KatrinaWagner.com

COACHELLA 2007

COACHELLA 2007
Oh where to begin???? I just came back this afternoon about 4 (I left Coachella at 6:30am) feeling like the festival was a marathon which I thoroughly enjoyed but which was a lot physically like Burning Man–but without the freedom to drink and carouse at will–Don’t ask me today if I will repeat the pleasure!!!

So I’ll tell you the challenges first and then the great stuff.
–The drive down took 11 hours–6 freeway stalls near LA and two full hours crawling through Indio (three miles???) getting into the site. With the help of a master scam king I managed to park near the campground saving me at least an hour of carrying my gear inside.
–There were 16,000 people camped, cars anywhere from a block to a mile away–you do the math on the process of moving tents, food etc from car to site.
–The campsite’s being without cars and RVs was nice, a sort of a polychromed fabric-domed suburbia with “streets” and “blocks”–the only problem really was that there were about 40 shower stalls to serve all 16,000 of us–and showers were closed half the day and seemingly randomly at night which was less than stellar after 12 hours in the 103 degree heat–
–The other serious bummer was that you couldn’t bring either water or food or alcohol into the music site and there were no ins and outs either so you were therefore required to buy buy buy everything on site–pizza slice $6, Haagen Daz $6, frozen Lemonade $5, BBQ beef $10-12, burger $6, water $2, beer or wine $7–It was hot–over 100 every day so one had to drink a lot of water–and subsist really on junk food–by the end of the three days I craved a real fruit smoothie and a salad. In fact the best deal I found was Sunday morning’s Bloody Mary–which I had because they had run out of breakfast burritos (eggs in a wrap–$5)–that included an amazing condiment bar of carrots, asparagus, string beans, jicama, olives, and celery that I made a meal out of –yum I felt healthy all day despite a number of glasses of cheap white wine

As for the great stuff
–the SITE first of all is drop dead gorgeous–green lawn–soft real grass, lovely–surrounded by palm trees and mountains–blue and bluer into the distance. And at night the nearly full moon and stars covered the sky.
–The interior lawn was filled with all sorts of Burning Man-like art and a whimsical array of shade structures–silk on bamboo, pod-like organic places to chill out of the blazing sun, one of which housed a dj booth where some excellent djs (Bassnectar among them and Pocket) spun house music throughout the festival. This is the site too where water jets sprayed us with a fine sweet cool mist and a silver-bodied wild woman sprayed a rocket-load of water at whomever she targetted from her platform near the dj booth–There was also a geodesic dome where I think amateurs found a stage and strange bicycle driven merry-go-rounds and steam locomotive driven amusement park rides. At night the site was alive with lights and motion everywhere you looked
–All this was backup to the music which was FABULOUS–5 stages all more or less reachable in time to see whomever you chose–that is if you held up in the heat. I was knocked down by it by still managed to see maybe 30 bands in the three days and I LOVED so many bands, I feel embarrassed like a teenager–who can’t say whom she loves best.
So with this caveat– here were my favorites:
FRIDAY:
–INTERPOL–their ecstatic drone and beat–I’ve loved them for a while now
–JESUS AND MARY CHAIN–who would’ve guessed–I never heard them when they were big but loved them here–harsh, hard driving
–STEPHEN MARLEY–I thought I was DONE with Reggae but here comes another Marley with a great range from old skool reggae to something Celtic to hard reggae–he was great
–OF MONTREAL–kind of BritPop, Indie, incredible sound, their own, brilliant

