1:You Have Given Me a Country, performed by VIA at 92Y TiBeCa:
VIA (VisionIntoArt) is a transmedia group dedicated to collaboration. In late summer I emailed composers/friends Paola Prestini and Milica Paranosic to see if they would read N's book--a creative memoir about her Long Island Irish-Cathloic mother, Indian Father, the child they create, and the truth found in the blurred spaces between borders, genres, and categories--compose music based on their reactions, and then help me throw together a launch event to display the product. I also asked video artist Carmen Kordas, who works with VIA, if she would create film pieces based on her reading of the book, but also timed and built to go with each of the musical compositions. N and I would perform the book's intro, and she would read sections from the body of the book, and finish with the last chapter.
They all agreed, easily and instantly, and this event was a powerful expression of how different forms and arts can come together and enhance each other. Paola and Milica have such strong reputations as composers and collaborators that people of ridiculous skill levels just kinda say 'hey, lemme know if you guys have anything I can be in on.' It never ceases to amaze me. The 'regulars' who played clarinet and violin are virtuosic (I probably made that word up) in the extreme. Rarely do I enjoy feeling like a lout, a hamfisted dipshit, a lummox. But what these musicians can do just cracks me open. With little rehearsal time, they plop down and play, and the sounds they make are impeccable, both as their own expressions of skill and talent, and also when mixed in with the whole.
And that's a strange mix. VIA pieces as often as not include electronic tracks mixed with live, voice work blended in with music, film, and elements from vastly different styles lying atop one another. And Richard Mannoia (clarinet) and Hiroko Tagucki (Violin) just tucked into their instruments and tore it up. Genius.
Carmen--while in Germany, no less--made video pieces that somehow spoke to the deepest themes of the book while at the same time flying next to and within the music.
And as if that wouldn't have been enough, we got ringers who signed on because they had either heard about VIA and wanted to be involved, or they were drawn to the specific piece and it's multicultural theme, or both.
Glen Velez has four Grammys. Four, like in almost all the digits on my hand. He is a percussionist the way Cal Ripken was a ballplayer: simply at another level. And here he is, hanging out with us, perfectly willing to step into the theatrical aspect of the piece and use one of his larger drums as a white-space in which to capture the looping images from N's book before releasing them onto a larger screen along the stage apron. Glen sometimes plays a Bodhran--an Irish drum--in an Indian style: bingo. And Lori Cotler is a vocalist--singer doesn't do it justice--of a range and skill that kind of just makes you giggle. She's a white chick with a mastery of an Indian singing style (bingo) that is glottal, staccato, and fast like bullets from a Gatling. She goes from this rapid-fire glory to western-style arcing melodies and folded-in harmonies as if the transition weren't of a degree of difficulty similar to shifting seamlessly from off-road racing to glass-blowing.
And Andre de Quadros shows up, a conductor of great renown currently helping chart the artistic course at Tanglewood, and sits down, lays out Paola and Milica's scores, and brings it all together. Did I mention he's Indian, with two half-Indian, half-Australian kids (saying Bingo at this point is getting old, but...seriously? Its Kizmet).
Don't get me wrong: I firmly believe that, putting bias aside, N's book is a great achievement and a work of art as heart-tearing and true as any I have read.
But that doesn't mean that I expect an idea I had a few months ago to try and do it justice would turn into this...this...triumph.
OK, I'm blathering on. In short, from rehearsal:
To the opening reading I was proud to be in:
Through the curtain call--where I realize I looked a bit like an extra from "Fosse:"
the whole night was amazing.
N has been nigh on killing herself taking care of me, bearing the burdens of worry, vigilance, and really heavy crap I used to carry. I sent Paola, Milica, and Carmen an email in the summer, thinking maybe I could throw together a book launch that would in some way do the work and the writer justice. But I never thought it would go this well. I have my friends in VIA, those of you who attended and spread the word, 192Books (who sold out all the books they brought) and the outrageous fortune of artistic openness--which tucked a few absurd extras into the night--to thank.
