Cheap Cure suggested by my Dad...yogurt saves the day

Just 100 grams of live culture, via yogurt, and I am quickly getting better. Yay Dad for the suggestion. I had been taking pills with "live" culture so I could avoid the milk, which doesn't agree with me, but that didn't work. Not so live after all...and I would far rather suffer a bit of milk than a bout of traveler's belly.

With my new found freedom I went to the following amazing places:

1. A good bye party in a photo studio hutong for Kemin's supermodel girlfriend Mia Qiqi (nickname in English).
The hutongs are built in a warm gray brick and as I stepped up to the raised door I suddenly realized there was a courtyard inside. Just like the temples, an entrance needs a gate. This courtyard was small but fit a table and chairs and the table was laden with party food that included French pastries, fresh tiny apples the size of my thumb, and vinyard grapes with their snap of citrus and earthy tang. The inner rooms of the house had been combined into a studio with drop cloths and lamps at one end and a computer and cameras at the other. A cluster of beautiful people sat and watched a slideshow of fashion photos on the large monitor. The old wooden beams looked like an inverted hull of a ship over our heads.
Mia is not only tall, thin, 23, and beautiful, natch; but artistic, fully involved in a charity for kids and adults with special needs, and wildly in love with all things Paris. She is off to live in the city of lights for awhile and when not modeling, learning French, and taking art classes, she will be drawing her adventures in her whimsical dreamy art and words. And no doubt publishing them at some time! The party was full of Beijing's artsy types, from the supermodels who swayed overhead, to photographers, TV show hosts, producers, actors, and a man who has to be the world's expert rubic's cube performer--with a book out too! He did every variety of rubic, one of them looked to be 8 or 12 squares across, and he also did one blindfolded. He could do them one handed and blindingly fast. A normal cube he could do in under 22 seconds.
We got to talking to a very attractive honey blonde woman named Charlotte MacInnis. I asked her how long she had been in Beijing and she got a bemused look and said she had been born here. She must be assumed to be a foreigner all the time. She does two different TV shows for CCTV, one on learning to speak Chinese and the other on cultural events in Beijing! That night when we got back to our hotel room, we turned on the TV and there was Charlotte, in a pink hoodie, explaining how to say "I'm sorry about that" with video clips, grammar cartoons, and her own warm and animated face! Charlotte grew up in China, then attended Columbia University, and returned to work here in Beijing. She described a huge culture shock coming to America! Unfortunately, acting parts for whites are somewhat limited since non-traditional casting isn't done very often, but she seems very involved in her shows. She has written over 60 episodes for the language show!
I also got to talk to Nick, a friend of Kemin's who grew up in the Midwest and developed strip malls. He looks Asian but I quickly saw how American his gestures and expressions are. He came to Beijing 10 years ago when his bilingual and real estate skills were highly in demand. He was able to name his own price (plus a villa and full time driver) but soon enough, more folks came over and things got a bit more competitive for guys with his skills. He said he is currently involved in developing good nursing homes in China. He says what currently exists is appalling, even for people who can afford to pay, it is like incarceration. Locked in, fed and pilled three times a day, an occasional sponge bath, and nothing else. And these are the "good" ones! Awful. He feels happy about what he is doing, it makes up for all those strip malls! he says with a laugh, and he is looking at multi-use places with retiree apartments on golf courses with hardly any help provided (other than doctor access and house cleaning) to full hospital care and everything in between. When he speaks about nursing homes the Chinese at first say no way, never! Because their images of such places are so grim. But once he describes what he is doing, they want to sign right up. He says he has to start with the very wealthy, but hopes this model spreads to the middle class as well, with a bit less luxury... His very cute toddler Darwin carefully picked up runaway grapes from under the table and threw them out. And what grapes didn't drop from his pudgy little fingers went into his mouth.

Tony Stimac

Amazing Rubic's Cube guy

In the photo studio

Nick and Darwin

Mia relating to toddler Darwin. She is tall when standing up!

2. The Temple of Heaven
You would think I'd have known how important it is to have a street map, in scale, with English, Pinyin, and Chinese characters on it. Right? Sigh. I got out at a subway stop I thought was close to the large park which holds the Temple of Heaven compound. I ended up walking miles through hutongs and busy highways (passing a district of plumbing supplies), over rivers and under overpasses...it seems like every inch of street that hasn't been taken over by parked cars has a merchant selling trinkets and produce on a bit of cloth over the curb or sidewalk. I kept asking directions of people who could only point, backtracking and second guessing my miserably out of scale map...before I finally saw the southern gate. The first tourist shop selling cold water in a bottle was like finding an oasis after sweating through the cement desert. The droplets of cold felt like heaven against my forehead. The young woman who sold me the water practiced her English on me. She was amazed I was from New York City. I told her Beijing was just as amazing as the big apple...
Here is what the guide books say: "The Temple was built in 1420 A.D. during the Ming Dynasty to offer sacrifice to Heaven. It is much bigger than the Forbidden City and smaller than the Summer Palace with an area of about 2,700,000 square meters....The Temple is divided by two enclosed walls into inner part and outer part. The main buildings of the Temple lie at the south and north ends of the middle axis line of the inner part. The most magnificent buildings are The Circular Mound Altar (Yuanqiutan), Imperial Vault of Heaven (Huangqiongyu) and Hall of Prayer for Good Harvest (Qiniandian) from south to north. Also, there are some additional buildings like Three Echo Stones and Echo Wall. Almost all of the buildings are connected by a wide bridge called Vermilion Steps Bridge (Danbiqiao) or called Sacred Way."
I moved slowly because of the heat and my now tired legs (I had spent the previous week chained to the bathroom so I'd lost a lot of walking muscle). But I was glad I'd taken the southern route. The gates and walkways each led to buildings of greater size and magnificence, culminating in the three tier Temple of Good Harvest.
I didn't buy the audio tour or join a group. The signs were in Chinese and English. Not to mention loudspeakers everywhere playing music or giving lectures... I relished taking it slowly. Letting my fingers touch the warm slightly pitted marble and glazed heads of tile dragons. The entire place was designed to go together. It is "branded" by symbols. Square for earth, round for heaven. Blue and gold tile to speak of heaven. As I stood in line to look into the temples, I was surrounded by all the languages of the world. I took so many photos the camera grew hot in my hands. But my little pocket camera was defeated. I could not find a shot that showed how it felt to be there with ancient history all around me. I tried to imagine the Emperor taking three days to make his annual report to god. Everything one man does to make prayer becomes separate buildings. There was a yellow roofed structure just for changing his clothes. I was unable to be the Emperor in my mind. It was much easier to think of myself as a worker with a twig broom sweeping the many steps and paving stones. I sank onto the steps on the shadow side and joined many other weary visitors and simply looked at the brightly colored pagoda shaped rooftops against the gray backdrop of skyscrapers.
I bought a charmingly illustrated tourist map of the park and enjoyed the almost English translations...
I followed an ancient covered walkway through the park. Small children played as their parents rested a moment on the sides. Off to my right a group of singers were enjoyed by a large middle aged crowd and everyone sang the traditional songs except for me. Some large white bumpy stones turned out to be where sacrifices where beaten to death with mallets before dispatch by knife became popular.
And there at the eastern gate was the subway stop I should have used. I gratefully hobbled down the many steps and went back to the hotel for a nap.