SATURDAY–oh my, a day I was dragging from the heat and hardly any sleep and wanting to see bands from one end of the venue to another–a mile or so– and heat heat heat heat but the music ROCKED:
–the CHILIS playing more of the old stuff (unlike last year’s Lolla which was so esoteric jazzy that I spaced on their whole set)
–ARCADE FIRE–this band is about epiphany, ecstacy, all the songs like a graduation or funeral anthem–strings, chanting, hallelujah real–what can I say–you have to have seen the Fire live to know what it feels like to see God or someone like him/her
–TIESTO–late, I was tired but this dj made me stay–hard beats, electric lights–I wished I’d spent more time here as the Good the Bad and the Queen were thin (I’d had great hopes–Blur, Clash and Verve meets someone great–) compared to this Ibiza quality dj who the crowd was too tired and hot to really appreciate
–DECEMBERISTS–I’d never even heard of them but their hard-rocking and sometimes sweet Celtic songs were a delight to my soul
–RAPTURE–electronic, electric, got me dancing while nearly heat-dead
–HOT CHIP– an quintet of geeks playing synthesizers, drum machines and thumping their bodies to their computer generated beats–this group is amazing–I’ve seen them 5-6 times, from Iceland Airwaves (an October Indie hard rock fest that’s the deal of the decade–$600 for 3 day rock fest, hotel and airfare) where NOONE in the USA had ever heard of them to a big Mezzanine gig now Coachella–they rock big time
DAMIEN RICE—David Gray crossed with some happy rock energy, still potic and romantic—a sleeper for me

SUNDAY
–MANO CHAO–Latin, reggae high energy renegades best seen live—I danced though their set, nearly heat-dead, singing along, wildly dancing the salsa-regsae-son they played, while th3e band played on in wild abandon
–PLACEBO–the band ecstatic, the lead singer like he was chanting his heart out loud, hallelujah like Arcade Fire but different–compelling, beautiful
–WILLIE NELSON and CROWDED HOUSE–both sounding good, but both really and obviously dated, done, singing the old stuff but relics we must pay tribute to–not entirely unlike the punk driven stars of the whole show—
–the RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE– I met so many people here from Australia, Scotland, England, Virginia, North Dakota, everywhere, here to see RAGE as if they’d come to see God. The band WAS driven, hard, a passion I needed to hear but since they’d never rocked my world, this was my first go round with the band. They felt like what you’d HAVE to listen to after you’d ended a passionate but doomed love affair and needed to bang your head against something hard –in the end I loved Rage like everyone of their die-hard fans

So there you have it–Coachella 2007–from a single point of view–written at full moon midnight after a ten hour drive home and a few hours to assimilate and wind down to regular life at a mild 75 with tap water free but no wild bands chafing at the gate to be heard. I could see myself there next year….

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At Home at Stars

Why do I find this moment so exquisite, so rare?
‘S’Wonderful,’ the blonde woman plays on a fine old Steinway
I taste the salad–exotic greens, Gorgonzola Blue, candied
pecans–and sip a smooth dry Chandon cocktail.
in this most elegant of San Francisco restaurants
The piano notes slide like fresh oysters into
the almost breathing space,
this room filled with flowers,
the primary colors of circus posters
and champagne adverts from the 1930s
I am here, dressed in a Nordstrom suit,
black, slender, slit at the leg…
I wear the medallion my father gave me
many birthdays ago,
and a diamond dinner ring from Brasil
At long last, I belong here,
my venue, the opera,
my transport, a restored British motorcar.
I sit by the piano overlooking the lovely people,
streaming through the satin room
and I want for nothing
no company
no compliments
the music sparkles into my heart
and
I am
content.

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98 in the Shade

98 in the shade
as ravens circle up to the sun
Heat shimmers from the slickrock
the air is hot
still
silent
Here in the shade
a rattler waits
under a juniper tree
for the afternoon wind
Here in the shade
I sit still
look at marks
some old ones painted
on the sinuous canyon walls
that rise, sheer, before me
Still, like the air
still, like the lizard, the snake
out of time in this dry canyon,
I sit watching the pictures on the wall,
waiting for them to speak.
I could stay here forever,
become stone
and never know more of the stories
than I do right now.

–Cedar Mesa
Grand Gulch Wilderness, Utah

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What I Got from AM Radio

WHAT I GOT FROM AM RADIO

It never occurred to me
in all these years
of listening to rock and roll
that I signed up a long time ago
for perpetual teenage torture.

