David Gonzalez & the Poetic License Band

FIFTH ENTRY

2004-12-04T05:57:00.000-08:00

City of Dreams is coming to UM this Saturday. The show at the Ina and Jack Kay Theatre will mark the final activity of a remarkable three-month residency at CSPAC. The premiere is a fitting finale. After giving poetry readings, storytelling workshops, music therapy seminars, etc. I will now get on stage to perform. Doors close, doors open.

I've been thinking lately about the ritual nature of live performance. I remember the time in my life when I'd go to sweat lodges in Upstate New York. A bonfire roasting the bread-loaf sized rocks, a small hut made of thin branches covered with blankets and hides to create absolute darkness, the sweat lodge leader drumming, chanting, and spraying water on the red-hot stones, the prayers, the heat, the groaning, and finally the emergence — the stepping outside, back to the real world. Live performance is the same in many ways. Both events are gatherings in darkened spaces where spectacles occur, where flights of the imagination abound, where insight, wonder, and power are discovered. I once had a professor who posed the question, "Who is the most powerful shaman today?" His answer — Mick Jagger — I'm dating myself here, but you get the point — the stage is a form of altar, the performers its celebrants.

My Dad told me that as a baby I was blessed by my "santero," (priest/celebrant of the Yoruba tradition in Cuba), uncle, Tio Anibal, (see poem below). My father told me that on some level he expected I would follow in the footsteps of my uncle, to carry on the tradition. Now, I'm not religious in any way, but I do worship at three temples; "the great outdoors," friendship, and the stage. I am most moved by performers and productions that reach for some kind of transformation, and so, when it is my turn, I try to bring a visionary intensity to the stage — not preachy, never sappy, just a performance fueled by deep longing. After all, it is a lot of responsibility to have an audience out there, and a tremendous priviledge. I like to imagine the varied trajectories that bring us together as artist and audience; the twists and turns of our biographies, the desire of audiences to move out into the world of live performance to explore and be moved, the desire of a venue to house the magic and offer it to a community, the technical marvels that make it possible, and the passion and craft of artists on the path of beauty. I am humbled by the commitment made by so many to make that hour and a half on stage be transformative, and simply put, enchanting.

City of Dreams is an enchantment dressed as "Afro-Cuban Jazz meets Spoken Word" — slick, funky, and full of "sabor." Please come!

A note on the Mary Harris "Mother" Jones storytelling festival.

Tears were in the eyes of the student storytellers last week when I said goodbye. Their festival was a hit, we talked about what we learned, we toasted with fruit juice and chocolate cake, and then the sadness of farewell came into the room. I told them that life is filled with hellos and goodbyes, and how one door closes so that another can open. It was scant consolation, but they were brave. Lucky me — I feel in love with 100 nine year-olds. Doors close, doors open.

Tio Anibal
by David Gonzalez
copywright 2004

Tio Anibal,
eres blanco y negro santo,
fumando tu tabaco
y haciendome las bendiciones Yoruba.
Me metiste Ellegua y Chango
con tus humos y cantos,
y hoy los celebro
y los entretengo,
convivo en este ahora
con ellos rumbando
por mi ser,
como el spiral de tu inspiracion
y expiracion,
como tu humo
y como los gestos
de tu propia biografia.

Tio Anibal
You are a light and dark priest,
Smoking your cigar
And giving me the Yoruba blessings,
You placed the spirits of Ellegua and Chango inside me
With your smoke and incantations,
Today I celebrate them,
I live in my here and now with these forces
Dancing through my being,
Like your smoke,
Like the movement of your breath,
Like the gestures of your biography.

FOURTH ENTRY

2004-11-28T22:59:00.000-08:00

When pressed with a deadline I always remember Duke Ellington's words, "Don't give me time, give me deadlines!" It is true — there is nothing like a deadline to stimulate the creative forces. I've spent the past few days getting ready for the final two projects of my residency at CSPAC; the storytelling festival at Mother Jones School on December 2nd, and the presentation of City of Dreams on December 11th.

City of Dreams

Casey Meade, the fine young video artist who is creating the projections for City of Dreams, brought me to his studio in Brooklyn the other day to review his work and make adjustments for the performance in College Park. If one picture is worth a thousand words, and if our eyes/brains can register 24 separate images per second, that equals 24,000 words per video second — a bit of an exaggeration perhaps, but you get the point that video/film is a powerful medium, and a tricky friend to performance poetry. During the performances I was looking at the audience, and not the screen, so I needed to sit with Casey to check out his work. We choose to watch the last of five performances from our run at La MaMa Experimental Theater Club in New York two weeks ago. The question we had in our minds was, "How is the video functioning to enrich the communicative power of the poems?"

