Big Night at the Folly Bowl

There are people who sit on stone and grass under a summer sky listening to poetry from dusk to darkness. They do this voluntarily and with pleasure. They let their hearts fly free into the night and for a little while they are all beautiful and hopeful and I was among them. In fact, I had the privilege of briefly standing in the light myself and reading a story I had written. It was my big night at the Folly Bowl and I’ll never forget it.

Okay. The truth is, I was the amateur opening act, but that turned out to be a good spot for me. If someone as riveting as Laurel Ann Bogen had gone before me, I’d be frozen in my seat. I basically read; the others performed. There's a big difference there and I guess I need to work on that. But when poets and dreamers converge in the night, it generally turns out okay. And my piece, about sweet illusions and folly and the human need to dream, was certainly appropriate to the venue.

There was music also, by “ukulele chanteuse” Janet Klein singing saucy songs from the first three decades of the 1900s. She wore a vintage yellow dress and a flower in her hair and seemed to have stepped directly out of the past. She was accompanied by talented banjo and guitar player John Reynolds (who happens to be the grandson of 1930s film star Zazu Pitts) and two other impressively adept musicians who appeared later in the night and whose names I didn’t catch.

Pictured on the left are Sue and James, the Folly Bowl creators. For background on the marvel that is the Folly Bowl, go to the ARCHIVES for this weblog and then to April 15 - 21 and scroll down until you get to "Hey, Let's Build an Amphitheater!" posted on April 20, 2007.

Part of the fun was getting there – and back. I traveled with my buddies Vickie and Cornelia, and it would be hard to imagine better companions through all the adventures that ensued, which included a flat tire, weird engine noises, and negotiations on three different cell phones about tire changes, towing, car rental, taxis, street closures, detours, arrival times, and contingency planning with the sweet men in our lives. Not to worry. Things worked out for these damsels in distress. We even managed a Sunday stop at L.A.’s Museum of Contemporary Arts and dinner in Santa Barbara.

We laughed a lot too. We always do.

So I stepped out of my comfort zone and didn't let shyness swallow me up. I heard powerful poems by new voices. I experienced the defiant optimism and lunacy of the Folly Bowl firsthand, and the next day, at the MOCA, the creativity of a rising artist named Matthew Monihan, the son of our friend Dorothy Jardin. ("I began to consider my mind's disorder a sacred thing," Matthew wrote. "To tidy up would be to demolish an edifice full of prickly chestnuts that are spiky clubs, tin foil that is hoarded silver, bricks that are coffins, cacti that are totem poles, and copper pennies that are shields." How wonderful is that?!)

And of course, with V & C, I discovered anew the camaraderie and humor that we share. When it comes to friends, I have been lavishly gifted.