It was always a bad moon rising
over my hopes
that some cute boy would ask me out.
Always running on empty into the parties
and out alone onto mean street
wishing a guy with tatoos
and a Harley wanted to sweep me away.
always attracted to poor Italians,
from the wrong side of town,
outsiders born to run
from whatever
was white and good and proper.

And who did I think I could be?
wearing black from the time I was twelve,
wishing for sex and romance
but cooped up in the suburbs
with nothing to do but listen to my AM radio,
feeling lost and
out of all the places I was supposed to be…
no,
there was nowhere I was really supposed to me,
not at home in the afternoons
because no one was there
and no one particularly cared
whether I was there after school
not hanging out at the soda fountain either
because the guy there didn’t like any of us much,
and told us so
although there was never much of an us,
not at a club or a friend’s house either—
I belonged to no place,
had few and fickle friends…
So it was just me and the AM radio
and paper dolls I made of a dream girl
I called Lorraine

who had long hair
and lots of clothes
and nothing much to do,
like me,
but pretty.

So is it any wonder
that I wanted the passion
they sang about in rock and roll songs?
that seemed to stream through the cruel eyes
of the tough boys wearing black leather jackets,
who loitered around the Loew’s downtown,
who themselves had nowhere to go but the streets,
but never my streets.
My streets were full of empty green lawns
trimmed up to English gardens,
and lined with silent houses
divided by hedges,
streets where no one ever even walked their dog,
streets that no one ever wrote a song about
or I never heard one
listening to the radio day or late at night,
alone in my suburban bedroom,
waiting for a cowboy or a hood
to take me away.

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My Father Died in Texas

My father died in Texas
bound and tied to dreams of love
developed dancing to jazz and going downtown
in the suburbs,
to the movies
died still longing for Ava, Rita, or
any bleached blonde dame
languorous on a chaise,
bored,
martinis dry,
the air thick with sex
wanted a Varda girl for a wife,
bubbly breasts bursting out of gingham pinafores,
legs going on forever down to ankle strapped stilettos,
nibbling a peach.
I am my father’s girl even as I age,
wishing that I too were blonde
with a tiny waist,
a hundred men at my door,
showering me with roses,
offering love.
Oh yes, I would love to have had Bogie
and perhaps Robert Mitchum sharing my satin sheets,
but actually
I’ve crafted another version of Hollywood dreams
and likely will die
longing for the likes of James Dean,
hard bodied,
lean,
lonely
and misunderstood,
standing against the wind
out on 50 in Nevada,
tender
somehow never before
touched to the soul
by love
until I come along,
riding a stallion,
the sky on fire.

In memory of my father, nearly Father’s Day 2003

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LA Sunday Morning

it was 8:30 and the LA streets were empty,
the air
silky
warm
everywhere there were flowers–in the trees, in gardens, on the hedges–tulips, daffodils, begonias, ,
colors everywhere and birds singing.
Then,
loping easily and proud
right down the centerline of Montana Street,
is a coyote-
thick coated and beautiful, still wild,
casually self-assured that
he belongs here,
was here way before any of us–
he came by me as I walked-,
came closer than any coyote I’ve ever seen before
in the desert
or the Rockies
Doesn’t he realize this is Los Angeles?
Does he care?
I was thrilled.
I saw a golden eagle circling above the palm trees
and I followed every street to the end,
In a cul-de-sac high above a wooded canyon
I find a home abandoned to the wild oat grasses
the paint is peeling and the shades on the windows
have cracked, dissolved into a kind of ancient lace
I look inside and there’s a coffee pot,
a sauce pan on the stove
then a very, very old woman moves her wrinkled hand into view,

As she stirs her breakfast porridge,
I imagine a whole life spent here,
spent at first in a home
once freshly painted white
children in the yard,
gambolling through the daffodils,
swinging into cherry blossom springtimes
so many years ago

all so very long ago, she remembers
as she moves the kettle from the flame

Her hand shakes but she is well enough
and the sun streams in her window
overlooking no longer the high rises of downtown LA
but simply a tangled desert canyon,
with coyotes down the road.

