From last week’s Meatpacking NYC photo shoot, here’s one of my favorite images. The artistic graffiti and guitarist’s soft profile bring a high-low aesthetic hinting at so many NYC contradictions. There’s something regal among the tagged ruins here. And that’s very Manhattan right now.
Army Of One
Photo: Sharon Rousseau 2012
Here’s the piece I wrote this week for the Woodstock Writers Festival “Rock and Roll Story Slam.” The phrase “By The Time I Got to Woodstock” had to be part of the story, and if you went over 3 1/2 minutes reading tonight in front of Michael Lang, you got gonged. But that’s rock and roll, baby. So I didn’t get gonged, the event was great, and here it is:
By the time I got to Woodstock, I’d driven miles of tobacco roads through dust fields and hidden stills, our Blue Ridge Valley held tight by mountains and broken ballads of Appalachia. Freebird was the modern anthem, but not mine.
My mother in the kitchen high on show tunes, Dad turning up the dial on the car radio—again, the dreaded Lightfoot. “Listen kids,” words tossed over the seat like Mom tossed carrots into the salad bowl while soprano-ing out a chorus of “My Fair Lady.” My brother’s Zeppelin and full-costume backyard Kiss concerts drew crowds, earned him some at-the-door cash before supper.
From my room, disco and “Rumors’ whenever the radio wasn’t reaching for miles-away WLS–Chicago. Over our black top two-lanes, Rick Ross was spinning on 3WC from a toy-sized studio on Main Street. Time stalled and Patti Smith lingered on our local stations, as if by some magic, as if there was a voice determined to help me get on with it all. Sixteen and restless, the windows down, driving no where—everything was, “Because The Night.”
The thing about college, about getting away to Chapel Hill, was the promise to never make that lazy exit back to the twang and foothills. I’d seen a lot of people do it, but not me. No way. So the 80’s were no sleep “In The Name Of Love,” U2 taking over the world, and REM blasting from ivy-covered buildings as we sat on brick walls late at night, the sweat of the bars glistening on our skin, like glitter in winter.
By the time I got to New York, I knew I was gone. Applauding my brother through every heavy-metal-dive on the Jersey shore, the Stone Pony and Rock Horse, bars up and down the hopelessness called Route 9 and finally into Manhattan showcases, I waited for the lights to come on. In the city, I saw who I wanted to see. CB’s, Brownies, The Beacon, etc, etc, etc,. There was the Roger Daltrey kiss. Showcases and A&R-speak. Velvet ropes and stage doors. Earplugs in my handbag—until the need set in.
By the time I got to Woodstock, there were photographs I wanted to shoot in daylight. Poems to write in the morning. The mountains echoed back things I’d forgotten—like space between the words, the sound of my breath at sunrise. Trails of the familiar Blue Ridge met me, and I sat down for a minute, linked again to home.
Today I heard Patti Smith’s new single. After all these years, all these miles, all the times I’ve seen her, read her, watched her, I sit outside on Ohayo, amazed at how close everything stays.
–Sharon Rousseau
And Levon, we miss you. Thank you.
Woodstock is sad right now. Levon was, and is, so loved here. The Hudson Valley’s natural beauty is astonishing today as if in tribute.
Tonight I’m reading at the sold out “Rock and Roll Story Slam” at Oriole 9. The Woodstock Writers Festival kicks off the weekend bash with these 31/2-minute rock-tune-inspired performances of the written word. Tomorrow I’ll post my written piece here.
Thanks again to The Golden Notebook for helping bring all things literary to Woodstock. The Augusten Burroughs event—hosted by Vogue’s Jonathan Van Meter—on Saturday night should be fabulous.
Early Spring:
The fallen blooms drift
magnolia on frost-tipped stone
–seasons colliding.
“Left neon city
piercing night’s forgotten vows
–in dreams, mountain spring.”
Meatpacking NYC and “Cabin P0rn:”
125-Seat-Space Tumblr
100 Word Story Anthology is now a dotcom! Visit and ‘Follow’ to receive email updates about new stories by fabulous guest contributors. And since March Madness begins this week, here’s a 100 word story on basketball:
Echo
Ball meets concrete: cracked, uneven, bleached from heat and exposure. Echo. He remembers years ago, after the hard rains, trying to dribble through patches of debris blown onto the court. Sky’s the same. Blue heat, cloudless—-always been like that above what drove him out here alone in the first place. Looking off-court, he surveys The Vehicle—-his roving funhouse, logging highway miles. No nets on the rims now. He lifts the ball, shoots. Spalding rolls off his middle finger into the habitual follow-through, nearly perfect. He remembers the boy, squared up, obedient to form, listening to echoes of dusk.
—Sharon Rousseau
Excerpt from piece published in The Rambler magazine, July/August 2008
“Besides me wanting to be an artist, I wanted to be a movie star.” ~Patti Smith
Performance dialogue, locations and performances on 125-Seat-Space Tumblr. If you stage it, do it with love.
On the last day of my first trip to Palm Beach, wind-tossed sea covers the sand, and I pack summer clothes into laundry bags, pulling black boots from the corner where I discarded them the minute we arrived. Leaving a place always makes me wish I’d written down everything. Of course, when I’m walking on a beach or lying by a pool, I don’t, but I try to pay attention to the way salt water beads on my skin and the sun’s relationship to paths of scalloped ridges in receding tide. Here are some prose fragments, glimpses of Palm Beach from this trip, possibly story starters.
In night breeze through cabana drapes, sea glass flickers with candlelight, shadows of orchids bow.
Awake early, sunrise colors fade into opaque sky; it all changes so quickly, bending clouds and sun separate, sea’s finite illusion.
Southern beaches from my childhood, miles of dunes, sea oats, even sand—a landscape existing in memory, ocean now.
Writing with a sweep of rain, rhythmic on tile, pushing my story.
From a balcony in palms, wondering how many miles to the sea’s horizon where light gathers before reaching the shore.
The Woodstock Festival didn’t happen in the village of Woodstock, NY, but the event’s story began there, and the town’s name instantly became significant as a description of the building musical and social consciousness of peaceful freedom. The valley was already a home for spiritual seekers, artists, writers and musicians seeking refuge from New York City and industry’s disconnect with nature. The Arts Students League in New York City formed its first summer school of painting in Woodstock in 1906. Renowned artists followed, and the list is long. By the time “Woodstock” shut down the New York Thruway, made music history, and changed public perception of the long-standing artists’ colony built under the shadowy beauty of Overlook Mountain, visionaries had been working for years trying to create a utopian dream. And the pursuit of that dream continues.
The Varga Gallery, which focuses on outsider and self-taught artists, seems to blend the original intent of the Woodstock festival with the goal of creating and selling art in a town of artists. Christina Varga opened the gallery nine years ago beside a church-turned-theater where Jimi Hendrix played guitar on stage and used the Varga building as a dressing room. In the summer, giant sunflowers create a fairy tale forest to the gallery’s front door. In winter, the walk’s shoveled, but an expected country chill hugs the gallery unless an opening party packs the rooms and spills over into the street. Varga’s currently hosting her yearly Goddess Festival. My mixed media contribution, Altar, isn’t for sale. It’s interactive poetry, and if you want to see it, visit Woodstock and drop by the gallery. Also check out the Woodstock Artists’ Association Museum and The Center for Photography at Woodstock.
I’ll post more about Woodstock history, artists, and the happenings around town. Stay tuned.