifts” that served as Cockburn’s closing number during shows in the early 1970s.

Cockburn’s story got me thinking about the life of a troubadour, the singer/songwriters who spend a large portion of their adult lives on the road. Their dedication to performing is rewarded by meeting people around the world and discovering the beauty of new places. These pleasures are offset, however, by long stretches of lonely highway, uncomfortable hotel beds, and quick, non-nutritional meals at Interstate exits.

Cockburn, 66, has been living this kind of migratory life for almost four decades. He’s a consummate artist, amazing guitar player, and a writer of rich, provocative songs. Although not widely known in the Southern U.S., he enjoys international respect and recognition. He’s recorded 31 albums, received five honorary degrees, and been the subject of a tribute record.

Three friends and I traveled to the gorgeous 700-seat McGlohon Theater Friday night and sat enraptured by songs such as “Last Night of the World,” “Lovers in a Dangerous Time,” and “If I Had a Rocket Launcher.” The McGlohon is one of the best-sounding rooms I’ve ever experienced, and the memory of Cockburn’s guitar wizardry on “If a Tree Falls,” spiced with echo, tape loops and dynamic soloing, will stay with me for a long time.

Hitting the road for shows by artists such as Bruce Cockburn, Gillian Welch, Richard Thompson, Lucinda Williams, and James McMurtry, has become a habit for many Columbia music fans. We’ve become familiar with venues such as The Handlebar in Greenville, the Orange Peel and Grey Eagle in Asheville, Neighborhood Theater and Evening Music in Charlotte, and the Music Farm in Charleston. If there’s a bright spot, it’s that Columbia is centrally located to all these cities, and we can truck off in various directions and catch a show without too much effort.

Which is why I was on the road again Sunday to catch Todd Snider at The Windjammer on the Isle of Palms. Snider could be considered an artistic opposite of Cockburn. While Cockburn is classically trained, Snider admits he only knows a few guitar chords. Cockburn writes songs that resonate with political and emotional power. Snider writes songs called “Beer Run ,” “Easy Money,” and “Keep Off the Grass.”

But Snider puts on one of the most entertaining shows in the business, interspersing his tunes of everyday turmoil with hilarious stories and witty anecdotes. Sunday’s show at The Windjammer (the second of Snider’s two nights at the club) was especially fun because drivin’ ’n cryin’ frontman Kevn Kinney opened the festivities then pulled up a chair and stayed onstage with Snider for his entire set. The two tunesmiths had a great time bantering back and forth onstage, and Kinney’s nifty fretwork filled out Snider’s tunes.

Barefoot and with his trademark floppy hat pulled down almost over his eyes, Snider played a few opening numbers and then just turned it over to the crowd, who in their Deadhead-like devotion, began to shout requests. Snider would say, “OK, let’s do that one,” and he and Kinney would tear off into tunes such as “Play a Train Song,” “Ballad of the Kingsmen,” and “Doublewide Blues.” It was rollicking good fun, and you could tell that Snider and Kinney were having more fun than anybody.

After last night’s gig, Snider is taking a few weeks off the road before trekking through Ohio, Kentucky, and Arkansas. (He’ll be at the Orange Peel Nov. 5). Cockburn didn’t have far to go after Friday night’s show for a gig at the Cat’s Cradle in Carrboro, N.C. (Cockburn will visit the Orange Peel on Oct. 1.)

As for me, I’m sure I’ll be on the road again, too. I’ve got my eyes on upcoming shows by The Jayhawks, John Hiatt, and cool double bill by James McMurtry and Jason Isbell.

-- Mike Miller

Jasper Magazine - The Word on Columbia Arts

debuts in print on

Thursday, September 15th at 8 pm at the Speakeasy in 5 Points.

Please join us there and catch us at our website

www.jaspercolumbia.com

For Your Consideration -- Jasper's take on three plays opening in Columbia this week

Jasper loves going to the theatre. On rare occasions, he'll just show up and be surprised by what he gets. But most of the time, he does his homework. There are three shows opening in the city this week. One you should just show up for and have a good time. One you might want to do a little planning for. And another that you need to know what you're getting into so, you know, you can really get into it. Anything Goes, opening at Workshop Theatre on Friday night and running through October 1st, is like an ice cream sundae. You really just have to go for it. Other than knowing it's Cole Porter and how, like ice cream and chocolate syrup, it's brilliant in its simplicity, you don't need to over-analyze it. Just have fun. And, given that Cindy Flach is directing it, yeah, you will have fun. Flach has a way, not only with execution, but with space. Her shows conjure up words like pizzazz, and sizzle, and flare. She's another one of Columbia's treasures who asks for little attention, but always gets the job done and gets it done well.

