Folklife festival
May. 26th, 2003 11:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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jinian biked over and we took the bus down. We had plans for some particular things to see, but the bus was late, and the people in charge of wheelchair lending had a good deal of trouble figuring out whether the other(!) wheelchair was spoken for, and herding the people out of the way of the chair took some time, and when we arrived at the Thai dance event it appeared to consist of a long line of people standing in the courtyard at the closed doors of the theater. You advanced in line when people ahead of you gave up and left. Eventually we gave up and left, passed by Vance Lelli Longshore Troubadour who was growling Lennon's "Imagine" now with extra labor struggle!, and straggled back towards the courtyard through a dense crafts market. Catherine Peterson's painted silks were beautiful (my favorite was the octopuses), and we spent some time ogling Katrina Kruse's underwater photography -- macro shots of jellyfish, flecked octopus eyes, anemones, vertebrates too. Skates' eyes have valances at the top, she said, look.
We got back to the courtyard for "How To Sing In Parts For Shy Singers With Jim Roe". It kind of turned out to be For Singers Who Sight-Read And Do Sing In Parts But Are Shy About It All. While standing in the line at the closed doors we did pick up a brochure for an interesting-sounding non-singers' workshop in June.
A second Thai dance performance now occurred in the theater, and this time they did open the doors. I'm glad we made it. I particularly liked the long zither.
Schedules all slipped. We still didn't make it to the end of the Performance Clogging Team, but got in to the Quebecois stepdance, which was amazing stuff. Flinging the feet ballistically through a chain reaction of richochets. Then some of the marimba orchestra on the lawn (I love the huge end-struck tubes used for tuned bass percussion), and rush back still trying not to run people over to get the chair returned by 9:00. Some early movies with sound -- short clips, primitive music videos; seems there was a whole genre centered on besuited men singing and fantasizing of when they were cowboys, but my favorite was the absurd polyandrous cuckoldry flick "What Did Mrs. Doodle Do?" -- and then caught the 16 back up.
I walked home around the lake. Tell me, what swims leaving a V wake along the surface, scurries on land, and is about the size of two fists? Water rat?
Today I went down, toting my Sched 40 PVC didj, for the didjeridu panel. It's a conversation-starter -- on the walk over from the 358 stop I chatted with one woman about beeswax versus hard mouthpieces, and after the panel I talked bore size and demoed it to several people after the panel. Advocated the $3 DIY didj to those who seemed like they might want to try it. (Some of the audience members playing nice painted wooden didjes hadn't heard of the plastic-pipe didj. Live in a world far more saturated with nice painted wooden didjes than mine was, I guess.)
Anyway, so at the end of the panel they had everyone with a didj form up into a "didjerdorchestra". Playing in a group in the open is odd: very hard to hear what you're doing. I scuffed up my throat a bit trying. Brian Pertl chaired the panel, opened with an intro to didj techniques. (It was funny, I recognized him from his playing on an instructional tape I got about ten years ago, when I was in southern California.) He then emceed for half a dozen players, my favorite of whom was a German fellow named Frank whose last name was sadly never mentioned.
I stopped by Katrina Kruse's booth and got a present for my dad and another jellyfish I couldn't resist. She does almost all of her diving locally. I asked her about drysuits here, and she advised "absolutely essential"; also that to buy one you needed someone experienced to judge the fit, but she didn't think a training course was necessary, could show me the buoyancy technique herself. ("But a course would be useful if it makes somebody feel more confident." "Usually the dive instructor reminds me of my high-school gym teacher.")
Mostly I wandered. Took some pictures, listened to a lot of music. The lovely thing about this festival is that people bring their instruments, and play them. I sat on some steps by a circle of folding chairs, and fiddle and banjo players would walk by, greet friends, sit in, chat between songs, step out. On the other side an African drum ensemble set up shop. I played a bit with a drum circle, but like I said, the no acoustic support will take some getting used to. Need to make a didjerisax. I did go indoors for Raqs Al-Hamra's bellydancing, then wandered a bit more.
The fellow I sat next to on the bus home asked me if I'd gone to the festival. I said it was a great time. He said he might have gone, but it hadn't come into his head, you know how it is. He was saving his ducats for Lou Reed. He'd never seen Lou live; the first time he'd heard him was in '67, when he was on the Haight, some friends had come in to town, needed to do some business, so he took them down, stepped into this one guy's pad, and the guy was blasting "Heroin". Hit him like that. Look at the mountains, I said; we were going over the Ship Canal, and the Olympics rested in pale yellow light under a dome of grey cloud. All God's handiwork, he said. That motel there, shuttered, he stayed there the first night he was in Seattle, in '75. Second night -- first night he slept in his car. Fourth of July; they went over to Green Lake for the fireworks. His bank was giving him trouble with his money, wanted him to mail the California branch a signature, trouble for weeks. Some kind of segue here. The judge practically fell off his chair laughing, when he sentenced him. Prosecuter didn't know what he was doing. Public defender didn't know what she was doing, still had braces on. Stack of bad paper here four inches high, the judge said. Twenty-seven days. This is my stop here, I said. And, yeah, you don't want to miss Lou Reed.