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I Would Wish Her Another Mesa

As I stand
at the edge of the canyon
I suddenly remember
an old soft-focus black and white
my father took of his city bride
astride a palomino
his raven-haired bride
with dark Indian eyes
She is beautiful and strange at once
and
she is
smiling
into some vague and wonderful future
this man promises

She is out here on a precipice
overlooking the whole sandstone West
no clouds to shatter into rain,
no,
nothing will ever hurt her again
right now
she rides like she was born on the mesa

Who knows what happened next
what my father did
or what she lost
did she even know how her dreams dissolved
like a darkening scene from an old Western movie
Who knows how she found herself
back home in the East
settling behind sooty windowed factory walls
alone
at work
in an office with no view at all

I would wish her another mesa,
another mountain ride,
I would wish her fulfilled
of the promise
she dreamed so many years ago
as she rode above the canyon
and smiled or maybe ached
for youth and the West
for whatever she had never had.
–Canyon de Chelly

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House and Home

For three years or so,
really in order to know,
in order to make order of a scattered life,
I have been making
shelters
shrines
structures in the shape of houses,
though I have found
no Simplicity pattern to follow
have found
no Good Housekeeping seal
to vindicate my plans
I simply find things lying around
–ordinary things–
stones from the trail
sticks and branches left bundled on the curb
brown paper bags and twine from the grocery
iris leaves
debris
bones, even.
I gather these things,
weave them,
tie them together,
join them into houses
I hope will make a home.
I am trying
at last, it seems,
to be a homemaker.

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The Chair

The chair
she sits in every afternoon
embroidering for the day
some fine young man
will come to her daughter,
will come to the cathedral,
come to give her grandchildren
stands empty now at noon,
vacant by the geraniums
she set outside this morning
stands near other chairs just like it,
empty on the cobblestones of
the village
that time has not touched
for seven hundred years,
the village of rock walls
built above the golden fields of
Medieval manuscripts

At the cafe, men sit gossiping
or walk slowly,
at ease under the olive trees,
until siesta
when the men disappear,
and no one else
comes outside

no one, that is, except the women
who for a time
come out to their chairs
come away from
the washing,
the children
come out to the narrow streets
Each woman
sits in her chair
facing
her
own
stone
wall
each woman
sews for her daughter,
sews the ancient patterns
into fine linen
sows her daughter’s life
inextricably
into
the fabric
of the past.

–Casole d’Elsa, Italie

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Aero Island, Denmark and Folkehojskole

It is early, perhaps 7am but the sun has been up for hours, or at least the gray sky has been light since 4am here on this 30 kilometer long island off the coast of Fyn, the middle kingdom of Denmark. Here we are in the Baltic Sea which is warmer than the air on colder drizzly windy days and clearer than Lake Tahoe. There are songbirds on the chimneys of the heavily thatched roof of my arts-focused folkehojskole, at one time a typical Danish countryside farm built in 1779 and they sing their hearts out all day, beautiful varied melodies like Esteve’s primary colored paintings, like all the jazz we are hearing every day and night here at this “folk high school” I am attending for some weeks of the summer 2004.

In the field just beyond where we have breakfast of jam and yoghurt, cheese and rodebrot (a thin dense, nourishing dark bread made with sunflower seeds and other whole grains) there are always roan horses grazing and the hill beyond has an ancient windmill, the “Vestermolle,” also thatched and looking like every Van Gogh you’ve ever seen. Just down the hill is an earthwork, a huge mound a Viking king had raised by hand in the year 900 or so.

