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August 2, 2019
Dear Friends and Neighbors,
I have a new adventure! I'll be performing the part of Majorie Prime in a play by the same name this coming September. It takes place in the future, in a time when AI beings can be created to simulate a loved one. The play deals with issues like memory and relationships, the transitory nature of life and love, and the deep need to maintain a connection with those we love no matter the circumstances.
Having just finished my memoir and doing all the little things it takes to bring it to publication, I've been thinking a lot about memory. My writing mentor, Ariel Gore of Hip Mama fame, says that all memoir should be called fiction because it's, well, memory, and as we all know, two people never remember anything in the same way. Akira Kurosawa's 1950 masterpiece Rashomon addresses the motives behind our interpretation of events and the subjectivity of human perception, memory and reporting. The idea that you and I can be in the same place at the same time and each come away with a different understanding of what takes place in that moment has even spawned the term "Rashomon effect" based on the unreliability of eye witnesses. We certainly had a huge display of it last September with the Kavanaugh hearings, and in all the #metoo reports that come up on a daily basis.
While our memories might be faulty, this phenomenon is vastly different from what's taking place in our culture right now. I don't understand how anyone can look at the babies and small children being neglected in camps along our southern border and believe that it's fine. In fact, #45 said in early July, “I’ve seen some of those places, and they are run beautifully. They’re clean. They’re good. They do a great job.” Sometimes we tell ourselves what we want to hear.
In the past I've often wondered what I would do if I were transported to an historically difficult time. Would I go along and turn a blind eye? Would I join the resistance? I like to think that I would fight the good fight, but I haven't been tested in this way. The survival instinct is strong. I read somewhere that we would do in 1930s Germany exactly what we are doing now. What do you see happening in the USA? What stories will we tell ourselves and our children about the stands we take in the days and months to come? No easy answers. Just more questions to trouble our sleep.
Another Small Gathering
Lindsay Bernal
Someone had laced the pot,
my date shape-shifting
in the car’s plush seat.
I rolled with it, his tongue,
not sexy or soft, but possibly
earnest. I must have bit him
on purpose to regain my breath,
redirect him away from my throat.
Get it on, bang a gong, get it on,
his favorite song on the mixtape.
I was a liar, called my parents
hours later from a distant Finger Lake
to say I was sleeping at Suzanne’s.
Is a hydra like the zebra mussel
taking hold here, forever altering
the ecology of Keuka and me, half-dressed
in his younger sister’s top bunk,
my bony hips against his,
the popcorn ceiling scraping my back
each time I was flipped over.
I’d foreseen this happening
the second we left the gymnasium
with its stupid decorations.
Through the bay window of a child’s room,
the black water licked the dock,
the huge lake a dream
into which I threw my still boyish body.
He wasn’t aware of me,
nor I of him. How inelegant and sad
our untangling was, how we’d misremember it.
WHAT'S HAPPENING THIS WEEK
Friday, August 2 @ 9pm. Doors at 8pm. KILLER QUEEN is a new monthly variety drag show hosted & produced by our own Sunday night volunteer, Violet Hex, which showcases an alternating cast of Portland’s most talented, eccentric, creative, and one of a kind fabulous queer entertainers! This month the headliner is DEE LYRIUM of the House of Ada. Vintage pop-up shop by WYLD STALLYNS! $5 Champagne Cocktails! DJ Johnny Demonic!
Tickets $12 in advance or at the door.
Saturday, August 3 @ 7pm. Doors at 6pm. Prepare for a night of wild entertainment as Doctor Jack’s Old-Timey Medicine Show takes your eyes, ears, and tongues on an adventure of a most pleasurable sort! Enjoy mind-boggling magic, heart-stopping sideshow, and gut-busting comedy from our menagerie of talented performers. It is sure to be a night to remember!
Cast: Doctor Jack, Lacy Knickers, Paper La Shay, The Historical Conjurer, Lady Coquine, David D. Daniels, Eloise Pym, Nicholas Bronson, and Johnny Mayhem!
Don't forget to show up in an old-timey costume for a FREE raffle ticket!
Tickets for the show are $12 in advance, $15 @ the door.
Presented by the Northwest Mothers Milk Bank and the Black Parent Initiative
Sunday, August 4 @ 2pm. Chocolate Milk examines how the socioeconomic factors of race and sex influence breastfeeding rates for black mothers in America through the stories of three women.
After the screening, please stay for an engaging discussion with:
- Royal Harris, Program Coordinator for the Multnomah County Health Department’s Healthy Birth Initiative Father Involvement program;
- Dr. Roberta Hunte, an educator, facilitator, researcher, cultural worker, and breastfeeding mama;
- Lilian Olero, a Community Health Worker/Doula with the African Family Holistic Organization (AFHHO); and
- Linda Bryant-Daaka, an International Board Certified Lactation Consultant, Labor and Postpartum Doula and Childbirth Educator with The Black Parent Initiative’s: Sacred Roots Doula and Lactation program.
Northwest Mothers Milk Bank (NWMMB) is the only not-for-profit milk bank in the Pacific Northwest!
The Black Parent Initiative (BPI) was established in 2006 to help families achieve financial, educational and spiritual success. They provide a range of services including doula services, parent coaching, parent training, and education. The Sacred Roots Doula program provides mothers and families with consistent, continuous reassurance, comfort, encouragement, and respect. The Doulas provide culturally specific care for mothers based on their circumstances and preferences.