It was a delight to see scenes that we shot a month earlier on the streets of New York edited into the mix. Some examples: a super-sized Mac Gollehan, our trumpet player, slowly consumed by fire during the poem Cry Out Phoenix (see text below), the image of master drummer, Bobby Sanabria, playing and singing an Afro-Cuban sacred song set within the kaleidoscopic transfigurations of an array colorful prayer candles shot at La Original Botanica (spiritualist shop), the hyper-speed red and white night lights of the Cross Bronx Expressway. These images, (and many others), were engaging, potent, amplifying. Some images didn't work quite as well. There were points where the poems were in conflict with the video screen, where a spoken image needed "space" to be absorbed but there was another absorbing image on the screen. There were a couple of places where the video images went on too long — where less would have been more, and places where the video and word could be in stronger relationship. Discussing all this Casey and I were content with the result, but more importantly, grateful for the process of discovery. This is new territory for Casey — he is a documentary filmmaker, and VJ for hip hop artists and concerts, so working with live music and live poetry in a theatrical production is a new challenge for him, and I am delighted to be bringing him into this world. For our performance at CSPAC we are aiming to simplify the content while sharpening the intent of the video projections.

Mary Harris "Mother" Jones School Residency

The BIG day is coming. There is nothing like a deadline. The third-graders are pumped. The teachers are busy. The festival is coming! We have just two days to put the final touches on the festival: to review the stories that have been chosen, to listen to the kids, to chose kids to coach, to select the tellers, to teach microphone technique, to rehearse, to perform. The kids who don't get to perform will be asked to do all the "behind-the-scenes" work that go into making performances a success: technical support, house management, promotion, documenting, prepping the space, cleaning up, and being an attentive and appreciative audience for their classmates.

The Festival has six principal aims:
1. to encourage the kids to be excellent communicators
2. to help them appreciate the power of language
3. to help them understand the value of family storytelling
4. to help them overcome inhibitions
5. to participate in a shared experience of art-making
6. to learn the basic elements of the craft of storytelling

I invite my blog readers to come to the festival to hear these young tellers show what they have been working on, and especially to lend and ear and clap enthusiastically at their wit, wonder and audacity!

Aesop's Fables, Family Tales, Inventions, Magic, Adventure!

Cry Out Phoenix

Beat your wings Phoenix,
resist,
it is natural.
Flames are so appealing,
such brilliant metaphors, from afar,
but you are falling Phoenix,
falling,
gravity has made your feathers heavy,
it has soaked your blood,
and weighted your will.
You will burn,
and die.
It must be said.
So resist,
cry out,
yield to terror and cry out Phoenix,
it is natural.
If you didn't
we would doubt the image
we hold of you
soaring in the azure world,
ablaze above the sun.
Cry out Phoenix,
you are dying,
and the promise of rebirth
is a meager balm
against the fire's rage.

THIRD ENTRY

2004-11-22T08:07:00.000-08:00

City of Dreams
Blog #3
David Gonzalez

Just catching my breath from the most recent action-packed residency visit to CSPAC. I appreciate days filled with many different experiences – the sort of days when lying in bed at night I can't remember how the morning started and just end up feeling that I've lived two days in one. On these days I feel lucky.

On my previous visit to the center I was introduced to many members of the CSPAC staff. Everyone seemed interested in the City of Dreams residency so, with the help of Carlos Castrillon and Adina Williams, I hosted a lunch were we could get to know one another. Copious quantities of pizza and soda were consumed as we all enjoyed a good conversation about the New York production of City of Dreams, the writing process, my experience as a music therapist, jazz, and the Clarice Smith Center's philosophy. I travel a good deal and often have rather superficial contact with the folks behind the scenes who make my performances a reality – this lunch meeting with the staff was truly refreshing.

After lunch I gave a presentation to the MENC club (Music Educators National Conference) about music therapy. They were fascinated with my tales of working with autistic kids, mute teenagers, and the story of little Lucille in the ICU (see poem below). We improvised on piano, drum and xylophone and discussed the process of "meeting the client where they are." I left with the feeling that at least one or two of these young musicians will look into music therapy as a possible career.