Oh, time to see a run through of Jim's play, more later...

Beijing a go go go go

Sadly, I've been confined to my hotel room for three days straight with traveler's belly. I've worked on freelance. Wrote a couple of poems. Slept, and you know, did the go go go thing. I watch the ceaseless traffic of people in cars, buses, bicycles, taxis, and on foot and think "they are not holed up in here, they can move about without needing a bathroom no more than 3 feet away!" Jim has been wonderful bringing me the Chinese version of gatoraid and bowls of broth with fishy lumps rather like gefilta fish, but better. Well, I had wanted to lose weight...but can't recommend this method.

Night Storm

Thunder echoes down the hutongs
shakes metal cranes and rising towers
drives yellow smog to the Yellow Sea,
a dragon screaming light and tears
over it's home so changed by men.


Flux in the East

So much to see
and I am stuck
in a bathroom.
Oh tell me the
Great Wall and
Temple of Heaven
will still be there
when I can
leave my hotel?

Hutongs, in case you didn't know, are the streets with low buildings, so ancient and the real "old" China, now so few left with the pace of development...

Beijing with purple fingernails and much hospitality

I have been busy finishing an illustration while attending rehearsals so my full exploration of Beijing has been confined to the evenings when Jim is free to join me.

We have been thrice to an upscale mall called "Sanlitun Village" which has an apple store and nearly every other franchise you would find in the US, McDonalds, Le Sportsac, etc. But we didn't go there to shop, really! It has to be the most expensive place in Beijing, costs just the same as a fancy mall in NJ. The cab ride takes us past the panorama of modern Beijing, part Miami part Dallas. Skyscrapers everywhere but spaced out more than Manhattan. In fact, it looks much bigger than the big Apple! The national bird of China is said to be the crane, the construction crane, and they were everywhere. Hopefully the urban planners realize they should preserve some of the old before it is all gone. What tourist wants to see only modern malls? But back to the one mall I kept seeing...

The first time we attended a 9th year party at Hatsune, a Japanese restaurant. The place was mobbed and almost half the party was foreign born. I met a young tall Austrian, Raphael, who is managing a jazz club and hotel in the art district. A friendly Chinese business man pressed his special projects card on me, he is apparently in construction. The owner of Hatsune, Alan Wong, was born in California and came to China ten years ago. He is a friend of Kemin's (one of Jim's cowriters). I spoke to a friendly young Beijing woman whose English wasn't quite up to telling me much but we smiled a lot at each other. The scene was so expat bar, full of mostly young chic types...for entertainment some drummers played lion drums and then 4 sumo fat suits were handed out to the owner and friends. It was so funny to see thin elegant girls climb into the ridiculous costumes and wrestle on the floor. Unlike a similar bar in Manhattan, I was treated as a person of interest. People wanted to exchange business cards with me...perhaps as a foreigner I represent potential investments? It was refreshing to not be met with the usual 20-something's disdain or avoidance of elders.

The next time we headed to Sanlitun Village it was to have my nails done, along with Louis St. Louis (music director), at a chic spa, Lovely Nails, just around the corner from the mall. Louis has more stories about show biz than an encyclopedia has entries. He has met EVERYONE and worked with many stars, John Travolta, Olivia Newton John, Ann Magaret, and on an on. But as interesting as his stories about others, he is himself an interesting story! He told me Jim is one of the most talented lyricists he has met in a long time! Some of his songs could be instant hits! He and I sat in adjacent chairs as dainty women sawed off our calluses with super-sized files. I was sure I'd lose a shoe size by the time they were done. I let Louis help pick a deep purply magenta for my fingers and toes. It just seemed to fit the mood, Louis brings out the diva in me. He had his back waxed, I sank into the upholstered chair as my polish dried and watched koi swim in a tank, their scales as glittery and my nails.

Jim took photos of me being primped, but alas, the next day his camera was lifted skillfully from it's velcro case on his belt, as we strolled the neighborhood around our hotel, and we lost all the photos he took.

The third trip to the mall was to go to the nearby, found at last!, Bookworm, a cafe, event space, and bookstore. It was everything Jim had said it would be. I loved it. Walls full of books, a lending library as well, tables galore, views (it is upstairs and has windows that show the sparkling lights of the curving and torqued modern buildings in the area) and a western style toilet! A book discussion was just winding up in one of the rooms. I heard bits of questions about philosophy and religion and wandered away, didn't sound like my kind of book judging from the earnest discussion. 

I have been having pains in my stomach, not Ghengis Khan's revenge! but jabbing acid reflux. So I went with one of our translators to a traditional Chinese medicine shop and was given two types of pills to take for two weeks. One appears to be a root turned into tiny ball bearing sized brown pellets, I take a table spoon of those a half hour before two meals a day. The other pill I take three a day and it has the color and flavor of a dehydrated lump of instant minty beef bullion. I am already feeling better.

The Chinese we are working with, both the actors, tech, and creative team, are remarkably generous and warm. They really want us to have a good time. Last night Jim and I and Mark Allen were invited out by the talented guy, we call Ben, who is putting together the score with the chinese lyrics in a program called Finale. He can do a rubics cube in nine seconds flat. He is also a drummer and both the translator (age 20) and a friend "Idy" (19) who joined us were his students. The friend also speaks English. We were treated to dinner at a traditional restaurant that had members of the Beijing opera singing in a stylized warble to two stringed instruments. The food was, well, terrific, and conversation flowed thanks to the two translators. We were a bit upset that Ben was treating us but were told this is the Chinese way, we could pay next time. It is a concept, guanxi, that involves planting favors and building networks of friendly connections. Hopefully I learn how much to accept and give so I can be a good visitor. 

Next we went to a hutang (alley) district on S. Luogu Alley full of shops and bars. The bus we took was as modern and clean as the subway. And, as always in China, more people are employed to provide services than in the US. Someone had a job to take tickets as well as someone else to drive the bus. We left behind the ancient gate and lion statue and the bus took us a few blocks to the famous hutangs. The old north south street we walked is unbelievably ancient! But it reminded me of Greenwhich Village, a bit touristy but full of fine goods and crafts. The single story buildings, fronts opened into shops, made for a warmer more human sized window shopping. I bought some tea and looked at blank leather and board bound books using tan paper inside with images of Mao--Andy Warhol style--on the cover... The first bar had some loud drunk Americans playing a game and cursing their luck or wins in the same vocabulary. Bleary and weaving they chugged and played on. Oh how they made me wince. The second bar, where we were joined by two more friends, was nicer, we could talk more easily and ate popcorn and I watched the men and one translator get a bit tipsy. The couple that joined us were really cool, he is a musician--traditional guitar--and she is in graduate school learning how the brain makes connections, the sociology of affection studied in the lab. She plans to do a post doc in the US if she can. 

