My Pandemic Project (aka What Is Time)

You know how the whole world turned upside down in 2020, and people were suddenly home a lot, and suddenly everyone was into PROJECTS, like windowbox gardening [fun fact: stick a heel of romaine in a bowl of water and you get new lettuce], sewing masks, and making bread [oh god, the sourdough revolution!]? I'm no exception, and I bounced back and forth between jigsaw puzzles, learning to cook Mexican food, streaming all 4 seasons of The Crown, and doing children's art kits. And occasionally writing postcards!

But one side effect of the pandemic has been that my focus is even more erratic than ever and finishing anything is a challenge. I had great big grand ideas about restarting this blog (and maybe even finally starting my travel blog). Especially when one of those art kits ignited a new passion for collage that meant I spent a lot of this year's LetterMo creating individual postcards for folks.

I didn't do that. And as the year wore on, I became less and less capable of doing anything for longer than a hot minute. I even started this post last night and gave up because it was harrrrrd. But I have a little time right now and am trying to use it to rediscover joy or at least some semblance of good habits, so here we go. 

Step 1: something I've been meaning to do for forever, basically: Change The Name. I created this blog on a fluke years ago and didn't understand naming. But "Wish You Were Here" is so ubiquitous that literally no one can find this blog unless they have a direct link. Even I thought I'd lost it until I found my Blogger dashboard! I also always wanted to have some sort of connection to my travel identity, Artful Stumble. Thus: let me introduce Artful Scribble. Still postcards, still correspondence, still random. Maybe a little more recent than digging into notes from the '80s. Or not!

Step 2: oh god, is there going to be a Step 2? I suppose this would be posting at least semi-regularly. The good news is that I've sent a bunch of postcards and even received a few. And there are lots of stories about our collective non-travel in the last 18 months to be told. Can I dig deep and find some stick-to-it-iveness? Hopefully yes....but I'm also learning to not be so hard on myself because we are all doing the best we can, even when our best is kinda fine-minus. 

To get things rolling - I sent this postcard a few days ago:

Artist: Barbara Earl Thomas 

My cousin and his wife were in town and we met for lunch, and then headed over to the Seattle Art Museum for a Monet exhibit, which was fine - but I was more interested in the other exhibit by local Seattle artist Barbara Earl Thomas. Her cut-paper portraits are beautiful and compelling but I was blown away by the full room installation. I may have to go back, because I could sit in that room for hours and still find something new. Unfortunately, installations are less postcard-friendly, so I picked up a few of the other amazing images.

tiny detail of the unbelievable excellence that awaits you

 "The Geography of Innocence" runs through January 2, 2022. 

See you.....soon?

 

Bon Voyage!

I'm off on a big adventure this afternoon, which means I'm up reeeeeeeally early packing and cleaning. I've got a bunch of postcards to take with me, although my track record of sending mail while I'm still abroad isn't great.

Last month was so busy I didn't send many postcards. I did get a nice response from one of the recipients, who put this up on Facebook with the following message:

"I got mail and I love it when I do! Thanks so much. I miss you.
Thanks for sending me hugs..."

A lot of the people I send postcards to don't say anything about it - which isn't necessary anyway, but who knows if it's something they enjoy or just toss. One friend demurred, saying she's got too many postcards already (not all from me!). The point of writing certainly isn't to annoy or antagonize anyone, so I'd rather know if anyone doesn't want them (although who doesn't like mail???), but it sure is better to know when a postcard has brightened someone's day.

I sent some of the promotional materials from my show last month to my mom:

The performances didn't have traditional posters or programs. These are the two sides of tickets we handed out to attendees of the night market in the City of Redmond, giving them passage to a staged meditation labyrinth in a nearby heron rookery.

This is the postcard for the shows, featuring images related to the second one. The photo was from a previous event, and isn't someone in our cast, but I got to be a clock.


My other postcard from the last few weeks went to My Awesome Sister:

I didn't take notes about this postcard, except it came from my grandmother's collection and is from Turkey.

Back to packing! Ta....

Showtime!

I've been largely MIA this month, due to a heavy rehearsal schedule for two shows. Tonight is the first of those shows, so here are some performance-related postcards:

This was my first post-college professional dance gig, a 20ish minute piece with live music that was part of an amazing dance festival in Vancouver, BC. We left Seattle early in the morning and I slept funny in the car, causing my back to go out. My memories of the performance aren't great - it was a matter of being able to do the work at all, not how well I could do it - but the group I was performing with was great fun and we managed to get up to all sorts of mischief. There's a BnB in Vancouver that probably still has my name on a 'banned' list.

There weren't any printed programs for the shows, so I grabbed a few of these postcards. I recall sending one to a college girlfriend and she later asked which one in the photo was me. Er...

Promo picture for the whole festival, not our group!