The event is FREE. Donations will be taken at the door for Sacred Roots Doula program.
AS YOU LIKE IT
Presented by Public Domain Xinema
Tuesday, August 6 @ 7pm. William Shakespeare's classic comedy, As You Like It (1936) receives its definitive film adaptation starring the greatest actor of all time, Laurence Olivier. Co-starring the great Elizabeth Bergner and directed by her husband, Paul Czinner, this version of the great playwright's work is funny, romantic, and filled with zesty adventurism. Don't miss a minute of this legendary classic, on the big screen with newsreels, cartoons and other treats from 1936 before the show.
Tickets $5-8 suggested donation; no one turned away for lack of funds.
REMEDIATION: Photo-Journals of the French & Japanese Avant-Gardes
Presented by Church of Film
Wednesday, August 7 @ 8pm. REMEDIATION explores the use of photography as document, narrative, and surrealist expose in the works of four radical theorists and filmmakers, Alain Resnais & Chris Marker in France, and rivals Toshio Matsumoto & Nagisa Oshima in Japan. Included will be their strange, atmospheric experiments in GUERNICA (1950), LA JETEE (1963), THE SONG OF THE STONE (1964), & THE DIARY OF YUNBOGI (1965). A global quandary over the meaning of the image in art, and cinema’s relationship to other visual mediums, opened a dialogue between the avant-garde groups in France and Japan—and works of intermedia explorations that seem to answer one another.
Tickets $5-8 suggested donation; no one turned away for lack of funds.
Presented by KBOO Community Radio and the Clinton Street Theater
Join us for this documentary screening with vibrant discussion afterwards! When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1990, Cuba’s economy went into a tailspin. With imports of oil cut by more than half – and food by 80 percent – people were desperate. This film tells of the hardships and struggles as well as the community and creativity of the Cuban people during this difficult time. Cubans share how they transitioned from a highly mechanized, industrial agricultural system to one using organic methods of farming and local, urban gardens. It is an unusual look into the Cuban culture during this economic crisis, which they call “The Special Period.” The film opens with a short history of Peak Oil, a term for the time in our history when world oil production will reach its all-time peak and begin to decline forever. Cuba, the only country that has faced such a crisis – the massive reduction of fossil fuels – is an example of options and hope.
Tickets $7-10 suggested; no one turned away for lack of funds.
COMING SOON
The Clinton Street Resistance Series has started booking a great line-up of films for your viewing pleasure. ROCK 'N' ROLL HIGH SCHOOL, September 9; 16 CANDLES, September 16; SEEKING A FRIEND FOR THE END OF THE WORLD, September 23; DAY OF THE JACKAL, October 7; BRAZIL, October 14; KUNG FU HUSTLE, November 11; TREMORS, November 25; HOW THE GRINCH STOLE CHRISTMAS, December 9; THE DARK CRYSTAL, December 16.
Do your parents *know* that you're Ramones?
The Portland 48 Hour Film Project is bringing its legendary creativity and chaos to the legendaryClinton St. Theater on August 9 and 10. You won't want to miss this party! Tickets on sale NOW!!!
Portland Psychedelic Society presents Liminal Mind on Tuesday, August 13. Don't miss the chance to join two of psychedelic culture's most adventurous thinkers, Erik Davis & Jennifer Dumpert, to learn how to unlock the potential of your LIMINAL MIND. Between dream and waking, between fact and fiction, between sacred and the ordinary, liminal mind blooms in in the in-between spaces of twilight, ambiguity, weird possibility, and creative encounter. Discussing and exploring practices of dreaming, meditation, psychogeography, and psychedelic consciousness, Dumpert and Davis will show how easy it can be to access the fantastic edges of the everyday.
Lessons of a dream (Der ganz grosse Traum) screens Wednesday, August 14 as part of the Portland German Film Festival Monthly Film Series. This feature film is based on the true story of the teacher and football pioneer Konrad Koch.
Planned Parenthood Fundraiser, Friday, August 16 @ 7:00pm. Two documentaries, A GIRL LIKE HER and JANE: AN ABORTION SERVICE with conversations afterward with Judith Arcana and Lani Jo Leigh.
This summer, JACK G FILM SCHOOL brings the Clinton Street Theater a series of film screenings, discussions and musical guests. Come out for triple-feature on Sunday, August 18. The school leads up to the making of the feature film COWBOY NEMO, filming in Portland, Oregon August 26-31st. $5.
Francis Ford Coppola‘s Apocalypse Now: Final Cut has a full week run beginning Monday, August 19th.
The rich inner world of the renowned Georgian screenwriter, artist and puppeteer Rezo Gabriadze is as fantastic as the animation into which he has poured this story of his life. Rezo’s director son, Leo Gabriadze, who previously made the hit horror film Unfriended(2014), leaves it to his father to talk about a life suffused with magical thinking. Coming August 22 through 28, times vary.
Forgiving does not erase the bitter past. A healed memory is not a deleted memory. Instead, forgiving what we cannot forget creates a new way to remember. We change the memory of our past into a hope for our future.— Lewis B. Smedes
Don't be a stranger. Come see us soon.
Kind regards,
Lani Jo
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