Mark Allen (composer) did a bar game with Ben where he said if Ben could copy everything he did, then Ben could pay, but if he missed something Mark did, Mark would buy the round of drinks! We were all laughing at their antics. Mark did a little sleight of hand and won.

The bar was full of cigarette smoke, as was the restaurant, the streets. It was odd to feel like I'd gone back in time to a place where second hand smoke gave me a fuzzy second hand buzz and dry throat, I sure don't miss it. A lot of young Chinese smoke. Of course, a lot of young Americans smoke too. Idiots.

Before she left to go start college in Toronto, Kemin's younger sister Rosy played Rachmaninoff for us on the rehearsal grand piano. Kemin accompianed her on the other piano. What a talented skilled family they are. Rosy has a wonderful mix of sweetness and sarcasm. We enjoyed her so much. She plans to major in cello, not piano. I'm sure she will be terrific.

I am loving it here. Beijing is a city to rival any other world city. I only wish I knew the language better. 

Wish you were here to see all of this!
C

Welcome to Beijing

The first few days have gone by too quickly. But I do keep popping awake at 3 or 4 am so I thought I'd send my first dispatch.

13 hour flight was quite uncomfortable by the 9th hour. My legs just wanted to move, go anywhere but frozen in front of me. The small elderly Chinese woman to my right took to sleeping with her bare feet tucked into the magazine pocket. I wished I was small enough to do the same...the overhead projector had color problems and the movies became purple and green, as a result the feel good football movie had giant eggplants tackling each other on the fields and talking in blurry chinese characters. I couldn't see the subtitles or hear the sound track--my supplied headphones were not so good, so I turned instead to books I'd saved for free on my iPhone. I read Heidi for the first time since I was a kid. What a weird cultural experience.  By today's standards the story goes like this: A neglected Swiss girl is dumped on her crazy loner grandpa who lives in a mountaintop cabin cursing humanity. Despite her upbringing she is unaffected by any neuroses, takes to the hills like a euphoric goat, and reforms not only nasty gramps, but by novel's end she had three sugar granddaddies, heals a lame girl, brings religion to the entire Alps and still believes her friends, the goats, will frolic uneaten forever.. And her greatest reward for being cute, innocent, and prayer inducing? The most ardent sugargrandaddy wants to adopt her so she need never work again and her job in life will be to nurse him through old age and hold his hand when he croaks. Wow, have things changed, what I remembered wasn't what I read. It was a long flight...

Day 1

China in no way matched my ancient National Geographic images. The airport was huge, modern, attractive, and indistinguishable from any other international hub. Except for the signs in Chinese characters with Pinyin (sounded out in English) and English. They have tight security. Giant machines sniffed us, took our temperature (thank goodness I didn't have a hotflash at that moment) and filmed our entry down an astonishingly long corridor with moving walkways. The duty free shops sold all the usual brands.

We, Jim, Mark Allen (the composer) and I, were met by Mr. Li's driver and an assistant who spoke no English. They drove us on a modern highway, and since it was night, all I could see were tall modern buildings. It was like driving through Dallas. Then we left the highway, took some more local but still modern looking streets, and were soon at the Song Lie Hotel. There is also a SongLie compound of apartments and a rehearsal building behind the hotel. We were met by Mars, who spoke English and made us must welcome. I got a hug. Then we were taken to our quarters. Since I was with Jim on this trip they gave us a rather deluxe setup. We have a room with a bed, desk, and table--but our bathroom has a huge round water bed in the middle. And a jacuzzi.  All the walls within the bathroom are glass, from shower to toilet, so there could be such a thing as too much togetherness in my opinion. We are sleeping on the terra firma bed.

Waterbed in bathroom a problem with the frequent aroma of overwhelmed Beijing sewers.

We are behind the blue and purple stripes in the Songlei Hotel. Prison view.
The buildings behind are all part of the complex, with theatre rehearsal studio,
pool, canteen, and apartments.

By morning, I looked out our window, as best as I could. Since it is partially obscured by slats of exterior decorating and that has left the glass behind rather spattered with smoggy rain drops, I saw long thin views. Here was the Beijing of today, modern buses (rather like the ones in Manhattan) moving a steady stream of commuters from the nearby subway station. But also, people on bicycles of every description, some clearly off to the office, others were mini cabs, and some were3 wheeled and fitted with wooden trays on supports that turned them into leg powered heavy transport. A bike piled high with melons gracefully sped by. Street crossing looks dangerous, and it is! Cars, scooters, and bikes don't slow for pedestrians.

We were treated to a breakfast that was our host's best estimation of western, in our room. Two waiters placed trays of cold sunny side up eggs, glasses of hot milk, bowls of a powdery granola like substance, and a fruit platter that included tomatoes. And no utensils. Well, how would you know what was hot or cold just looking at a photo?

We were escorted around the corner to the large new SongLie musical theater workshop by the courteous Mars.It is a multi floor building with many rehearsal rooms.  This is really the first and best rehearsal space for musical theater in China! There Jim was reunited with the creative team and met the actors and new crew. I spent the first day watching the cast read through the play.His director and cowriter is Tony Stimic, tall and white haired.Tony started Musical Theater Works in New York City and he is starting a Chinese version out here. So in addition to directing and producing plays for Mr. Lei, he is launching this huge theater training and performing center being built outside of Beijing. The other cowriter is Kemin Zhang, a young Chinese man who is translating the play into Mandarin. Kemin is multi talented, he performs magic, plays piano, conducts... I got to share one of the scripts that had both chinese and english with Rosy, Kemin's little sister. Kemin and Rosie have been raised in Beijing and Toronto.

The building was only used for the musical Butterflies, but now has several productions going.
Note stair entry. My workout.

Largest musical theatre rehearsal space in Beijing. Big windows are the room we were in.

It was fun watching the cast get the humor and start to take on the characters they will be playing. THE JOKER'S GAME is a musical comedy with magic. But very much a Beijing show. Kemin has found Mandarin equivalents to some of Jim's colloquialisms and that in turn has suggested new but appropriate veins of verbal humor. That afternoon the cast did short auditions to show the range of their voices and they were invited to add any other skills they might have. We were treated to two displays of martial arts, one with a sword, the other with a stick, that were amazing! It is one thing to see it in an action movie, it is a thrill to have someone do spinning acrobatic leaps right in front of you. One plump actor danced the salsa at high speed, the comic relief guy did a funny singing scene he told us was like Lady Gaga.

