Images From Barnstorm

Here are some shots I took at the Barnstorm Cabaret last night. I stayed until closing and had a fabulous time! The post-it shots are from artist Clare Johnson's entrancing autobiography piece. Tonight is the last night, and I highly recommend you check it out before this pop-up event is folded up and carted to a new location sometime in the future.

Barnstorm Preview!

I wait at the bus stop at 3rd Ave and Virginia quite a bit--almost daily--and yet I've never noticed the empty glass storefront facing the Bed, Bath, & Beyond until today. It turns out that this space has remained empty on its ground floor for at least the last ten years. Airy, full of exposed brick, and deceptively large, it seems like an ideal space for...something. A show space, an art space, a mingling space? Arts production team extraordinaire Quiet Heroes On A Rainy Night is actually aiming to combine all three, giving the cabaret tradition a modern kick in the pants and elevating 1927 Third Ave into a laboratory for art, celebration, and audience participation.

I got the chance to tour the Barnstorm: Cabaret Re-Imagined site with Bond Huberman, a Heroes board member and producer for the event, who gave me a peek at what will be in store for Cabaret attendees this Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights from 6pm-2am. Let me tell you: it is a lot. I poked my head through a cordoned-off section in the back of the space, my head brushing the fronds of a light installation hanging from the ceiling--a space Bond informed me had been created by artist Jessie Wilson to explore Ars Moriendi, or the art of death. During Barnstorm, this will be a living art installation drawing in cabaret-members who are curious, morbid, or simply want to pull back the curtain. In addition, a square of neatly-assembled post-it notes currently cover one section of wall, and will cover more. This is artist Clare Johnson's 5 year autobiography-in-process. Glossy, large paintings were also hanging on the wall and snagged me in for a closer look.

More traditional performing space, however, will dominate the center of Barnstorm, where a raised stage holds court among low tables and chairs (the image I always have for cabarets myself). On this stage, a variety of acts will titillate, provoke, and engage Seattleites, with acts ranging from electronic music to tango to a multimedia play featuring cartoon stereotypes. Bond wanted to make it clear, though, that in the spirit of true cabaret, the audience for any of these pieces is decidedly not supposed to sit in an attitude of polite, golf-clapping appreciation. Oh, no, no, no. Think raucous laughter, conversation, and well, generally having a fabulous time. QHRN Productions aims for an audience that blends with the performers and crosses that aqueous space between self, art, and the consumption thereof. In that spirit, a section dubbed the "soft spot" has been created in the style of a cozy sitting room in order to pull cabaret attendees back from the wooden stage and into something else--perhaps a transfixing piece of artwork, a conversation with a stranger, or maybe even a kiss. Here's hoping.

As they often are, my eyes were drawn to the hand-built bar, which wraps itself in a sinuous curve around the edge of the long room. This baby, like everything else involved in the extensive Barnstorm buildout of 1927 Third Ave, is a labor of love created from donated or salvaged materials, and constructed by dedicated volunteers and the production team. Its surface is scrawled in charming, hand-painted letters by another talented volunteer and friend of the organization. Funded by a small city grant, a Kickstarter grant, and QHRN's own savvy thrift, Barnstorm is a great example of low cost, high impact art-making. The team found an empty space (which was donated for the event) and fundraised, borrowed, and made everything else. It's a venue built from scratch--a crucial difference from producing an event in a readymade venue. Bond noted that this aspect came with a steep learning curve, but has been an invaluable experience for all of the artists and producers involved. And the coolest part? All of the presenting artists are getting paid. A non-profit venture, this was always a major part of Barnstorm's goal.

So, now, a neglected building in the heart of downtown Seattle gets a new coat of paint; a cast of artists, performers, and writers; and a dedicated team of fellow artists to facilitate the magic. The only missing element is you--the audience. You are the last olive in the martini, the Alka-Seltzer tablet that makes the glass of water fizz, and the top-billed actor in the performance. You are kind of a big deal at Barnstorm: The Cabaret Re-Imagined. Better hightail it over there before your chance is gone.

DETAILS:

Barnstorm is running May 5, 6, and 7 at 1927 Third Ave from 6pm-2am. There is no program--that's sort of the point. Come any time you please! $5 gets you in at the door and if you want to plan ahead, advance ticket sales are HERE. Need more info? Please check out Barnstorm's official website. 21+

In case I didn't mention this, there will be a bar and catering. Yum. I will be attending on Friday night and hope to see you there!

