For information or general correspondence, email Nick at: ncchara@yahoo.com
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I added an unconscionable SECOND musical show in Asheville in one week on Tuesday night by seeing tortoise. tortoise is the definition of ensemble genuis. two drummers, two xylophones, synths/sequencers and samplers/mouth keyboard/guitars and EVERYONE can play EVERYTHING. The music is like the astonishingly/surprisingly beautiful daughter of Electronica and Jazz. (i want to call my daughter electronica.) so it was extraordinarily immersive. i spent most of my time with my eyes closed...(and trying not to smell the horrible stench of crusty/unbathed hippies.)
Epiphanuit was awesome as awesome can be...the Lounge Krewe was me, Burdette, Shua. McD, Lanna, Simon, Heidi, Crystal with Matt Mantooth and Haely Mauldin dropping by a few and the festivities went into the early hours of the morning...on a school night! There was some prose reading, spawn of Simon's curious brain; a play reading, spawn of Simon's curious brain, and then some real deep talk about God, life and the universe, with particulalry sensitive personal revelations by McD and me, including one about how i want to be a shaggy dog, followed by more hang out weirdness. i think we need to start taping some of this stuff.
we also set the stage for a June 25 Epiphany Arts Jam where all the Loungers will be putting together a seamless, immersive arts experience involving poetry, prose, drama, music (rock and electronic) video graphics and interactive art at the Anderson Farmer's Market.
Lounge Night at Ken's was groovy and a visual brain bomb.
today, I'm torn because I've been offered a free ticket to the Midtown Music festival in Atlanta and I would get to see The Strokes and The Shins...man oh man...i'm supposed to be working on Saturday all day and Sunday is the Lounge....what is a man to do?
Posted at 7:15 AM + Care to
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We're just going to hang and chill and talk and do some of that spreading joy and celebrating stuff that it says we're supposed to do in that funky Shua-crafted trademarked logo we now have....and Nick might be doing some performance art of his own: viz: baking baklava. Kinda like pulling back the curtain on the Wizard of Oz, or tearing away the desk from a news anchor...Is he all talk and no trousers? oooh missus!
post, post, post people! never a day without a post!
peace out. nc.
Posted at 9:15 AM + Care to
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Ken here, with a few tidbits for those of you interested in attending Thursday night's viewing of some experimental / artistic motion graphics at the pad-o-Wilson. If you would like to do your studing ahead, we'll be watching the new Myra disk from weworkforthem. In addition, I'll be showing some selections from Richard Fenwick, and maybe a few selections from the new Res disk, as well.
The invitation is still open. We'll start watching at 8, and will stop when everyone's had enough.
Ken
Posted at 8:10 AM + Care to
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...weird observation #1: Asheville is a haven for granola chicks and crusty guys (you know, the ones who wrap their knotted-and-oil-soaked hair in a sack; hemp of course), so the stench after 2 1/2 hours of shaking was what hell probably smells like.
....weird observation #2: If the Rapture has a soundtrack, Tim Jenkinson might well be the only man alive capable of capturing how AWEsome and terrifying (for some) it would be.
...weird observation #3: this guy decided to play a gig in ASHEVILLE. I mean, come on people: I know Asheville is cool, but it's not the kind of place you think of when you say electronica. Atlanta? Yes. Asheville? That's more the kind of place where you'd expect Jesus and Mary Chain to have their 50-year reunion Resurrection Tour.
just to prove that the Epiphany Lounge may not be a totally bizarre idea, me and ken met a friend of Celena's from Spartanburg High School who was tired of that cow town's creativity vacuum and decided to see if he could network artists together, believing that mutual inspiration can produce collaboration and generate a fertile soil for artistic sensation. sound familiar? he's got an invite to a Lounge soon...you can bet on it. You can check out his website here.
we also bumped into Wes, who's a future Lounger an electonic dj in Greenville, friend of future Lounger and electronic music recording maestro Damon Downs and sometime visitor to New Spring who totally freaked out at the possibility that New Spring might be searching for someone to spin discs between services (according to the rumor.) Message to New Spring#2: You guys need to start an electronic music worship service AND an electronic music dance club. soon.
Peace always. Love one another with passion. seek joy often.
n.c. signing off.
Posted at 6:30 AM + Care to
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speaking of which...another quick shout out to Shua, who totally outdid himself this time with Epiphany Lounge4 invites that feature...drum roll please....BRUCE LEE! with ANGEL WINGS! I mean, do you think he is channeling God or what! Oh, and then, he went ahead and gave the Lounge a logo and everything. Totally without prompting. I am so not worthy of cool friends like shua and rob and heidi and lanna and simon and lee and kylie ....man the list could go on and on and on...this Epiphany Lounge is the real deal people!...