First day, read through the script.

Creative team meeting.

We were treated to a formal round table luncheon at the hotel. The entire table center spun and bowls and platters of food would go by. It was all good, rather formal, I particularly liked the duck. A dessert, with cold inside and hot crispy outside was delicious.

For dinner, Kemin and Rosy treated us to a place in a nearby mall where there were 20 food stations...I started to feel overwhelmed as each station had a mock rivalry to get business. Kemin ordered some very traditional fare, we each had a rice bowl and added toppings. Bits of fish with mixed vegetables was outstanding. The subway is so clean, well marked, modern and air conditioned and  it puts the New York subway to shame. All the trains have an announcement of the stops in mandarin and English. Tight security includes scanners of bags.

Claudia, Jim, Kemin, Mark on Beijing #5 line subway, photo by Rosy.

Day 2

Learning the songs.

Rehearsals now focusing on learning the music. Jim has to write a new song. We went in search of an expat hangout THE BOOKWORM (bookstore and restaurant and at night book readings)  that was 3 trains and 55 minutes away. Unfortunately Jim didn't quite remember where it was and we didn't find it. It was hard to be without phone, translated map, or anyone to ask directions. I took a deep breath and just looked around as we finally decided to give up and head back after shopping for toothpaste, shampoo and the very necessary small packets of toilet tissue. I saw the lives people lead. Men sleeping on their now empty bike wagons in any shade they can find. Babies in open bottomed pants followed by hungry pet dogs... A middle aged man on a tiny balcony tending his one plant. Everyone seems able to sit in a squat, and since their bathrooms usually have squat toilets, I am the creaky kneed outsider. All guards are soldiers. All stores have way more staff than I am used to in the US. And, I was happy to see that the widely reported story of Beijingers  never giving up their seats to the old was not true. We saw it happen twice on our fruitless quest for the bookworm. For dinner we took Kemin and Mark out to a hot pot place across the street from the hotel. What a thing! A huge yin yang bowl of both spice and tame broth boiled like mad as we dumped in progressive trays of raw food. The fish we started with was shown to us live and swimming in agitation, whiskers whirling, in a bucket before we ate it.

Jim is going to be too busy to go exploring and I am sad our few hours yesterday didn't get us anywhere. And yet...I will start to plan trips. I want to see the art district and go to all the usual sights--forbidden palace, gardens, temples--but also the paint and brush street, and look into taking some painting lessons in traditional style.

I also need to find a good wifi connection, the hotel has ethernet but it only seems to work OK. No big files. Well it is about 6 am... day begins. Hopefully, I stop waking up at 3 am soon!

One staff member to hold stool on mattress...

So, how many Chinese does it take
to screw in a lightbulb?

Bye for now.
C

In the swing of Beijing

Well, not yet. But just got the internet guy at the hotel to fix my access so I can do more internet than only checking my email. Yay! Now, except for some sites that are unavailable, I can do web searches for maps, weather, what bongo drums looked like in the 60s, spelling and etymologies, not to mention things to do!

This city is modern and timeless side by side but the modern seems to be winning. My first two days have been rather jet lagged...I watched rehearsals of Jim's musical (and I could easily spend the entire month enjoying their creative process) but at some point I need to pull away and define my relationship to this extraordinary city and myself as a creative at whim. Jim is busy, I am now going to explore on my own...the temple of heaven and hall of abstinence are only 2 subway stops away.

What do I want to write? So much freedom. Yikes. And yet I am without language in this city. Odd.

I have some freelance work, thanks to Flash Rosenberg, and have done more thinking about the novel I want to write, thanks to a lovely lunch with Delia... maybe this city will infuse me, shift what I want to write about. I am open to the muse, please do feel free to visit me here on the other side of the world.

The Song Lie Hotel is behind the blue and purple strips. Our view is in thin inches.

Along the ring roads, many skyscrapers...CCTV tower on right.
Cabs are green and orange.

Cartoonists and a scotch with two speech balloons

Last night Flash Rosenberg invited me, and two other female friends, to attend the (largely male) monthly happy hour gathering of The National Cartoonist Society at O'Casey's bar near Grand Central Station.

I arrived early and was directed upstairs. There were two long tables. One was nearly full, with a crowd of jolly folks and the other had only two guys sitting there quietly. Assuming cartoonists were noisy, I sat at the full table. I shook hands, introduced myself, made small talk, and then someone asked me what firm I ran or worked for. Firm? Cartoonists have firms? They started to laugh deep laughs.
"We are accountants, the cartoonists must be on the other side of the room."
"Well," I said, "I am enjoying you all anyway, so I'll have a few more sips of my scotch before I join the other side. Besides, my brother is an actuary, that makes me almost related."

I made my way over to the slowly filling table of cartoonists and had the luck to sit right next to a short, sweet, funny, old man. Our patter was delightfully snappy and silly. At one point I told him I was taken and held out my ring finger, he pulled out an imaginary loop and inspected the diamond. I told him it didn't melt in the shower so the love had to be real... then I asked him what he draws.

"You mean, drew, what I drew."
"I guess I do," I replied.
"I drew Dondi, The Green Hornet, Wonder Woman, to name a few. I'm Irwin Hasen."
"WOW!" I made bowing motions. I was clearly sitting next to a flirtatious legend.
"My father loves Dondi, we always read it!" He smiled happily.

Irwin Hasen with me at the Cartoonists happy hour. Photo by Flash Rosenberg.

I also sat next to Ellen Abramowitz one of the other women Flash invited. She is the skilled, smart, and sophisticated (best dressed at any table in the joint) chairman of the board of trustees at the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art. She was brimming with good ideas, professionalism, and enthusiasm for the museum. She also tells great stories about the cartoon world, movies from cartoons, cartoonists... Cool. She knew who I was because she responded to a previous blog about my visit to their current (go see it!) show "NeoIntegrity" and had heartily agreed that the museum needs to grow in size. If comic con can fill the ENTIRE Javit's conference center, then surely, MoCCA deserves to fill a building too. One suite is just too little space for a museum. (So anybody with cash to spare, do donate.)

Ellen Abramowitz and Karen Green, photo by Flash Rosenberg

The other Flash invitee was Karen Green, both a Graphic Novels and Ancient and Medieval History and Religion Librarian at Columbia University. She, too, was fascinating to talk to. Think about how medieval manuscripts relate to graphic novel layouts. I got to ride home on the subway with her and the time flew by as she and I talked about what cartoons we devoured as we grew up, our ages being close, we went through similar stages of discovery. From daily newspaper strips to New Yorker cartoons to Edward Gorey to Crazy Cat to Archy and Mehitabel...We took a moment of silence around 86th street for the untoppable genius of Winsor McCay! Karen said (something she heard from Feiffer) "Imagine being there at the start of the golden age of cartooning and having his talent and creating Little Nemo without having to know that you would be the pinnacle that all others had to follow and could never top." Karen is great. I think all colleges should immediately contact her to come and speak to their students.

