R.I.P.
Blog put to sleep but kept online for the links.
Posts
About my 2017 reading at Vineyard Place
This is an odd addition to my professional resume. From one point of view, it might be called a waste of time, reading to a small (30 ish) audience not particularly interested in literature, there mostly out of curiosity. But I knew this going in. I schdeduled this without regard to the audience, a present to myself on my birthday. And in this regard, I came through with flying colors. My energy is high, the selections perfect, my comments relevant. This, in fact, is probably as good a literary reading as I am capable of giving. Whatever else it is, it's an accurate representation of my writing and career. https://youtu.be/ZBTn1ulBvTU?si=a-vROqQ7Wbj436yI
Sneak preview: Titanic Blues
Another Typecast artificial intelligence project, creating an audio play from the textual script. The first short scene of a longer work, about a history professor who drops out to spend the remainder of her life emulating the musicians on the Titanic. Looked like it was going to open in Santa Fe until covid hit. Gathering dust ever since. Now it's getting new life. (6 minutes) https://youtu.be/tX8JPP3Le0M?si=uQq86HDbrx8o17vM Back to top cdlivhw.blogspot.com
Snoops, a short audio play
Produced from a playscript with Typecast Artificial Intelligence (using characters Ron, Jack, Emma). Website at typecast.ai Snoops (8 minutes) https://youtu.be/xyNRt6f95DM?si=xCBBdJFguXX9J5CE Back to top cdlivhw.blogspot.com
I play clawhammer ukulele
Can you guess this is a ukulele? I am playing it in the style of a 5-string banjo. Unfortunately my arthritic hands disrupt playing today. But I still wear my Ukulele Underground ballcap! https://youtu.be/zqTqtXSqvso?si=vo47ouxSKuudU5V3 Back to top cdlivhw.blogspot.com ,
A dramatic reading by seniors
Nature Wins Before living in the Homewoods retirement community, Harriet and I lived in another, Vineyard Place, which is not far from here. We didn't like it much but fell in love with the area. We stayed at Vineyard less than a year and moved into an apartment. While I was there, I formed a dramatic reading group. Only one woman had any drama experience. It didn't matter if we weren't very good. The point was to keep busy. We did two projects while I was there. This is the first one, called Nature Wins. Part one ... https://youtu.be/SqzNdXWAelk?si=9nXMU_rYyPK2jex4 Part two ... https://youtu.be/VHQ_a84xneY?si=FNxZ7LH7SKb6LhoE Part three ... https://youtu.be/jn-Ad0P0MNY?si=O-mtwjdH6WSmjArP Back to top cdlivhw.blogspot.com
Four playwrights, four extraordinary plays
I've been fortunate to see live productions of each of the plays below. To my sensibilty, plays don't get any better than this. The Physicists by Friedrick Durrenmatt https://youtu.be/biPiQgkCkQQ?si=wJY9VUm7aaRChnQJ Sizwe Bonzi is Dead by Athol Fugard https://youtu.be/93a2xx5e-Gw?si=PxybbLqmyA6BFNWo Betrayal by Harold Pinter https://youtu.be/0KJ59uV-hOY?si=_WEzlCc_0O0ordzg BBC radio, Betrayal https://youtu.be/ppVoib4e7ao?si=1aROce90NJsF8H_S Our Town by Thorton Wilder (with Paul Newman as the Stage Manager) https://youtu.be/gc1o9cGQ9_Q?si=6TkIKJsqJsAHPZfdi Back to top cdlivhw.blogspot.com
Two from Oregon Magazine
I wrote a lot of non-fiction for a playwright. Pays the rent. In the late 60s, early 70s, I was a regular contributor to Northwest Magazine, a supplement to the Sunday Oregonian. It no longer exists. Two decades later, I contributed regularly to the online Oregon Magazine. Below are two favorite pieces. The Weight of My Father's Soul https://www.ibiblio.org/cdeemer/soul.htm Birthing Little Richard https://www.ibiblio.org/cdeemer/birthing.htm Back to top cdlivhw.blogspot.com
The Moon in its flight by Gilbert Sorrentino
Another extraordinary short story in my book. Like the Coover story mentioned in an earlier post, this one rejects the rules of traditional narrative. I often quote the story's last line. The Moon In Its Flight https://youtu.be/zkGdsHpqT_s?si=HQqN3s0cPIkriD55 Back to top cdlivhw.blogspot.com
Going For A Beer (2011) by Robert Coover
