By Garrison Keillor
  June 4, 2009

The driest May in Minnesota since the Dust Bowl. Venerable GM slides into bankruptcy and you shudder for the old Pontiac dealers and the retirees in Michigan. In the middle of the night, an Airbus drops out of the air into the Atlantic Ocean, and the veteran traveler shudders to think of it. And the posthumous John Updike appears in the bookstore, a book of short stories and his last poems, written by “my right hand ... faithful old five-fingered beast of burden ...

its labors meant

to carve from language beauty, that beauty which

lifts free of flesh to find itself in print.”

In the midst of these ominous rumblings, I went to a lovely party Saturday night. A big brick manse on a quiet street, 30 people, half of them under 25, on a deck out back, hamburgers, fried chicken, chips, beer, wine, the usual repartee, and a lot of youth going on around us.

A boy and a girl with eager eyes, in the shadows, like badgers at a campsite. Three boys holed up with a video game. A beautiful, coltish 16-year-old girl leaning around in a black strapless evening gown, trying out different personas (Dorothy Parker, Nancy Drew, Ava Gardner), who struck me as a reincarnation of Anne Frank. A teenage boy sitting with his nose in a book, making a great show of isolation. And an intensely quiet blond girl, a math whiz, who, with no reluctance, sat down at the piano when I asked her if she played piano, squared her shoulders and played the exquisite Chopin Prelude No. 2 in A minor, the notes of the slow movement like raindrops on birch leaves, smoke drifting by, an anguished old man pacing in the grass, and played it so beautifully it transformed the entire evening.

Transformation is no easy trick: it’s what art promises and usually doesn’t deliver. But she did. It was a difficult piece, and what she showed us was the intense poetry underneath her calm Lutheran exterior. She borrowed Chopin’s passion and made it her own, an astonishment, and then she stood up awkwardly and we all clapped and whooped. It was so much more than what we deserved to hear, which is true of art, a lavish gift of the heart that shames pretense by its outrageous generosity.

I went back to the crowd on the deck and had a piece of rhubarb pie with ice cream, feeling buoyed up by the performance, and still feel buoyant days later. The plane falls, the company slides, the good man is gone, the lawn turns brown, but with Chopin you come back to basics: Do I regret this life? Is it, despite all our brave words, a cheat and a waste? Does it make any slight difference to the universe that we are present?

Playing the Prelude No. 2 in A minor is not a step on a career path. There is only one Emmanuel Ax, and he has the Chopin chair for now, and there are plenty of dead pianists around on CDs. I suppose that you could argue for a correlation between mastery of the Prelude No. 2 and scholastic achievement leading to opportunities in computer programming, but meanwhile, it simply is an extravagant gift from the heart of a girl to the hearts of whoever is standing nearby. Life is good, no matter the disappointments. Just square your shoulders and give them your utter best. As the late, great Marilyn Monroesaid, “I don’t want to make money, I just want to be wonderful.” Life is insurmountable, but we mount up every morning and ride forward. Thanks for being wonderful, dear heart.

Hi.
I made a political cartoon.

Alex Sacui
828 335 7238
illustrator at nosepilot dot com

The itinerary for the “Daylight” portion of the festivities includes:

12:00 Opening Ceremony, and short presentation entitled
“What is Steampunk” by the Rev. Johnny Lemuria

1:00 Discussion Panel

2:00 Craft Contest

3:00 Story Time

4:00 Victorian Sing-Along

5:00 Costume Contest

6:00 Acoustic Jam

I hope all can come. It will be a great time.

Some informative links:
SPATSFest 2009 Facebook page
A User’s Guide to Steampunk by Bruce Sterling

and

We’re planning on going to the thing on Saturday, and I’m hoping we can make “Surface Designing With Felt,” so I can tell everyone that it’s really about me, The ‘Felt, and how I design things.

By any chance, slim though it may be, is anyone else going to this thing? It costs a whole $3 to attend.

Here’s the fest’s site: http://www.saffsite.org/dnn/Default.aspx

No judges, no jury, every artist gets to display one painting and the citizens of Asheville will
benefit from an awesome show displaying the full eclectic visual ability of Asheville’s artisans.
Besides that it will just be pure fun with music and food and drink.

To enter:
Bring one piece of your work (it’s first come first choice on location) between 12:00 and
5:00 on October 27th…find a space…display your art…and stand back as the adoring crowds
worship your genius. Razcals at 831 Old Fairview Road (828) 277-7117