I do. And it's still possible. Now some men journey into space. Others--along
with plenty of women nowadays--do indeed climb Mount Everest. People hang-glide,
race cars, free-jump, all manner of intense rush-thrills.
Now me, I'm a dad and the most dangerous thing I knowingly did this year was
to go white water canoeing with my son, Gavin, in gentle spilling puddles of
whitewater, on a warm summer day. And although I used to run a tiller raft
with young cons on their way to Rikers Island through Blue Ledges on the upper
Hudson River, using dam releases for propulsion, and felt that "death-could-happen" thrill,
I no longer pursue my bliss in that fashion.
Yet I encountered a peak experience the other night. A melding of all my skills
in the hot crucible of musico-dramatico-literary creation. I told The Iliad:
Book I to a capacity audience at Phillips Exeter Academy, in the soaring library
on campus, with my guitar.
Big thrill, right? Well, it was, at least for me. In order to understand why
it was a big thrill to watch the Muses trot out this hot-button tale, and to
be the guy sitting there in their presence, music playing, voices speaking,
well, it deserves a blog entry.
Chris, my youngest son, said: "Dad, don't make Achilles a big hulking
guy. Make him sophisticated." That was last summer on the back porch.
He'd just seen Troy with Brad Pitt and although I haven't seen it, I guess
Achilles must have been sophisticated. I don't know. I don't think I want to
see it because according to Jon, my eldest son, the writers left out all references
to the gods of Olympus in the tale, which essentially guts it, in my opinion.
It just ends up another fight club.
You can tell that my treatment of this story does indeed include the gods
of Olympus. Remember, these were the pagan gods of the classical world, and
as such, were mere projections of human virtues and vices. That's of course
what's so interesting about these old stories. They're humanly real.
Anyway, the day at Phillips Exeter started out with my meeting Jackie, the
librarian of the school, in the Meeting Hall, prior to a morning presentation
for all the students. Everyone was very nice, directing me, helping me haul
in the gear. There was tension in the air, however. I could sense it. I am
usually rather jolly before performances, but I began to hear hints of how
rambunctious a mood the students were in, shortly before exams and break. I
think that all the nice adults were worried for me. A famous singer had been
there the week before and had forgotten the lyrics to a song in the middle
of it. I'm sure the kids were thrilled. I decided to try very hard not to forget
my stories.
I went about my business and set up the harp and 12-string. I planned to tell
The Storm Breeder, a good intense showpiece high school kids usually like,
and The Giant, a one-minute fable on harp about fear. I spent more time than
I wished to tuning the harp, and ended up not using it at all. But that came
later.
My radar told me that this particular group of students--they're all bright
and early Twenty-first Century American high school kids attending one of the
finest schools on earth--were probably busting at the seams with stress.
I remember being a student. I didn't like it very much either.
Now I've told The Storm Breeder to countless restive high school audiences.
What I've learned over the years is that they don't want to be bored, or pandered
to. Today's youth are a thousand years old by the time they reach eighteen,
considering their media surroundings, and so it takes a certain amount of escape
velocity to catch their interest, much less hold it for thirty minutes. So
I've adapted to that reality and learned to hit them hard at the outset, to
overwhelm them with sound and imagery, so that at the very least, at the beginning
of my performance, they know they're seeing something they've never quite seen
before. And despite themselves, they begin to imagine.
Backstage I could hear them. Rising surges and diminuendos of conversation,
loud basso yells from certain boys, a rumbling mishmash of talk. From listening
behind the curtain I usually know, well before I step out onstage, what the
mood of the audience is. It gives me an idea of the level of energy that will
be required to subdue them into imagining. Or to lift them up into it, that's
another way to look at it. Or some combination of the two. These are extremely
subjective observations.
During Jackie's introduction of me, they continued to rumble away rather rudely,
not listening to her, antsy, ready to be bored yet again by some codger. I
sensed that this was the sort of behavior they'd been showing to all adults
lately. High school kids.
The Storm Breeder, however, is a tested product. I haven't told it yet when
it doesn't work. It takes about a minute for the silence to fall. Once the
characters begin to speak, certain students, especially the guitar players,
begin to hunch forward and watch. The audience, if they've got any wit at all,
fall silent and we're off and running. Jonathan Dunwell's cultured voice--the
story's narrator--is what got these bright young people to listen. Dunwell's
use of elegant vocabulary, somewhat old fashioned, but nevertheless on target
always, so far exceeds their own levels of eloquence, I guess, that they grow
becharmed. There are the vocal effects, too. The horse's hoofbeats. The whip.
Peter Rugg's wild cursing at the storm.
So there I was, watching this lovely veil of attentive silence fall over this
noisy crew as my characters spoke and my fingers raced the neck of the guitar.
By the second minute, I knew all was well. It was fun to scan the margins of
the crowd. That's where the teachers stood. Excellent teachers, these. Many
quite brilliant. Dan Brown, author of The Da Vinci Code, worked there. The
walls are hung with portraits of Exeter luminaries down through history, none
of whom, however, I had the luxury of paying much attention to during the performance.
But I did watch the teachers. They began to display that delighted disbelief
that I see so often, otherwise known as my god they're listening.
