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reidharriscooper"Man, there's no boundary line to art! If it sounds good and feels good, then it IS good! You can't dig it if you don't dig it, ya dig? The possible has been tried and failed. Now it's time to try the impossible. Damn the rules, it's the feeling that counts. You've got to be good or as bad as the devil. Don't play what's there, play what's not there. It's taken me all my life to learn what not to play. If you think this is weird, just look at yourselves. Learn to deal with the valleys and the hills will take care of themselves.
You don't know what love is, until you've learned the meaning of the blues, until you've loved a love you've had to lose. It's all about creation and surprise. It just needs to be appreciated and watered like flowers. You have to water flowers. These peaks will come again. Whatever you do, it's over when you do it - but first you have to do it.
(The preceding is a pitter patter of sound collected from quotes of geniuses, Monk himself, Sun Ra, Dizzy, Sonny Rollins, Ornette Coleman, Chet Baker, Mingus and more. Together they all speak of Jazz, of sound, of creation, of building and bleeding art. My pathways of experience have not put me in their shoes, but in similiar shoes.)
I've frequented three very different sessions of shared creation in my time on what could be called a regular basis and experienced many more on a less regularity.
BULLET SPACE
In the basement, sometimes the lobby of a space owned by the tenants with no landlord, a group of students from different schools and different walks of life would gather together in a circle and try out our work on each other. "Guided" by John Farris, yet completely organized and facilated by myself, Patrick, and my brother Nicholas Isabella along with a few others, we cheered and grilled each other to get our work better. We smoke, we drank, we partied, we fought, we danced. Sometimes we'd end up across the street at A Gathering of the Tribes. Other times I don't know. One night I found myself laid out almost dead after too many painkillers and a mix of alcohol, but quickly recovered by my friends. Another night my friend attacked the young person I was seeing at the time and we had to descalate that. Another time another friend attacked another friend. As I said, we fought. Sometimes John would fight us, sometimes we'd fight ourselves. It was all part of it. Then we'd write about it and perform the next time.
URBANA NYC at the BPC
This was HOME for me on Thursdays for I'm not sure how long. I essentially was a volunteer employee who also took to the stage when I could. We had major guests who would sometimes become friends of mine, such as muMs the Schemer. Working closely with Taylor Mali, Shappy Seasholtz, Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz was just a joy. When something of mine failed, as long as COA laughed, or Shappy appreciated an obscure reference or Taylor, a master poet recognized that I had an inkling of what I was doing it all worked out. Getting to know Bob Holman over the years was a treasure, getting the chance to meet Jim Carroll and poke his mind, becoming friends enough with Amber Tamblyn that David Cross knows who I am. I got to learn a lot of production stuff, organizing, setting up. Skills I gained in college and on stage previous but that I discovered could be applied to any type of performance. The same skills I would use years later for other kinds of productions.
HI CHRISTINA
I discovered Hi Christina through Amy Uzi, but the friendship I built with Fritz and Christina was so strong and fast. The venue for Hi Christina would change multiple times over a few years, but I always felt great to return there and through it I had one of my greatest friendships in David Shifren. David and I were destined to meet no matter what, but it was through Hi Christina that we bonded. We were both in their feature film as wedding guests and attended various events hosted by them. David wasn't always at Hi Christina, but I definitely was and gained other friendships through, such as Laura Lee Gulledge and through her others and the small worlds that Laura and I both occupied. I probably would've never met my neighbor Sarah that I see frequently who would then later be living with my long time friend Kyle Baker, who she used to date back in high school if not for the small world that all started through Hi Chrisina. Not long ago I actually bumped into Fritz while attending a movie event. It'd had been a couple years actually since we'd seen each other (as we all know COVID changed our lives), but it also told me, we are meant to be in each others lives. Always... making what we make that we make.
-----------------------------------------
A bit on playing with the prompt:
Instead of Thelonius' quote itself... I bounced off another Monk quote that always inspired me. Then I thought, Jazz is that thing, it has no rhyme, but it also has ryhthm. It has no rules, but it is a craft. Hence, what if the words of not just Monk, but all his contemporaries and friends could be combined?
