TataTober Fall 2024

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NETWORK

By Lee Hall

Based on the film by

Paddy Chayefsky

Directed by

Ashley Kelly Tata

Scenic: Afsoon Pajoufar
Lighting & Video: 

SeifAllah Salotto-Cristobal
Audio: Aubrey Dube
Costume: Nancy Leary
Props: David Allen Prescott

Stage Manager: Vanessa C. Hart*

Assistant Director: Joe Juknievich

SEPTEMBER 27-NOVEMBER 3

TIX

The Fall

2024

Dear Every Body,

Welcome to our fall. I just returned from the land of the Trans-cendentalists, Concord, MA, where I have been totally immersed in the making of Network.

Big thanks to the Billy Rose Theatre Division of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts where I spent somewhere between 30-40 hours going through the Paddy Chayefsky papers. Join me in showing your library love here.

I am thrilled that this project allowed me to continue collaborations with Afsoon Pajoufar who designed a brilliant playground/gladiator arena/newsroom studio for us to play in; Vanessa C. Hart with whom I first was in a room they stage managed in February of 2020 before everyone went home and Vanessa invented how to manage the stages of Mad Forest; and Tom “no-notes” Giordano who I met in grad school and who was in my thesis production of Brecht’s Good Person of Szechwan.

This production introduced me to an incredible group of new collaborators from the Boston area: very fine actors, designers, technicians and makers who leaned in to the challenge of making this work with curiosity, excitement, seriousness and a lot of joy, despite the nature of the material. My overwrought director’s note can be found in a section at the bottom of this email. Quick reminder: “Mad as hell…” This screenplay was developed between 1974 and the film’s release in 1976. It covers such topics as presidential assassination attempts, the co-opting of social movements by corporate and entertainment interests, the sacrifice of the fourth estate on the altar of ratings, the suspicion of women in executive roles, crises in the Middle East and in New York City, and other topics that we are lucky to have moved on from 50 years since the text was initially drafted.

So while Concord, MA is a bit of a trek, if you find yourself in the Boston environs, go take a walk in the woods and then check it out. The Umbrella is creating a space that encourages and supports artists to dive into the work with a deep commitment, integrity and bravery. Really grateful to have been able to make a work there.

Some other things happening this fall are the Festival for Theatre and Democracy at the Martin E. Segal Center on October 31st which I’m curating. And Orestes by Euripides at the New School. A bit of post-democratic theater before the onslaught of winter. And also - pick up your copies of Kate Soper’s The Hunt  now available on Compact Disc  (and Band Camp) from New Focus Recordings. And pick up a copy of New Dramaturgies of Contemporary Opera:The Practitioners’ Perspective edited by Jingyi Zhang and out now through Routledge. Some really exciting contributors in this volume and I’m proud to be among them with a chapter that I wrote about a couple of things.

Thanks as always for reading, for being a member of the community I call home, and for all that you make in this world.
In solidarity and in making,

Ash

Left to right: Zoe Pepin, Tom Giordano, Amy Barker with Bill Motos (projected). Photo by Tim Gurczak

Network is performed by

Barlow Adamson* as Max Schumacher
Amy Barker* as Louise Schumacher/Camera A technician
Steven Barkhimer* as Frank Hackett
Jennifer Bubriski as Sheila/Production Assistant
Blythe de Oliveira Foster* as Diana Christensen
Tom Giordano* as Nelson Chaney/Floor Manager
Johnny Gordon as Director
Tim Hoover as Harry Hunter/ELA Member
Will McGarrahan* as Arthur Jensen/Continuity Announcer/Interviewer
Bill Mootos* as Howard Beale
Zoe Pepin as Camera B technician
Damon Singletary* as Jack Snowden/Warm-Up Guy
Olivia Sowell as Schlesinger/Hair/Makeup
Phil Thompson as Edward Ruddy

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 31ST

A FESTIVAL FOR

THEATRE & DEMOCRACY

@ The Martin E Segal Center

REGISTER HERE

NOVEMBER 21-23

ORESTES

@ The Bank Street Theater

Info + Register

Network Director's note

A Note:

Setting: Int or Ext. Two Colleagues catching up.

“I’m directing Network.”

Reaction shot: confusion.

“You know, ‘I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore…?’”

Cut to: Recognition.