On Wednesday night, in some wild configuration of the Trustus Black Box and Late Night series, our boy Larry Hembree opens Randall David Cook's play, Third Finger, Left Hand. The show plays Wednesday nights at 7:30 and Friday and Saturday nights at 11, for two weeks. Cook is a hometown boy who has done well so, in our book, that would be reason enough to go out and support this show with your patronage. But there's more -- well, first of all, you know Larry Hembree and the kind of weird and magical spells he tends to put on a stage, so, there's that. But the bottom line is that the play has been described as both "Southern gothic" and "twisted" -- terms that makes Jasper's pulse absolutely race. (Jasper likes weird -- why hide it?) But here's the thing -- Cook and Hembree are also presenting a little bonus, next Tuesday the 20th, when they give a staged reading of another little something from Cook's box of tricks, a play called Southern Discomfort. In an effort to construct something of a study of Cook's work, we'll be seeing both the reading and the play next week. Then we're going to sit down and decide what we really think of Cook's work and talk about it. We invite our lovely readers to join us in this online discussion next week. Come back here -- right here -- and share your comments below. We look forward to getting your views.

Finally, a third play opens this week that already has us wiggling in our seats. We've never seen David Mamet's Oleanna, but we've seen David Mamet's Race (with David Spade) and his Glengarry, Glen Ross (with Alan Alda), and we've seen his films, Wag the Dog, The Postman Always Rings Twice, The Verdict, to name just a few. So we know that when David Mamet writes for us, we have to prepare ourselves to be receptive. Mamet's use of language and delivery (called "Mamet speak") is unique and edgy and a little scary. Rather than enjoying a little vino or a draught of bourbon before a Mamet play, we recommend you dose up on caffeine -- not to help you stay awake, but rather to help you keep up. Mamet is unrelenting. That said, the subject of Oleanna is sexual harassment in the academy. A subject far too serious to trivialize or present solely for entertainment value. Mamet doesn't - it will be interesting to see what director, Ait Federolf, a senior in the department of theatre at USC, does with his production. It opens at the USC Lab Theatre on Thursday night, the 15th -- but you'll be busy then attending the Jasper Magazine Launch Party at Speakeasy -- and only runs until the 18th. All shows are at 8 pm and cost $5 -- with tickets available only at the door.

For more information on all three plays, visit the following websites or addresses  respectively:

Anything Goes - workshoptheatre.com/11-12season_AnythingGoes.html

Third Finger, Left Hand - Trustus.org

Oleanna - bushk@mailbox.sc.edu

Jasper Magazine - The Word on Columbia Arts

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"Collecting" At Its Best?

Last week’s First Thursday exhibition at Tapp’s Arts Center featured artist and writer Alex Smith reading from Matt Bell’s moving chapbook “The Collectors,” a fictionalized true story about reclusive brothers Homer and Langley Collyer, whose deaths in their beyond-cluttered Manhattan brownstone in 1947 became apparent only after the stench of their remains wafted into neighboring spaces.

Though the reading was nearly an hour long, I sat riveted, alternately feeling horrified, mesmerized, enchanted, disgusted, melancholy, and, ultimately, thoughtful. If you didn’t catch Smith’s reading, you really missed out. And if you haven’t before heard the story of the ultra-hoarding Collyer brothers, you should read about it. Plenty has been published on the case. In addition to Bell’s manuscript, there’s Ghostly Men by Franz Lidz, and Homer and Langley: A Novel by E.L. Doctorow.

Able to get into the home only through an upstairs window, police literally had to bail thousands of pounds of debris for two hours before discovering the blind invalid Homer’s body. Although Langley’s decomposing body was only 10 feet away, it was not located until two weeks later due to the vast accumulation of junk, which Langley had navigated through bobby-trapped tunnels that are believed to have inadvertently collapsed on him, leading to his death. The paralyzed Homer, with his dead brother unable to care for him, dies several days later, slowly, of hunger and thirst.

All of New York City watched as officials, gagging from the stink, removed more than 130 tons of refuse stacked floor to ceiling from the filthy dwelling: items such as farm tools, musical instruments, newspapers, books, and magazines, old stacked furniture, weapons and ammunition, dressmaker mannequins, old medical equipment, a sewing machine, baby carriages, skeletons of small animals, and even a nearly intact Ford Model T. Newspapers at the time featured photos of the rubbish being set on the curb outside the notorious home.

