The Fool

The Fool is always whole, healthy and without fear. He is the spirit of who we are, the spirit expressed and experienced as wonder, awe, curiosity and anticipation. We never know what is in the future but like the Fool we must blindly go forward.

I don't always get a Tarot reading, but when I do...

it is so spot-on I pee a little.

For those of you not familiar with the major arcana, some stuff has happened to me.  Most notably, I applied to the New Orleans Fringe Festival, and in a moment of either weakness or great euphoria, they accepted me.

That means I'm producing a show, start to finish.  I've never attempted such a thing and in this case, my ignorance is totally bliss.  Falling over myself as I go, much like the fool I find the world appears benevolent in the face of such a fearsome task.  Rattlesnakes be damned...the cliff doesn't intimidate me the way it probably should.  

I kid, but also I know, blindly going forward- this is what happens next.  Genesis is the best thing I ever made- that was over one year ago, and has set into motion a host of events I never would have thought possible (like this:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Z6Q12OeS7s).  I look at the road that rose up behind me and think to myself, "well hell- let's keep going!"  

As though there were anything else to do.

This story, I've had it in my head growing for five years.  I started writing a novel in 2008, got 5 pages in, and so fell in love with the imagery I never had the guts to mess with it.  Until SOMEONE *coughcough- Krin Haglund* pointed out that it was never going to be born stuck in my head, and it would never become unstuck without a deadline.  She was right of course, so here we are, pumping blood into the flesh and hopefully we come out with something that can be called art at the end.  Actually, it doesn't matter what it is called, because it will exist, in some approximation, and continue to live.

And when things are alive by their own nature, they change.  That's enough about that for now, much more coming soon about my pet beloved project...

...but for now, another piece of life to share, which is the FOURTH annual Carnevolar, that's right!  The famed Halloween show at Emerald City Trapeze, is coming up October 24-26th and (in a moment of weakness of euphoria) it is directed by yours truly.  And by "directed" of course I mean mashed together joyfully after obsessing over it for months.

No really.  When Gary Kirkland asked me to do this, at first I said, "NO."
He said, "just think about it."
A week later he got this text, "I'll do it."

Because let's be honest...once the opportunity was there, we all knew I wasn't going to just leave it lying around.  And so off we go, this is a lovely cliff!

I decided more than anything, I wanted to scare the crap out of my audience.  Not so much shock as to creep out... almost irreparably.  So (with the help of my fellow friend Grant) I saturated myself in horror films, watching sometimes 2 a day for well over a month.
I laid off a bit when I started having nightmares about an insatiable mother eating her own daughter in a church pew.

It was and continues to be worth it.  It is my great pride and pleasure to present to you this incredible poster for the show; photography by Kari Santoro, exquisite graphic design by Dave Piexoto, and the face of course belonging to my friend and comrade the lovely Adrienne Jack-Sands: