What is Avalon to Us?

Performance photo courtesy Opera House Arts.

Ah, Avalon. The magical Isle of Apples. Where King Arthur goes to heal, and from the mists of which he will come again. Sounds heavenly, no? Imagine the sweet crisp smell that is apple in salty, misty air.

The problem for us moderns, in this 50th anniversary year of Woodstock, is that we've yet to get ourselves back to this garden. When patriarchy crushed matriarchy, Christianity crushed the Druids, and life became about nothing so much as conquering and consuming to show who was right and called by God we lost an awful lot.

The newly commissioned, world-premiere, site specific performance "Avalon," written by Melody Bates in collaboration with the work of sculptor Peter Beerits at his unique sculpture park, Nervous Nellie's Jams and Jellies, and produced and presented by Opera House Arts at the Stonington Opera House, wants to remind us of what we have lost--and to what we still might get back.

Beltane: the celebration of the beginning of summer, when the cattle were driven to field, great fires were lit, and our ancestors danced around the May pole. This evolved into the Christian feast day of Pentacost, marked by the tongues of those same great fires signaling the arrival of the Holy Spirit in the apostles after Christ's death.

There's no question that something holy becomes visible to us as life is reborn in the blooming of the spring fields.

Our shadow selves -- Mordred in legend and play, he who is ultimately responsible for killing the King Stag, Arthur -- are very visible in "Avalon." How easy to indulge the adolescent, narcissistic shadow, how difficult to keep it at bay. Yet at the end of this play, it is Mordred whose speech holds the biggest moment of truth for attendees: it is not he, he points out, (or Trump) who is responsible for the blood tide of war in which we live. Our choices -- each and every one, small as well as large -- make the tide. Giving more life to Mordred, our shadow selves, is a part of our collective will -- or lack thereof. And Mordred (played smartly by Shawn Fagan) is real, and therefore loveable, as well.

Neither the wizards nor the Druids (nor later, the native Americans) knew how to defeat the bloody tide of the Anglo-Saxons. Their relentless, irregular warfare -- their ability to commit genocide and still consider themselves Christians, in combination with their hatred of women -- drove civilizations and their peoples into the ground from which we have yet to emerge. We are stuck in a blasphemy of unholy leaders: men who, like their slave-holding kin before them, will let no life go unscarred, no lie be untold, in their quest for power and personal gain. The sad, lost culture in which we try to honor each other and the earth is one of taking rather than giving.

We need, collectively, to dream a better dream -- and wake to join the dance that brings it to life.

"Avalon" points the way. And for those of you who simply want to be a child again, and play in the magical woods: come wander.

Avalon
an Opera House Arts at the Stonington Opera House world-premiere production
every evening at 5:30 p.m., now through August 25
Nervous Nellies Jams & Jellies
Sunshine Road
Deer Isle, ME

36 Hours in the Arts in Maine with NEA Chairman Jane Chu

From The Telling Room to Spindleworks and the Bowdoin International Music Festival in 3 Short Days

NEA Chairman Jane Chu greets members of the Somali
Bantu Community Association, recipients of NEA funds
via the Maine Arts Commission's grant programs

In less than 36 hours you can get a grand picture of the vitality and breadth of the arts in Maine. Here's a quick tour courtesy of last week's visit by National Endowment for the Arts chairman Jane Chu. 

I had the great pleasure of accompanying chairman Jane Chu and Maine Arts Commission Director Julie Richard to Brunswick on day 3 of the chairman's junket here. Hopefully many of you were able to attend the packed Town Hall meeting she conducted Monday night in Portland.

Thanks to the office of Congresswoman Chellie Pingree, the Chairman visited NEA grant award winners in Portland on Monday, August 10; in Waterville and Lewiston on Tuesday; and Brunswick Wednesday. Details of that day below, but in the meantime here are the great organizations that Chairman Chu visited -- and you can, too!

Day 1, August 10, Portland: The Telling Room, Terra Motto/Veterans Story Exchange, Portland Museum of Art
Day 2, August 11, Waterville: Maine Film Center
Day 2 continued, Lewiston: Bates Dance Festival, Bates College Museum of Art, Somali Bantu Community Association

Julie Richard, Executive Director, Maine Arts Commission;
Jane Chu, Chairman, National Endowment for the Arts;
Liz McGhee, Program Director, Spindleworks;
Spindleworks artist, seated, and teaching artist.

We started Day 3: Brunswick at the ever-amazing Spindleworks, a non profit art center for adults with disabilities, where one of the most famous lines ever written or spoken is “HANDICAP, I HEARD ABOUT IT BUT I AIN’T GOT IT NOW," by participating artist Rita Langlois. As intrepid Program Director Liz McGhee walked us through the full and busy artist studios, they showed us their excellent work and described their inspiring days of art making at Spindleworks. We reluctantly tore ourselves away from the Spindleworks Gallery without buying armloads of art. You can purchase Spindleworks art online or at their new Spin Off Studio in Gardiner, but I truly recommend visiting and perhaps getting a chance to meet one of the 40+ artists who use these studios every week. 

We hiked up Maine Street and were lucky enough to greet briefly Bowdoin College's incoming president, Clayton Rose, who showed off Nathaniel Hawthorne's desk.