Author Bell takes exquisite liberties in telling the Collyers’ sad story, artfully setting the scene and communicating what each of the brothers must have been thinking and feeling as their final hours unfolded:

Homer experiences the lack of guideposts, of landmarks, of bread crumbs. He knows his brother is dead or dying and that finding him will not change this, but even though he wants to turn around he’s not sure how. He tries to remember if he climbed the stairs or if he crawled upwards or if he is still on the first floor of the house, just twisted and turned inside it. He tries to remember the right and the left, the up and the down, the falls and the getting back up, but when he does the memories come all at once or else as just one static image of moving in the dark, like a claustrophobia of neurons. He wants to lie down upon on the floor, wants to stop this incessant, wasted movement.

He closes his eyes and leans against the piles. His breath comes long and ragged, whole rooms of air displaced by the straining bellows of his lungs. He smells the long dormant stench of his sweat and piss and shit, come shamefully alive now that’s he’s on the move again.

Somewhere beyond himself, he smells, if he sniffs hard enough, just a hint of his orange peels, the last of their crushed sweetness.

Homer opens his eyes, useless as they are, and points himself toward the wafting rot of his last thousand meals. He holds his robe closed with his right hand, reaches out into the darkness with his left. He puts one foot in front of the other, then smiles when he finally feels the rinds and tapped ash begin to squish between his toes.

He slips, and falls, and crashes into the tortured leather of his favorite chair. He pulls himself up. He sits himself down. He puts his heavy head into his hands.

Smith’s dark, dramatic reading was complemented by photographic slides from the 1947 excavation along with haunting music from William Christopher on keyboards and sound effects from Lucas Sams.

Tapp’s window displays featured artists who assembled various “collections” for public perusal. Among my favorites were Billy Guess’s Barbie-themed dolls and mannequins, Jorge Holman’s assortment of superhero action figures and iconography, and Jenny Maxwell’s collection of old hand-held fans from funerals. Perhaps best of the best, however, was Lyon Hill’s mind-blowing 3-D sketches arranged into a diorama of the Collyer residence accompanied by a looped animation film using dioramic images to dramatize scenes from the brothers’ desperate lives. These can be found in the inside foyer window at the Main Street-facing entrance to Tapp’s.

As the exhibition’s theme says, there is a “Fine Line Between Collecting and Hoarding.” I, too, am a “collector” of numerous odd items, including neckties, blazers, and books. So many books. But the collection I love the most is my art collection, which includes oil, acrylic, and watercolor paintings, sculptures, batiks, handmade ceramic platters and vessels, and mosaics by both local and non-local artists. I probably started collecting art because my father collected. I have paintings he purchased while our military family was stationed in Europe. I have a nearly 50-year-old California redwood tree trunk table my dad bought back in the 1970s. So much stuff, and I won’t part with any of it. Does that make me a collector … or a hoarder?

Many of my friends are artists. Some have neat, organized studios. Others work in complete disarray. I’ve found no rhyme or reason in the working spaces of creative people. More and more, found objects are material fodder for art. A great example of that is Kirkland Smith’s amazing portrait assemblages.

Among the many, many books in my personal “collection” is Southern Writers, published by USC Press in 1997. Page 49 presents a black-and-white photograph of the late James Dickey sitting at his desk surrounded by piles of books all around him, on the desk, the floor, the credenza. I could imagine him trying to peer over the great wall of books to greet a visitor. He had to know the photographer was coming to shoot the picture for the book that day. Was the result of his tidying up? It makes me curious. Was Dickey a book hoarder?

Well, anyway, I digress. And I apologize for the length of this blog entry. Writing can be a lot like “collecting.” Sometimes you just don’t know when to stop.

NOTE: The collectors/hoarders window exhibit is still up at Tapp’s for the next couple of weeks, so check it out. If you’d like to read The Collectors, you can download it for free in pdf at http://www.mdbell.com/collectors/.

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Jasper likes Tall Girls

If your Thursday night isn't booked yet, or even if it is, Jasper recommends you take a few moments to stop by City Art Gallery in the Vista between 6 and 8 for the opening of the Harriet Marshall Goode exhibit, Tall Girls.

In addition to being an arts supply shop, City Art Gallery is a beautiful venue that speaks both of old Columbia, in its rustic brick walls and elegant wooden floors, and of new Columbia, in the art -- classic, as well as innovative -- that adorns its walls. We like the spaciousness of the gallery -- how we have room to step back and study the works in the main gallery hall from many different vantages. And we like the vibe. Randy Hanna and Wendy Wells are always on hand to answer questions or chat for a bit. It's inviting -- not stuffy at all.