I also got to take home a truly funny new (free) newspaper full of cartoons "Coffee Talk" put together by Tony Murphy. The third strip on the front page was done by Marc Bilgrey who sat opposite me. It turns out he is also a fantasy novelist and we had both attended Lunacon a few months back and somehow I'd never heard of him or met him there. He was on the panels as a featured author and I was one of the listeners. So nice to meet someone who draws and writes fantasy. See! I'm not the only one.

I talked to so many...it was great to meet all of you...even the accountants. Thanks Flash Rosenberg for the invitation!

Going to China for a month

It is official. I even have a plane ticket and visa. A house/dog/cat/3-plants sitter has arrived fortuitously and I am clearing space in my creative (tottery piles), project filled (clutter in progress), apartment to make room for our pet caring guest.

Every night I do some Rosetta Stone for Mandarin and this reassures me that I can say "hello man" or "hello girl child" as well as the useful "yellow car" and "black cat" I am sure with this amount of language I can meet impresarios and very important persons connected with Jim's musical writing career and make my silence golden. Chances are, many of the people I meet will have at least 100 useful phrases in English and I am ashamed to say I have, as yet, none to offer back in Mandarin. But I am working on "where is the bathroom?" and "I write and draw" so they know I'm not just Jim's middle-aged arm candy on this trip.

Some friends sent me dire warnings about:

1. air pollution
Hey, I survived Los Angeles in the 60s in a neighborhood that was perfumed by a plastic doll factory. The fact that I came out of the miasma of smog without asthma proves I can survive Beijing.

2. the great firewall of China
I lived decades without Twitter, Facebook, and blogs. A month without, think of it as an analogue artistic retreat. I will draw on...paper. I will write with a...fountain pen.

3. squishing in subways
Really? And the NYC rush hour is so roomy, so spacious, I have never had body parts pressed into my flesh in anonymous sweaty cleaving. Hint, I won't take trains during rush hour.

4. cultural gaffs
You bet, I will record my every shameful mistake for humor future forward.

5. cultural recoil
I am sure the differences in how people do things will occasionally make me uncomfortable. Like spitting. Like taking cell phone calls no matter where or what you are doing. The trick is to stop thinking like an American and realize they have their own house rules. Takes practice, I'm sure. Note to self, do not pat children on their heads...

Remains of the day

I just watched The Watchmen. Didn't catch it at the movies. Wow, dark dark dark dystopia. With a glowing blue god-like man and deeply ruthless disenfranchised super heroes.

The blue guy, John, gets zen about things while he hangs out on Mars making big glass timepices, and mentions that at an atomic level, a dead body and a living body are equally complex. He has a point.

This got me thinking about all the many ways people weigh the significance of both living and dead bodies.  Religions and governments make efforts to shape the choices people make about their bodies when alive. And in death, the government has its set of rules about how the corpse must be disposed and religions enact their rituals. Both offer comfort, or at least hygiene, to the living and religion offers hopes for an afterlife. Religions embrace the soul, something that has no atomic weight but is earnestly believed in.

When my grandmother Florence died, all these choices about atoms, about souls and bodies, came into play in the pleasant, flower and photo filled parlor of the midwestern funeral home. A cousin looked around and saw no coffin. He was perplexed. He wanted to know where grandma was. My Unitarian parents brought him over to an urn sitting next to candles and framed photos of what Florence had looked like a few years ago, before cremation. A look of horror tightened his jaw and he turned pale with rage. I realized he was of the belief that the body was still needed, that at some future date Grandma, or rather Jesus, would reanimate her corpse with her soul. Converting some of her atoms to energy and removing the H2O from the rest was not his idea of appropriate. I inevitably think of zombies with this scenario but I said nothing, he said nothing. Because even when beliefs clash, good manners still rule, if you are lucky.

I, too, am used to the convention of a coffin. Something approximately the size of a single bed. It is big. It says I am full of someone you loved. An urn, it is so tiny, it is hard to think of someone fitting into something smaller than a shoebox. But over time, the long long time of eons, our remains disappear. Or rather, the atoms go back into general use. Cremation just speeds it up.

We buried the urn. And even then, there was plenty of space in that small plot. We wrote our memories on pieces of paper and buried them with her too. Memories and love can be said to have weight, as much as a brain or heart has weight, but feelings are like ghosts in the clockwork, even the blue man on Mars decided that messy life held more value than pristine mechanical lifelessness. As for the cousin, only the second coming will prove him right. But his is only one belief system.

Shameless plug for Divorce Bard's Blog

A friend of mine, who must remain nameless, has started a blog where he writes one rhymed poem a day. His self-inflicted rules: must be iambic, must be true rhyme.  Like Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of Eat, Pray Love, he is writing through the pain of his life post-divorce. Add to that he is also a father with a very touchy ex... He is becoming a more accomplished writer from the daily practice. Today's offering is particularly fine:
Genesis I:1-3. Tuesday July 27, 2010

Now Listen.  The Beginning knew no dark,
No light, and so no difference in the two.
No notion of contrasting things, no stark,
No sharply.  Impulse, verbs, to make, to do,

Could not exist.  There was no mind to know them,
The void held none, where absence could not be.
Then somehow a potential formed, to show them
To one potential Word, this only: See.

And then, a flickering.  A just potential
Of particles, where none had been before,
And time would soon begin, in exponential
Increase of things that may.  And this Word: More.

One flickering had sparked Imagination.
And More begat Desire.  And Coalesce.
Potential matter took on gravitation,
And space that would be, started to compress,

Collapsing on itself, to gather force.
Potential metamorphosed into Power,
Collecting in a single point -- the source
Of time itself.  And soon, a day, an hour,

Would come to be.  But first, Desire must peak.
That flick'ring.  Now with all the gathered matter.
Desire, now infinite, began to speak:
Let There Be Light.  And Space began to scatter.

And Time began to be.  Creation sang.
Some fourteen billion years before us.

Bang.

Chinese poetry

I am reading from one of my thick anthologies of  world poetry and flitting online as well. I do love the succinctness of the great classical Chinese poets. But...what is not coming through? I know so little of daily life a thousand or so years ago. And then, when something does touch me, I am sitting near the poet and time is the question not the barrier...


The Ching-Ting Mountain
by: Li Bai (701-762)
translated by Shigeyoshi Obata

Flocks of birds have flown high and away;
A solitary drift of cloud, too, has gone, wandering on.
And I sit alone with the Ching-ting Peak, towering beyond.
We never grow tired of each other, the mountain and I.

Bumble & bumble and hair tumbles...