And so it went. I finished the tale, was about to grab my harp, but Jackie
appeared suddenly to my right, applauding along with every body else but telling
me with her eyes that my time was up. And it was. The story came in at thirty
minutes. So I smiled and bowed and left the stage
This was not the peak experience, however. A precursor, perhaps, and anthropologically
interesting, but not the blissful business. That happened at seven that night,
in the library, with The Iliad.
I've told The Odyssey in my own portmanteau manner for many years. For 5th
Grade on up. It is one of the larger, stronger horses in my stable. The
Iliad,
however, is unsuitable for 5th graders. It deals with sexual slavery, death,
politics, clashing egos, backstabbing and greed, and all sorts of topics I
usually don't share with 5th graders. The Iliad is for high school and adult
audiences and prior to my peak experience, I'd told it three times, all for
college audiences, each time struggling to bring it under control.
Certain of my longer stories have what I tend to think of as lots of moving
parts. Each character takes all kinds of introspection and abandonment of self.
If the guitar score is at all complex--with twenty different leitmotifs floating
there to be played at the proper moment--then the prospect of getting up there
in front of all those nice people and not screwing up scares an artist like
me. I envy painters and writers. All alone, dabbing or scribbling. And if they
don't like it, well, hey, toss it. Rewrite it. Nobody's there.
Ah, that artistic safety valve does not pop for the bardic storyteller, let
me tell you. And so the onus to be mindful is immense, particularly with tales
still under construction, still awaiting the arrival of the Muses, who, when
the preparation has been vigorous enough, sit at my shoulder. Up until the
other night in the library, the Muses had shunned my efforts with The Iliad.
I'd gotten through it, but I hadn't flown through it.
Autonomic is a great word. Michael Jorden sank his clutch three-pointers autonomically.
Stories make me extremely nervous until the musical portions become autonomic.
That is, they play without thought. The fingers have trod their paths so many
times in rehearsals that when the moment comes and people are listening, the
literary part of things--the voice that speaks--doesn't have to think about
the complementary activity down there on the guitar neck.
Instead, the fingers just do it. It's all emotion based. It's like a world.
I'm getting toward the peak experience business, though, I really am. It's
important to set the scene.
The library at Phillips Exeter soars four or five stories upward. It's an
atrium inside. During the performance, Ed dimmed the lights up there in the
stacks. A few overhead lights were on. A huge plush carpet where many of the
students seated themselves splayed out before me. Prior to the show Jackie
bustled into her office, which she'd kindly lent me as a staging area, to inform
me that they were at overflow. I think she was pleased. This was optional for
the kids. So they'd liked The Storm Breeder. And Jackie's posters were first
rate. I'd seen my face at least fifty times that afternoon, smiling in front
of the big waterfall in Yosemite, from glass doors and hallways here and there.
I've got to get that photo off my web site.
But there it was: Odds Bodkin, The Iliad: Book I.
I have great respect for scholars. Anyone with an exhaustive knowledge of
even the slightest facet of truth has my vote. And the staff at this particular
school know exactly what they're talking about just about all the time, I would
think, and so seeing these posters I realized that were I to fumble badly through
this thing, I would essentially crown myself with a dunce cap. The Iliad:
Book I, with the Introduction, is an hour. A solid hour. No breaks. No intermission.
No finishing a two minute song and waiting for the applause and grabbing a
beer.
No. Offering epic tales to serious adults is a different business entirely.
Not to mention all those beautiful students on the big rug. A sea of them.
Young men and young women. Bright eyes. Keen minds. Luckily, the morning's
fun had set me in a jolly mood, so I decided to go out there and see what happened.
It always comes down to that: stepping out before them, welcoming them, and
coaxing them up into their creative selves, all the while trying to remain
firmly within my own.
In any case, the story emerged. I ended up disregarding Christopher's advice
and used a deep, powerful voice for Achilles. Similar to the voice for Hercules
I use in another story, but differentiated, I hope, enough to give this great
mythic warrior his due shrift. Agamemnon is one of the nastiest characters
I've yet devised, and he came off reptilian and awful. And all the other characters
spoke their lines and did a pretty good job of it.
I told myself prior to the performance to let the music speak by itself on
occasion. Many listeners over the years have told me to do that. To let the
music just speak for a while, here and there, to let my admittedly too intense
stories to breath a bit. So I did that.
The music for The Iliad is the best score yet, I think. But I always think
that. But then again, all the various guitar techniques I used in the last
story--The Harper and The King in this instance--are available to vary in any
future score. So if I'm not getting better at playing the damn 12-string guitar
for each ensuing artwork, then I'm getting worse at it, right? What's the point
of that?
An hour later, I finished. I enjoyed especially watching the adults lean forward.
They all knew the Homeric text intimately. It was fun to watch them smile in
recognition when every once in a while Homer's nearly exact words thundered
out of some angry man's face, with the music going,
I drove home whooping in my car. It was the most fun I've had performing
in quite some time. If there is a cutting edge anywhere near the anachronistic
craft of storytelling, I'd just been on it. My Muses had heard my distress.
And they had decided to show up.
