Rootwire Arts & Music Festival 2010

Well, friends, we have reached the end of the first Rootwire Arts and Music Festival hosted by Papadosio. My only regret is that I didn't take more photos. I suppose I was having too good of a time absorbing the experiences firsthand to hide behind a camera documenting said experiences all weekend.

I am ecstatic to say that I was able to participate in the festivities as a volunteer this year. I started out flyering and spreading the word about Papadosio and Rootwire during Camp Bisco and in Columbus in the weeks leading up to the festival. I joined other volunteers the Thursday before liftoff to make signs and Tshirts, and perform other odd jobs that were necessary to bring it all together before Friday. I sporadically (wo)manned the Happy Helping (first aid and lost & found) Tent along with the front gate, and participated in other odd jobs such as errands to the outside world and trash duty. And in everything that I did, I was thanked, appreciated, and rewarded. There was nothing thankless at all about the work I put in this weekend, which made the work I did that much more enjoyable.

Although the weekend was exhausting, it was a rewarding experience full of love, dedication and community. The musical and visual artists, performers, participants, and organizers all came together to share a glorious weekend, and everyone played a role in making this festival memorable. The installations, decorations, performances, and art showed all festival-goers that this festival was for their pleasure and enjoyment. I'll probably never successfully remember all of the activities going on over the weekend, but they included guided morning yoga, environmental workshops, glass-blowing demonstrations, hoopers, fire dancers, acrobats, knife-jugglers, star gazing with telescopes, user-friendly and hands-on art installations, and lots of badass music all weekend long. It wasn't a Lollapalooza or even a Bonnarroo, bent ultimately on the bottom-line and the almighty dollar.

The most positive aspect of Rootwire was the feeling of community it created. Everyone was working for the benefit of everyone else, and that is a feeling you don't get at the big festivals and shows. I think this moment was solidified for me when I saw Jessy on the first night, and Alyese on the second night, tirelessly carrying the heavy flaming lanterns from one end of Kaeppner's pond to the other, just so we could look at their beauty floating on the water. Every person who was able to lend a helping hand did so, often times even if they were not technically a volunteer. Things would get stressful, tasks would pile up, chaos would ensue, but by the end of the night I would see Annie, Kim, Jess, Alyese, Grace, Katie, Jessy, Ed, Julia and others smiling, dancing and soaking in the positivity that the festival had to offer "by the light of the stars."

I know that because of the overwhelming positive feedback from this year's festival goers, attendance next year is going to go up. Those of us who were lucky enough to be a part of Rootwire's first go are always going to look back fondly at this year's festival and talk nostalgically "remember when..." about the vibes of the 2010 experience and about how close-knit the community became. So many faces at each show were familiar ones, and walking from the front stage back through Magreenery Woods felt like walking through a forest planted with friends. By the end of the weekend, those you didn't know before became new friends, and the bonds between old acquaintances were solidified, whether it was at the front gate at 9am or the dance tent at 5am. I am truly, truly grateful to have been a part of it all. Rootwire 2010 and its workers and participants will remain in my heart forever. I cannot wait for 2011 and the chance to make this festival happen once again.

Thank you guys for making this possible, especially Ed (pictured left) who put this all together from the get-go. I will miss everyone who heads out to Asheville, NC to continue pursuing the dream.

And now I am off to sleep for an entire weekend's worth of hours, because I have never been so exhausted in my life and I already started my new waitressing job at the sushi joint yesterday right after the festival. Needless to say, that was a little rough, and tomorrow they might have to train me from scratch all over again.

The Kids Are All Right

Once again, my movie review is going to contain spoilers, so if you have not seen the film and don't want anything revealed ahead of time, read no more! I just will always put this kind of disclaimer up because one time I went to a friend's house while he was watching Fight Club, walked in around the time of the big Tyler Durden plot twist, and he knowingly let me ruin the entire movie before I got to watch it from the beginning.

Last night I saw director Lisa Cholodenko's newest film, The Kids Are All Right. Jules (Julianne Moore) and Nic (Annette Bening) are a lesbian couple living in Southern California with their two children, Laser and Joni. Fifteen year old Laser decides he wants to contact the sperm donor responsible for bringing him and his sister into the world. Legally, eighteen year old Joni has to make the contact with donor Paul. Paul is a smooth-talking 30-something organic farmer/restaurateur whose hyper-masculine persona and irresponsible behavior first gains the love and admiration of the family, then their disgust and anger.

Rather than to regurgitate the plot here further, I want to talk about the way the movie addresses sexuality. I do not want to overstep my bounds here, after all, Cholodenko is, herself, a lesbian, and thus I trust that as the director she portrayed the lives of Jules and Nic in a way that was similar to her own experiences. After all, Cholodenko herself had a child with her life partner through an anonymous sperm donor. That being said, I was mostly pleased with the way sexuality and gender were portrayed in The Kids Are All Right.

To begin, I liked that this was a film that did not fall into the typical trap of needing to characterize the lesbian couple as a copy of a male and female couple. I wouldn't say there was a butch or a femme role assumed by either Nic or Jules, which was refreshing to see, as I feel that lesbians are often portrayed as one hyper-masculine and one hyper-feminine partner. Sure, there was masculine and feminine performativity carried out by both characters, you can't strip away the fact that gender is inherent, or at least deeply associated with many different traits. According to US or Western social standards, Nic's short pixie haircut and no-nonsense attitude may be seen as a more masculine performance, while her sensitivity and maternal protectiveness is typically associated more with femininity. I don't try to fall into these generalizations, of course men can be family-oriented and women cut their hair short all of the time. But there are gendered associations with behaviors and appearances in every culture, and I doubt you can argue that the associations I just laid down there don't ring true, at least in the US. Thankfully, the film doesn't portray these characteristics and behaviors as dichotomous.