Jasper will be popping by City Art Gallery -- maybe sipping a little vino and chatting for a while on Thursday evening. We hope to see you there as well.

~~~

For more information on the Tall Girls exhibit, here's a little something we bold faced stole for the City Art website itself:

Columbia, S.C. – An exhibit of oil paintings by Harriet Goode will open with a public reception for the artist between 6:00 and 8:00 p.m. Thursday September 8 at City Art Gallery in the Congaree Vista. The exhibit runs through October 1, 2011.

City Art Gallery Director Wendyth Wells describes the event as an interactive installation combining the historic authenticity of the building and the drama of the nearly 7 foot tall paintings of females. “We are creating an atmosphere,” Wells said, “Those who experience it will feel the power of the paintings and the call of the historic architecture. It’s all about what one feels standing among these ‘tall girls’.”

All the paintings are oil on wood panels that Goode based on characters from short stories.

“If we allow words to flow freely in our minds, the experience of reading fiction is immeasurably enhanced,” Goode said. “My paintings are about the often overwhelming power written words have over us, and the rich imagery our minds can create when those words are set free.”

Goode has a life-long love of these stores. “Each month when my mother’s magazines arrived in the mail, I’d curl up in a big chair to read the short stories”, she said. “Even at an early age, I had vivid mental images of the fictional characters. And the dark stories were always my favorites. My own childish interpretation of the characters filled my sketchbooks, and now, many years later, I’m still finding subject matter for paintings in short story and poetry anthologies. I return to old favorites, Steinbeck, St. John, Cheever, and in the last few years have added new names to the list, like Raymond Carver and Alice Munro. Each painting is a short story or one-act play. The viewer has to figure out the plot.”

Goode says she paints because she cannot imagine her live without painting. “I invent women,” she said, “some with vulnerable personalities and some with the strength to transport them to another world; but they all tell a story.”

Goode has had a distinguished career as a gallery director, free-lance illustrator and advertising director. She currently lives in Rock Hill where she is a fulltime painter, commercial art consultant and art competition juror. She attended Converse College and later studied with William Halsey in Charleston, SC and at the Silvermine School of Art in New Canaan, CT. Her paintings are part of museum and private collections throughout North and South Carolina. In addition she has work in corporate and private collections in Mexico, Europe and China. She has been featured on SC-ETV and her paintings have been on the cover of “The Evening Reader Literary Journal”, “Artifacts”, “Best of Watercolor: Painting Color” among other publications.  (http://www.cityartonline.com/current-exhibition/)

City Art Gallery is located at 1224 Lincoln Street. The exhibit runs through October 1st.

~~~

And while we're talking calendars, we hope you have yours marked for next Thursday, September 15th when, as promised, Jasper Magazine - The Word on Columbia Arts debuts in print!

Please come and celebrate with us at Columbia's own Speakeasy at 711 Saluda Avenue in Five Points, starting around 8 pm. We'll have a birthday cake for Jasper and music from Josh Roberts. Andy Shadday will also debut a new drink dedicated to yours truly -- The Jasper!

In the meantime,please visit us online at www.jaspercolumbia.com.

"Like" Us & Win!

In honor of Jasper's big launch next week, we're giving you goodies! Head over to our Facebook page, http://www.facebook.com/jaspercolumbia, "like" us, and you'll be entered in a raffle to win a one-of-a-kind Jasper basket -- just make sure you do it by noon on September 15 (so you'll have plenty of time to get ready for the launch party that night)!

Jasper Magazine Coalescence Series: Volume 1 – Photography and the Word

Something special happens when artists from differing disciplines get together and share the creative process. For artists and arts lovers alike, there’s a tingling in the spine. Chills rush up the arms, and the shade on a window in the brain dramatically flaps open, as you realize you see something in a brand new, mind-expanding light.

Selfishly, Jasper is a junkie for this type of not-so-naughty voyeuristic experience. That’s why we’re announcing the Jasper Magazine Coalescence Series.  The Coalescence Series will facilitate connecting artists from two or more disciplines in the creative process – dancers with painters, and musicians with actors, for example.

The first event in the series, Coalescence: Volume 1 – Photography and the Word, will turn the process of illustration on its head as the Columbia area’s excellent local writers are invited to respond in short prose form (500 words or less) to photos submitted by our best local photographers. The result?  A journey into the imagination of the literary artist as it is stimulated by that of the visual artist in photographic form.