Then off to greet Peter Simmons and the staff of the Bowdoin International Music Festival whose violin instructor, Frank Huang, was recently named concert master for the New York Philharmonic--a testament to the amazing quality of work and student experiences offered by the festival. A quick tour of one of the Festival's musical homes, the beautiful Studzinski Recital Hall (where I swam as a Bowdoin student, as it was formerly Curtis Pool) and off we swept to see, last but not least, the renovated and re-energized Bowdoin College Museum of Art, now under the guidance of curators Anne and Frank Goodyear. If you didn't see my previous posts re the unexpected Night Vision exhibit, or the innovative new work now on display there from photographer Abelardo Morrell, check them out here.

Whew. You CAN do this, too--and I highly recommend it. Maine arts and artists in all areas -- whether folk or traditional artists, or those who hang in museums -- are of international quality. And they are right here in our very own, very beautiful backyard.

A final quick note re NEA Chairman Chu. This fall she is poised to announce her signature leadership initiative, Creativity Connects. Earlier this year she launched the Tell Us Your Story to celebrate this year's 50th anniversary of the NEA and said,

"We have an opportunity to start a new dialogue on the ways in which the arts—and the ways the NEA supports the arts—are an essential component of our everyday lives," says Chu. "Although many may not realize it, the arts actively intersect with areas such as the economy, human development, and community vitality. The arts and artists who are funded and supported by the NEA are an integral part of the solution to the challenges we face in all parts of our society."

We say YES.

The Perfect Winter Storm

Our local daily newspaper, the Bangor Daily News, is very good, and its editorial and op ed pages, in particular, are the best kind of this genre: a source of never ending conversation and infuriation.

Last week, in the midst of our second major snow and ice storm of the not-quite-here-yet winter, columnist Kent Ward from up in the County decided to use some newsprint inches by pooh-poohing, alongside a few seemingly “sacred cows,” global warming. He did so from a very particular, traditional Maine viewpoint, one which greatly informs our Down East island fishing culture and is therefore worth further consideration.

This viewpoint has several predominant characteristics, all of which Ward ably illustrated. The first and most obvious here in our own community is a pragmatic “what you see is what you’ve got” approach to the world. Ward’s expression of this characteristic sounds like this: we’ve had more major snowstorms, ice, and cold in the first days of December than at any other time in recent memory; therefore, there is no such thing as global warming.

The second and related characteristic of our rural Maine communities which Ward exemplified in this column is a separation of the human world of cause and effect from the natural world. Snowstorms and cold weather are forces that effect human beings, creating inconvenience and pain; yet their causes are disconnected from any human action.

The third and most important characteristic of Maine communities illustrated in Ward’s column is a natural resources-based fatalism. If “what you see is what you’ve got,” and the natural world is a force of its own, separate from human causation, then there isn’t a damn thing you can do about global warming. Just like the past ballyhoo about a potential “nuclear winter,” Ward writes, concerns about the negative effects global warming are just another creation of the “professional doom-and-gloomers of the world” (the polar opposites, if you will, of the cheery, optimistic, traditional folk in northern Maine).

Our local version of these characteristics sounds like this: the fish aren’t here this year; this has happened before; we don’t know why and we can’t control it; maybe they will be back when they’re ready. Or perhaps an angle like this: property values are increasing; we can’t afford our homes or taxes; “the economy" is a large, natural phenomenon and there is nothing we can do about it.

There is a lot of wisdom in this type of fatalism, which has its deep and understandable roots in rural experience and traditions that for centuries had no way of measuring human impact on our own environment; and in problems that seem so much bigger than we are that they are unsolvable. Fish DO come and go in natural, often unpredictable cycles—just like the weather. Fish and weather are natural elements of our world, with lives and spirit and meaning of their own; they are rightfully mysterious to us.

This traditional Maine viewpoint, however, also helps us to avoid taking responsibility for ourselves and our actions. It’s one thing to believe in god, or to recognize that the world is a bigger and more powerful spirit than our own individual self; it’s another thing to use this knowledge and respect to abrogate our individual responsibilities, as part and parcel of this world.

Luckily for our fisheries, most of our local fishermen are, in their own words, “waking up” to the fact that the demise of ground fish, and potentially lobster, are the direct result of fishermen’s own management of the resources; and they’re working to turn that management around.

What are our similar responsibilities for global warming or escalating property valuations? The tragic aspect of both phenomenon is that they are NOT “natural” or inevitable. They are a direct result of how we, in the richest and most developed country in the world, consume resources.

Our fierce ice and snow storms are a part of, not separate from, global warming. Our high property taxes are a direct reflection of how little we choose to involve ourselves with core community issues via land use ordinances and economic development initiatives.

It’s true, each of these is a very complex ecosystem, in and of itself; and, as individuals, we are small in the face of these much larger issues. But together we are powerful. The earth has born witness to both glacial and tropical ages throughout the millennia and, with our help, is quickly entering another tropical age. Our oil-and-consumption based economy is quickly entering a recession. If we’re unwilling to take both small and large actions to stem the effects of these very human phenomenon—rising tides, droughts, the loss of farms and fish and jobs and the polar ice caps—then at the very least, in another good Maine tradition, we need to be willing to let them go without complaining.