More often than not this is a scene that has played out during these months working on this staged adaptation of Paddy Chayefsky’s seminal, 1976 film Network. “I’m mad as hell…” is a line I cannot remember not knowing. Like “To be or not to be” I don’t remember the first time I heard it or even the first time I quoted it in a self-conscious meta-theatrical way that allowed an outlet for some seed of truth. As with “To be or not to be” I now have a knowledge of what it is like to insist upon finding a way to make a cultural artifact into an extemporaneous utterance by a character who is doing their best to articulate something that has yet to be described. As in both of these cases it is impossible to make Network without dealing with the reality that we are making the work at a time when the words have been performed before. Nearly 50 years after Howard Beale stood rain-soaked in a news studio screaming at the glass lens of a camera “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore” (Peter Finch, famously, never quite got the line as written) we are living in a post-Network landscape. My thoughts on Howard Beale had been that he was one of any number of American, usually male, icons who raged against a system, speaking up for the “little man or woman” in the face of bureaucratic and anonymous serialism and dehumanization. His cry has an echo of the siren call that sounded through the mid-20th century in a chorus of anti-war, Black Power, women’s liberation, gay rights movements. An attempt to shatter the teflon-shellacked, cookie-cutter society that stoically ignores the terror of its own creation. Or, as Chayefsky writes in his notes “television is not up to tell the truth, but only to preserve the illusion of the status quo.” Working on this material in the fall of 2024 I and the company of creators have had to face the fact that we are living in a world full of Howard Beales. Being “Mad as hell” doesn’t feel like a revolutionary act. It has become the status quo. Not that there aren’t things to be mad about, but working on this piece feels like a reflection on a less quoted Beale line: “First you’ve got to get mad, then we’ll figure out what to do with it.” The madness in this work is not only anger, but the madness that comes from a lust for power and money won by viewership and ratings. Howard Beale lights a fuse giving permission for every character to follow their pursuit of madness. It fuels Diana Christiansen, a TV-molded station executive who Chayefsky originally constructed as a man. Gradually through his notes the character morphs into a “hero(ine?)” Of particular interest in our production is how Christiansen sits in a moment of history that we look back to while we seem to be making a u-turn in its direction. Living in 1975-1976, Diana is a woman who has recently been granted the agency over her body and sexuality that comes with the passing of Roe v. Wade. She would have been one of the first in a generation of women to benefit from the Fair Credit Opportunity Act passed just a year before the events of this play takes place and without which Diana’s character would not have been able to sign for a credit card in her own name. Her relationship to money, to power, to a capitalist notion of success is informed by these legal changes. In a note on Diana’s character Chayefsky writes “[Diana] has the capacity and intelligence to be a poet, a philosopher, an artist - but that requires the faith or illusion that beauty and wisdom are substantially worthwhile.” This acknowledgement that Diana’s tragic flaw is that she doesn’t have faith is contrasted with a note about Max Schumacher’s character in which Chayefsky notes, “Max’s mistake was that history moves towards human and social justice - NOT SO - History moves towards the concentration of power, so that, in time, one mad man could destroy the world.” (my emphasis added.) Max’s liberal progressive faith is a counterpoint to Diana’s faith-void. Completing this trinity is Howard Beale. A character who we mostly experience through a series of arias, at turns honest, angry, empowering, conspiratorial and/or racist. “The big note we have made so far,” Chayefsky writes, “is the increasing despair of Howard Beale. He has rage, but no answers - so he turns more and more in need of a final and ultimate solution - TRUTH.” But “…what’s wrong with TV is the audience - who want instant truth - So the clown has become the prophet - and the world will follow these lunatic jugglers to their own destruction.” And so we witness a performance of “truth.” And in the same way that many social media platforms pitch an illusion of conversation that denies actual dialogue, Howard’s truth becomes the stuff of soundbites -- memes. A spew at a glass lens. Drafting thoughts that will eventually become text in Lee Hall’s adaptation, Chayefsky writes in his notes, “We don’t need truth, we don’t need the absolute, the ultimate, the total and the certain. All we have to do is get along reasonably well with our neighbors.” The necessity of working on a theater piece that is based on a film script that criticizes the medium of television is that we can place the complexity of these characters, the contradictions they carry, into a room where we sit and are affected by the complexity and contradictions of our neighbors. It is in the embodied experience of being in the theater where it seems this work begins to get at a note Chayefsky writes to himself, “I guess I would like to say something against the destructiveness of absolute beliefs. That the only total commitment any of us can have is to other human beings.” My hope from sitting with your neighbors tonight is that at the conclusion of our production of Network your recognition of this iconic work expands to a complexity of associations beyond, perhaps, being “Mad as hell.” And that we may be inspired to go out from here and “figure out what to do with it.”