jinian biked over and we took the bus down. We had plans for some particular things to see, but the bus was late, and the people in charge of wheelchair lending had a good deal of trouble figuring out whether the other(!) wheelchair was spoken for, and herding the people out of the way of the chair took some time, and when we arrived at the Thai dance event it appeared to consist of a long line of people standing in the courtyard at the closed doors of the theater. You advanced in line when people ahead of you gave up and left. Eventually we gave up and left, passed by Vance Lelli Longshore Troubadour who was growling Lennon's "Imagine" now with extra labor struggle!, and straggled back towards the courtyard through a dense crafts market. Catherine Peterson's painted silks were beautiful (my favorite was the octopuses), and we spent some time ogling Katrina Kruse's underwater photography -- macro shots of jellyfish, flecked octopus eyes, anemones, vertebrates too. Skates' eyes have valances at the top, she said, look.We got back to the courtyard for "How To Sing In Parts For Shy Singers With Jim Roe". It kind of turned out to be For Singers Who Sight-Read And Do Sing In Parts But Are Shy About It All. While standing in the line at the closed doors we did pick up a brochure for an interesting-sounding non-singers' workshop in June.
A second Thai dance performance now occurred in the theater, and this time they did open the doors. I'm glad we made it. I particularly liked the long zither.
Schedules all slipped. We still didn't make it to the end of the Performance Clogging Team, but got in to the Quebecois stepdance, which was amazing stuff. Flinging the feet ballistically through a chain reaction of richochets. Then some of the marimba orchestra on the lawn (I love the huge end-struck tubes used for tuned bass percussion), and rush back still trying not to run people over to get the chair returned by 9:00. Some early movies with sound -- short clips, primitive music videos; seems there was a whole genre centered on besuited men singing and fantasizing of when they were cowboys, but my favorite was the absurd polyandrous cuckoldry flick "What Did Mrs. Doodle Do?" -- and then caught the 16 back up.
I walked home around the lake. Tell me, what swims leaving a V wake along the surface, scurries on land, and is about the size of two fists? Water rat?
Today I went down, toting my Sched 40 PVC didj, for the didjeridu panel. It's a conversation-starter -- on the walk over from the 358 stop I chatted with one woman about beeswax versus hard mouthpieces, and after the panel I talked bore size and demoed it to several people after the panel. Advocated the $3 DIY didj to those who seemed like they might want to try it. (Some of the audience members playing nice painted wooden didjes hadn't heard of the plastic-pipe didj. Live in a world far more saturated with nice painted wooden didjes than mine was, I guess.)
Anyway, so at the end of the panel they had everyone with a didj form up into a "didjerdorchestra". Playing in a group in the open is odd: very hard to hear what you're doing. I scuffed up my throat a bit trying. Brian Pertl chaired the panel, opened with an intro to didj techniques. (It was funny, I recognized him from his playing on an instructional tape I got about ten years ago, when I was in southern California.) He then emceed for half a dozen players, my favorite of whom was a German fellow named Frank whose last name was sadly never mentioned.
I stopped by Katrina Kruse's booth and got a present for my dad and another jellyfish I couldn't resist. She does almost all of her diving locally. I asked her about drysuits here, and she advised "absolutely essential"; also that to buy one you needed someone experienced to judge the fit, but she didn't think a training course was necessary, could show me the buoyancy technique herself. ("But a course would be useful if it makes somebody feel more confident." "Usually the dive instructor reminds me of my high-school gym teacher.")
Mostly I wandered. Took some pictures, listened to a lot of music. The lovely thing about this festival is that people bring their instruments, and play them. I sat on some steps by a circle of folding chairs, and fiddle and banjo players would walk by, greet friends, sit in, chat between songs, step out. On the other side an African drum ensemble set up shop. I played a bit with a drum circle, but like I said, the no acoustic support will take some getting used to. Need to make a didjerisax. I did go indoors for Raqs Al-Hamra's bellydancing, then wandered a bit more.
The fellow I sat next to on the bus home asked me if I'd gone to the festival. I said it was a great time. He said he might have gone, but it hadn't come into his head, you know how it is. He was saving his ducats for Lou Reed. He'd never seen Lou live; the first time he'd heard him was in '67, when he was on the Haight, some friends had come in to town, needed to do some business, so he took them down, stepped into this one guy's pad, and the guy was blasting "Heroin". Hit him like that. Look at the mountains, I said; we were going over the Ship Canal, and the Olympics rested in pale yellow light under a dome of grey cloud. All God's handiwork, he said. That motel there, shuttered, he stayed there the first night he was in Seattle, in '75. Second night -- first night he slept in his car. Fourth of July; they went over to Green Lake for the fireworks. His bank was giving him trouble with his money, wanted him to mail the California branch a signature, trouble for weeks. Some kind of segue here. The judge practically fell off his chair laughing, when he sentenced him. Prosecuter didn't know what he was doing. Public defender didn't know what she was doing, still had braces on. Stack of bad paper here four inches high, the judge said. Twenty-seven days. This is my stop here, I said. And, yeah, you don't want to miss Lou Reed.