Posted at 9:43 AM + Care to
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the real thought burst came in thinking that the music/readings format was something we could explore in Anderson. i was thinking...drum roll please...the farmers market. yep. think about it. makes sense. Lanna and simon and heidi all agreed on that. promise. imagine: we could put on a two or three hour revue. it would include music, video and motion graphics projected on white sheets, maybe some art hanging from the rafters, an open mic poetry deal, plus maybe some drama (or drama exclusively.) it could really work. open air. under the stars. friday or saturday. i think it would be a real winner.
guess what: i've already talked to Tom Gibson into giving us the space for free for one night to see what happens!!
you all need to comment on whether this is something to explore. signing off. n.c.
Posted at 10:26 AM + Care to
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608 Westview Ave.
Anderson, SC 29625
231-9574 (h)
ken.wilson@newspring.cc
Posted at 8:06 AM + Care to
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i figured everyone should be able to make a quick post to let each other know about artistic opportunities and happenings. Or they should be able to post a quick thought about creativity that they think someone else would enjoy sinking their teeth into. Or they should be able to relate something about how friendships/opportunities/happenings discovered through the Epiphany Lounge had resulted in something cool. (like me and ken going to see Paul Van Dyk.)
i really think this whole process works best as a collaborative enterprise. I think the lounge could truly transform into an artists collective in the Upstate. if you want to post and don't have password etc., let me know by email.
+ love, live, create +
Posted at 6:16 AM + Care to
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...It's impossible to do justice, of course, to the intricacies and subtleties and the twists and turns of the discussion, but i think there was a concensus among all that failing to be honest with yourself about the powerful/mysterious forces at work in your relationship with your creativity can have some pretty dire consequences.
...i think the lounge got most out of the first question, with Bo Powell, in particular, making an extraordinary connection between the darkness of a human heart/mind that can bend its (God-given?) natural light into itself, until you can free yourself from its gravitational pull...we also had a lot of fun with the definition of love and seduction. (I was insistent that seduction wasn't just viewed as a predatory act.. What if it's more like a courageous surrender to the desire for transcendence? (yeah, okay, sounds like i've been reading some hoity toity philosopher, but i'm serious)...On pushing and pulling: Lauren touched everyone's heart with her deceptively simple view of art as something that kept pushing her toward the need for completion (presumably never satisfied)....
...the experiment with having fellow loungers Kylie Yerka, Lee McDerment and Gemma Kelley helping host the event workled fabulously. i know they were pretty exhausted by the end of the night.
....oh, and in case you're wondering: the four-course meal was an appetizer of black olive toast , topped with mozarella; a salad with cranberries and almonds; fettucine with alfredo sauce, sauteed vetables and grilled chicken; and a dessert of cappucino-flavored ice cream, sprinkled with chocolate chips and a chocolate sauce
...i'm getting hungry again...roll on Epiphany Lounge4!
Posted at 11:36 AM + Care to
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electronica drips with spirituality (even if the lost souls who listen to it haven't figured out who God is) and this guy opened the sluice gates...
message to new spring: you need to start a dance club, guys. preferably electronica, but any dance club will do....
...PVD was like a puppet master for the heaving, writhing mass of humanity, (close to a 1,000 i think) who got swept away in the bass beats and the rousing, melodramatic crescendos and quirky/cheesy synths. the visuals were out of this world, but ken rightly said that it was nothing he couldn't do better. watching a dj at work totally eliminates all that pompous talk about how electronica isn't real music..this guy seriously knew exactly what to do to keep his audience hanging on every beat...it was actually kind of scary, especially when the crowd would get to chanting paul van dyk, paul van dyk, paul van dyk, and gave it a vaguely hero-worship feel, which isn't kosher, of course. but genius is genius. i danced the whole way through the 3-hr set (ken graciously allowed me to cut loose) and i felt like somebody had beaten me up by the end of it. i was seriously hurting. it was one of the best nights i've had in years...my london friends would be totally jealous.
...lots of good talk with ken on the way up and down. we managed to avoid the temptation of eating at a waffle house on the way back. we still didn't arrive home until after 5 p.m. seriously cool.
Posted at 7:15 AM + Care to
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+++be creative always..+++
Posted at 11:48 AM + Care to
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..i thought, in my usually nutso way, that it would be a good idea to throw myself to the mercy of the group (and to show them that i really mean it when i say you can't offend me and that serious writers need to hear their work critiqued vigorously if not totally torn to shreds) by showing them one of my poems...a love poem (with some sex stuff in it, although a lot more apparently than I remember writing about at the time)...a christian and sex! the audacity!...
the discussion was totally fascinating, prompting me (this morning) to creatively thought-burst all over my kitchen table after my morning prayers, trying to gauge whether i was glorifying or dishonoring god with my work, which i thought was the point of me writing in the first place..i decided that honoring god is about honoring the complexity of his ceation and that we can only understand the divine by understanding our humanity...so i stubbornly refuse to stop writing about sacred love and sacred sex....