-Ashley Kelly Tata

September, 2024

Quotes are from the script or the Paddy Chayefsky papers retrieved from the Billy Rose Theatre Division of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts

Chayefsky, Paddy.

Plot Outlines. 1974.

Box 93, Folder 1

Plot outlines, narrative development  - undated

Box 93, Folder 2

plot outline, notes on narrative development, scene drafts - undated - original order maintained from final bulk grouping by PC

Box 92, Folder 9

LPA Cornell-McClintic Special Collections Room

Billy Rose Theatre Division the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, New York City, NY.

Tatatober

Dear Every Body, 

Thank you for coming to see the premiere production of Kate Soper’s The Hunt last week. It was thrilling to finally be in an audience experiencing the big little thing we managed to put together. And really grateful for an absolutely wonderful design, performance and production team making impossible things happen.

And like that, it’s gone.

N E X T

Later today a bunch of ephemera workers are presenting a brief excerpt of Jerry Lieblich’s Fecund Error as a part of the 20th Anniversary Edition of Prelude Festival. It’s a total dream to be a part of the Prelude Fam Fam again this year. In true Preludian fashion I lied to Frank upon receiving the out-of-the-blue “have you got anything you’re working on?” email.“Totally” is a great excuse to plant the seed of an idea. I read Jerry’s script about 5 years ago and since then, well… a lot has happened. Some of what has happened includes a Berlin encounter between Jerry and Robert M. Johanson where over a beer in a biergarten Rob & Jerry agreed that Rob should set Jerry’s text to music. I know Rob as a carpenter. We were carpenters together. And now we’re building a thing that might be a Lynchy, Jodorowoskian Ritualistic Musical. And it’s sung by six fabulous and frighteningly game singers.

So if you happen to be in midtown on 10.21 around 4:30pm come on up to the Tank and spend thirty minutes with us. And then - not to organize your Saturday - but you could stick around and see Jerry’s Mehinerator which just appeared on New York Mag’s approval matrix in the High Brow/Brilliant quadrant.

Fecund Error

Saturday, October 21st

4:30pm-5pm

The Tank

312 West 36th Street

By Jerry Lieblich

Music by Robert M. Johanson

Directed by Ashley Kelly Tata

Music Direction by Nathaniel Granor

Sung by:

Justine Aronson

Nathaniel Granor

Leni Kreienberg

Brian Mummert

Emma Orme

Rachel Towne

More info here

BUT WAIT ! THERE’S MORE !

Tatatober To Do List:

Commemorate 22 years in NYC ☑️

Develop a habit of riding the NYC Ferry ☑️

Premiere The Hunt ☑️

Turn 41 ☑️

Get pic in local paper ☑️

Learn Tai Chi from Laurie Anderson ☑️

See the NY Liberty play the final game in the WNBA Finals ☑️

Send email to list on time ☑️

Work in process showing at Prelude 🟪

Collaborate again with the fabulous Ted Hearne and a “crack band” 🟪

They call it a “crack band” accompanying this piece. It is so. And a beautiful design team.

Please join us at Carnegie’s Zenkal Hall (it still takes practice) on Friday, 10.27 at 7:30pm to hear settings of Dorothea Lasky’s poems the way that only Ted Hearne can generate.

DOROTHEA

Friday, October 27th

7:30pm

Zankel Hall

Seventh Ave bet. 56th and 57th Streets

By Ted Hearne

Text by Dorothea Lasky

Feat.

Ted Hearne, Vocals and Electronics
Eliza Bagg, Vocals and Electronics
Rohan Chander, Keyboard and Electronics
Solomon Dorsey, Bass
Taylor Levine, Guitar
Nathan Koci, Piano and Keyboard
Ron Wiltrout, Drums
Diana Wade, Viola
Ashley Bathgate, Cello

Ashley Kelly Tata, Director
Thomas Dunn and Josh Higgason, Video Design
Rachel Perry, Visual Art

More info here

Thank you, as always for your time and attention. I am more than ever grateful for the privilege of knowing each of you and being a part of this community: a maker among makers. Fierce, defiant and healing love to every single body, our collective bodies, and a hope for a hug in our near future.