My friend Flash has treated me to a new concept of self through a haircut at the trendy, delightful, multi-floor loft/salon of Bumble & bumble on far west 13th street in Manhattan. Before meeting Andrew, Flash and I drank gratis fizzy bottled water while overlooking the Hudson River and most of Manhattan's skyline in their airy boutique/cafe. I had grown out my hair and it was a fuzzy topiary. Having had no time to get home and change into my (one) chic casual outfit, I arrived in salt stained tee shirt and jeans, straight from the beach. I also had my recent self inflicted dye job, which I'd left on a tad too long, turning my brown with gray to black. This I regretted, but c'est la vie.

Pre-haircut portrait by Flash Rosenberg

Andrew's Bumble & bumble haircut, photo by Flash Rosenberg.

"Andrew, Claudia is a cool, mischievous, fun artist--poet, please give her a haircut to match. Right now she has a Long Island matron helmet do, this must change." Flash placed some images she had pulled from the web on the counter. Andrew glanced and nodded. Short, asymmetric, wispy bangs, but with some loft to the top in a spiky way.

"Yes, that's what I had in mind as soon as I saw her!" he said to Flash. His own short curly hair gave me confidence, it was natural, appealing. Not to mention Flash's own fantastic look: dramatic, feminine, quirky and in harmony with her features.

He cut my damp curls with a razor and half moons of black fell to the polished concrete floor. My head felt lighter and lighter, a balloon on a string.

Then I put on my glasses saw it was very short and different than any cut I've ever had. Andrew showed me how to tousle it with their magic cream and pull up artful bedroom hair tufts. I now had an Annette Benning style short do. And the hair fit my funky French glasses. Now all I need to do is find some fun, off-kilter, artsy used clothing! I think I will go with daughters to the nearby thrift stores, for the same price as shopping at Target, I can find things that feel in harmony with me, not just with my budget.

Next we celebrated with a half carafe of wine and a plate of sardines at nearby Pastis (self-described as a French bistro located in Manhattan's meatpacking district). We sat outdoors in the shade of the building and watched most of trendy young New York wobble by on the cobblestones. Best people watching spot in the city!

How wonderful. Here's to kind and kindred spirits, here's to my friend Flash. With love and thanks for this new do. And the thing to do with generosity is...pass it on.

Ocean Grove in summer

My Aunt Sonya has invited us out for a couple of days to her lovely home on the Jersey Shore. The entire town of Ocean Grove has a quaintness code that is enforced seriously. It is a shock of Victorianna. The wooden houses stand cheek to cheek, displaying their lacy fretwork and fancy porch rails, chintz curtains like drooping eyelids, and exteriors tarted up in the 15 approved colors. I could also draw them as a flock of creaking wedding cakes admiring their reflections in a briny mirror.

Did you know that "chintz" is a word adapted from Hindi meaning “spotted”? Calico cloth was stained or painted in India sold to Europeans, starting in 1600s, and became the general name of floral patterned fabric. The word chintz seems to call forth the word cosy and that immediately suggests this town would make a great background for a whodunit mystery.

As we walked in the almost warm surf, I noticed how white everyone is. The town's summer population is swelled by visiting church folk who fill the giant tabernacle and eat lots of ice cream. They are friendly and say hello as we stroll past their tent cabins. There is a 10 year waiting list to rent one of these tents. They are passed down through families... I feel like an anthropologist in a unique cultural niche. There are also locals who have the look of year round hardscrabble lives. Older men and woman with tans, tats--their bodies and smiles noticeably unsymmetrical, and attitudes that suggest, however dry the town is, they are not.

So what am I to the Methodists or locals here? How do they see us? With no doubt we look like Methodists (white, middle aged, wearing fresh tee shirts and displaying no body art) but if one were to listen, we talk a load of writer's nonsense peppered with pungent unchurchy phrases. Of course, there is the third population in the town, people like my aunt. Comfortably funded types who buy or rent homes here, some of them Jewish, others gay, all artsy, smart, and in love with decor... and then there are the shopkeepers, craftspeople, and people that fix and restore wood and pipes.

If I were giving a writing prompt I'd ask for a description of a herring seagull by each of the four groups: tent camp Methodist child, one armed pony tailed man who does small jobs, the elderly homeowner who is determined to recreate her house into a prize worthy magazine feature, and the waitress on break from a lunch spot that uses bad puns to name its specials.

I noticed the young gulls with tan and gray spots eyeing me intelligently from small dunes. They molt into birds with white heads, gray wings, and a bright red spot on their lower bill. Some of the young ones were exactly in between, as if I had merged two photos. All of them waddle on sand and hover in the air. Where, exactly, is the poetry in that? I guess as a tourist, the poet in me has gone on vacation.

Unexpected Waterfalls

Today I met a new friend, Valeria,  in a cafe I've never been to before, Society Coffee Lounge at 2104 Frederick Douglass Blvd. at 114th St. We had a lovely talk about writing and how to reshape pieces of life into fiction. We enjoyed the coffee, crab cakes, grits, and each others company. She has had a fascinating life growing up in Russia!

As I walked back, I decided to try a new route on 113th through Morningside Park. The view was lovely, cathedral and trees forming a scrim behind Harlem's rooftops. Now as odd as this sounds, I have never ever walked this particular path before. Not in all the years I've lived in this neighborhood. I've walked north along the top of the hill on the Columbia University side (looking down into the valley of the park), walked the south side on my way to the much larger Central Park, but simply never entered it going west at 113th street. Following a man leading two large dogs onto a green lawn near a baseball field, I discovered a tall (for a city) waterfall rippling into a pond near a flight of stone steps. I walked up 18 flights of stairs through dappled leaf and earth scented shade. Soon there was no view behind or above me, just green and green and I felt like I'd reached the heart of summer. I was magically alone in this huge city. Butterflies bobbed, a few wildflowers shook their heads, and even the occasional dented cola can seemed like a glint of treasure.

I thought about friendships new and old. Today is my friend Deborah Atherton's birthday. The days feel lighter with friends, the heart fuller. Happy birthday Deborah. And to Valeria too, who had a birthday last month before we had gotten to know each other. Known paths and new ones, all welcome.

The Monkey King visits our apartment

Since Jim and I will be visiting China in the somewhat near future, I decided a spot of education would be advisable. Since I have mastered "good day" and "thank you," or at least say them in a way that suggests I am trying, I decided to tackle culture next.  Off to the library!  I am now reading a condensed version, told for children, of The Monkey King. What a great series of trickster tales! Here is where Curious George is just a weak imitation. King Kong a humorless expansion. And George W. Bush an unwitting example. Naturally, I am aware that I have a bit more to learn about China's uber-mega-vast history and culture, but there is no better place to start than where a child starts.

Next, poetry... suggestions wanted for which poets to read in translation!