This island I am living on for the summer, Aero, is an island lost in time, its lifestyle and values embedded in the 18th-19th centuries. Homes are all old, hand built, small and cozy; everyone walks or rides a basic bicycle around the island; and everyone has a garden, a craft he or she lives by, and a friendly heart Outside most homes is a small box, a chair, or a table on which are fresh foodstuffs and crafts for sale–. “ny kartoflen–10 kroner” (new potatoes, (about $2 US), juicy purple onions, lavender, homemade cookies, hand knitted sox and baby clothes in brilliant wildflower colors–orange, buttercup yellow, Mediterranean sea blue or would it be Los Angeles pool Hockneyesque blue?, Red, blue green, each sock or bonnet knitted with a different pattern, with stripes and flowers, each one unique, and for sale for a pittance–sox for two dollars, a baby dress for seven. Each cache has a jar for any money that you might owe, as here trust and honesty are givens. The office here at the skole for example is always open, with cash box, computers and telephone there with no one looking after them as no one misuses privilege. At a railway station on my way here two weeks ago I absentmindedly, travelling on two hours’sleep, left my suitcase in the kiosk store, and went to wait for a half an hour for my train. When it arrived I realized I’d abandoned my antique Sansonite (which is a marvel that I’ve lugged around for twenty years and still manages to stay intact and functional) in the little store in the station, a store by the way like most here in Denmark that serves fresh sandwiches, bakery bread and pastries. When I returned it was still there waiting expectantly. Indeed people leave their babies in perambulators (of the most advanced high tech and luxuriant kind) in front of restaurants while they dine inside and of course the babies are still there when the meal is done.

What brings me to Aero is Folkehojskole—a Danish post-secondary, non-graded school system, state-supported, and intended to give adults respite from work, a week or two or ten off in the country studying something they want to explore from world political peace movements to soccer, drawing to classical music composition. At our skole–Kunsthojskolen pa Aero (kunstaeroe@post.tele.dk)–the day begins with breakfast outside in the green yard next to the horses; then we have “sammling”– the gathering– wherein we sing songs not from a hymnal exactly but from a songbook of joyous tunes about the new morning, the grass, the beauty of the earth and life, a songbook that every hojskole here in Denmark uses, and that unites the people of this country in positive joyful peaceful living.

The idea of the folkehojskole was developed by a preacher and hymn composer named Grundtvig in the mid 1800s. Initially a folkehojskole was a school to let farmworkers (and other poor people who hadn’t the opportunity to go to school) come back to school at any age and be lightened by music, art, sport, ponderings of philosophy or study of other countries’ cultures. Grundvig is revered almost as a mystical visionary and his ideas about building a nation of happy and peaceful people revolutionized Denmark and really shows in every aspect of the Danish life. I was told in fact that you really cannot fight if you are Danish because fighting words do not exist in Danish so one cannot really be vicious to others. Case in point, here in Aero I have been living with thirty people for the last ten days and haven’t heard a cross word yet. We are all participant in a communal experience of great sweetness–we eat together, paint together, drink wine together (it’s quite hilarious really to see our little herd of middle aged people, each with his or her own bottle of usually Chilean red wine, me included strolling about the lawn and fields), and sit outside as often as the weather will allow and talk and talk and talk. I am as included as anyone else and most of the time they kindly speak English, though sometimes they are comfortable enough with me around to chatter on in Danish and I really don’t mind; it’s a little like birdsong in the end.

As the focus of this folkehojskole is the arts, and the course is “Art and Jazz”, we start the “study” day with a slide lecture on art–Sigmar Polke, Mondrian, Esteve from France, Saatchi artists, a Venezuelan installation artist from the last Venice Bienal, Bearden, a light installation in the Tate modern–or a film about contemporary art.

Then we go to our studio, an old farmhouse where huge buckets of acrylic paints and a huge roll of brown paper are available. And coffee, tea–herbal and English Breakfast–are brought to us fresh each morning and afternoon. Then the painting begins, done always to jazz, from Ellington to Brubeck, Jarrett to Miles. For three special days we had a duo from Copenhagen– Maas on sax and Erik on drums–play for us live in the studio, sometimes in the main room, sometimes wandering among us as we painted, Erik drumming on any surface he could find, Maas blowing the sax like a demon. They even came with us out one night to a sand quarry where we had our “night experience” Imagine a long long dusk, mounds of concrete blocks and rusted machinery, a crane, a huge shovel, mountains of sand and a lake, birds singing and the scent of lavender and us, all thirty of us, with six by eight foot sheets of paper and paint. By the time we set up, the light was fast disappearing which of course was the director, Nils, idea to free us all up. And so we painted until we couldn’t see what we were doing, painted with sand falling into the paint, painted by walking into our surfaces to make marks. It was great fun and then we were rewarded by cake and coffee–yes even out there in the quarry. Other nights we have heard live jazz at the Festival in the main town of Aeroskobing–great traditional cool jazz, sometimes cacaphonous obscure jazz by an Argentinian group–in an intimate old half timbered building, candlelit and cozy as every place here seems to be. When we come home at midnight or so the whole tribe raids the refrigerator and kitchen like kids at camp, bandits finding kuchen and kaffe and then talking another hour longer before retiring to our feather beds, mine in the garrett under the thatch of the main house.