In making,

Tata

Newsletter Fall '21

*|MC_PREVIEW_TEXT|*

IPSA DIXIT Hello Every Body, Do you find yourself in this post-art society looking around asking "What is Art?" And then worrying that you should stop asking and keep making because the quibbling may have provided the gap for the Noise to fill-it-in with air-popped, crunchiness co-opted, repackaged and re-purposed by the Machine for tangible prices that proves the endeavor obsolete? Me too. In the before times I worked with Kate Soper and the Wet Ink Ensemble in collaboration with designers Anshu Bhatia, Brad Peterson and Nina Vartanian to stage the premiere of Ipsa Dixit. It's a wonderful Philosopera that performs the inquiry "What is art?" as a kind of MacGuffin into a work that slips from the asking into the experiencing. From cerebral Aristotle to somatic Holzer. Or that's what comes up as we re-visit this work five years after its premiere, three years after it was last staged at the Miller Theater and at the beginning of what everyone says is a new world. With the same questions and the same answers, neither of which seem to get at the point. Besides it is more direct. "People can understand you when you say something." Please join us at PS21 in Chatham, NY this Saturday (9/4) at 8pm  Tickets here Or message me if you think you might bop by. Below is more information about this weekend and about other in-person events over the course of the next few months that I'm enormously grateful to be in the processes of creating.  I hope you all are weathering the various storms. As always, let me know what you're up to. In making, atata ABOUT IPSA DIXIT  “Brainily winsome.” Kate Soper enacts “the polarities out of which art emerges.”                         — Zachary Woolfe, The New York Times “A brainy and emotional tour de force.”                         — Alex Ross, The New Yorker Called “a twenty-first century masterpiece” by Alex Ross, Ipsa Dixit is a theatrical chamber opera for soprano, flute, violin, and percussion. Exploring the intersection of music, language, and meaning, the piece blends elements of monodrama, Greek theater, and screwball comedy to skewer the treachery of language and the questionable authenticity of artistic expression. Each of the piece’s six movements draws on texts by thinkers such as Aristotle, Plato, Freud, Wittgenstein, Jenny Holzer, and Lydia Davis, delivering ideas from the linguistic disciplines of poetics, rhetoric, and metaphysics through extended vocal techniques and blistering ensemble virtuosity. Ipsa Dixit, which premiered at EMPAC, was a finalist for the 2017 Pulitzer Prize in music. Composer: Kate Soper Director: Ashley Tata Soprano: Kate Soper The Wet Ink Ensemble: Josh Modney, Violin and Viola; Erin Lesser, Flute; Ian Antonio, Percussion Video: Brad Peterson Lighting/Scenic: Anshu Bhatia Costume: Nina Vartanian Portrait and a Dream On September 18th join musicians, designers, composers and singers who, enabled and commissioned by David Bloom and Contemporaneous Ensemble will present a Day of Imagination at the Irondale Center. Three works will be premiering, including Brian Petuch's Portrait and a Dream, a new work about Jackson Pollock, and Lee Krasner, and the engineering of the Art Machine that's been taking us all on a drunken car ride for over half a century. Music + Libretto: Brian Petuch Director: Ashley Tata With  Kendra Berensten, Brian Giebler and Ricardo Rivera Scenic/Video Design: Magnus Pind Lighting Design: Abigail Hoke-Brady Costume Design: Márion Talán de la Rosa Associate Video Design: Adam J. Thompson   DETAILED INFORMATION AND SCHEDULE Proof of COVID-19 vaccination or a negative COVID-19 test result taken within 72 hours required for entry September 18, 2021 | 2:00-10:00 pm The Space at Irondale | 85 South Oxford Street | Brooklyn, NY Tickets Available Here! $20 individual set | $30 full day pass ** On September 18th, 2021, in collaboration with The Space at Irondale, Contemporaneous presents the inaugural DAY OF IMAGINATION, a day-long festival of musical dreams. DAY OF IMAGINATION is an ode to idealism — a space for the presentation of the most thrilling, ambitious, wildest "dream projects" of musical artists from across the world. Curated through the "Contemporaneous: IMAGINATION" open call, which asks creators to share what work they'd most like to be making regardless of traditional constraints on scale and practicality, DAY OF IMAGINATION is an entire day full of these extraordinary artistic dreams. This inaugural DAY OF IMAGINATION festival features three different sets over the course of September 18th, with massive multimedia world premieres from artists Kara-Lis Coverdale, Brian Petuch, Andrés Martínez de Velasco, and Dylan Mattingly. This first DAY OF IMAGINATION was initially scheduled to coincide with and celebrate Contemporaneous's 10th anniversary, and while the pandemic pushed back its presentation by a year, we are overjoyed to celebrate with you now – in our eleventh year — the limitless capacity of imagination. Join us for this joyous day of the most extraordinary music and art you've never heard.   Day of Imagination world premieres Schedule: *Day of Imagination consists of three sets, starting at 2pm, 5pm, and 8pm. You can buy a ticket for an individual set for $20 or a pass for the whole day (which you can use to get into any or all sets) for $30. 