What is love without expression?
What is art...
I have been an adult for sometime now. I often forget the freedom that comes with being a "grownup," though I still maintain that I will never grow-up. Wordsworth laments the innocence we lose when we become adults. What is lost then and what is gained with age? There is likewise much lost in being young--youth is not immortality. Play is immortality. This is why I will never "grow up" or rather why I will always "play."
We may lose part of our innocence in growing up, but being an adult allows us certain freedoms we don't have as children (such playing and dis-playing our affections). We become free of what the whining schoolboy dreads. And now to imagine rules such as NO PDA... but I must express myself! I must play! Ah, to live now is to have our cake and eat it too. Wee can choose to gorge on innocence and freedom. We play. We love. We sing.
Each week we perform roughly 3 shows a day. We practice growing-down like we eat meals. This also means we load our steel/corrugated polycarbonate bulletproof greenhouse set in and out of the Penske roughly 15-20 times, articulate and punctuate roughly 100 plosive curses from our diaphragms, and endure roughly 36 collective deaths--per week.
In addition to this physical labour of love, we have the privilege of teaching workshops. We take the highschoolers through the process of understanding what we minstrels do for a living. I am grateful to have the health and courage to move my limbs, stretch my lungs and let the words of William Shakespeare fly through me. Teaching our workshops reminds me this.
We may lose part of our innocence in growing up, but being an adult allows us certain freedoms we don't have as children (such playing and dis-playing our affections). We become free of what the whining schoolboy dreads. And now to imagine rules such as NO PDA... but I must express myself! I must play! Ah, to live now is to have our cake and eat it too. Wee can choose to gorge on innocence and freedom. We play. We love. We sing.
Each week we perform roughly 3 shows a day. We practice growing-down like we eat meals. This also means we load our steel/corrugated polycarbonate bulletproof greenhouse set in and out of the Penske roughly 15-20 times, articulate and punctuate roughly 100 plosive curses from our diaphragms, and endure roughly 36 collective deaths--per week.
In addition to this physical labour of love, we have the privilege of teaching workshops. We take the highschoolers through the process of understanding what we minstrels do for a living. I am grateful to have the health and courage to move my limbs, stretch my lungs and let the words of William Shakespeare fly through me. Teaching our workshops reminds me this.
Working with the children is the best part of this job. I forget sometimes what it was like before I loved William. It gives me joy to imagine we might be a reason these youths fall in love too. I am charmed. Honored. Silly. Fourteen again.
Cascade, Idaho"Attention Students--before you head to the milk chugging contest, those of you who drove a farm vehicle to school today, please proceed to your tractors for photographs."
Buhl High, Buhl, ID
Week 3 done! After Wednesday's crazy 3 show 2 workshop day, we earn our weekend. Next week we take to the road again--northern Idaho, where we will approach Canada and become minstrels again, guitars in hand, poles in Penske.The Vic Chesnutt obsession continues. Limited expression has always fascinated me. Lavinia, Jean-Dominique Bauby, Jacqueline du Pre...
Dakotah surprises me with a blue guitar. I try out different positions to arrange my fingers to make the sounds I want. Or don't know I want. I am going to write a song, a woeful ballad, a joyful, childish explosion of musical PDA.
Dakotah surprises me with a blue guitar. I try out different positions to arrange my fingers to make the sounds I want. Or don't know I want. I am going to write a song, a woeful ballad, a joyful, childish explosion of musical PDA. 
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