Here’s how to get involved.

Photographers – please select your most evocative, narrative-rich photographic images for submission. While portraits are not prohibited, they may be less likely to induce imaginative response, and therefore, not chosen for this project. We encourage you to choose photographic submissions that depict action or interaction; pictures that show distance, proximity, mannerisms, emotions, relationships, or response. Look for potential clues to the action in your images. Can you can find one or more stories in the image you submit?

A few more things to consider:

If your submission depicts an individual, have your model sign a standard model release form (available at jaspercolumbia.com).

Submit only high-resolution photography to editor@jaspercolumbia.com.

The deadline for photography is October 15, 2011.

Writers – stay tuned to jaspercolumbia.com and the announcement of the winning photographic images selected for your compositional pleasure, and follow the directions you find there.

Photography and the Word will coalesce in December 2011. More details to come at jaspercolumbia.com.

Arts Fatigue anyone?

Sometimes the life of an artist or arts lover can get heavy. Art is all about thinking, reflecting, analyzing, questioning, growing. Certainly, all these cerebral endeavors make for enlightened, self-aware individuals who live life intentionally and, I tend to believe, more fully. No one holds a gun to our heads and makes us love the arts -- it's a lifestyle we choose and enjoy. That said, there is no denying the reality of a syndrome I have come to call - arts fatigue.

Arts fatigue typically presents itself after a number of nights in a row when beloved artists have generously shared the gifts of their talents in a wide variety of ways. For Columbians, it usually manifests early in the month, after First Thursday often, and it is exacerbated by concomitant openings of gallery exhibits, multi-artist cooperative projects, concerts, CD releases, dance performances, and readings. We love these events. We live for them. We can't miss them. And, after so many, they exhaust us.

Yes, it is an embarrassment of riches -- and it is a glorious problem to have.

If you're like Jasper, and your head is feeling heavy with all the arts you've experienced recently and have yet to have the time to process, relief is on the horizon in the form of a play that, as I understand it, is less about reflecting and analyzing and more about laughing your ass off.

This Thursday night Trustus Theatre opens an encore run of The Great American Trailer Park Musical, directed by Robin Gottlieb. Jasper did not see this musical during its last run, but this time, at this particular moment in the arts season, a play that will allow us to laugh uproariously at ourselves and our neighbors feels like just what the Doctor ordered to not only battle arts fatigue, but to refresh our overworked brain cells with a healthy dose of laughter-induced endorphins.

Here's the blurb from the Trustus website below. And if you, too, are suffering from arts fatigue this week, just take a musical comedy to cure your ills -- and enjoy!

Back by popular demand! There's a new tenant at Armadillo Acres—and she's wreaking havoc all over Florida's most exclusive trailer park. When Pippi, the stripper on the run, comes between the Dr. Phil–loving, agoraphobic Jeannie and her tollbooth collector husband—the storms begin to brew. Throw in Pippi’s insane marker-sniffing ex-boyfriend, and you’ve got a recipe for hilarious disaster. “…It is really, really funny and should be a very big hit for Trustus Theatre […] the casting of the show is perfect.” – Larry Hembree, Onstage Columbia / The Free-Times. Please note that there will not be a show on Sunday September 11th. All tickets are $25.00

Columbia IS a music town! There - we said it.

Magnetic Flowers

Despite what people may tell you, most weekends in this town have so many opportunities for good live music, sometimes you are forced into a tough decision.

Case in point is this Saturday, when indie folk and rock fans have the opportunity to catch Say Brother, Kemp Ridley, and Ned Durrett & the Kindley Gents at The White Mule, or head over to the Art Bar for Magnetic Flowers, Elonzo, Sea Wolf Mutiny, and Famous Thieves. And while we have some serious love for the folks over at The White Mule, we’d tend to recommend the Art Bar show.

First off, headliners Magnetic Flowers are teetering on the edge of an extended hiatus/break-up, so it’s hard to say how many more times you are going to get to see these guys—and they have been one of the most exciting bands in Columbia over the last few years, with an energetic live show and some highly literate indie-folk-pop songwriting married to hyper-melodic and complex arrangements that throw keyboards, guitars, and an onslaught of separate vocal parts on the wall to see what sticks. Their last record, 2009’s What We Talk About When We Talk About What We Talk About, featured a delightfully cathartic re-working of “I’ll Fly Away,” a tune that riffed on the form of “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” and such literary-informed song titles like “Southern Baptist Gothic” and “Books and Bad Poetry.” Hear Southern Baptist Gothic here. Plus, one of the most achingly beautiful songs about growing up Jasper has ever heard. Listen to Northern Lights here.

And even if that isn’t enough, they are supported by the Rock Hill band Elonzo, whose dreamy brand of indie folk takes a laidback, front porch-meets-chamber music approach to its subtly Southern songcraft, and Sea Wolf Mutiny, a darker, more prog-influenced folk-rock outfit whose mix of influences include The Decemberists, Flaming Lips, Band of Horses, and Mumford & Sons, for starters. Jasper doesn’t know Famous Thieves well yet but, in company like this, it’s probably safe to assume you are going to have 4 awesome bands for a cover of $5—just one of many examples this weekend that prove that Columbia is, in fact, a music town!

- Kyle Petersen

 Elonzo

Please visit our website at

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Jasper Magazine - The WORD on Columbia Arts

debuts in print on September 15th, 2011

Art + Community = Photos from Last Night

Art = good

Community = good.

Art + community = lucky Columbia, SC

Below are just a few photos from September's First Thursday Gallery Crawl last night. Inspiring art. Joyous faces. Friends. Family. A community of artists and arts lovers that grows in complexity, diversity, gifts, and talent with every event held.

Don't stay home. Don't be alone. Don't be apart from it all; be a part of it all.

Tonight -- Cola-Con 2011 featuring Talib Kweli at Columbia Museum of Art

And, First September Art Bar Improve Comedy Players at The Art Bar

And, Whiskey Tango Review CD Release party at 5 Points Pub with The Capitol City Playboys

And, Bey's Gays -- name says it all -- at Bey's 711 Harden Street

And tomorrow -- SC Pride 2011 Parade and Festival at Finlay Park

Next Door Drummers with Dick Moons and Lee Ann Kornegay

(L to R), Jasper webmaven Lenza Jolley, Jasper editor Cindi Boiter, Bonnie Boiter-Jolley and Coralee Harris

Natalie Starr Mudd and Terrell Rittenhouse (Terrell modeled for Linda Toro's show below)

Poster for Linda Toro's delightfully non-heteronormative photog exhibit at Frame of Mind

Maria Mungo and Ann Smith Hankins

(Maria and Ann -- Anastasia's Mom -- helped serve at Anastasia & Friends Gallery - glorious peanut soup prepared by Marvin Chernoff & vino courtesy of Roe Young)

Anastasia Chernoff and Roe Young

Art (Tapp's Arts Center) by Kirkland Smith

Artist David West & Baby Boy at Anastasia & Friends

Cindi (right) with Columbia Arts guru & dear friend, Jeffrey Day

Artist, Thomas Crouch in Tapp's Center window

From the Baboon and Wolf Series by Thomas Crouch

(possibly Baboon IV and, if so, now Cindi's)

From the Baboon and Wolf Series by Thomas Crouch

Tapp's Art Center Gang featuring Brenda Schwartz Miller

(More from the Tapp's folks, this time with Molly Harrell, and depicting more of the Crouch exhibit)

Jenny Maxwell with fodder for "Obsessions -- A Fine Line Between Collecting and Hoarding" - still on display at the Tapp's Arts Center, Main Street Columbia

SCA Group -- Abstractalexandra

SCA Group - - Joanne Crouch

My father, dying

In this month’s Poetry magazine, a poem by Kevin Young, one of my favorite poets, caught me by surprise. Sometimes that happens, that twist, that leap, that chill of meaning that is both of the work and not of the work. I’m not sure how to write about this.

You can read the poem, “Pietà” by Kevin Young online here where a blogger has posted the poem. (Note: The poem is not centered in the published version. Subject for another day: centered poetry, pet peeve.)

Who is this “I” in the poem, and who is this “him”? I wondered. The title, Pietà—pity—suggests all those images of Mary cradling the body of her dead son. Whoever the sought-for “him” is, he can’t be found in heaven (“too uppity” and “not enough // music, or dark dirt”), nor in the earth. Death appears in the poem, a boy bounces a ball, and the speaker notices the delay of sound reaching him. Then Young ends: “Father, // find me when / you want. I’ll wait.” Prayer? Elegy? Father or father or both?

Last spring as my father was dying of cancer, I was reading poems, writing poems, drawn to poetry as a form of understanding, a way to process my conflicts and my grief. Poems I’d always loved and taught, from Alfred Lord Tennyson’s “In Memoriam” (his long elegiac sequence about the death of his dear friend) to Li-Young Lee’s stunning first book Rose, had new resonance for me. New pain, new forms of consolation.