2pm | Set 1 Stranger Love | Dylan Mattingly 5pm | Set 2 Particles and Fields | Andrés Martínez de Velasco Aftertouches | Kara-Lis Coverdale 8pm | Set 3 Portrait and a Dream | Brian Petuch DETAILS Set 1 | 2pm Dylan Mattingly: Stranger Love, Acts II & III The day begins with the concert premiere of the last two acts from co-artistic director Dylan Mattingly’s ecstatic 6-hour opera Stranger Love. Scored for 28 musicians (including three microtonal pianos), 8 singers, and 6 dancers with music by composer Dylan Mattingly and text by Thomas Bartscherer, Stranger Love is a grand celebration of life itself. It follows two lovers whose romance unfolds to the rhythm of the seasons. Set on a vast time-scale against the ever-expanding universe, it broadens in scope and frame over the course of three acts, moving from the personal to the archetypical to a vision of the divine — a love supreme. Stranger Love evokes the visceral thrill of a gospel revival, the ethereal calm of watching snow fall, the wonder of staring into the night sky. Contemporaneous presented Act I of Stranger Love in a concert performance on the PROTOTYPE Festival in 2018, and this will be the first performance of the music from Acts II and III. Stranger Love is in development and will be presented in full in its world premiere production in Spring of 2023 in Los Angeles. This project was the inspiration for Contemporaneous IMAGINATION. Composer and co-artistic director Dylan Mattingly writes: as I’ve worked these past nine years to bring my own dream project to life, I knew that there must be so many other artists in the world who share this kind of experience, who have ideas for artistic work of the utmost importance to them, which are just too bold or big or weird or plain countercultural to receive traditional support. I realized that Contemporaneous could offer artists a chance to pursue that work, to fill that gap in the model of how new work is produced, and to encourage artists to not back down from their wildest dreams. Set 2 | 5pm Andrés Martínez de Velasco: Particles and Fields Particles and Fields is a hybrid exploration in sound, word, and image of the fantastical realities of quantum physics and the imaginative power of the figures who formed a new understanding of the universe. The performance follows an allegorical history of physics written by historian Alexander Blum, taking spectators from atomism to the birth of quantum mechanics and quantum field theory. An animated painting created by visual artist Michael DiRosa unravels in time alongside a music composition written for the Contemporaneous ensemble by Andrés Martínez de Velasco. The composition unfolds in three chapters, evoking invisible worlds and microscopic events through its shape-shifting music at the same time that the projected painting weaves through a multiverse of tessellating light, color, and story. Through its entanglement of science and art, Particles and Fields seeks to illuminate the wonder of physics seldom experienced by non-physicists. Kara-Lis Coverdale: Aftertouches Aftertouches is an arrestingly beautiful electronica album created and produced by Canadian composer Kara-Lis Coverdale. Intricate in detail and vast in scope, the album is a tapestry of magical electronic sound. In collaboration with Coverdale, composers Dylan Mattingly and Zachary Ritter have worked meticulously to arrange this album for the live musicians of Contemporaneous. The album's otherworldly electronic beauty will be recreated in live performance in this never-before-heard arrangement. Set 3 | 8pm Brian Petuch: Portrait and a Dream An opera about the life, work, and myth of Jackson Pollock The finale of the inaugural Day of Imagination is Portrait and a Dream , a new opera about the life and work of Jackson Pollock. Using interviews and conversations with Pollock, composer Brian Petuch builds a musical imagination of the creative life of Pollock, focused on the art itself. **A portion of Day of Imagination’s tickets are available free of charge to those who need them. Use the PROMO code TOGETHER when purchasing a ticket in order to receive a free community ticket. If you would like to help sponsor this program, please visit www.contemporaneous.org/donate to make a contribution. ON THE HORIZON Tue, October 26 - Isola by Alyssa Weinberg with text by J. Mae Barizo directed by Ashley Tata SEPTEMBER + NOVEMBER A SUPER TOP SECRET WORKSHOP COLLABORATION BETWEEN PAUL PINTO, ASHLEY TATA, THE INTREPID STUDENTS AT BARD AND SOME MAKERS IN SPIRIT. THE WORK WILL NEVER LEAVE THE HUDSON VALLEY. BUT KNOW THAT IT IS HAPPENING.  Dirty Coffey Salon Series These are occasional performances of music and other expressions made down and dirty for sharing, admiration and an excuse to gather. They happen now and then at 153 Coffey in Red Hook, BK. If you have a Dirty Coffey brewing, be in touch. A tentative schedule: Sat, Oct 9 - theramin - what else do you need to know? Sat, Oct 16 - Paul Pinto (followed by a Small Seed preview and atata bday acknowledgment) LOVELOVELOVE is the vocal trio of Paul Pinto and Bonnie Lander and Kayleigh Butcher! We formed in 2019 after making a music video, and... you know... scheduling... and then you know... corona..., now we're playing our first show in New York... in Brooklyn. Expect music and microtheatres with clinical dialogue about conflict resolution, Pokemon, obsession, the Greeks, lamps, and love. Why love? Cuz it's on our minds.  This Dirty Coffey salon will also feature some expression of what Afsoon, Aoshuang, Espii, Eliza, Booker, Zo and Roger and Me have been working on this pandemic, Small Seed, that VR Opera that we traveled West to research. And hugged many a tree in the making. Dispatches from the trip here tatatime.live Copyright © *|CURRENT_YEAR|* *|LIST:COMPANY|*, All rights reserved. *|IFNOT:ARCHIVE_PAGE|* *|LIST:DESCRIPTION|* Our mailing address is: *|HTML:LIST_ADDRESS_HTML|* *|END:IF|* Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list. *|IF:REWARDS|* *|HTML:REWARDS|* *|END:IF|*