..another of the evening's epiphanies (yes, i have them all the time) is the fact that critiquing a poem (or any piece of writing) requires an understanding of what the writer is trying to accomplish first, and then an examination of how and whether he/she accomplished that purpose. it was equaly fascinating that discussing the christian in art inevitably came down to theological policing...should you really think that way? can you really think that way? what about the children? lots and lots to ponder...
...i just know this is going to be the most fascinating, most creatively stimulating thing i could possibly have done to further my artistic impulses...
Posted at 6:51 AM + Care to
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Posted at 10:20 AM + Care to
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first job is to find a venue... anyone with an idea should let me or him know.
Posted at 7:17 AM + Care to
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......rain, rain go away come back another day....
lots of lounge maintenance had to be handled today in preparation for the upcoming Epiphany Lounge. some panic about whether people will show again. had to run the invites (shout out to Joshua, again) to people's houses in person over the weekend to get them out there with enough notice, and i didn't know whether half the invitees were definites or not... some are already dropping out so it looks like we're going to have to find some more creatives with a sunday night free asap.
i just love the organized chaos of the Epiphany Lougne... in the beginning i thought it was annoying... but now its more like entertaining.
Posted at 11:17 PM + Care to
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...there's something extraordinary about standing to worship in almost-blue light before dawn. that alone would have made it worth going...the service itself was interesting from my perspective because i realized (again) how darn hard it is to follow a liturgy for someone who didn't grow up with it pounded into their head. also clear that singing some of those hymns is mighty complicated from a melody/tone point of view-- and i used to be a choir boy (cassock and ruff and all.) the breakfast after the service did prove that the lutherans know how to eat; which i like to do a lot.
...deep thought 1: easter sunday pondering revealed to me that new spring is my community and is a big reason i want to stay in anderson, despite the fact that i would have sawn my left testicle off to leave a few years ago... i just don't think the worship and fellowship here is easy to find somewhere else. its a gift from god.
...me and kylie spent an hour or so afterward walking in the rain around the streets near the church. she had been trying to persuade me to slow down and take a breath for weeks. the walk and talk did it for me: beautiful and inspiring. highlight was seeing a massive inflatable easter bunny in someone's yard, like it just bounced in from some inflatable animal zoo..oh for a camera!
...new spring totally rocked with lee's band doing covers of Evanescence and U2. anyday where U2 is played in church is a good day....
the afternoon was capped off with some good ol' fashioned southern table fellowship at the cracker barrel with the church posse we've cobbled together at work...they managed to persuade the waiter (the waitresses had to wear bunny ears; how totally naff!) that it was my birthday so i got a brownie and ice cream out of the deal. oh and i proved that even old geezer's like me haven't lost their mischievous side by pulling on the bunny rabbit's tail. (yes, there really was a schmuck in a bunny rabbit costume handing candy outside.)
...rest of the day spent in the divine embrace otherwise known as a nap and watching the video American Splendor, which ROCKED!
Posted at 10:17 PM + Care to
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...no, i'm thinking that friendships -- even the shallower ones -- can shape your life much more deeply even after high school and college, when we expect our identity to change every few weeks or so...Even a relatively short-lived and narrowly defined friendship can be life transforming when we think about acting inside a friendship as agents provocateurs, guerilla fighters in the war of fear and low expectations, grief and despondency....Inspiring and encouraging....is there any life-affirming relationship that doesn't come down to that?
...shouldn't just listen or give you a sense of rootedness or act as some kind of emotional comforter, the unselfish ones (can there be real friends who aren't?) help you discover who you are and the best ones make you who you are...
...so many of us, me for sure, get so used to the idea of living our safe, unimaginitive, regimented lives in emotional cocoons that we don't expect to create many new friends, and when we do, we're often scared to push each other toward higher things....to allow ourselves to be moved and changed....but can many of us look back on our lives and say that our networks of friends weren't in some way responsible for our greatest achivements?
...as a Christian now I believe that God puts people in our way for a reason, but I never realized until I devoted myself to Him just how abundant with blessings our lives become when we take seriously the responsibility to love one another....
....all this pondering comes after a real wonderful evening chowing down with Ken and Meg, two very good people..the meal was pot roast, asparagus and orzo pasta with a coconut and pineapple bread pudding for afters....but the real food was for the soul...the realization of how dark and narrow existence would be without these kinds of opportunities to share life and without allowing yourself feel differently about it based on the kinds of things you discover through others...
...i guess that's why I care about the Epiphany Lounge....
