Sagadahoc Stories 134: 5/17/04

Reshaping the Form

A lot of water has gone under the bridge since I last reported on Bowdoinham in this fashion. In fact the fashion has changed. When I began these e-journals, it was an attempt to chronicle the doings of a local artist in a small town, with the emphasis on local events. But our focus shifts, as times change.
I am much less engaged in local politics and the buzz of the town, for one thing. So I have less news to report. When I sit down to chronicle what I’m up to now, it tends to be about events or concerns outside Bowdoinham, or what’s going on in my creative life. That’s of less interest to those who used this site as a window on a local world, and I’ve not published all those writings as they happened.
But, because I see this vehicle as a way to illustrate a life and time, I’ve decided to go ahead and lump it all together. The Journal of a Local Artist will tell less about town events, and be (even) more personal. And I’ll post some of the back issues to keep all these illustrated e-journals together.

Fresh Maine
 It was a pleasant conceit to produce an occasional illustrated report on a small town. But, like all good things, it wore out. The Maine Festival and the Maine Times were ephemeral creatures, too. Both of them were sources of income, and a central part of our lives, for a spell. But it was past time for them to die when they finally did. The impulse to turn creative vehicles into institutions is understandable. We are creatures of habit. But “creative institution” is an oxymoron. No blame.
While the local journal changes, the Sagadahoc Story goes on. Now I’m chasing a new conceit. I’ve been working on a cycle of carvings which embody the seasonal round in this place. I have completed 16 statuettes and a handful of masks and other carvings, to this theme. Then I’ve written a mythic tale to go with each statuette, and am having the illustrated storybook printed next month. So I’m still producing local tales with images to suit. We intend to put on a show in a local space where folks can see (and buy) the sculpture, and/or the book. Brycemuir.com will feature a virtual version of this show, LOCAL MYTHS. You can read the tales here, too. Plus I’m posting a virtual sales gallery for anyone who actually wants to know what works of mine are for sale, and how to buy them.
I will give a quick sketch of the town in passage, because every story needs a setting. There have been no noisy confrontations or major civic actions since the bandstand went up. Yet Bowdoinham may have changed more in the past couple of years than in the last 20. (We are celebrating our 20th year here this summer.) We are now the developing exurb of choice, and property values have soared. The few old houses yet to be gentrified are selling up rapidly. There is a growing demand for new barns, which is an amusing turn of the wheel. Old barns were a tumble-down nuisance for non-ag homeowners in the last generation, but now we are becoming horse country. Tally-ho. Between the renovated farmsteads (and trailers), the suburban subdivisions are mushrooming. The realty in the old post office has a full parking lot, and the restaurant caters to cadres of gypsy contractors. There seem to be fewer local carpenters, and more work. The road noise is louder.
Boat noise, too. We are still a destination launch point for the jetski crowd, and even the Cambodian families who frequent the landing every spring are now playing with personal watercraft. But the pressure on moorings has abated. Jimmy’s marina has absorbed most of the local boatists, and the price of gas seems to have slowed the growth of new powerboat purchases. There are more canoes and kayaks going down the ramp, however.
And at least one classy new sailboat. Russ Dyer launched his new Chebaco this month, and she is a thing of beauty. That makes 4 traditional sailboats now in town, and there are a clutch of others that frequent the Bay. Right old-timey. TOAD is in, of course, although she sank to her gunnels the first day because I was too cheap to pre-soak her with town water. She’s nice and tight now, though. Ready for another yarting season. Last year we had musicians aboard every week, and there was as much music made as art. Still Life with Serenade.
Lynn took over the restaurant from Jeanine this year, and has kept the spirit of the place very much alive. Business is booming. Lynn and Anna, her daughter, are totally plugged into the town network. Anna was a starring member of Hope’s dance troupe, performing each month at the Town Hall, along with most of the crew of the TOAD. Lynn wanted to become part of a small town, and she is now at the heart of this one.
Marion’s store also changed hands this year, and the new owners have systematically renovated the space, widening the aisles and fixing the floor, so you are less likely to end up in the drink. There is a less personal flavor to the store, now, and a less varied inventory, however. Whether they will survive without cashing paychecks or offering personal credit remains to be seen. When Ron maintained a functional hardware section, I felt more obliged to pay the premium to shop there, to help keep the institution alive. Now I rarely buy anything there, and rarely find what I need when I do. But I suspect my shopping pattern is more a result of personal distance than of utility. I used to know the folks at the local store. Now it’s just a store. Creeping impersonalization.
That’s the flavor of town, for me. There’s still a large cadre of locals I feel connected to, but the flood of new faces makes the place less familiar. It makes you smile that people are moving here exactly for the small town flavor, just as that taste is fading. The community school still serves to knit together the newcomers, if they have kids, but in-migration is increasingly aged, aggravated by the higher property values. Indicative of changing values, my new Honda 4-stroke was stolen off TOAD’s stern one night last summer. High visibility notwithstanding. I guess it was a case of Us and Them. We’re now affluent enough to be one of Them. There was a time we were too low rent to be ripped off. Ah, civilization.
Speaking of discontents, the sense of suspended uncertainty hangs in the air here, as elsewhere in this country. The sensitives, those on the edge, the storm crows, are acting loony. While the hard-charging true believers are proclaiming their righteousness, and the absolute rationality of their doctrine, those who entertain doubt, or (heaven forbid) listen to their hearts, are at risk.
Even in that egalitarian space, the local restaurant, where everyone shares in everybody else’s blather, there are dangling conversations. If you want true belief, join the breakfast club. There’s more head-shaking at noon, but even then the talk is tempered. However loathsome I find this president and his lackies, however dangerous I think their imperial policies are to American democracy, I bite my tongue at the lunch counter. Because I like my neighbors, and want to get along with them. There is plenty of critical talk over coffee, to be sure, masked in absurdist laughter, but I feel the tension of conflicted uncertainties around the table. Not a good time for public debate.
So I’ve tried to be a bit less rational, less literal, less linear, this year. Make more music and do less typing. I’m convinced the only way out of the corner we’ve talked ourselves into is by a leap of imagination. The only way off the merry-go-round is to jump.
One aspect of the contemporary joyride is its haste. Because I feel time is speeding up, and I suspect this acceleration is in us, not in the universe, I’ve sought to slow the clock. My clock. Stop time. Not easy to do on a runaway juggernaut, but worth trying.
If I’ve got it right, there are three kinds of time. There’s the linear time of Western Civ. There’s the circular time of the peasant wheel. And there’s the timeless. To the degree we live in the latter two, the less we are victims of the first.
The time we were acculturated to live in is busily rushing toward chosen goals. It has a beginning and an end, and each of us is hastening toward our own. If I spend all my time looking forward I never see what’s around me. Call it highway time.