I also like the way that sexuality was interpreted as a more fluid and complicated matter than simply hetero or homo. Nic and Jules get their kicks in the bedroom while watching all male porn. In fact, Jules goes quite in depth about the fluidity and convolutedness of sexuality when Laser asks why she and Nic watch "gay man porn." Definitely a funny part of the movie as the hippie-esque Jules tries to be honestly explicit when explaining herself to her fifteen year old.

Jules does not turn out to follow an explicitly homosexual path as well, when she eventually comes to cheat on Nic with sperm donor Paul. I think this is where those who identify as strictly heterosexual or homosexual (i.e. 0 and 6 on the Kinsey scale) might have problems. I might be assuming here, but I have a feeling that many people thought, or even whispered to a fellow movie-goer "but I thought she was gay," at the onset of Jules and Paul's affair. And indeed, when Paul proposes that he and Jules move their relationship to an even more serious level after their affair is discovered by Nic, Jules says into the phone "I'm gay," maybe even further confusing many audience members. But I think this was a realistic exhibition of human sexuality, especially under the conditions that the family and Jules was under. Namely, Joni is an emotional 18-year old preparing to leave for college, Nic is stressed out about Paul's arrival and is downing more wine than ever, Laser is experimenting with drugs and hanging out with a sociopath, and Jules is trying to start a business and productive working lifestyle for the third time. Paul comes along and becomes Jules' first customer at her new upstart landscape design business, and this galvanizes the whole sexual escapade.

Although I delved into the sexuality of the film, The Kids Are All Right is a movie that really tackles family, growing up, infidelity and other issues that many mainstream or heterocentric films cover, but it shows how these same issues are present in nontraditional (in typical Western culture) family structures. Any of the problems that come up are neither further exacerbated nor smoothed over by the fact that Jules and Nic are in a homosexual relationship, and I think that is such a good step in a society where many still think that shows like the L-Word are the Last Word (heh) in lesbian relationship representation.

Healthcare Reform

I apologize for my recent absenteeism. It is likely to continue for the next couple of weeks because I have a lot of thesising to do! My entire rough draft is due a week from today, a final will be due to my committee about a week after that, and in 4-5 weeks I should be defending. So if you don't hear from me before then, that is why.

I have been wanting to write about my familial struggles regarding health care reform, but I had been concentrating my energy and efforts into writing out letters and compiling documents into a simple statement about my feelings regarding health care. These packets are intended for my family, who over Grandma's birthday dinner at Ye Olde Outback Steakhouse, attacked the prospects of health care reform. Not only that, but this conversation evolved into an asinine detour regarding Obama's nation of birth.

So I will make a mini-statement here about my feelings about health care reform. I am fairly happy with the developments that have been made because they are a step in the right direction. Anyone expecting anything more radical at this juncture needs to wake up and smell the coffee (or the coffin placed on a democratic delegate's front lawn as a protest to their support of the bill). If I have learned anything from the women involved in environmental work I interviewed for my thesis, I have learned that baby steps are a necessity for any change. That being said, I applaud the passing of the health care bill, despite its flaws and despite the little matter that Representative Stupak contributed (in a nutshell, no federal funding for abortion proceedures). I only wish that this bill would have been passed years ago, when I was a college graduate under the age of 26 with no health insurance. I am very happy for those who will be able to now stay on their parents' health insurance plans until the age of 26.

What upsets me most of all about this whole debacle is how worked up, angry and violent the opposition is becoming. And I'm not necessarily referring to all this "isolated incident" talk, but rather to the reaction of my family to this whole thing. I fervently defend my political beliefs, but as a rule, I try not to bring up politics around my family, especially my extended family. Now under the Bush regime, everyone in my family was happy, I maintained my political silence around them, and for the most part, peace abounded in their lives, while I privately battled the demons of the Bush administration. But now that things are not going their way for the first time in 8 years, everyone seems to be involved in the political arena, and everyone in my family seems to have been informed by Glenn Beck. In my defense, they are the ones who have been bringing up the subject of health care reform, and I am the one voice of opposition (reason?) in their lives. Maybe it is something I need to work on, but I simply cannot maintain silence when my grandmother looks at me and tells me she is scared for what this health care reform is going to do to the elderly and this country in general. I had never, ever heard my grandma talk politics or about the government. Wanting to share with her that I don't think she should be scared, and that health care reform can be a great thing for many people including myself, I told her that I was excited for a change in a clearly broken health care system. What followed was a hodgepodge of "Where's the birth certificate?" and "This country was founded on freedom and we are losing that," among other questions and comments. Coming at me from all sides at the family-style seating, I can no longer even distinguish who said what or who attacked whom. I do know that something changed that night involving our family dynamics. I also know that I lost sleep and sanity as a result of the hubbub.

Several hours later, I suffered from another episode of an "opthalmic migraine." I put this in quotations because I am still not 100% certain that is what it is, but basically I get stroke symptoms, my vision goes haywire and my extremities and lips go numb for a short period of time. I get confused and have trouble reading, writing, and remembering. It is a scary thing to go through, and there really isn't much I can do besides ride out the 1-2 hour happening. I don't know what set it off, and it is still not even widely understood in the medical community. But I feel that maybe, just maybe, the stress about this whole health care thing has contributed to my recent episode. Due to health care reform debates, I must seek health care.

So if you see me within the next couple of weeks/months, we can talk about anything. But please lets not talk about health care reform, ok?

Update: Found this interesting...from http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~cook/movabletype/mlm/healthscatter2.png