Dispatch: Joshua Tree - Lands of the Serrano, Chemehuevi, and Cahuilla

Up before sunrise. Before rooster crows. Stretch Rooster Peck.

Grab some goodies at Boo’s Organic Oven. Then on to the desert. At the entry gate, Jerry - a volunteer, no official ranger hat - offers me a route and is excited by my excitement. He illustrates the proposed journey with a family photo album that has pictures of he and his wife visiting the sites over the last 12 years. “Did you know,” he says, pointing to an image of a bird “that these birds can’t eat the lizards as is, so they hang them out to dry on the trees and then eat them.” “Like Lizard Jerky,” I say. “Exactly!”

“Jerry,” I ask, “Do they hang around waiting for their lizard to dry, or do they leave it in the oven and come back when the timer rings?” “I don’t know that I’ve been asked that! I don’t know!” Inquiring minds want to know, Jerry. He then palms me an object. “Don’t tell anyone I gave this to you.” I put it in my pocket “I won’t, Jerry. Thank you. I’m honored.”

Out to the desert. All of the trails are supposed to take 60 minutes or less. Strong recommendation from the Parks Department in this heat.

A now-familiar pattern presents: trees fallen and decayed yield life from and shelter. A being disperses in death. No longer consumed with living, growing, taking. The whole of what was self becomes offering in ceasing.

Petroglyphs carrying a message.

Shrubs scramble up against boulders finding shade for a few precious hours each day.

Crepuscular mammals find food during the bookends of day, burrowing into dry, dense fauna to pass the sun’s peaking.

The network is present. But the nodes are more widely dispersed than in the Redwoods.

Shortened shadow calls for shelter. Off to AZ.

Rainbows and flash-floods. Crack of thunder, downpour, door opens.

“An auspicious arrival!” an old friend shouts.

The pie from Boo’s survived the desert and the state-border crossing. It’s pretty freaking great.