Pick Your Own
 The peasant wheel goes round and round. From planting to harvest to dormancy and again. This is the indigenous time of the hunter and forager, too. In this time sons become their fathers. We follow the same traces around and round. Call it byway time.
The timeless simply is. Platonic archetypes. Jungian constellations. States of grace. Call it standing still.
Well, we are occasionally blessed with the timeless. But I haven’t found an incantation that will put me there on demand. I think it’s all in being prepared. Open to the moments of grace. So I try and stay tuned. Besides which, the absolute timeless is in death, and I’m really not ready. Even the moments of grace in life pass, and we are back on the road again. I cherish the memories, but have to deal with the traffic.
So I seek solace in the wheel. It turns through two dimensions in this dooryard. The seasons of nature and the seasons of man. The whole grand symphony of the natural round entrances me. I try to be out in it as much as I can, to savor all its details. And the more engaged I am in nature, the less preoccupied I am with the human haste.
But I’m a manipulative creature, who must be doing to be (at some level). So I have my annual round of doings, too. It smells of fresh-turned loam and boat paint. It has the feel of afternoon breeze on the Bay and a handful of new potatoes. It is taking down screens and shoveling fresh snow. I have my seasonal rituals, and they take me out of the race.
Since I stepped away from commission carvings and began to seek a sculptural self-direction I’ve found that the work has two magnets. In one direction, I’m constructing a series of mechanical portraits of American Icons. Images out of what Joseph Needham calls The American Soul. Man caught in the gears of American History. Aspects of our cultural time. Archetypes out of our linear experience. Capt. John Smith and The Sultan of Swat.
The other compass heading is toward a series of Perennial Dancers. Shamanic figures celebrating the annual round of the seasons in this place. I have my seasonal circuits through the woods, around the roads, across the Bay and back -- and the creatures I encounter on my rounds have come back with me to dance in the woodwork. I’ve just completed one turn of that wheel with this collection of LOCAL MYTHS.
Somewhere in this process the times cross over. When I go out of my present time onto the winter ice it could be any winter. It simply is winter. The image of Smelt bearing the Black Ice is any winter. He’s part of the wheel. And maybe he’s timeless, too. At least that’s what I may be groping for. Similarly, Satchmo may be caught in time, a creature of history, but he’s also the emblem of inspired improvisation. The Muggles Man blowing a wild horn. That grin is the inner joy of pure creation. A timeless smile. So I’m trying to stop time in the workshop.
That’s the trick of it, isn’t it? To turn the linear into the circle, and then find the center. I think the music does that for me, too. At first it was all about the struggle to find the notes (and I’m still less than masterful in my technique), to keep up with the time. I was frequently overwhelmed with self-consciousness, as if the music were about ME playing. But it’s not. And you get entrained in the musicking with others, and transcend yourself. What a relief. You become part of a circle of music.
And the music we play is mostly boomer standards, with some originals thrown in. The form of these tunes is totally familiar. Basic blues or tin pan alley. You know the stuff. 16 bars. Call and response. Verse and chorus with a bridge. Ending on a half tone. The American Songbook. Folk forms perpetuated through mass media. Each song is a traditional round. Although each tune has a beginning and an end, the song goes around its natural cycle, and the memories in the music take you out of immediate time. The form is timeless, and the playing gets you off the treadmill.
Nothing better than the blues to make you feel good about feeling bad. And nothing better than making music to get you out of time.
Does an escape from highway time cure the contemporary malaise? Not entirely, but it helps. And you are less likely to get run down. Reason and Ego march along the high road headed toward their important ends. Wandering the byways and pausing at the vantage points lets you live in the now. Stop and enjoy.

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