3rd Eye Thursday!

Travers Marks

Wow!

Just - Wow! What can I say? I was so delighted by this man, his natural style and his poetry, that if I'd had the sense to record it, I'd be listening to it every day like my new fave band! Next time Travers Marks!! (I'm starting a podcast series here called 

TheBlueRoom. Stay tuned!) 

You can get a word in with him if you're lucky at Max's Place Downtown-he owns it! Max's Pizza is adored by All!

 

Thanks so much for starting Lotus off here at Blue with your World Class Poetic Grooves!

Tony Brewer

Same Wow again for Bloomington Writer's Guild Alum Tony Brewer, to whom I had the pleasure of being introduced through Travers Marks!! Tony's a long-time pro at reading and performing, and his poetry had me munching some Tony food for thought! Love-love-loved it and started really having the feeling that it was a Magical night.. great poetry, again- world-class stuff! I am excited about Third Thursdays!  So grateful to Tony Brewer for offering me the wisdom of his extensive experience and advice! Looking forward to the future of this wordy rappinghood downtown in the BEAD District at Blue!

Kyle Quass' Empty Form Jazz

Dang!! That was some seriously birthed cool brought to the Blue Room by
Kyle Quass and Paul Kirk! 
Again, the sound was just amazing, someting like Jazz Chamber Music...a truly riveting and breathtaking performance!
This music was full of information and it was all about listening and responding to LIFE!!!





Awesome Nowness. 
I am still feeling Sweet from this whole night, a week later! Thanks Kyle and Paul!! We want an Encore!!!!

World Class Performances at Blue!

September~First Friday

Poet Shana Ritter  and Harpist Amanda Jensen!

Amanda brought her great big incredibly beautiful 1935 harp, (That's real gold on it!) it took four of us to wrestle it gently up the stairs! (Thanks to Al Jarvis and Rob Westcott, BTW) And we were transfixed, transported to what one listener described as an entree into Bach's chamber! We discovered that music sounds really excellent in here at the BlueStudioGallery- the shape of the room, the acoustic tiles on the ceiling, the smooth floors and lovely blue color tone that you can almost hear. All of this contrives to create a vibrancy that is alive and intent on pervading even the most stubborn of moments between ears and hearts.  Ear is of course, the very center, the punctum, of the word heart, as well as beginning with the directive, Hear!!  The art of hearing is the true subject of the heart!

We were enraptured! Amanda promised to return and grace us with another of her beautiful instruments, a smaller Baroque Harp!

 

Both performances were stellar, with Shana reading from her recent publication,  Stairs of Separation,

 from Finishing Line Press in Georgetown Kentucky, a grant-funded project to create a collection of poetry about her family's immigration to America, her heritage, and in particular, her vision of her mother's heart. We were stirred by the integrity of phrases that formed pictures in our minds of both her mother's experience and the poet's lens through which we were given the opportunity to glimpse a personal world heretofore unknown to us. Here's a tiny peek at Shana's poetry- hopefully, she will return and read to us again!

"Not much else would she say. The tumult of New York must have washed it away, leaving anything from before lingering, a faint scent, a box left wrapped and tied."

excerpt: Memory , p. 13

from Stairs of Separation

by Shana Ritter