Posted at 8:45 AM + Care to
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a good sprinkling of LOUNGERS turned out and stayed past 11 p.m. and a hardy bunch comprising me, Heidi, Lanna, Simon, Hayley (sp?) and Joshua crowned the evening with a trip to the gleaming-almost-too-clean Waffle House that appeared to drop from the sky right next to the Clemson Boulevard Ramada on one weekend a couple months ago... there's really nothing like hash browns, eggs, waffles and all manner of Waffle House juke box weirdness to signify a night of socializing excess.
art took a mostly back seat to conversation that included: horrifying tales of first dates, the unbearable lightness of being a graphic design guru, red light districts and the violence of prostitution, cool English slang words that must be reclaimed, Ion Ionescu and the extraoardinary misunderstanding of an absurdist playwright, how to criticize an artist and get away with it and all manner other ephemera and weirdness...
can't say it was totally without creative inspiration... Joshua revealed his idea for a new play called The Best Coke in The World, set in a sleepy Southern town where the locals have gotten addicted to the coke....and no one knows why it tastes so darn good! I won't give away the punchline because this piece of dramaturgy has to be staged... soon! Its just that amazing.
actually, simon's inching closer to putting on his play called "Weird" and job #1 is to get the thing staged sometime this year. Next job: finding a venue...
+ a bientot + (That's French for until we meet again)
Posted at 6:37 AM + Care to
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a news story here... a news story there... who cares, right? Being creative... there's so many freakin' creative genuises out there already... who cares about a group of folks in a cow town like Anderson deciding to meet up every now and again... not like it has happened before, right?
...got the first rejection -- yep, rejection -- of the EPIPHANY LOUNGE today... a real gem of a guy whose art is just breathtaking... guess it had to happen at some point....
really hoping for some uplift tonight....
+ love and peace +
Posted at 7:07 AM + Care to
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i'm just the one taking the orders...
got a totally thrilling mail from Simon Grant, LOUNGER and playwright. Looks like he's interested in the idea of setting up a theater group along the lines of the EPIPHANY WRITERS GROUP. He also digs the idea of a performance evening....could be real interesting, especially if the artists in the EL gel creatively at some point.
Posted at 9:03 AM + Care to
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...i got a email yesterday from someone i met just a couple of times who'd heard about the Epiphany Lounge and the Epiphany Writers Group from Joshua Burdette. She sent me an email saying that she hadn't written any poetry for years, and that she wanted to get back into it. She heard i was a poet (maybe she thinks that I do more writing than talking about it. Message to God: I hear you loud and clear.) and she wanted to share some of her work (how awesome is that?) and get my feedback.
...the poems were good. i mean, really, really good. it would be a crying shame if she weren't writing more....is there any better way to start a new week in the EL?
Posted at 7:56 AM + Care to
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....there's something about food, love and fellowship that is just inseparable....as I was saying to Gemma, a lounger and mystery novel writer, Jesus didn't just decide to let his disciples know about his betrayal in passing...it wasn't the last snack but the last supper....it seems that the most important things are done around a dinner table. Would the Epiphany Lounge be the Epiphany Lounge without the four-course meal?
Posted at 5:20 PM + Care to
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...ever since the idea of the Epiphany Lounge™ was born in mid-January in a throwaway comment to Heidi during a company training session, it's had a mind and life of its own....that's the real epiphany...the Epiphany Lounge will become what the Epiphany Lounge will become. there's not much one person can do to control it or shape it. as i said to Joshua last night, i think that's what makes it exciting: all the frustrations, joys and, yes, epiphanies, of surrendering to something and seeing what happens.
...it won't be too long before it begins to get up off the floor and crawl and walk, and then, before you know it, it will probably starting spitting in its parents' face and telling them they don't understand who it is, just before it accomplishes its greatest glories.
i know, i know, i'm rambling again...the reason for the post is to send a huge shout out to Joshua who helped me set up this blog and to Rob who showed me the light earlier this week when I went through a little crisis of faith about future of the Epiphany Lounge. He created a flash animation you can view here that said it all....
...that was the germ of the idea that began the Epiphany Lounge: What would happen if we got a whole bunch of creative artists together and let them talk about what moves them?...i remember saying that even if one person had one insight or was moved to do one creative thing as a result of the Epiphany Lounge then it would be a success...actually, a blessing.
...i've heard stories from several people -- Kylie, Rob, Joshua Burdette, Simon Grant -- that the idea is working. The Epiphany Lounge puts a finger in the eye of a material culture that prides itself on numbers and products; usually something tangible that be converted into something to sell. spreading joy can't be priced at 3 easy payments of $29.99, thank God.
...every minute I spend thinking about the Epiphany Lounge and the people in it I'm reminded that I wouldn't be thinking about art and its possibilities... probably just watching some mindless tv (or maybe working, but don't tell my boss. please. i need this job...) that's my greatest epiphany so far.
...i promise the posts will be short from here on out.
peace...
Posted at 7:23 AM + Care to
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