Honored, Jerry

Tallest Joshua Tree. Est. 300 yrs. old. Thanks, Jerry

Dispatch: Somewhere near Barstow

Rooftop brunch by the train. Food before flight. Fresno. Hugs and 666 and goodbyes for now.
And then there were two.

South on 101 towards Palm Springs. Traffic, traffic, traffic. Ah the thrill of “coming back” “flipping the light switch back on” get this economy moving.

We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert.

And stuck in traffic.

A second sequence of hugs and departure. Til.

Return to solitude. Car rolls to Joshua Tree. Arrive before the sun sets and the jewel of this destination: a hammock swaying in desert wind as the sun sets under a crescent moon. Howling.

Joshua Tree Moonrise from a hammock

Dispatch: Sequoia

When you’re about to meet the one of the largest living organisms on the planet you should get up early.

Stretch. Meditate. Component Coffee Lab in Visalia. Fuel up. Head out.

The climb. Get to 6000 feet before the temperature is 107. Tonya the Ranger is less exuberant than I’ve grown accustomed to. But it’s hot up here and the uniform is not great for heat. A poly-cotton blend. No doubt. We can’t confirm. She suggests a water feature in Kings Canyon (again, the heat) and the path to the really big, old trees. We had been given a hot tip from Gordon at an REI in Berkeley to see a really big rock as well. Hopefully all before sundown.

First stop: falls. Snow melts up the mountain makes for frigid wading. Scratch the surface of the bark field recording. Back through the canyon. Pull over for a fiercely determined selfie. Enough of this. We’re late for the trees. They’ve been waiting since before Jesus and Muhammad since a couple centuries after Siddhartha sat under a Bodhi tree or the Greeks began to honor Dionysos in festival. Since all that subsequent art and practices.

That’s when this tree seeded.

Oh.

And then about 100 years ago a small human labeled this really big tree “General Sherman” who scorched the Earth to save a country that came into existence during the last 2” of rings in this tree’s age. Scorched earth in the Pacific Northwest. In the Southwest. The victims of the current campaign litter the parks. “General”s “Sherman” and “Grant” and comrades shake their heads in their own time waiting for us to depart from this amusement park made to marvel at what is not for our amusement. Before the park the cavalry was sent in to protect the trees from humans. Even then they knew: it’s the humans that will get you, every time.

It’s not for us.

“Oh my”s exhausted we head to Moro rock. An ascent that makes you dizzy. At the top: a view that quivers the legs. Sunset in 360 at 6713 feet. Good thing we have the GoPro.

The red giant slivers down behind the crest and on to other lands. We applaud it’s awesome departure.

Not amused.

Hours down the mountain. Head full of hairpin turns. Legs still shaking. Steadied by marvel and late-night talking about what next? Is it all as small as naming a tree after a human?

Kings Canyon

Sequoia Bark Texture Detail

Sequoia Bark Texture Detail

(L-R) Aoshuang, Tata, Afsoon, Espii

Sunset at 6713 feet

Dispatch: Travel Days 101.2

Rohnert Park to Visalia. 266 miles.

But - wait. First a diner in Berkeley and reunion with tech friends. All the smiley people. And animated discussion of AR, VR, XR, IRL - all the realities - and what they look like. And what they do and why we’ll keep doing them.

Return to 101. Farmland and stuffland is all from here to there. Irrigate for agro. It’s 107 degrees at the gas station. Green farmland, white big boxland and dry, flammable beige in between. The in between being the primary color. $15 for 3 gallons unleaded. 30¢ for one gallon H2O. The whiff of water wars in the distance.

Keep driving. Must see those big trees. Why? Because they’re big? Don’t question my twisted sense of motivation. Highs of a different kind have motored all sorts of obsessive engulfing driving across this too-big-for one-national-park-land. This is an inheritance. Gotta catch them all.

Sequioa. Kings Highway. Climbing 1000, 2000, 3000. Temperature drops with each 1k feet. At 4k it’s only 100 degrees. 6 - 87. Clear and cool.

These giants. Fists of gods touching down. Golden Gate: we did that. Burj Khalifa - designed and constructed by a human. Build big and be comforted. But this mystery. Beyond control. It denies the setting of our correct proportion. Put it away. 6000 feet.

Sunset. Blood red. Moon rise.

Tomorrow for the trees.