Cowboy Limbo

So I was stuck in Pendleton, OR (Home of the “Round Up”, the world’s fourth largest rodeo) over the 4th of July.  It’s about 200 miles east of Portland up in the high desert.  There’s a short in the wiring of my truck somewhere that won’t let me get more than 30 miles from anywhere.  Of course, this short happens about an hour and a half out from Pendleton.  I was helping my friend Karin move there.  She and I moved to Portland together way back in 95.  I stayed, but she’s lived all over since then.

I’ve spent a fair amount of time talking to tow truck drivers in the last week.  Nice people who tend to be over 50 in that part of Oregon.  Thankfully, I was stuck there for one of the hottest days of the season so far (108F).  I stayed with my friend Karin whom I was helping move out there when my truck woes began.

One of the cool things about staying there was getting to tour the facility where she works.  Karin rehabilitates wildlife.  We walked around the acre compound and I was in close proximity to: 1 Golden Eagle, 2 Bald Eagles, about 20 hawks of various species, a couple Kestrels and Ospreys, 8 owls of varying sizes and colors, 3 vultures, and 2 Bobcats.  It made getting stuck there totally worth it.  There is something mystical about being in the presence of wild things, standing there staring at things up close that I’d never get to see from a half mile away if I was lucky.  Things that spend their lives hanging in the wind somewhere over the Columbia River basin waiting for some tasty flesh to rend with their claws and beak.

It made me yearn for wings and a warm wind.

Out on my own.

Well, I’m setting my own deadlines on school work these days.  It’s disorienting suddenly realizing that I actually need to get to preparing my first serious ethnographic project.  I’ve got the next couple of weeks to firm up all of my ideas and methods for my research in Rochester this fall.  Then I have to begin the practical work of getting business cards that read Brad Fortier: Anthropologist, subletting my room, and shipping the books I’ll need.  I’m flying out in late Sept.  So I’ve got some time on those particulars.

I’m going to be a fly on the wall doing participant observation, informal and formal interviews of the long form improv scene in Rochester NY, albeit small.  I’m going to be looking into the audience’s connection to the work.  I’m curious as to how they connect to and interpret it, and speculate as to why.  I’ve heard a thousand theories from performers, but I’m interested in what the crowds say for themselves.  Hopefully, two years of coursework focused on this won’t fail me.  Do yourself a favor and read some Victor Turner and Dwight Conquergood.

It’ll be odd leaving the Brody again for over three months.  It’s feeling like it’s gathering momentum again.  But I’ll come back, and I’ll get my degree.  Then it’ll be time to party.

Seattle Int’l Improv Fest

So I was part of the Seattle Int’l Fest this year.  Usually this festival is challenging, fun, and even sublime in the caliber of work that comes out onstage.  It also usually has a fairly even spread of Europeans and Canadians to Americans.  That wasn’t the case this year.

I did have a great time catching up with some of the regulars.  However, some of the new ads this year really brought the whole experience down.  It was like amateur hour at certain points.  Just painful.  Couple this with it being the most expensive with the least hospitality by way of food and stuff, and you’ve got a zero sum game.   The workshops were awesome.  The work with Christian Swenson and Laura Welland on their respective focuses was so incredible.  That was the redeeming part (at least when the newbies weren’t going on and on and on).

Grad Student Curse

So I have absolutely no plans until 10:30pm tonight when I’ll do an improvised radio show.  The only thing I can think to do is homework.  This is a good thing, BUT I have lost all semblance of a social life because of two years of grad school.

Because I have had to refuse so many invites over the span of this degree it doesn’t even come into anyone’s minds to ask anymore.  I blame myself for this phenomenon, and I cannot wait to finish this effing degree so I can rectify the situation.  If there’s one thing I know about myself, it’s that I require a good amount of socializing to stay sane.  Bottom line, my sanity is slipping.

If I can make it to June 9th without blowing a gasket, I will have survived.  The needle is in the red, though.

Brad’s first marriage

So my good friend Tim, whom I’ve been friends with since 1981, is marrying his fiancee, Virginia.  For this reason, I got ordained by the Universal Life Church to officiate their wedding.  Tim and I grew up together in Wisconsin.  We met in catholic grade school, played AD&D throughout high school, and hung out and partied through the early 90’s.  He took me to get my first tattoo when I was recovering from a terrible bout of food poisoning, and he accompanied myself and a friend on my move out to Portland back in 1995.

Tim is one of a core of 5 guys that I’ve known for over 20 years.  He’s lived all over the world in squats, ranches, and houses throughout Central America and Europe.  He’s a woodworker and carpenter, a fire-dancer and musician, a clever wit and a tender soul.  I have met very few people in life who are near to his level of genuine, caring sincerity. 

Virginia grew up in Argentina.  She is an artist, and her specialty is making puppetts of late.  She is a classic beautiful latina with a gracile frame, warm smile, and wonderful laugh that seems to somehow communicate her own generous spirit.  They met when Tim was living near Mexico City back in 2004.

To see them together doing anything is to see love.  It is something that hangs in the air between them.

So last week when they were proclaiming that they were trying to get married in the next couple of weeks (because they are both tired of having to play the immigration hokey-pokey for Virginia).  I caved and followed through with becoming ordained because I had wanted to for some time.  That, and I wanted to be the one to marry them.  Tim is like my brother, and Virginia is just such a wonderful, intelligent, kind woman.  I can think of no greater honor than marrying them today at noon.

The Crushing Weight of Too Many Committments

Things going on:

8 credits of Graduate coursework requiring about 45 pages of writing and 2000 pages of reading over the next 8 weeks.

Teaching, Rehearsing for Brody (2 nights a week).

Performing and Rehearsing with “The Feast”.

Rehearsing weekly with 2 other friends for a new project.

My grad assisting for a class on Global Environmental Change (about 20 hours a week).

Trying to complete revisions on my Thesis proposal to my advisor’s satisfaction by the end of the term.

Completing the Human Subjects Review packets for my ethnographic field study of improv audiences for the fall.

Polishing a proposal for Intel for an anthropological study of online daters.

Teaching improv to ‘at-risk’ middle schoolers once a week.

The good news in all of this is that this is my last term of coursework for my M.A. in the Anthropology of Improv Theater.  After my field study in the fall, I’ll write and defend my thesis, and hopefully I’ll pull it off and get this damn degree finished.  Then I can get a job where I won’t have to do any homework.  Oh, how lovely that will be again.