Hello, Muse!

It's funny, this sudden pocket where I want to write, where I can divine the thread of perception, where I know there are words there: supple and willing like the best lovers. From whence? Wherefore? It would be easy to believe that I am not also this person. It would be easy to believe that this is not also my brain. It would be easy to believe so many things (untrue! unjust!), and yet here, the simple fact remains. And the word on the page. And the word on the page.

Funny pocket: dear, lined in ermine. Silvery, with a silky feel. Slide into you like a tongue over the teeth: accustomed to the old drops and crags, but not the slick, hard surface which is suddenly new and sheer. Suddenly alliterative; suddenly in a fine shape. Playful like a bird with its questing beak, moving seed to the side, and moving seed to the other side. Metaphors winging up with all their associations, unspooled, suddenly saved. Months of things hoarded, moving up in an unseemly parade. Like Noah and his menagerie: two by two of timbre and shade. A trope on parade. And hope on parade.

Rare, precious, timely you came. Invocation to play; invitation to praise.

Miscalculation of the Day

♫ I just mistook a basket of of rocks for a basket of chocolates. Glad I did not attempt to bite one.

Just Shelved

A Nervous Splendor: Vienna 1888-1889 by Frederic Morton

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I read this book in an effort to give myself a crash course in the histories of some cities I will be visiting this spring. Thematically, this was a perfect book to begin with because we will be visiting Vienna first, and chronologically, the events of 1888-1889 described set in motion a chain of events that would ripple through the Balkan states, and the rest of Europe. We will be visiting Croatia after Vienna, and then Greece, so in a way, we'll be following that ripple effect across Europe.

The author, Frederic Morton, does an excellent job of creating brief but incisive anecdotal snapshots of the strata of Viennese society, from high to low, and the many people, some destined for greatness and infamy, who strolled the Ringstrasse during that fateful year. It is remarkable how many geniuses--thinkers, writers, composers, playwrights--lived in the city at that time: Freud, Mahler, Brahms, Strauss, Klimt, Herzl, Schnitzler, etc. Towards the end of the book, a great scandal occurs involving the liberal Crown Prince Rudolf and his teenaged mistress, and even though Morton sometimes overreaches in connecting this event to everything that would follow in modern life, in many ways he does have a point about rising nationalism, hysteria, and other afflictions of the "modern" era that dog us even now.

Content-wise, this is all very enjoyable and informative, but I feel I must issue a warning about the author's rather florid and repetitive writing stye. His wording is as rococo and baroque as the lavish imperial buildings of the city he describes. It's sort of like Cogsworth (oh, he of Beauty & the Beast fame) narrating an entire novel. If you can handle that, then Nervous Splendor is definitely worth a read.

Now on to the beginning of Black Lamb, Grey Falcon!

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Just Shelved

The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them by Elif Batuman

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A must-read for anyone devoted hopelessly, helplessly, and sometimes even selfishly to books and authors. Full of delightful literary criticism, memoir, personality sketches, and excursions temporal and otherwise, The Possessed is one of the most enjoyable books I have read in a long time. It's also very funny and will add book after book to the mountain of books you were already intending to read. I had some quibbles with Batuman's attack on MFA programs in the Introduction, even though some of her points were well-taken. I also think that at times, the author's flat narrative voice can cast a tone of mockery on people that I doubt she meant to mock, such as her dedicated teachers in Uzbekistan, who were being paid less than $200 to tutor her in poetry and history for an entire summer. There were times I disagreed and felt piqued, but these feelings did not draw me away from the collection of essays; rather, they made me wish that Batuman was an acquaintance and that I could argue with her in person. I think she is a critic and writer who may very well become a big star.

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Just Shelved

Female Trouble: Stories by Antonya Nelson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Solid short story collection highly worth checking out.

A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Postmodern puzzlebox of a book, linking characters' lives like a spiderweb - tenuous, touch and go. I was alternately moved and frustrated. An interesting companion piece to Cloud Atlas, which attempts similar disruptions in form. Surprisingly, the chapter that engendered the most skepticism -- a chapter told entirely in Powerpoint -- ended up being one of the most moving. I keep taking back my fourth star and then returning it. Egan, we aren't through.

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