Why I Love Jo-Ann's

I love Jo-Ann's Fabric and Craft store.

Here's why.

Something is always on sale. Something I need is on sale, and something I didn't even know I needed until I'm standing in front of it.

The women who work there look like my grandmother. Or, like that quiet girl who sat in the back of the room and had all the right answers. Oh, wait, that was me.

Jo-Ann doesn't care if your work is any good- Jo-Ann just loves that you do it. Jo-Ann values your project solely because it exists, not because you have achieved some level of success or artistry.

Jo-Ann does not judge.

Today I meet with Dave. Then I'm going to Jo-Ann's. Life is Good.

Hauntings

Writers are haunted by voices. Voices of characters wanting to come out. Voices of people we know. Voices of people long gone. Artists are haunted by images. Visual art appeals to me, because the stories are still there, but instead of voices, I'm conversing with images. Like the words in my head, the images are different when I put them down, but the heart of them remain. I write about isolation and loneliness. I'm finding that to be true in the images I'm drawn to as well. They say artists tend to return again and again to the same story, the same threads of ideas winding through each pass they take on the page, on the stage, on the canvas. While not all my stories are about dead people, I am definitely dancing with ghosts.

What's in a Name

So guys, why "Stories about Dead People"?

I know, you probably didn't actually ask.  But admit it.  You wondered didn't you?  Maybe just a little?

At the time things were just starting to come together, Elena was on her way back from the Midwest by car, it was obviously fall, and we were suffering from a period of torrential rain in the Seattle area.  Thinking about snow in the Rockies, I made a crack about the Donner party.  Yeah, I know.  Donner pass is in the Sierras, but what's a mountain range or two between friends.  Turns out Elena has a "Donner Pass dead guy" story.  She finished our email exchange with: "I'll regale you at Starbucks.  Because nothing says artistic collaboration like stories about dead people."

So, now you know.  Ironically enough, I still haven't heard the "Donner Pass dead guy story"

>>Elena Says... "Hey Dave, I started reading this and I was thinking to myself... 'Self, you forgot to tell Dave the Donner Pass dead guy story'...."

And Thus it all Begins

Everything starts somewhere, although many physicists disagree.

But people have always been dimly aware of the problem with the start of things.  They wonder aloud how the snowplow driver gets to work, or how the makers of dictionaries look up the spelling of the words.  Yet there is the constant desire to find some point in the twisting, knotting, raveling nets of space-time on which a metaphorical finger can be put to indicate that here, here, is the point where it all began…

Hogfather, Terry Pratchet

For me it may have begun early this summer when Elena said: "Maybe you and I should do a show without actors.....", to which I responded: "I think that's usually referred to as an art installation."  Or maybe it began when she later said: "I'm serious about the whole Dave and I should do an art installation thing....", and I realized that one of the more scarily talented people I know wanted to do a non-theatrical artistic collaboration with me.  If you ask Elena about where it all began, she undoubtedly has a different set of answers, but that's the beauty of story telling.  Everyone tells the same store a little differently.

In any event, it ultimately began one warm afternoon in October, when Elena and I met at a Starbucks in Eastgate to discuss our prospective collaboration.  I'd been alternating between terror and euphoria with thoughts of an opportunity to display some art in public and thoughts of an opportunity to demonstrate my inadequacies publicly.  After jotting down about five pages of random thoughts, I approached the meeting with a certain amount of trepidation, unsure of whether Elena and I would turn out to be on the same planet, much less the same page.

Much to my relief, we discovered that we shared similar goals, and had similar thoughts on what we'd like to explore.  There is a long way to go, and a lot of details to work out, but the artistic collaboration "Stories about Dead People" has been officially born.  In the not terribly near future we'll be doing an exhibit involving visual art, and mixed media, and…  

Well, as I said, there are a lot of details to work out.

>>Elena Says... "It began for me when I started thinking about doing a 'show' with Dave, but without any actors. I was thinking- here's this great light designer  I love working with, why should I have to wait for a play (with actors) before we can do something. Then, of course, I had to start thinking about without actors, what would we light? So I mentioned it to Dave, and happily he supplied the answer, art. Dave and I have been passing visual art-in-progress back and forth via the Internet, so the seed was there. We poured a little Starbucks coffee on it and up grew ... Stories about Dead People, presenting ... Art. Filling in the blanks should be exciting. And fun. And collaborative. One of the things I most enjoyed in our first meeting, was I showed up with a few random ideas, and Dave showed up with five pages of random thoughts. I like a person who raises the bar. His notes were all good things we should think about. Next time I'm bringing notes."