Lunch is my favorite meal here as a smorgasbord of treats welcomes us from a long hard morning of making art–two kinds of herring, wurst, ham, salame, camembert, gorgonzola and white cheeses, eggs, four kinds of fresh baked breads, greens, sometimes a pate or a spinach quiche, a veggie burger kind of loaf, tomatoes, cucumbers, cabbage and carrots, dill dressing in creme fraiche and mustard viniagrette–always a feast and we take our food outside in the sunshine when it isn’t raining, even going out when its gray, the Danish folk so grateful for light and summer that they are outside as often as possible. In fact I am amazed at how often they become lobster red and sunburned, never a fear of skin cancer; actually many of them smoke a lot as well and seem to not care about lung cancer either. They are a happy, somewhat generous of body lot, who are unpretentious, casual of dress. It’s been funny for me to see a whole populace with the same skin and body type as mine–stout Germanic/Nordic with broad shoulders, pink prone to burning flesh–I have a friend here, Marlene, who is in the textile industry and she told me that each country actually measures its own population and makes clothes to fit that group. Here the clothing fits me better than it does in the states. If I could only learn Danish, but it is the most impossible of languages–words spelled one way never sounds like they look as they do in Spanish; and there are many sounds distinctly and uniquely Danish; hence the name Aage for instance is pronounced “oh yay,” and Aero is “ay rhuuuuch,” go figure. I am constantly misunderstood when I ask for places–people tell me they don’t exist. Of course they do; I just can’t say the words, try though I may.

Living with the Danish people for a month showed me a quality of community I’ve rarely experienced in the States. Here people invested as much energy in personal communication as they did in their art and though I was an outsider, I was never left out. Indeed when my birthday coincided with our farewell dinner, I was feted with tributes and a necklace of mementoes—a gull feather, a stone from the beach, a piece of rubble from the quarry, a velvet pouch of treasures Kirsten gathered for me to have a remember this new-found family by….and then, in the morning, my actual birthday, I was led out to the farmyard to see that the formal Danish flag was being flown. Knowing that this only happens on proscribed special days like Christmas and the Queen’s Birthday, I asked if my birthday was an official Danish holiday as well. “No,” Birgit replied, “the girls in the kitchen decided that we should fly the flag for you today!” In fact, the whole village of Soby, where our skole is located all replaced their daily vimpel (the long slender flag than flies from a white and red flagpole in every yard on Aero) with the big Danish flag in honor of my birthday. I was moved to tears as I walked down to the port to see my friends off for home.

Two weeks of painting and conversing, washing dishes together and listening to jazz, and we were family, not to mention that the entire group had as well produced a prodigious amount of art, had made exciting artistic break-throughs and were thoroughly reinvigorated in spirit. We had a final Gallery Opening and then a farewell dinner, full of tears and toasts, as if we’d known each other forever and were each departing for Antarctica. And indeed in the morning everyone departed except me (I was to stay for the next intensive, one on landscape that began with a trip on a classic square-rigger sailing ship). My fellow painters, now all friends, left on a red and yellow hulled steamer bound for the mainland of Denmark, a scene reminiscent of the departure of the Queen Mary—everyone on deck, waving hankerchiefs and blowing kisses until the ship vanished into the blue horizon of the glistening Baltic Sea.

Summer 2004

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