Ball Jar Nation

"You remember the Nineties, when everyone was pickling their own vegetables and brewing their own beer?  People were growing out their mutton chops and waxing their handlebar mustaches."

"The Nineties?"

"Yeah.  Everyone was knitting and sewing clothes for their children.  People were wearing glasses all the time like contact lenses had never been invented."

"Wait, are we talking about the Nineteen Nineties?"

"No — the Eighteen Nineties."



This video is so relevant to my culture it hurts.

"Let's talk about definitions": ORE, a site-specific performance

The clouds hung over us like lead as we laid the set: tarp up against the sandy walls, benches on the sandbank for the audience, sound system in the ravine.  Light rain flitted about.  As I piled on layers and tried to warm up I wondered if I could even dance in these conditions.  The arroyo where we'd been building this dance for six weeks had turned hostile.

This is one of the hazards of site-specific performance -- but one of its thrills, too.  Because 10 minutes before our figurative curtain went up, the clouds broke and the high mountain sun tipped the mercury this side of bearable.  A crowd bigger and more varied than we expected turned out, and as we began our show I noticed how the rough weather had only immersed me in the site more deeply.

This is ORE, a site-specific dance and theater piece I collaborated on with the wonderful Sarah, Miles, Áine, Eric,  Adam.  I hope you enjoy watching it as much as I did making it.  Special thanks to Eric and Monique for the documentation.

For a little more background, check out Sarah's write-up of the piece.



ORE Part I from Sarah Ashkin on Vimeo.



ORE Part II from Sarah Ashkin on Vimeo.

dilapa-dome diaries: how many nights were you outside this year?

As I lay awake I counted up how many nights I slept outside this year.  Two in Joshua Tree, the coldest nights I've ever spent.  Four in Hueco Tanks, TX, where 45 mph winds turned one side of my tent permanently convex.  Will dubbed it the Dilapa-dome.  We mimed beta in our sleep and woke with burning hands.  I spent strings of nights on the road, steaming swamps in Louisiana and pine forest in North Carolina.  I mastered the pitch'n'ditch, pulling in late and lighting out before anyone came around to collect fees.  Should I be ashamed, or proud?  Neon and damp grass at Yogi Bear Mini Golf Camping, a lightning storm on the dark New Mexico horizon.  The bulk of nights I spent with Áine on a farm in Italy, where the tent's slope gave us two choices: crawl uphill while we slept, or rest in the damp crease of the downhill door.  It was worth it to look across the valley at the Dolomites every morning.  In the Whites I slept solo, every yawing tree a bear.

Thirty-two nights.  Not counting the nights in the Fun Finder trailer, or the ones in Zealand Falls Hut. Thirty-two nights in a tent.  None of them under the bare stars, none of them far from a car.  Thirty-two nights, a month of tent living.

I look forward to besting it next year.

it's not a place, it's a state of mind

This time of year, with darkness falling in the afternoon and a body longing for the warmth of the hearth, I can't help but think of 175 Lincoln St., Middletown, CT 06457.   I lived there my last two semesters of college, nine glorious months.  As finals approached and the Connecticut winter began to clench its fist it was such solace to find Eric baking up some bread, or Arielle toting cider to brew, or Abe jamming in the basement.  Or this bear, which showed up on the toilet of our basement bathroom courtesy of some mischievous friends.

So throw a winter squash in the oven and raise your highlife/PBR/blue moon/cider/fancy Weshop drink.  Happy December to the residents of that noble abode, past, present, and honorary.

More photos of the Lincoln St. lifestyle after the jump.

from a farm in south Vermont

(cite your source)

in Boston

in Montpelier