A year later, I had formed a dance collective with some of the dancers from the previous show. Our first production was in October 1997. On our opening night, another dancer gave everyone postcards for good luck (a nice performance tradition that I think has faded away).

Gold Crown Gas Queen, 1957

"You've done it! You 4'8", 91 pound dynamo. You are SO money, you don't even know how money you are. But beware, as the only reason that man put you on that stand was so he could look up your cape!

Have a super run + see ya in MAUI! Merde...."

Rest assured, I am neither 4'8" nor 91 pounds, but that's a reference to one of the dance pieces, in which I portrayed a gymnast preparing for the Olympics. I even had a cape! Not as nice as this one, though. Nice 1990s pop cultural reference to the film Swingers, too.

Now to get ready for tonight....

Death and Taxes

It's tax day in the US, so the postal service will be busy today - or will it? Is filing by mail still much of a thing? I never like waiting until April 15 to do my taxes - occasionally I've filed on or near the deadline if I've owed money, but in those cases I've prepared my return early. I both like and hate deadlines - they are great motivators, but I don't like getting too close to them without having everything sorted. I think my many years of poor study habits and scholastic procrastination have scarred me for life.

I'm going through a round of de-cluttering, opening drawers that haven't seen the light of day for many years. Some highlights: meeting notes from my dance company days; strongly worded letters to a previous landlord, a stereo manufacturer, the phone company; planning notes for a 1999 vacation to Maui; a school binder from 1983 that made me rethink the quality of my education. More postcards, of course, both blank and received, as well as scraps of letters. One letter in particular stood out - it was written over the course of several days (as one did back then), and essentially nothing happened in all that time. It was a letter about the ennui of living in a small town where little things can have huge impacts but nothing really changes. This sort of rumination feels so foreign to me now. Connection and communication is so instantaneous that I can't even imagine the patience required to document such stillness, but part of me remembers filling pages and pages with "nothing is going on". It's remarkable how great it is to read that again so many years later.

The result is a renewed burst of energy around correspondence. I still haven't felt the call (or had the time) to write an actual letter, but a couple of postcards did manage to make it out the door, fighting for the postman's attention this week.

From the Mark Mothersbaugh (DEVO) collection:

I identify with this too many mornings

A promotional postcard for a show I was in last year. The back was filled with information about the show, so I covered it with blank mailing labels to create writing space.

There was another postcard I sent in a hurry without scanning - I've got more copies of it, may add later.

Performing correspondence

Last weekend I went to a reading series called Letters Aloud - "Private Letters read in Public". This was probably the first (and possibly the last) time I've ever gone to a Valentine's Day event - ON Valentine's Day even! - but I saw the listing a few days prior and was interested in how the group would translate correspondence to the stage. I also wanted to check out the venue, which is relatively new.

The format is very straightforward: the host and two local actors shared the stage with a musician, and took turns reading from actual letters centered on a theme. Most of the letters were written by people who went on to be celebrities and were found through online research. There were minimal visuals provided as background, so the focus was really on the writing.

The actors were excellent - there were two men and a woman reading, but I appreciated that they did not restrict which letters were read by whom to shared gender - and the overall arc of the show was thoughtful and well constructed. Highlights included a surprisingly mature response to a high school breakup by the man who would become Slash (Guns n' Roses), a written pass from Marlon Brando left for a server, and a letter from Elton John in his 60s to his younger self. I was also happy to hear a letter than I had just perused from the Between Us collection of lesbian correspondence by Kay Turner, which I'd re-read a few days prior to this event. But the most memorable letter was the one that opened the show - a hand-written version of the grade school rite of passage "Do You Like Me? Check Yes or No" note. The response had been a qualified no - but the child managed to hang on to the note through the following years and in the end the two not only liked each other but got married. More stories like this one (which did not involve anyone famous), peppered with celebrity surprises would have given the evening more impact.

Nevertheless, it's an interesting concept, and the host told a great story about having been inspired by the series to write and mail a letter to his wife of many years - only to see it idle in the mailbox for five days because his wife doesn't check the mail very often! It would be great to think that even a handful of the audience members went home inspired to give old school correspondence a try.

Come see this show!

No postcard today, but an update about the flamenco show I talked about back in July - it's happening this Friday! At the Rendezvous Jewelbox Theater. Come see amazing dance and music! Yes!

http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/261376

Added bonus - there is a show on Thursday in Bellingham, and TWO shows in Portland, Saturday and Sunday nights.

And thank you Melinda for introducing me to an ongoing Tuesday night flamenco show that is happening in my very own neighborhood.

It's hot. And I got a postcard.

This week has been kind of brutal, in more ways than one. Adding insult to life's little injuries, it's been quite warm here in the Pacific Northwest. Oh, nothing compared to the outrageous heat waves suffered by the rest of the country this summer, but keep in mind that air conditioning is a rarity here, and buildings aren't generally built taking air flow into consideration, so when it gets hot (and I'd say mid-90s qualifies as hot), there's not a lot of relief.