The next night I gave a poetry reading and hosted an open mic at College Perk, the local hang for UM bohemians. The poets who came out were spirited, creative and generous. A couple of them were truly spectacular. Students from Northwestern High School involved in the "Belonging/s" project with Chris Patton shared their work to the hoots and hollers of the college audience. It was a good night of spoken word and inspiration.

I am falling in love with the young storytellers at the Mary Harris "Mother" Jones School – their playfulness and palpable wonder is food for my soul. And man are they pumped about the storytelling festival at their school. I had them read, remember and draw an Aesop's fable, then come ready to tell it to their classmates. I think they were a little bit discouraged by how hard it was. They see/hear me dropping tales and it seems so easy and fun. It is natural to assume that anyone can do it – maybe this simplicity is the charm of storytelling. To discover the effort of the craft can be daunting – a bit like enjoying a ride in a plane, and then trying to build one for oneself. I talked with them about taking the listener on a "journey of the mind", we played several games to make this point, then visited the elements of storytelling (words, voice, gesture). By the end of the second day they were once again enthusiastic about their task to find a story from their family, or a book, and tell it well.

Here is Lucille's poem/story I shared with the MENC gathering, and later read at College Perk.

ICU Lucille

Peek-a-boo I see you Lucille
through the thick clear plastic tenting that covers your bed,
it is quieter under there,
the monitors bleep is muffled,
the ventilation hum faded toward disappearing,
it's the two of us alone
together again Lucille.
I awaken you with small Tibetan cymbals tied with a stout string,
like us, one making the other sing,
your frailty shakes loose in me a new tenderness,
like a newborns first eye-opening,
you moan a groggy hello,
we're together again Lucille.
Neither me nor the bells, nor my guitar, are sterilized,
the nurses don't mind,
there is little they can do for you now,
I quietly sound the soft chords that three weeks before – in the bright Child Life Center
had accompanied your spontaneous aria of sadness,
the song that told the truth about your parents abandoning you,
about your leukemia,
and in whose final lyric you named all of us present
as your new family,
forever and ever.
Now this progression of harmonies draws you out,
and the first you see are my eyes wet and fearful,
the first you hear is my voice singing your name,
Lucille.
Too weak to utter sounds you sang with your eyes,
you smiled, turned away and slept,
forever and ever.
I woke up this morning – twenty years later
to your song,
to that simple melody of longing
that we sang together,
together, Lucille.

SECOND ENTRY

2004-11-14T22:08:00.000-08:00

City of Dreams
Blog #2
David Gonzalez

Listen to a sample:

City of Dreams is a reality. We premiered the show on November 11th at the world-famous La MaMa Theater in New York City to wonderful applause and appreciation, and last night we received our first standing ovation. What a journey. I have been visioning, writing, composing, recording, and producing this for ten years, and now we are here. I don't know what it is in human psychology that causes us to categorize and pigeonhole people, but we do. I suppose that we simply need to keep our mental file cabinets in good order, even when the filing system doesn't fit. For many years I have been known as a family and kid-centered artist. I am, and continue to be happily engaged in the creation of exciting and meaningful works for young audiences. However, there has always been another voice within me -- a contemporary poet wrestling with cultural identity and the quest for self-realization. In City of Dreams I have given life to that voice.

Together with my fantastic musicians and collaborators I have been "wood-shedding" the piece -- not just the poetry, but the music, the arrangements, the video, the lighting, the overall concept. Poetry and music have sat together since the beginning of time -- just think of The Last Poets, Ken Nordine, Utah Phillips, Bob Holman, and Sekou Sundiata, not to mention the Greek Chorus, however this particular mix of Latin Jazz, these poems, this extraordinary hi-tech video treatment are breaking new ground. One woman called the experience of City of Dreams "profoundly healing". Comments like this one give me hope to go on.

The show begins with this invocation:

Forces of creation
Here is my wish,
Re-new the receptors of this reptilian brain,
Re-transmit the chemistry of your enchantments,
I will close my eyes, surrender,
Take in air,
And direct my breath.

From here Bobby Sanabria and the band launch into funky back-beat groove over which I recite a love poem to the soundscape of the city -- from "shuffling cards and a three point swish" to "the beeps on the EKG, and you and me, and you and me", and then we're off for ninety minutes of burning Afro-Cuban jazz, video-poetry, and the best lyrics I can conjure.

I feel deeply grateful to the peeps at the Clarice Smith PAC for their support. I can't say enough how much this commission means to me. Dreams do come true.