Yes, sometimes this is what art does: offers consolation.

I’m not sure how to write about this. It feels, maybe, too personal.

I know I’m seeing dead fathers everywhere. My own keeps showing up in my dreams. I picked up a thin collection of new Scottish poetry when I was in Dublin in July, Intimate Expanses, and the first poem was Alastair Reid’s “My Father, Dying.” “The whole household is pending,” he writes. “I am not ready.” (I remember when the hospice nurse told us my father was on “the imminent list.”) The end of his father’s life, writes Reid, seems the beginning of something else: a “hesitant conversation / going on and on and on.”

In the July/August issue of Poetry, a poem by another favorite poet, Spencer Reece, “The Manhattan Project," a poem that ends, stunningly: “The quietness inside my father was building and would come to define him. I was wrong to judge it. Speak, Father, and I will listen. And if you do not speak, then I will listen to that.”

So I'm thinking about my father, I’m writing about my father. Here’s a draft:

Last Night

Last night, bright moon, dark trees lining each horizon,

armadillo digging up the flowerbed. The yucca’s last buds glow white.

Last night, a nightmare, lame as nightmares come, but

for all that, I woke up calling out for my father’s help. My mother

woke, her soft feet at the door.

Last night, she says, she heard voices, in the house, outside the window,

someone calling her name. It’s like that now.

Last night my dad asked how I got there,

sitting beside his bed, his head against the rail,

his soft focus stare. He says something else

I can’t quite hear, his quiet voice receding, as if

he’s elsewhere, another room. My mom says sometimes he waves

at someone, but no one’s there.

So I’m writing about and to my father. Not pleased with many of them, but writing. Maybe it’s a way to keep that “hesitant conversation” going. I am thinking about all the conversations I never had with him. I am listening to the silence. As I sit here at my desk, the dark shadow of a large hawk keeps crossing the backyard.

-----

For those of you who are writing or have written about illness, USC Sumter is hosting a writing contest (essay and poetry). Download the information here. Deadline is September 16.

The Art of Africa tonight and "First Weekends?"

So many wonderful arts events are going on in the city of Columbia tonight. Has it occurred to anyone else  that First Thursday may be outgrowing the 3 or 4 hours it's been allocated on Thursday nights? Could there possibly be a First Friday, as well? Or maybe even a First Weekend? Some of us who love our First Thursdays were chatting yesterday and the subject came up. With the arts community as buzzing as it is these days, it's not an exaggeration to speculate that Columbia may be on the way to becoming a Southeastern arts destination. Certainly, the introduction of a First Weekend Series could make that happen. Start on Thursday as usual, but continue with gallery hours -- even openings -- and performances on Friday night, Saturday afternoon panel discussions and symposia, Saturday evening soirees, Sunday morning choral performances over brunch? If not every month, then what about seasonally?

Let's talk about this, OK?

In the meantime, one of the exciting events scheduled for tonight is a multi-disciplinary arts endeavor at Anastasia & Friends Gallery on Main Street called, The Art of Africa. In addition to the visual arts in Anastasia's gallery, videographer Lee Ann Kornegay will show images from her various trips to Africa on a constant loop while the Next Door Drummers perform outside.

Can you say, "Sensory Explosion?"

We could talk more about the event but A & F provided Jasper with a lovely and informative press release. Let's just take a look at it below, shall we?

____

What do Anastasia Chernoff and Lee Ann Kornegay have in common when it comes to Africa?

Inspiration and a love of the culture, people and art.

Together with visual artists Rodgers Boykin, Michaela Pilar Brown, Wendell Brown, Tyrone Geter, Arianne Comer King, and Keith Tolen.

And performances by Abou Sylla, Next Door Drummers, and Sufia Giza Amenwashu.

Art that comes from Africa, is created by artists with African roots and that has been inspired by Africa. The exhibition will be a combination of paintings, sculpture, film, music, mixed media and textiles.

An explosion of color, texture and emotions, The Art of Africa brings connection to the culture and gives a perspective from many sides.