The week was so busy (and HOT!), I don't even remember when it arrived, but I received this lovely postcard...

Earlier in the summer, a friend was running an online campaign to send her dance company to the Minneapolis Fringe Festival. Normally I opt out of thank you gifts, but I saw that one option was to receive a postcard from the company after the show, so of course I couldn't resist. And what a cool card! It makes me want to book a flight right now.

...especially looking at the 5-day forecast in Minneapolis, which is predicting breezy, mid-70s weather in the coming week.

In the mail!

Hey! Check out this fab postcard that arrived this weekend from my favorite flamenco dancer, Melinda.

She's an artist living in Sevilla (of course), but she comes to teach and perform in the States and particularly the Pacific Northwest frequently. I'm looking forward to her upcoming show in September at the Rendezvous Jewelbox Theatre. If you're in the area, please come! In the meantime, here's a shameless plug for her awesome work;

Baile!

Lazy Sunday

It's a weekend meant to be spent outside instead of writing and posting, but I did manage to send out one postcard in the past few days:

A promo postcard from Rockhopper's King County Network tour. How could this be over a decade ago?!?

We did all our own marketing and promotion, even when we were being presented (like this tour). We felt very fancy with these cards by using colored font, and the cardstock is kind of lavender with a mother-of-pearl sheen on it. Very turn-of-the-century desktop publishing! This is still one of my favorite photos from the Rockhopper days. And I can never hear that particular piece of Gershwin music (which I tend to hear a lot because it's a popular selection for figure skating programs) without doing the toaster dance choreography in my head.

If I get motivated I might send another before the weekend is out, but right now the sun is calling. Cheers!

Leap Day!

I can't believe this is it!! Even though there were a couple of days where I wasn't really in the mood to write anything or feeling creative, I've really enjoyed doing this. I'll post more about the project later, but here are the final postcards that went out today...

Mailed February 29:

First, I sent this little thank you postcard to Mary Robinette Kowal, the woman who created the Month of Letters Challenge. It was a cool project and it was nice to see all the different ways people participated (if you haven't checked out the Lettermo site, I encourage you to do so).

Since it's the last day and all, I decided to send another card too...

This is a promo postcard for another show I was in - again, Laura Curry's work. The piece was called "White Elephant", there were 9 dancers performing onstage with a 27-piece orchestra, at Seattle's Bumbershoot festival in September 1996. The month before the show I was between apartments, staying in a friend's spare bedroom. There was a skylight over the bathtub - I remember 9 hour rehearsals in the week before the show, and afterward dragging the speakers over to the door of the bathroom, cranking the music and soaking in the tub for over an hour pretty much every night.

I can't remember what the audience reception to the piece was. Performing at Bumbershoot is a strange gig. You can reach a huge audience, and a lot of people who wouldn't normally see modern dance, but because of the nature of the festival, people don't have any problem just walking out if it's not their cup of tea. This piece wasn't exactly accessible to a mainstream audience. Or maybe it was, who knows. But the music was gorgeous, the dance was challenging and there's nothing quite like the satisfied exhaustion (or exhausted satisfaction) of putting together work you are totally committed to.

Days 22-25

Gah, so behind this week!!

Mailed February 22:

Another Mutts card. I feel a little lazy sending these instead of something "new", even though they are all different drawings.

Mailed February 23 24

Diego Velazquez, "The Needlewoman", 16th century

Aaargh, so annoying - I had this one written and stamped Thursday morning and I left it at home when I went to work. I have no clue where I got this postcard, but it's another I've had for decades.

Mailed February 24 (for reals):

More '90s activism! ACT UP aka the AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power. Another organization that this project made me look up to see if they're still around. Answer: yes, although the site looks more archival than active. Kudos for having a site that looks like someone's thought about it this century (sorry Guerrilla Girls).

Now I really wish I had a Lesbian Avengers postcard to send. I used to have one of their fab posters and if I could find it, I could send that out. Sigh.

Mailed February 25:

A postcard from a show I was in, from November 1996. This was the (I think) first showing of Laura Curry's "You = Me". The theatre was barely heated, and had a concrete floor. The work called for us to be lying motionless on the floor, in leotards, for the 20+ minutes while the audience filtered in, and the piece was all slow, controlled, seamless movement. It was freaking COLD in there. One of the other dancers fainted during a performance. I can still see him go down, but not what happened next. I know we didn't stop the performance, I think he just got right back up. I think he even managed to faint in a sustained way so it wouldn't be disruptive.

Some of the other works on the bill - KT Niehoff's "4/4 Culture" (had to have been an excerpt, because that was an evening length piece), Kim Root's "Uncomfortable Cafe" and Maureen Whiting's "Huka Haka Luka"