I thought I might provide a breakdown of my experiences at the End of Times event on August 15, both as a participant and spectator.
Since it’s my blog (and I’m so all about me anyway), we shall start with my return to the Spoken Word Performance Art world after a several year hiatus.
It was hotter than all get out both inside and outside of the venue, so it wasn’t difficult to warm up and get that whole “sweat lodge” experience going. Any nervousness about my rustiness was quelled by the warm and accommodating nature of all the performers in the impromptu “green room” (literally, for once) that was the garden area behind the converted church where the event was held. Knowing that these people were all the kind of folks who would be into the sort of thing I was planning to do (I almost don’t care how the audience responds just as long as the other performers respect me, probably a throwback to my stand-up days), I was able to concentrate on getting my shaman on and really focus and emotionally prepare.
This revamped church was the perfect venue for this event and this particular performance of mine; with the curved wooden pews, the lovely giant mural of the Ascending Christ on the back wall, and a still nicely working pipe organ (they even had a tall pulpit stage right). Israel Alpizar (one of the event organizers and member of the art rock assault force that is Donoma) brought me up and I settled in with a few blathering opening remarks and the set up for the first poem I read, one I wrote several years ago, called Johnny Griffin (about seeing the legendary jazz tenor player for the first time). Here it is:
Johnny Griffin
By Michael Corcoran
I’m sitting at the tiny table like a kid at Christmas
Waiting to open presents
I want to turn around and scream
At the old man in the back of the club
Who stands there like some living diorama
History embodied in stooped shoulders
And a laugh like sandpaper rubbing wax
He’s talking with friends he hasn’t seen in a year
It’s just another show for him
A day in his life
But it’s Church/the Grand Canyon/Stonehenge/Voodoo
and the Art Institute to me
And I want the priest/professor/shaman to get his ass onstage
To recreate that missed moment in time I mourn for
Finally he looks up as if suddenly noticing the stage
And remembering who he is
He sidles towards it and the musicians suddenly materialize
Like flickering ghosts called forth
The ceremony’s about to begin
Set the Way Back Machine for 52nd Street!
The sax is a bolt of captured lightning in his hands
That throws off sparks of incandescent joy
Contorting sorties of psychedelic hummingbirds
Weave around our bobbing heads and twitching legs
The barrier’s eroded between heaven and earth
Spirit/Man/Horn now one circuit
A transistor radio picking up the Music of the Spheres
A Pentecostal Reverend speaking tongues of golden fire
Drums beat waves of thunder like echoes of Krakatoa
The throbbing pulse of quasars at the edge of infinity
Sometimes he pulls the horn from his mouth
And gasps in a hoarse orgasmic rasping growl
Like the mating cry of galaxies
The rumble of drifting continents
The universe awakening from a dream
It’s probably the best poem I’ve ever written (not that I’m Milton or anything), and (despite my rust) it turns out that I’m still able to bring it as an orator; so the already warm and receptive crowd was now really on board as I segued into the second piece (which I wrote especially for this show). It is a lyric visionary performance poem that dealt with several of the themes of the event, is untitled for now (just realized I never got past Sacred Geometry Performance Piece.doc- I’ll have to think up a title), and at least for the moment shall only be orally disseminated (that means I ain’t going to print it out here).
That second piece went extremely well (no matter how many times you recite something in your dining room you can never tell how it’s going to actually work onstage), and I really wanted to focus and bear down for the narrative storytelling piece that closed my show.
I explained that it was a segment taken from a much larger solo show I had created as a school project years before, entitled Thirty Circles (pretty much the oral narrative of the first thirty years of my life), then provided some background to make up for the forty five minutes of exposition that precedes this particular story in Thirty Circles.
I intoned an ancient Irish storyteller’s incantation to bring back the sacred story circle vibe that had been broken by all my ‘splaining of stuff and launched into it. The tale seems a bit sordid and loses its effect if I just dryly synopsize it (besides, you folks gotta come see it live sometime), so I’ll forgo any play by play; but it lasted about 12 minutes or so, I really got into the telling, everyone seemed to enjoy it, and it proved to be a very nice cap on what was an incredible performance experience for me and a perfect return to my roots (the rebirth of my artist within- if you will).
I headed to the back garden green room and took a moment to come down from the powerful emotions that are brought up when one does a performance of that sort, then headed back inside to see the next band, Things Falling Apart.
I was going to make this just one big monster post, but it looks as it would be best split it up into two sections to save everyone (especially myself) some eye strain. Next post will be about the 5 incredible bands that were also there that night.
Have a great weekend, ya’all!!!