March 14th, 2012.

I’m thinking about demographics and the beauty of diversity.  I’m often a believer that if we can communicate with people sans our labels, become friends, show how similar we are and THEN introduce those labels (whether they be Catholic, Gay, Male, Female, Black, White) that a lot of our issues would melt away… I’d babbled optimistically about how the anonymity of the internet would help bring us all together.

Whoops.  It just allows us to solely search under our labels and pretend that our labels are the only ones out there, get news with nothing but our label on it and get the opinions of OUR label about OTHER labels without ever having to be encountered or consulted.

Whatever… and then I hosted the Java Mammas open mic.  I was so pleased that that room was filled every week with Jews and Muslims and blacks and whites and gay kids and straight kids and the guy with the Confederate flag on his truck STILL came and had a good time – all sorts of music – it was such a fantastic mixer on the edge of an area that’s hailed as one of the most racist in the nation.  I’m sad to have seen that vanish, in addition to the wonder of the music and the community, I felt like I was doing something really, really positive.  That was reaffirmed by the kids themselves, and even parents who’d contact me and praise what we’d inspired in their children.  Six Mile never had that diversity, but still had a delicious optimism through its short-Lived existence. 

It’s strange running an open mic that’s an older demographic.  It’s a great meeting space, and people are meeting musical partners and trading their art and teaching within the pool – the talent is hot and the food’s good – but there’s something missing at its soul for me… it has vast musical diversity but doesn’t feel like it has the racial and mindset diversity that my younger open mics had and I certainly don’t feel like I’m making a difference to anyone there.

We’re headed mostly to the Triangle area of North Carolina for two coffeehouse shows and an open mic feature over the course of eight days.  We’ll probably spend the rest of the days playing open mics and fishing around, rebuilding connections and meeting new people.  I guess it’s been about three years since we’ve been down here and I’m horribly aware of the feeling of starting all over again, building from scratch.  It’s kind of a nasty surprise.

I feel like I want to have a teen night or something.  A friend of mine who’s encouraged me to get involved with the Takoma Park Folk Festival has been talking a lot about younger artists in the area, and it’s that conversation that got my brain working about who I was and was NOT seeing at the TPOM – and the lack of younger performers (I don’t mean pre-teens – but teen to twenties) is sort of glaringly obvious.  Is that the product of occupying the timeslot that’s normally occupied by last-minute homework?  Is that just demographic?  I think I need to find out about the local high schools and seehow to advertise to them…

Ha – not that I’ve got space for more people.

Last night my mom took Kristen and I to see Spamalot in Washington DC.  T’was a great night and a fabulous show.  The woman who played the Lady of the Lake (Brittany Woodrow) really stole the show with just a marvelous performance, incredible attitude and a stunning voice.  She did hit some weird notes here and there, but she simply SHONE.

I must admit I was expecting to see sort of a rehash of Monty Python’s Holy Grail and I was worried that I’d be frankly bored by it – but though most of it was pretty familiar (and DID smack just a touch of watching the movie sans sets and special effects and the Circus) the new material was absolutely wonderful, pushing the envelopes a little bit further, and really making great use of the medium of a Broadway (well, in DC) musical.  The singing and dancing was fabulous, the sets were fun and everything SPARKLED.  I Loved reimagining Camelot into a Vegas style casino and the revelation about what was imperative to make a Broadway musical was probably the funniest thing I’ve seen in a long time.

It IS interesting to be reminded what genius Monty Python is though – it’s interesting to see that the 90s / early 2000s cultural references seemed jarringly dated, much more so than the original jokes from the 70s (With the only possible exception being the HAY gag.  Yay hay.)..  Maybe that’s just the difference betwixt the movie script and the aesthetic of a stage show – but Prince and Brittany Spears references seemed out of place and it seems a shame that those aren’t being kept up-to-date in some way.  The audience chuckled – but I’ve got to rewatch the movie and see if they cut anything that seems so very temporally specific.

Yay Monty Python!  Yay seeing Circus animations on stage show scale!  Yay Terry Gilliam! And thank you mom!