I'll never forget the day I first read this short story in the New Yorker magazine. I was stunned. I was shaking. I had to reread it again several times to convince myself I wasn't hallucinating. Robert Coover, an American writer on the edge, had done it again. The story is brilliant. I alerted several writer friends to the story, and they agreed. Coover had reshaped traditional narrative to show, better than any other literary work we knew of, how the mind works when under the influence of alcohol.This story doesn't describe what it's like to be drunk: it PERFORMS what it's like. And I am blown away again to find the story on the Internet in an excellent reading. Going For A Beer https://youtu.be/75KPZY9ftV0?si=LLb7YSdYvnqWNfA5 Back to top cdlivhw.blogspot.com
My favorite folksinger: Ramblin' Jack Elliott
Today my favorite musical genres are jazz, classical, folk, in that order. The only time I listened to pop was as a teenager, loving doowop. But in the 1960s, 70s and 80s, my favorite music was folk. I performed folk music myself and always had my guitar at hand. At parties, at dinners, I arrived with guitar and sang for my supper. I first heard Elliott in the Army. I subscribed to the folk magazine Sing Out and responded to an ad for his first American album, Elliott sings Woody Guthrie. Playing the album, I became an immediate fan, an increasingly obsessive one. Elliott was ahead of the curve, peaking before folk music became popular in America. He went to England and made a reputation there. With the sixties new interest in folk, he returned to America. By the time I got out of the Army, Elliott was making regular appearances at the Ash Grove, a So Cal folk club. I was always in the audience. Why do I like Elliott so much? His performances blow me away. Here he covers a ...
The playwright arrives
Chateau de Mort, Pittock Mansion, 1986. Commissioned. My first hyperdrama. About the adventures of bringing a new dramatic form to the Pittock Mansion. From Oregon Magazine: "Watch out, mama, hyperdrama's gonna mess with your Pittock Mansion!" www.ibiblio.org/cdeemer/watchout.htm An introduction to hyperdrama (video) https://youtu.be/H9pYzjzKrvc?si=HlEbWYMqFcnGtlFe Hyperdrama archive www.ibiblio.org/cdeemer/hdrama.htm Back to top cdlivhw.blogspot.com
Remembering the four-minute mile
When I was in high school, and a sports fan, there was periodic speculation about whether or not the mile could be run in under four minutes. Track stars were trying but always failed. Then in 1954 a miler named Roger Bannister took to a track in Oxford, England, and the rest is history. This Day In History tells the story: https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/first-four-minute-mile This sort of thing -- folks believing "it can't happen" -- occurs all the time. When I was managing editor of Oregon Business Magazine in the 1980s, we published a special issue addressing the question, "Will the Dow Jones Average ever break 1000?" (Today the Dow was almost 39,000! By June, 2022, 1755 milers had broken 4 minutes.) Remarkably enough, online I found a film of the event -- narrated by Bannister himself! https://youtu.be/wTXoTnp_5sI?si=PBdrv3ezkEfCP-SA Back to top cdlivhw.blogspot.com
Harriet's Boxed Art show
https://youtu.be/EltjmsC4ybc?si=hqFqkdIqAtDt8XVf Back to top cdlivhw.blogspot.com
Ralph Stanley's "O Death"
Man, talk about sending a chill down your spine! https://youtu.be/2xmRWj7gJEU?si=ZFn_JxwQpwGabjzyf Back to top cdlivhw.blogspot.com
Woody Guthrie's "Dirty Overalls"
Dirty Overalls: https://youtu.be/erBy_oZTbfg?si=_VbzBMCYS-FCETzp In 1979 I received a grant to tour and perform my one-man appreciation of the songs and stories of Woody Guthrie. The show became so popular I was able to renew the grant several times. After putting the show to rest for several years, I decided to resurrect it but with a second musician. I chose my friend, the late Jim Wylie. We had no grant but booked it easily from the show's past success. We kept it alive for a few more years. Here is the entire show: http://www.ibiblio.org/cdeemer/Audio.htm Back to top cdlivhw.blogspot.com
Clawhammer Ukulele
Can you guess this is a ukulele? I am playing it in the style of a 5-string banjo. Unfortunately my arthritic hands disrupt playing today. But I still wear my Ukulele Underground ballcap! https://youtu.be/zqTqtXSqvso?si=vo47ouxSKuudU5V3 Back to top cdlivhw.blogspot.com
The teacher (audio)
From The Colorado Quarterly, summrr, 1969 https://youtu.be/gJlu3wmgE_E?si=2-BAVtPtU8irV81J Back to top cdlivhw.blogspot.com