Marilyn Stimac, producer and wife of Tony Stimac, told me the spouses, of people on work visa's in China, need to make a life for themselves while they are there. You can't be a tourist forever. Some of them play cards, others visit for afternoon teas--very 1950s diplomatic wife stuff--but there is much more than that if you look for it. Even though you can't work there, join groups with interests that fit well with yours. And keep meeting new people, the visas run out...everyone moves on. Except, of course, for the 1.3 billion Chinese whom I look forward to meeting as well.

Poets House reading

I am lucky to have poet friends who write delightfully well. Maybe, and I admit this is a prejudice, I cannot be a supportive fan of dreck. For instance, when Jim and I met for a first date we both brought examples of our writing, no point in pursing a kiss if the prose was a miss. Or in our cases, poetry and lyrics...

Last night I attended one of the readings held in honor of the annual show of poetry books published in the previous year and, er, donated to the library at Poets House. Included in the line-up of readers was my friend Estha Weiner, who is finally having multiple books and chapbooks published after too long a wait. She is a delight as a teacher, writer and reader (her other life was as an actress). Baron Wormser said of her book, Transfiguration Begins at Home, "a blend of Beckett and Dorothy Parker." Most true. You can buy it here.

I looked around the somewhat too small room for readings and enjoyed the array of 2009 books on the shelves. Happily several of my cover designs were presented face out. I designed many of the Marsh Hawk Press books as well as the cover for Gardner McFall's Russian Tortoise. Missing was Benu Press because they are new and most likely just didn't know about contributing to this annual show. I will make sure next year's poetry books are submitted.

Spoke with Martin Mitchell, Sarah White, Rachel Hadas (told her I'd just finished my first kid's novel!), Jeanne Marie Beaumont, and other friends of poetry and Estha at the reception. 

The new lower Manhattan space for Poets House is lovely, despite the too smallness of the performance room on the ground floor. I adore the long reading gallery upstairs with its ample chairs, tables, and couches, and above all the astounding glass wall views of the harbor with light that bounces off the Hudson River and the ribbon of comforting green public space that now frames so much of this island. But...change is hard. I miss the cosy lived-in feel of the SoHo loft. Maybe I miss the location, it was easier to drop in after work, free lectures (at Noble Desktop), Alimentum readings at the Housing Works cafe, and museums such as MoCCA which were so close by...

But in time, the new becomes lived in, gains a personality that comes from being occupied by the passions of it's tenants and tenents.

A Happy Birthday to Elof Carlson

We should all wish my father a very happy birthday. Since he measures his time in chapters, let us wish him a shelf/hard drive full of books before his next birthday. Which he will write without breaking a sweat. You think I exaggerate? His prodigious talent and copious productivity with sentences and ideas makes Pepys look like a mealy mouthed jotter and Dickens only a half-hearted wordsmith. No, really. He writes a chapter a day, with footnotes, and a book a month. Half the books are hard science history, the other half delve into the messy intersection of society, ethics, and science and then just because he can, he writes the occasional novel, libretto, poem, limerick, or play. Oh, I forgot the reviews and essays, blog, and articles. Ah, also his lengthy daily journaling. Apparently he sleeps a hearty 3-4 hours a night and pauses to eat, read, write letters, watch the news, nod happily at his wife, and read this blog.

This lucky man has a press that adores him and publishes nearly a book a year. And this third career came after two most successful careers: first as a research scientist (genetics, drosophila) and then as an award-winning teacher at universities both on land and sea. He also attends conferences and gives talks.

I will admit that his productivity can be a bit daunting...I am sure my siblings would agree. Here we struggle to complete a project that can take us months or years and Dad will be nicely encouraging and then ruin it by saying "oh well, they didn't want that last book I wrote on agent orange, that's sad...but...I'll just write another book this month." Are you secretly thinking, how good could this spewing font of words be? A veritable Vesuvius of vapid patter?  Can a man that makes the spouting oil leak look like a thin drizzle of spit actually write well? Sadly, yes, he gets good reviews and has been nominated for things like the pulitzer...

So happy birthday Dr. Elof Axel Carlson, Ph.D. as the man who ought to have his photo in the dictionary next to both productivity and professor, absent-minded! To all the books of you! And also, for being my dad, with all my love.

(And for all the former students...say hi to him on facebook!)

When the comics go to the museum

Last night Caitlin and I joined Flash Rosenberg at an opening of the NeoIntegrity show at MoCCA (Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art) at 594 Broadway. From Hogarth to video, it filled every wall, column, and baseboard and left nary an inch between each item. While this made the show feel somewhat like walking into a manic double page spread of a superhero smack down, for this particular viewer it lead to dizziness and the occasional padded chair helped me recover.

I loved seeing original art, complete with pencil ghost lines and the crunch of pen over paper for Maurice Sendak and Edward Koren, "Seuss" drawings in pencil, Roz Chast water coloring photocopies of the original drawings (as Flash does), Allison Bechdel's ink line, and so so much more... Also a fun show of R. Sikoryak's process for adapting classics into comics.

I met lovely staff, curators, a fascinating woman who studies graphic novels and medieval manuscripts, and a man who paints covers for The New Yorker.

I do hope the "museum" gets to grow from a suite to a building with abundant galleries. Imagine the rooms devoted to Batman, Will Eisner, Posy Simmonds, William Blake, Charles Addams, Disney, 8-page "bibles"(of which I could contribute a few of my uncle's collection), Jules Feiffer, our own Flash Rosenberg... but please with more space, a bit more room around each piece of art.

Great show, go!

(Inspires me to think of how I'm going to create my graphic novel...hmmm...)

A very busy day

While it was delightful to visit the worlds of musical theatre, I came home to find a great many jobs needed to be finished or started.

I finished a new teaser chapter (to lead into the next book) for the novel for the toy manufacturer. Plus a synopsis. This means I am done! There will hopefully only be small corrections. Off it goes...

I finished designing a book for Norman Finkelstein, The Ghost Factory. It is a satisfying read, full of the machines people devise both with hands and heads.

I made much needed updates to Jeanne Marie Beaumont's website. She has a new book coming out, The Burning of the Three Fires, and I highly recommend reading ANYTHING she writes. Seriously, she is one of the most brilliant poets I know.

I billed two jobs.

I looked over the manuscript for my next poetry book and concluded it is not ready for print, it needs a LOT of work and must be stewed accordingly in my brain. So I let my editor know it won't be part of next year's line up...

I listened to a CD Jeffrey Stock gave to me and Jim of his work (musical director for Jim's staged reading) and I smiled, sighed, and tapped my feet and wrote to tell him he is an absolutely wonderful composer, really really good, but that I am an idiot when it comes to opera and could not comment on those pieces. (I keep seeing Bugs Bunny singing, I know, I know, I'm a cretin. Ignorant, that's it, I'm iggggggorant.) One of these days I plan to learn to speak opera.

I've been invited to write something for my favorite magazine.