“My trip to Botswana, South Africa and Robben Island in 2005 changed my life.” says Anastasia.  “I was overwhelmed by the warmth of the people and their respectful co-existence with the animals and nature surrounding them.  When my guide spoke to me about the trials of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, my heart was stung with an even deeper love for these beautiful, forgiving people. I thought to myself, if only the world could subscribe to this policy of understanding and be able to live in harmony WITH each other and not AGAINST each other … how would that look? And to be able to fully understand the importance/impact of forgiveness, not just for others, but for self, too?  For me, it was a thunderbolt of enlightenment from these simple, yet wise people who lived in the bush. The inspiration was so empowering, that I immediately began to sculpt (for the first time in my life) when I returned home.  This show honors that initial influence.”

Kornegay, traveled to Guinea in 2000 & 2002 to study and film the cultural arts and between 2003 and 2005 went to Ivory Coast and Nigeria on work assignments. “I wept the first time I flew in over Africa.  It was a powerful feeling, a visceral reaction. My trips to Guinea put me in the company of some the best West African musicians and dancers of our time.  I was and still am humbled by that.

One of those musicians, Abou Sylla, master balafonist and Jeli will be performing at The Art of Africa.  A singer, storyteller and doyen, Abou is a treat for the ears.

Wendell Brown, a fiber artist feels family history “forced me as an artist to use my work as a platform to look at the acculturation of African slaves in the United States. What survived of African culture in America?  What is it today? “

In search for answers, I looked at the Congo, Nail Fetish Sculptures (nkisi nkondi), and the masks of West, and Central African. Studying these objects revealed to me the stitch that united the African Art forms with African American quilts. “

Arianne Comer King indigo artist says:

“It took going to Oshogbo to lock in my pathway

I am an indigo child

Osun Ronke

A Native Daughter

I celebrate my blessing

a messenger through the magnificent world of creating

Looking at waters, beautiful southern skies and ancient trees

I humbly yet joyously live to create through all the senses

All the elements of the arts

No limitations

Just be

A vessel of exploration

Ashe Gon!”

____

Jasper Magazine – the Word on Columbia Arts debuts in print in

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Shame On You

I’ve been thinking a lot about shame lately. If this blog had a soundtrack it would be Evelyn Champagne King, 1978, “Shame.” (Yeah, I'm listening to it again while I write. Listen along!)

You can see him, can’t you? That skinny gay kid with bad Barry Manilow hair, dancing in front of his mirror to the eight-track tape….

Maybe I’m thinking about shame because I spent some time in my childhood home earlier this year, sleeping in that bedroom. (The mirror and the eight-track player and the Barry Manilow hairdo are gone now.  It gets better.)

Maybe it’s also because this is Gay Pride week in Columbia—rainbow banners on every street.  Pride is supposed to be the opposite of shame, a way of reclaiming as good an identity that has been, in the past, pathologized, demonized, stigmatized. (I do love those rainbow banners. I remember how excited we were, when I was on the Pride planning committee years ago, and that first gay pride street banner went up. We kept driving by it, smiling.) Pride is shame turned inside out. (A list of Pride events can be found here.)

Mostly, though, it’s because I’ve been working with the Sebastian art show, which I wrote about in an earlier blog. The beauty of the vilified.

Shame is a fundamental emotion of our childhoods—I think that it is amplified for some gay and lesbian kids. Therapists like to draw a distinction between shame and guilt: guilt is what we feel for something we’ve done or haven’t done, but shame is what we feel for who we are. It’s connected to our identities.

Shame can’t be erased or excised or purged. Nope, the residue of it sticks to us, no matter how much we try to wash it away, pretend it's not there. All we can do is transfigure it in some way, use it, understand it, recognize it, learn from it.

And write about it.

So in my poems about Sebastian, I was thinking about how and why we learn from shame, from the ways we’re shamed and the feelings of shame and the ongoing effects of shame. I don’t have answers; I was thinking of my poems as gestures, provocations, explorations, attempts. I was thinking about Sebastian and John O'Hara and Pinhead and Debussy and archery books and ampallangs and the Cowardly Lion. (Dorothy yells at him, “Shame on you,” before he breaks into his song: “It’s sad believe me, missy, when you’re born to be a sissy….”)

I wrote a series of poems or prayers for Sebastian. Here’s the last one of the series:

For Saint Sebastian

Arms, be bound. Legs bound, rope wound.

The rope that binds is shame. The arrow is shame, the bow.

Shame is a wound, shame is a caul. That we may learn the eloquence of shame.

That we may learn that the arrows do not kill you.

The tree stiffens the spine. The arrows do not kill us.

I’m still listening to Evelyn Champagne King. I know she’s singing about something else, but still, those lyrics sing for me. “Gonna love you just the same. Mama just don’t understand….”

- Ed Madden

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