FIRST ENTRY

2004-11-08T05:18:00.000-08:00

David Gonzalez

I am writing this on my birthday — always a good day for looking through the pages of my biography; the past days filled in, these present days more or less sketched in, and the future with its untold sheets waiting for ink. The City of Dreams project at The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center is a new joining of the three main rivers in my life: music, spoken-word/poetry, and community service.

When I first began talking with the team at CSPAC a year ago I was impressed with how seriously the center was aiming to connect with and enrich the community in and around the university. After many years working in the trenches of arts therapy and arts education I was encouraged by the center's vision and generosity - I thought, "these are my kind of people." Every serious artist is grounded by, and inspired by, grassroots relationships - sure we love the grand stage, but we also know that it is direct human encounter that feeds the soul as well as the process of art-making. The way the residency as CSPAC has been structured over these months achieves a good balance between the grit and glory of being a performing artist. Lucky me, I get to create a new piece with some of the finest Latin jazz musicians in the world, and hang with a hip crew of multi-lingual, nine-year-old jokesters.

Mary Harris Mother Jones School.

Every year I visit between 50 and 75 schools throughout the country, and, though it pains me to report this, I have to tell you, (as if you didn't already know), we live in an utterly segregated society. Rare is it to find a school that has what I call "flow" - an easy racial/cultural/social mix where America's true colors really show. Mother Jones School has flow. I am working there with the third graders to excite them about the art of storytelling and to help them find stories in their own family histories that they want to preserve. Each of my three trips to the area includes two or three intensive sessions with the kids. I began with a performance of Cuentos: Tales from the Latino World - a set of creation myths from Cuba, Puerto Rico and La Republica of ‘da Bronx. The stories are told with lots of Spanish words and repetition so that the Latino kids feel deeply recognized and honored, and the non-Spanish speaking kids feel included and "given-to." It was a delight to see the kids from Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, and Honduras leaning over to help their classmates with vocabulary - quite a switch from the typical. And of course laughter is laughter in any language.

After the show we met in the library for a hands-on "playshop" that touched on the four principal elements of storytelling: story, words, voice, and gesture. The kids were then asked to interview a family member about an "important and real" story from the family history. The next day they came back in and reported what they'd found: tales about the emergency room, about crossing the border into America, about relatives lost and found, about dancing with the devil - really, now that was intense. I'll go back to the classroom in a couple of weeks to pick up where we left off, and to listen to more from their oral history project.

Community Events

Another part of the project is for me to visit a variety of community centers, mostly in Hispanic areas, for poetry readings and discussions. We had our first in early October at the Langley Park Community Center with a group of recent immigrants who were attending an English class at the center. I got a charge out of this experience. Poetry is simultaneously a distillation of language down to essences, and at the same time it leaves much to interpretation. It can be tricky for native speakers, let alone for folks who are just learning to negotiate basic social and commercial transactions. But poetry speaks to the soul, and these English learners struggling with a new language and a new country, suffering the hardships of poverty and loneliness, were primed for the dialog. I read poems about my family, about Pablo Neruda, about mercy. We took time to translate the lines and, more importantly, to discuss what they meant. Finally, I read Jose Marti's La Rosa Blanca in Spanish and together we did a reverse translation into English. It was a surprisingly rich and rewarding night. More will follow at various sites around the area.

City of Dreams

Two years ago I released a spoken word/Latin jazz CD titled City of Dreams. I called it a set of "love poems to New York and other imaginary landscapes". We received lots of good press but I never felt fully satisfied in performance - the typical format of "poetry over a groove" left me wondering what more could be done. With the generous support of the CSPAC commission I've been hard at work these past months developing a rich new stage presentation which I hope will bring the music, text and imagery of my imagination to a new, more compelling level. Working with the brilliant young composer/arranger/keyboard artist Daniel Kelly, along with the ever-powerful Bobby Sanabria, we've re-arranged the original music for a larger ensemble, written new parts, new music, new poems, and added video. I have been exploring the use of video in two of my recent pieces (The Frog Bride and Double Crossed), and wanted to go further into it. Through mutual friends I came into contact with Casey Meade, documentary filmmaker/video artist/VJ. VJ? I had the same question. Casey mixes images the way a DJ mixes tracks. We've been all over New York shooting tape. He'll mix those images along with live video from the performance and project onto a large screen. I think of Casey as a jazz poet for the eyes. We are presenting City of Dreams for the first time at La MaMa, the famous experimental theater space in the East Village from November 11 - 14th.