Art/Life at Art City 15 December 2001
Twenty-seven published poets, paintings of nude women in every color and position imaginable adorning the walls, (note to Charlotte: Pele was EVERYWHERE) and countless shivering but loyal audience members all packed into a single art gallery for an amazing afternoon of spoken art... Now what did YOU do on Saturday? We drove up to Ventura for this special Art/Life event with both Phil Taggart and Joe Cardella in the house, not realizing it was the end of an era - Art City will be no more at its present location. People came all the way from Italy and Oakland and Marin and San Luis Obispo just to be there. (Okay - only one foreign country. But Northern California counts as a foreign country when you've lived here long enough.) Amy Uyematsu confessed to putting in her contact lenses backwards and driving around blind for an hour before figuring it out. Wayman was sick but pretending he wasn't, determined to make it through. "It's just allergies," he lied, grabbing for yet another tissue. No one can sneeze as quietly as Wayman in a public place. Other poets stunning me with their brilliance included Tim Pompey, Jeanette Clough (a fisherman knows how to unlock water), David Oliveira, Kevin Patrick Sullivan, Joyce LaMers, Gwendolyn Alley, Glenna Luschei, friday, Adrianne Marcus, David Starkey, Robert Chianese, Philip Greenlief, Jill Waldren, Kimberley Young, Carol Davis, Enid Osborne, Elijah Inlay, Jamie O'Halloran, J.G. Bertrand, Doris Vernon, Shelly Savren, Eleanor McNaughton, Virginia (with the very cute dog), Jackson Wheeler... Thanks to all of you, my head is filled with images of electrons stroking their quarks while Jupiter's moons spin around the Pilot House Motel where no one notices the girl who secretly loves the riots rising from Meeks Bay and shimmering like two giant turquoise glass earrings against lustrous black hair. I am utterly overwhelmed.
When the last poet had spoken (actually, the painter of Pele reading his girlfriend's poems), we headed home down PCH, Red Hot Chili Peppers and REM blasting as waves crashed off to our right under the starlight. We were already filled with words so we inhaled music. Each time I turned up one song, Wayman would try to outdo me and turn up the next even louder. Needless to say we can't hear anything today but we had a great afternoon of poetry. What else matters?
Eat your chicken soup, Wayman. I don't want to ride shotgun with anyone else tomorrow. And the rest of you need to check out Art/Life. It's twenty-one years old and it can do whatever the hell it wants. Be transformed: www.art-life.com
No comments:
Post a Comment