Okay so I like wordplay on titles, and yes Deep Space Nine was/is my favorite in the Star Trek series. It is apropos - the development of that series was as much an exploration of the inner space of the characters, even to the supremely metaphysical Prophets, as it was about exploration of outer space in the Gamma quadrant.

I have been going on Wednesday nights to the singer/songwriter open mike evenings at 4W5. I can’t go to blues night on Thursdays, and for whatever reason I have yet to feel a need for bluegrass on Tuesdays. Polly and I have been chatting and she is determined to have 4w5 to become a networking place for artists of all kinds.
I stopped by on the Art Loop night last Friday, and there was some event that had been planned well in advance to coincide with our “second friday” Art Loop activiites. Somehow the doyenne at the Arts Council who oversees the PR and publication of Loop events “forgot” to include 4W5 activities in the September itenerary. When this was brought to her attention, Polly reports that she tried to justify it by lamely making some remarks about 4W5 being “in the dead zone after all”.

It is all I can do to de-activate my CYNICISM about doyennes in the arts in Wilmington, Delaware - “The Place to Be Somebody” [ our city's slogan ] Well, I can understand how developing a thriving center at the grassroots does not fit into the old mode of the aristorcrats who patronize the arts. In the former, the artists themselves are empowered. In the latter, the power is in the patrones - and if you don’t compliment Queen Marie Antoinette’s voice sufficiently - you may find yourself on the outs completely.

It was an interesting collection of singer-songwriters tonite. Ranging from some who actually are more tonally challenged than I myself, to a few kickass writers and performers. All told there was a very modest crowd of about 12-15 folks. The 12 were the performers who took turns according to “rules” I couldn’t easily discern, and three of us who were there to be an audience. I had a chat with a few of the strongest players when they were not on stage in the outer cafe. When asked if I sang I answered immediately “No. ” and then I said “yes” and then I had to explain.

I found the environment to be one where it is so much easier to find my way in to my own deep space. The absolute bliss of the Creative Pulse experience is that it is a context that one gets to almost live in their deep creative space constantly for weeks at a time. This is one of the aspects of the ‘crash” of re-entry into normal mundane living space after the residence work of the Pulse has ended for the summer. Working at 4w5 even though it might have seemed that I was oblivious to all the singing going on, it was such a great place to just think. I started on finalizing my personal calling card, and ended up filling page after page after page in my sketchbook. It was nice to realize that the level of thinking I had touched in Missoula could be regained on my own, somewhere else.

Polly and I have known each other for several years now since the time my Dinosaur was in front of the Grand Opera House. At the time I never knew how participating in that public art project would help in gaining entree into the arts world beyond the ballet blacklist. If all it did was gain me the friendship of Polly it was worth it. She is such a huge booster of the artists she has come to know personally, and a fervent networker. I have been invited to join a new drum circle that begins on Monday, September 20. Holy cow- who woulda thought that I would be using my drumming apprenticeship so soon and so directly? And Polly is enthusiastic about getting me into an informal group of Wilmington women’s artists who have regular potluck meetings.

I am appreciative on such a profound level, that the usual giddy elation at extreme good fortune has seemed to pass me by. However, I am trying not to over anticipate either of these activities so that I can go and see and feel them for what they are, not what I might so deeeply want them to be.