2: Light The Night:
Last night it rained. A lot. And the hundreds, or thousands, of blood-cancer warriors huddling under the FDR didn't care. I have no idea how many were there: my separate-and-count-umbrellas-stretching-across-the-Brooklyn-Bridge skills seem to be rusty. But we filled up the outbound lane of the walking path over the Bridge, all the way to the middle, where some turned back and others went all the way across to their homes in the borough.
People with gold balloons were walking for lost loved ones. People with white balloons were walking as survivors or patients. People with red balloons were walking in support and remembrance of the other two groups.
The only place I put word of my walk was here, on this blog. My white balloon and I raised almost two grand. Thank you.
N intended to accompany me. She would have, but I persuaded her that, between my increasing strength, the absurd number of oncology specialists wandering through the night around me, and her need for down-time to catch up on non-cancer work, she should stay dry and rested. She relented.
Each balloon had a light inside it connected by a little wire to a battery and switch you could hold in your pocket. Between the weight of the wire and the rain pulling the balloons down, the evening would have been better represented were it called "Light the Area Around Your Waist, and Sometimes the Ground."
But it was a moving few hours in the weather. There were more red balloons than anything else. The team from our City-State hospital with whom I walked had two white balloons and more than a dozen red. It says something that the largest population was that of healthy people fighting the disease, fighting for those of us with white balloons, and in memory of those of us with gold. In the quiet shuffling of feet through puddles, the oddly specific ploink of raindrops on balloons,and the watery murmur of walkers talking, I felt surrounded by people who didn't know me, but were busting their asses in one way or another to make me better. That's an odd, even eerie, sensation. But a good one. A damn good one.
3: The Dr:
N and I hied ourselves as usual to the Dr for Thursday blood-work--yes, this happened a few hours before the walk, but I am taking artistic license because it fits my flow better here. Back off.
As has become the practice, we kind of guess and take bets on my medical state each trip: need a bag of blood, bag of platelets, white count 1.8, no-soup-for-you for a few more days: that kind of stuff.
And we were pleasantly surprised to learn that my white count is above 5, which is actually somewhat like normal people. My platelets are 24. 24 is not high, but when seen in connection with the fact that they were 4--barely enough platelets to rest Glen Velez's Grammys on--a few days prior, that is good news indeed. And it has been long enough since I got a bag of platelets that these new growths are self-created, not borrowed from the bag. It means that my numbers are coming back up, not simply supported by the medical establishment. Very good news.
And I didn't need anything. They talked to us for a while, we cracked some jokes about Keith Richards and Ozzy Osbourne (loving jokes, but jokes), they pulled the single snakebite out of my chest, and we went home.
If this keeps up the twice-a-week visits may get cut to once-a-week, and then my numbers will be high enough to go back into the hospital at the end of the month for that heady mix of Cytoxan, Vincristine, and the Devil. Wheeeee!
4: The Chemo-thlon:
I went to the gym today. I've ridden the bike a few times since getting out of the hospital, but now that my numbers are getting better I'm allowed to exercise in earnest.
A Trathlon is: Swim 1.5km, ride 40km, run 10km.
A Chemo-thlon is, currently: Run 2 miles on the treadmill, ride 7 miles on the recumbent bike, swim 20 laps.
Chemo-thlons, it turns out, are really hard. Seems like there's a lot more panting. And I plan on extending the distances, or shrinking the times, incrementally as I go on. I have a 5K to fight Multiple Myeloma in a month, and if the chemo lets me feel good enough to do it, I want all the cancer cells watching on their goddamn little cancer-satellite-TVs to see me pushing; not giving in. Surrender is not an option.
But it felt great. I got my heart-rate to 180 or so running, and averaged just around 9 minute miles. I rode the 7 miles in half an hour without feeling like maybe an Eastern European limb cartel had drugged me and stolen one of my legs when it was over, and I swam the 20 laps in about 10 minutes, keeping a four-lap average time just above 2 minutes.
Oh, and I didn't drown, which I will take as a plus. It's the little victories that build, link by link, a chain you wrap around cancer's neck, and squeeze till it's friggin head pops off.
