It's A Fresh Spring, So Let's Sing

My best buddies have a show coming up on March 2 at the Goodfoot in Portland. For the uninitiated, Wednesdays are actually a great night to go out! Gets you all primed and ready for the weekend, or something. It's going to be an awesome show: Just People plus DJ DV8 (usually plays with Marv Ellis) playing their first show in Portland since Masquerade Ball. They had a great California tour, which you can read about on their blog here (written by front man Scott Gilmore and creative director and guitarist Ian Ridgeway). I love this shot from their recent shoot with Leah Verwey. (Her latest project is really cool: called Spacepdx, she photographs Portland people and the spaces they work in. Her work is seriously awesome, and perfectly Portland--creative and feels so new.)

Calligraphy

Today I'm all cozied up with my cat (he's thankfully home, fever-free from the animal hospital--quite a scare this week!) and my Ink & Peat moss and mint candle (thank you sisters), watching a fresh dusting of snow fall while I write. (View from my window, below.) I've been writing forever, and I've always loved it. When I was 6 I started a "chapter book" about a talking Christmas tree and her family. I would lovingly rewrite the chapters I thought were the best, changing bits here and there until I truly believed my childish prose was a masterpiece. I'm from a family of writers, so it all feels very right and natural--even if, like many writers, I suffer an occasional bout of self doubt (or more often, agony). Of course my Grandma Anita readily encouraged my desire to find my voice through writing. She was an excellent story teller.

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This morning I couldn't locate this poem in any of my grandma's books, so my dad recited it while he flipped through looking for it. I thought that was pretty special. The sun is starting to come out and the snow is slowing slightly. I love that soft, muffled sound the snow makes when it falls.

Calligraphy

The snow has come again.

I cannot sweep the porch

for printed on the white

I find small tracings

of a hopping bird. Erase

such elfin artistry? Not I.

Could you? Or you?

-Anita Hamm

Murder Mystery



It's not every Saturday night that one finds herself transported to the 1920's and in a grand old hotel amidst a scandal. The night was full of murder and intrigue...all that scheming and speculating and gossiping... For my part, it wasn't long before I discovered that my character was doomed! As fate had it, I wasn't to get the part in my fabulous Hollywood film like I thought I might. At least I didn't suffer the untimely death Mister Nemetz did...

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You know by now how much we like to play dress up! Photos by Tyler Gould, organized by Jillian Rabe and Natasha Vieira. From top: Ryan Johnstone, Megan Rabe, Joe Aimonetti, Ani Larson, Scott Gilmore, Nick Sontag and Luke Sontag.

Judge A Moth By The Beauty Of Its Candle

Sure, much can be discovered through solitude. But what about the absolute divinity of most precious friendships? If your friendships are anything as wonderful as mine, I'd work hard to keep them fresh and healthy. Here, a dearest and bestest friend of mine Scott playing out in the Black Rock desert. You can bet our friendship is made of being awake, late and loud into the night.

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The Waterwheel 

Stay together, friends.

Don't scatter and sleep.

Our friendship is made

of being awake.

The waterwheel accepts water

and turns and gives it away,

weeping.

That way it stays in the garden,

whereas another roundness rolls

through a dry riverbed looking

for what it thinks it wants.

Stay here, quivering with each moment

like a drop of mercury.

-Rumi

The Beauty Of Solitude

My grandmother, lover of words and beauty, created a world of fulfillment through her artistry and imagination. Very early she discovered no one else was going to sweep her off her feet provide her magical fantasy, so she set about doing it herself. That world she let her granddaughters in, to witness and create along side her. The art, the poetry, the music, the natural world, the make believe...it was all a part of the message: you can create it! Don't you wait for anyone to create it for you.

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The first poem is perhaps a moment of regret. But more likely it is a brief departure from fantasy, a meditation on reality. I can't see the purpose of posting this poem without the next, found side by side in the collection of poems "Between Raindrops" (book published 1985). If the first is the glimpse of her post-World War II reality, the second is only the beginning of what she knew was possible.
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 Above photo shot in the Ford Building with Ben Piago last spring. Model Hannah Gale. Make up by me. Sahlia Michelle Jewlery. Lizard Lounge shoes, tank and shirt. Model's own jeans.

Blue Rain

Where are you
this four o'clock afternoon
when the rain is falling
in great sheets?
where are you
when I'm crouched
in a wool coverlet
of rejection,
alone?
Are you
also in a cave
taking your ease
in dim lit cacophony?

My music,
my flowers,
my books
do not interest you
I will stir
my solitary cup of "instant"
and pretend
I'm hosting another lover

of rain.

-Anita Hamm

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A Coming Together

Today we made poetry
which is something
like making love.

A high bright fire
sings in the blood.
touching off radiance

Small rainbows
glance
off words.

Small arcs are struck
from our thoughts
as we make a weld

fragile
but enduring.

-Anita Hamm

Shy-Town Saturday

Working on a couple websites, one of them mine. If you haven't heard Gorillaz album The Fall, written and recorded on the road during their most recent tour (all on the iPad), do so now. (Although I might be the only late bloomer on this one! I seem to always be a couple months behind in Gorillaz's releases for some reason.) Perfect Saturday listening. It's musical poetry, with an incredibly vast arrangement of elements. I understand it, though, only peripherally. I can't take the pieces apart like I could a poem or a piece of literary art. I wonder what listening to music would be like as a developed muscian. I don't grieve it though--I speak my own lovely languages. And it doesn't take the kind of deep understanding of a scientist to grasp the beauty of the stars.