Stage notes for LA LLORONA, a performance I did for Oakland Readers Family Night

LA LLORONA                                                                                   

Welcome/bienvenudos. Me llamo Maureen, o Marina o Maria pequeña.  

BEGIN with HOOK: This is a tale, a very old tale...about a girl, a beautiful girl, who...

Sientate mis hijos. Come closer. Donde esta mis hijos? Closer so that I may see you. Venga aca! Sientate.

This evening we are going to visit Mictlan/ the Otherworld para Todos Santos. Cuantos personas comprenden Engleis? How many people understand Spanish? Bilingual? 

Bueno, yo hablo solemente en Russo. (To make them laugh).

I’m going to tell you a real Californio ghost story. 

This evening we are going to invoke el duende/the goblin wind with a story that’s at least 500 years old. Cantadora, cuentista, curandera, seanachie...huehuetatlolli (words of the elders), tlapuetzali (story) historia para todos santos. a real temblón, a shiver story.

Listen well to all the parts because after, we’re going to act out the play for the audience. Insert historical info about halloween/Aztecs /oral tradition whenever possible.

Storytelling with Gay Ducey

I got to work with famed storyteller Gay Ducey at the Rockridge Library in Oakland. We learned a lot of techniques that I added to my existing repertoire. I gave my handbook back to the library, but not my binder chock full of notes and handouts. What to do with it? Not sure when to post this as it has no date.

IN PRAISE OF THE GRAPE

in vino veritas/ in praise of the grape
  —An occasional poem for the Coppola Niebaum Cafe, 10/8/2003

It was on one of those achingly clear days in Fall, like today,
when the coastal ridges bezel the sky into lapis lazuli.
Because the harvest is in from the fields,
long nights of roulette with the weather are done.
Indian Summer has again sweetalked the grape into honey,
and coastal fog suckled up the river canyons at night
has teased that hot, sweet passion of sun and stone
into a diaphanous gown of noble rot and bloom
so that we may freely dance under the Hunter’s Moon.

Kirkegaard said the spirit of occasion recorded in the mind
is an indelible distillation of watery particles of memory—
like the generosity of wine shipped round the Horn.

On the long journey from vineyard dust to the delta of tongue,
we toast that struggle towards civilization: we raise our glasses
to the murals of Las Caux, to the pharaoh’s last offering,
we celebrate the miracle of water into wine, where, under a Tuscan sun,
Caesar’s Gaulish legions drowned solace at the bottom of amphorae,
where Cortez and Columbus decreed wine to grace the New World,
and an army of padres marched north to the tabula rasa of golden Califia
with their precious cuttings for the sacrament of the altar chalice,
where a Hungarian Count Haraszthy, slipped the first zinfandel
into the sweet Mayacama soil, opening her bounteous vein...
We toast the past with this fine wine, older than recorded history,
yet as young as the next harvest, into the poetics of the dream

Where we hold to the party line: In Vino Veritas,
because there will always be poetry, to be sure,
and not only fine conversation steeped in wine,
where we swirl the stem to observe the other
between veiled sheets of glycerin
cascading into a slow waterfall of desire.
And there will be eloquent speeches—
not to be made, except in vino,
and no truth to be uttered here,
excepting that which is in vino—
where wine is a defense of truth,
and truth, a defense of wine.

 10/8/2003

• "In Praise of the Grape" at Francis Ford Coppola's

"In Praise of the Grape" at Francis Ford Coppola's cafe, Oct 10 (MIA p2)

Hi All,

This is just to say that there will be a poetry reading/bash, "In Praise of the Grape" at Carmen and Francis Ford Coppola's cafe @ 619-something* on Kearney St. across from City Lights Bookstore in Northbeach at the confluence of Columbus, and Jack Kerouac Lane, on Friday, Oct 10th, from 3 to 5:30 PM-ish.

According to poetry event organizer, Herman Berlandt, grandfather of the poetry-film genre, who founded the National Poetry Association nearly 30 years ago in SF, and in 2002, the International Poetry Museum, —Francis Ford Coppola himself will attend the annual baccanalia*-as he has done so in the past.

