Monday Morning Musings

Enjoying my first cuppa this morning with the windows open, the sounds of songbirds.  One in particular keeps coming to a pile of natural plant detritus, picking up bits and zipping off to build a nest.

Lizards skitter across the patio, pausing to to do pushups and then rushing to the next pause.  A candle I bought at the Armadilla Works in Prescott is teasing my senses with swirls of orange and green and scents of citrus and mint.  My body creaks and I will workout soon to loosen up all the cranky bits and get the blood moving.  The air feels, even from inside, cool and crisp.  My kind of day.  Gratitude wells and I find myself saying thank you to a presence I doubt exists, but I was taught to be polite.

Last Monday, the day after a ten month journey of bringing a theatre project to fruition, I promised myself a week of sloughing off--scraping off the dead skin of months of working on two major projects, emptying the mind of 'should haves' and 'oh dear I forgots', preparing the soil of my creative self for new cultivation.  Well that promise lasted about two hours on last Monday and before I knew it,  I was tearing down the website and updating it, writing universities for their assistance in my next endeavor, writing press releases that won't be used for 6 months at least, and posting on The Artist's Path blog.  I did at least wait a full week to post on this blog, she writes, patting herself on the back with a phantom third hand.

A friend from grad school days showed up out of the blue to rescue me on Tuesday and we went off to Sedona to take in the beauty of nature run riot, good food, good conversation, and the magic of blue skies, red  rocks and rushing waters. 

Taxes are still due for Path and two grant reports, several financial reports I've promised the board and of course the ever present specter of now empty coffers and the necessity of filling them to produce Path 2013.  

Yesterday on the way down to see Road to Mecca  

at the The Theatre Artists Studio, I asked my companion if she would like to join me in robbing a bank to fund our respective theatre projects--we could split the take.  She said she was too busy and then I remembered a bank president friend of mine pointed out that I would be terribly disappointed at what I'd find in most vaults.  Bummer.  Back to the drawing board.

Need inspiration and it often comes with a walk in the woods.  So folks off to riparian area of Watson Woods here in Prescott, AZ to seek wisdom at the foot of a cottonwood.  Until  next time...

Come in Out of the Cold and Celebrate the Arts

I’m not a cold natured individual, but I do have my limits.  Yesterday I did something I haven’t done in a long while.  I auditioned for a play going up this summer, Fred & Mary, An Unconventional Romance by Micki Shelton (Visit www.ElksOperaHouseFoundation.org.).  Shivering in the 58-60 degree, dark Pueblo

 of the Smoki Museum in Prescott (Do visit this wonderful museum), I handed over my headshot (printed hastily on my home printer from picture taken in 2006), resume, and performed my two contrasting contemporary pieces.  All so familiar and yet not.  

For so many years I’ve initiated my own opportunities for creating art through theater, auditioning myself or being asked to do a project.  It was…well…it was fun to be required to go through these old, familiar routines, to see old friends, meet new members of our growing theater community.  I even wrote my own pieces, moving well outside my comfort zone, but relishing the challenge of venturing into the writing side of theatre.

Prescott, for all its small town community feel and often conservative outlook, has a growing arts world that continually expands in sheer numbers, quality, variety, and willingness to move outside its own comfort zone.  It’s a slow process that began over a hundred years ago when locals created theatre on the grounds of Ft. Whipple and made music on Whiskey Row and in their homes.

On March 10^th for the second year, under the founding and creative direction of Andrew Johnson-Schmit, our artists of all stripes will come together at the Elks Opera House and celebrate the arts through the Second Annual Buckey Awards For Excellence in the Arts. It’s a time to honor those who’ve been laboring in the fields for decades, those who arrived a short time ago adding their efforts to the creative cauldron and everyone in between.

Even if you do not define yourself as an artist, come meet all those who are either lauded or labor in obscurity, but who understand the value of just showing up for fellow artists.  Come in out of the cold of a Saturday evening in March into the warmth of the Elks Opera House.     Tickets on sale at www.ElksOperaHouse.com,  box office open Tues-Fri, 10 to 2 or call 928 777 1370 .

Gail Mangham,  Founder & Artistic Director of The Artist’s Path, wwwTheArtistsPath.org   

Second Annual Artist's Path Festival, Love Makes the World Go Round, April 14, 15, 21, 22 at 'Tis Arts Center in Prescott 

Coming Down from the 107th

Going through that adrenalin crash after a long project is finally put to bed.  I had planned to take to the road, a place where my mind often stills long enough for interesting ideas to bubble up.  But I fear my body is desperate for rest, so I am curled up with hot tea, vitamin C etc. warding off a threatening cold.

Huge, dense petaled red roses rise out of clear glass vase, opening more and more with each passing day, giving up the secrets of their unfolding depths.  Such miracles are flowers.  A Valentine's gift from my husband.

Central Arizona is so beautiful; yet I just spent some moments surfing the web for beautiful gardens where green is the predominate color and not beige, feeling the humid air, the rich smell of dark earth, the buzz of insects, all in my imagination of course.  How tiring rain can become when it becomes that unwelcome visitor who keeps popping by  unannounced.  Yet here in the Central Highlands of Arizona, we are more apt to run out and glory in the occasional shower.  That was true in the United Arab Emirates as well, indeed even more so.  I don't want to live in a humid climate, but sometimes I long for an hour or so where the earth is so fecund that you can almost hear the plants growing, see them pushing up and out.  I know the sweat would trickle down my back, break out on my forehead, run in rivulets between my breasts, but just for a bit to know that wet world again where the scents of rain and dark soil and flowers wrap themselves around you like creeping tendrils of ivy until you know, really know, you are not apart from but part of all of this.

Just following my meandering thoughts, but time to move from contemplation to a bit of action...but only a bit.  R & R time for me...