I need to write explanatory notes (in the back of an anthology) about a poem of mine.

All my other clients had left small notes indicating some attention on my part, for their projects, would be much appreciated. A few applied spurs. I concur. Tomorrow I will finish designing another book for Benu Press.

I ate dinner with my family and enjoyed each of their flavors including the food Jim made. I hugged Natalie for a long good hug. I thought about the lovely long walk and Guggenheim museum trip with Caitlin yesterday and the work of two artists (Julie Mehretu and Sarah Anne Johnson's Tree Planting) I loved who I had never seen before. Then we watched part of The Music Man on an old VCR with drifting attention... And now...I'll...yawn...sleep...

The last chair folded and the magic leaves the stage

Unlike Jim, I didn't suffer preshow nerves...in Jim it manifested as a sudden inability to figure out where he was. His mind was so full of lyrics and scene changes that when he transferred trains, in Times Square, he was momentarily lost despite this being a route he ordinarily follows unthinkingly. He spun like a human top. I walked by his side and he looked around for me...we could call this Absent-minded Situational Syndrome (A.S.S.) but my preshow (poetry reading) nerves involve urgent needs to pee even when I don't need to go, so let's not name mine.

Once there, I placed the playbills on the seats, and listened to the final rehearsals. All too soon the doors opened and the audience of family and friends took their seats.

As I watched all the actors, who gave so generously of their time and talents, I was reminded of why people do live theatre. It is exciting to develop something new and work as a team. When I was a girl I used to make up plays and games with neighborhood kids, we had fun, and every one of our efforts ended in us laughing in a huge pile on my lawn or bedroom carpet. Play is the right word for all of it.

The staged reading was rough, with so little rehearsal, but the flavor of the play came through. People laughed and applauded, asked good questions at the end, and the script's wants and excesses were made clearer to the creative team. We folded up the folding chairs and stacked the plastic ones and the theatre cleared of actors and audience.

Then some of us joined my daughters and ate Indian food on East 6th Street. I got to know Kemin's mother and sister and Jim got to talk to Jeffrey and I met a film maker friend of Kemin's that has a documentary on fashion models coming out in the Fall. Jeffrey described learning how to carve wooden masks in Bali, using hands and feet.

What a week it has been. I loved it.

Who knew a lyricist could be called upon to fix a music stand with gaffer's tape?

Creative team post reading.

Kemin's sister, Jim, Kemin, Jeffrey, Kemin's mom.

How is a rehearsal like a shaggy dog story?

Yesterday, the last day of rehearsals of The Joker's Game, was a classic "stumble through" with frequent stops for cuts, changes, and new cues. It reminded me of a shaggy dog story, the actors being the narrative, and the creative crew frequently stopping them for edits, comments, and deletions; with the goal of turning it into something faster and sharper. Ba-da-bing!

Fun was watching most of the cast hear the "Hot Hot Girls" numbers for the first time, they, like me, enjoyed it with nods and grins. Big number songs sent good little chills up my spine. The ballads are also sounding great... I really appreciate how much work it is to learn a musical in 4 days! The staged reading will only be an approximation of what the final show will be like, but with such professionals involved, they sound like they have worked together for far longer. The actors ask smart questions too.

Tony had only three hours to get through the whole script. He knew that the concerns of the music people and the word people all had to take second place to the time constraints and the reality that the rehearsals must end in a few hours. Equity rules. This is what a director does, sees the big picture. "Let this or that go," he would say, "we haven't time, let's do it more simply for the reading..." And then he would suggest ways the actors could make their moments more powerful.

I finished the playbill and sketched the creative crew (got autographs) and photographed the non-equity folks. I was exhausted when I got home. All that creative energy is both addicting and tiring. In a good way.

Best of all, both daughters are home and will be able to come to the reading.

Program notes

At rehearsal yesterday I didn't get a chance to sketch...I created the program for the staged reading. But instead of Jeffrey Stock's calm back (music director) I had bouncy Mark Allen (composer) leading the "Hot Hot Girls" in their series of show-stopping, toe-tapping numbers. Mark would play, then leap up, jump back, watch them, chime in with a few notes on the piano to maintain key and sometimes our eyes would meet and he could see that I couldn't stop grinning, just as he was.

When the show goes to Beijing, I am sure this hip-hop quartet will be played by a well-matched young cute girl band Chinese dancer/singers, but for this staged reading there is an utterly delicious mix of women of all colors. Some of the actors had never imagined they would be singing hip-hop style songs for a Broadway style show. They're really getting into it! Hooray! When Jim and Tony came to listen they were happy. Jim has that cowboy habit of minimal facial expression but even he looked  gobsmacked.

I have never designed a playbill before. Jim loaned me an Into the Woods (older) playbill and I still had my Shakespeare in the Park Merchant of Venice (Pachino! Yes he was great!!) in my purse. I couldn't identify the blocky thick-thin font used for the heads but it was close to Poster Bodoni, so I used that. I eyeballed the thick and thin line that goes on top of heads and figured that Times Roman for the text would be just fine. I added a hint of playing cards to the title page... And, la voila, it was done. I know  volunteering to do something I am good at is always better than trying to help where I am helpless. The director's wife, Marilyn Stimac (also a producer) gave me the copy and I used Jim's script to fill in the scene and musical number list. Marilyn said it would have taken her far far longer to do it. But of course, I'm a book designer using professional layout programs (inDesign) so yes, goes faster than  adding endless spaces and paragraph returns to place things in a simpler text program. Here is the unproofed title page...

Why I am the audience and the Director is both

Yesterday at rehearsal I sat and wrote a synopsis of a book I have written about a toy. This is my top secret hush hush but very exciting job I'm doing for a toy manufacturer... the rehearsal became a lovely hum of voices and pianos in two rooms as I was writing.

When I was finished, I put away my notepad and took out my watercolors. I painted and sketched as I listened and watched the actors master the music and expression in their songs as the music director pointed out places to adjust their rhythms.

I was so delighted. Loved the way the two singers acted the lyrics in a song about love of brand merchandise. Perfect, I thought, Jim's words much better sung than read on a flat page.

Then Tony Stimac, the director, came in. He is a tall, energetic silver haired man with sharp blue eyes. He listened. Then he urged the actors to throw themselves into the lust and get breathless with desire for the goods they are coveting. Slow down here, close your eyes, give it more emphasis here, then let it soar orgasmically... think of the scene in When Harry Met Sally... when the performers sang it again, the song was much better. Funnier, stronger, and the meaning crisp. I understood that Jim's words were like a blueprint and held more than I'd realized. This is directing.

Jeffrey Stock, music director and (not painted ) two of the leads Lannyl Stephens (looking on) and Matthew Schatz. Tomorrow I may go to the other rehearsal room and paint the composer at work with the "Hot Hot Girls" and their hip-hop songs.