I am at present combing thru my work for something appropriate to read as I'm a featured reader...it's been literally years since I attended the last vintage grape stomping event, but it was, um, intoxicating, as vaguely recall.. truth be known...

When the ancient Romans were having a party, they'd shout IN VINO VERITAS. Come down and praise the harvest by raising a poem and a glass or two of vino with us and maybe you'll find some truth or your future ex-muse at the bottom of it.

Maureen Hurley (he did not attend, but his uncle Carmen who was tending bar, was a gem. He kept my glass more than half full.)

PS: For more information on the International Poetry Museum, or "Mother Earth Journal" (I was co-editor for years), call Herman Berlandt, (415) 868-8865. Uniting the World Press, PO Box 886, Bolinas, CA, 94924  or email him at: info@intemationalpoetrymuseum.org http://www.nationalpoetry.org/npa/mother.html

PPS: *If you absolutely need the address, email me back and when I get it, l'll send it to you...otherwise, just stagger into every bar and cafe near City Lights until you find it... -MH 

IN VINO VERITAS (THE BANQUET) -Kierkegaard

It was on one of the last days in July, at ten o'clock in the evening, when the participants in that banquet assembled together. Date and year I have forgotten;... The "spirit of the occasion" and whatever impressions are recorded in one's mind under that heading, concerns only one's recollections; and just as generous wine gains in flavor by passing the Equator, because of the evaporation of its watery particles, likewise does recollection gain by getting rid of the watery particles of memory; and yet recollection becomes as little a mere figment of the imagination by this process as does the generous wine...

...The motto of the Party had been given by him as: In Vino Veritas, because there was to be speaking, to be sure, and not only conversation; but the speeches were not to be made except in vino, and no truth was to be uttered there excepting that which is in vino--when the wine is a defense of the truth and the truth a defense of the wine.

IN VINO VERITAS Reflections on a Glass of Wine  —James B. Sanders

The silver-haired gentleman gazed at his glass of rare old Chambertin so hard and long that the young American gustatory finally asked, "What do you see?"

Continuing to swirl and stare at the brick-red liquid, the venerable wine sage replied, "When I look at a wine of this one's quality, charm and provenance, I get a glimpse of the best of man and his struggle through civilization…

Missing the last page

The Bacchantes -Euripides, 410 B.C.E

O hallowed haunts in Crete, that saw Zeus born, where Corybantes with crested helms devised for me in their grotto the rounded timbrel of ox-hide, mingling Bacchic minstrelsy with the shrill sweet accents of the Phrygian flute, a gift bestowed by them on mother Rhea, to add its crash of music to the Bacchantes' shouts of joy; but frantic satyrs won it from the mother-goddess for their own, and added it to their dances in festivals, which gladden the heart of Dionysus, each third recurrent year.

Oh! happy that votary, when from the hurrying revel-rout he sinks to earth, in his holy robe of fawnskin, chasing the goat to drink its blood, a banquet sweet of flesh uncooked, as he hastes to Phrygia's or to Libya's hills; while in the van the Broman god exults with cries of Evoe. With milk and wine and streams of luscious honey flows the earth, and Syrian incense smokes.

While the Bacchant holding in his hand a blazing torch of pine uplifted on his wand waves it, as he speeds along, rousing wandering votaries, and as he waves it cries aloud with wanton tresses tossing in the breeze; and thus to crown the revelry, he raises loud his voice, "On, on, ye Bacchanals, pride of Tmolus with its rills of gold I to the sound of the booming drum, chanting in joyous strains the praises of your joyous god with Phrygian accents lifted high, what time the holy lute with sweet complaining note invites you to your hallowed sport, according well with feet that hurry wildly to the hills; like a colt that gambols at its mother's side in the pasture, with gladsome heart each Bacchante bounds along.

10/8/03

My occasional poem for the occasion

• IN PRAISE OF THE GRAPE