That's just remixing though. There's artistry to it, but without something to hold it together it's just a collage of nothing. Hence, I went deep into my memoir repository to create three paragraph stories that obviously could all be entire chapters or even books if I went deep. (I use to actually write extensive notes about URBANA that I could expand to fuller tales). I decided to tackle it in home game the same way I would if I was still IN the game. So if you read this? Thanks, hope you enjoyed it.
You don't know what love is, until you've learned the meaning of the blues, until you've loved a love you've had to lose. It's all about creation and surprise. It just needs to be appreciated and watered like flowers. You have to water flowers. These peaks will come again. Whatever you do, it's over when you do it - but first you have to do it.
(The preceding is a pitter patter of sound collected from quotes of geniuses, Monk himself, Sun Ra, Dizzy, Sonny Rollins, Ornette Coleman, Chet Baker, Mingus and more. Together they all speak of Jazz, of sound, of creation, of building and bleeding art. My pathways of experience have not put me in their shoes, but in similiar shoes.)
I've frequented three very different sessions of shared creation in my time on what could be called a regular basis and experienced many more on a less regularity.
BULLET SPACE
In the basement, sometimes the lobby of a space owned by the tenants with no landlord, a group of students from different schools and different walks of life would gather together in a circle and try out our work on each other. "Guided" by John Farris, yet completely organized and facilated by myself, Patrick, and my brother Nicholas Isabella along with a few others, we cheered and grilled each other to get our work better. We smoke, we drank, we partied, we fought, we danced. Sometimes we'd end up across the street at A Gathering of the Tribes. Other times I don't know. One night I found myself laid out almost dead after too many painkillers and a mix of alcohol, but quickly recovered by my friends. Another night my friend attacked the young person I was seeing at the time and we had to descalate that. Another time another friend attacked another friend. As I said, we fought. Sometimes John would fight us, sometimes we'd fight ourselves. It was all part of it. Then we'd write about it and perform the next time.
URBANA NYC at the BPC
This was HOME for me on Thursdays for I'm not sure how long. I essentially was a volunteer employee who also took to the stage when I could. We had major guests who would sometimes become friends of mine, such as muMs the Schemer. Working closely with Taylor Mali, Shappy Seasholtz, Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz was just a joy. When something of mine failed, as long as COA laughed, or Shappy appreciated an obscure reference or Taylor, a master poet recognized that I had an inkling of what I was doing it all worked out. Getting to know Bob Holman over the years was a treasure, getting the chance to meet Jim Carroll and poke his mind, becoming friends enough with Amber Tamblyn that David Cross knows who I am. I got to learn a lot of production stuff, organizing, setting up. Skills I gained in college and on stage previous but that I discovered could be applied to any type of performance. The same skills I would use years later for other kinds of productions.
HI CHRISTINA
I discovered Hi Christina through Amy Uzi, but the friendship I built with Fritz and Christina was so strong and fast. The venue for Hi Christina would change multiple times over a few years, but I always felt great to return there and through it I had one of my greatest friendships in David Shifren. David and I were destined to meet no matter what, but it was through Hi Christina that we bonded. We were both in their feature film as wedding guests and attended various events hosted by them. David wasn't always at Hi Christina, but I definitely was and gained other friendships through, such as Laura Lee Gulledge and through her others and the small worlds that Laura and I both occupied. I probably would've never met my neighbor Sarah that I see frequently who would then later be living with my long time friend Kyle Baker, who she used to date back in high school if not for the small world that all started through Hi Chrisina. Not long ago I actually bumped into Fritz while attending a movie event. It'd had been a couple years actually since we'd seen each other (as we all know COVID changed our lives), but it also told me, we are meant to be in each others lives. Always... making what we make that we make.
-----------------------------------------
A bit on playing with the prompt:
Instead of Thelonius' quote itself... I bounced off another Monk quote that always inspired me. Then I thought, Jazz is that thing, it has no rhyme, but it also has ryhthm. It has no rules, but it is a craft. Hence, what if the words of not just Monk, but all his contemporaries and friends could be combined?
That's just remixing though. There's artistry to it, but without something to hold it together it's just a collage of nothing. Hence, I went deep into my memoir repository to create three paragraph stories that obviously could all be entire chapters or even books if I went deep. (I use to actually write extensive notes about URBANA that I could expand to fuller tales). I decided to tackle it in home game the same way I would if I was still IN the game. So if you read this? Thanks, hope you enjoyed it.
