The CD release party is in a week. I really should be downstairs in my studio practicing for my performance, not up here in the darkroom printing 8x10s. But I have a backlog of images that need printing and they are banging around in my head more than the fear of next Saturday's performance. Hell, I've relearned the old synth pieces. Now I just need to work on not playing them badly. I can do that in a few hours of practice. I hope.
Before too long, I've printed up a good 8 x 10 of "Ricardo the Muleskinner". Nice. Good contrast. Good detail on the flags. Pretty easy too, for the Darkroom Gnomes haven't arrived yet to misdirect light, chemical and dust on my prints. (Never know when these invisible creatures may show up, but they always do.) I pick another diptych negative, this one, the best neg of the spiral at Dry Canyon in the Whetstones. No gnomes. Coming easy. Burning in the sky takes some doing but that's normal.
Sky's coming in now. It was one hot bright day.
I pull over after only a half-mile or so. The road is more boulder than dirt, and my feet work just as well, sometimes if not better, than the four-wheel drive in my truck. I find a wide spot in the jeep trail and park. The things I saw on Highway 90 just now echo in my head. Images of old tattered objects hung from the barbed wire fences that run along the edge of the four lane blacktop that goes to Ft. Huachucha and beyond. Dozens of t-shirts, long sleeve shirts, long pants, children's backpacks, half-gallon milk jugs blowing in the stiff dry summer afternoon wind. The flotsam and jetsam of illegal aliens heading north, but they didn't hang these things from the barbed wire, I suspect. But who? Angry Neo-cons showing the trash to get people as pissed off as they, or saddened liberal activists displaying these wares to raise the consciousness of passing motorists or to make a point? Hell if I know, but mile after mile of torn clothing waving at me has spooked me. But I scare easily.
I sling the Brownie over my shoulder, pocket some sidewalk chalk, and grab my small one-and- a-half-liter water bottle. I'm not going far today.
Dry Canyon is aptly named. No water, except during monsoon storms, but that isn't enough to support tribal life nor ranch living. Off to the east, across the wide flat San Pedro valley are the Dragoons. Water there. Water in the San Pedro River too. Indian and non-Indian flourished there back in the day. Still some folks now here and there. But not here in the Whetstones. No water. Barely any life. Creosote bushes and grass and no Mesquites trees or any trees to speak of.
Why am I here today? Beats me. Just curious of this road I guess. No Apaches lived here a hundred plus years ago. Some pasted through or around here, to and from raids on ranches but that's about it. That's about it for me too. I ain't staying. Just going up this road a piece and up that ridge to the south and then I'm gone too.
They used to call this kind of land God Forsaken. God's here. Just Man's not.
Still no gnomes yet! Wow. Prints are coming with relative ease today. A blessing. A few variations on the sky in the Dry Canyon image and then I really do need to go downstairs to my studio and practice for the party Saturday. The audience may not know I'm playing poorly but I'll know. I'd just as soon play well, thank you very much.
The bushwhack up to the crest of this low ridge overlooking the San Pedro Valley was a mix of ease and difficulty: ease in the lack of steepness and lack of thorns and bushes. Difficulty in the slippery footing across the fractured sharp rocks and the general lifeless vibe I felt walking up. I felt this on Mt. Lemmon after the Aspen Fire when all the birds and mammals had left or had been killed. Few if any animals live here in this part of the Whetstones. An odd feeling to not sense the rapid heartbeats of small creatures.
Drink some water. No smoking. Too much wind, not enough water to put out a fire, if I stare on. Below I can see cars and trucks on Highway 90. The wind is blasting the grass and the shin busters around me.
After a big drink of water from the wide mouthed bottle, I wander around this ridge looking for a canvas for my sidewalk chalk. Hmm. That may be a place. A large pocket is in this small ridge of rock below my feet. I bend down and study the concave space. Can I make it look natural? Or will it look contrived? I shrug and pull out a large piece of chalk. Worth a try.
Many prints lay wet and drying on the screens. Many variations, some with more sky burned in, some with no burned sky. I'll figure out which is best for scanning tomorrow when they‘re dry.
I clean up the darkroom, empty and wash the trays, wipe down the counters, turn off the Safe light.
My studio calls. Time to lay hands on the XK-6.
I walk down the hill the way I came. I pause to look out onto the valley below. No rising dust from 4x4s. Just a steady stream of traffic on Highway 90 off in the distance. Grass, some rock, not much else.
My kind of holy land.
The smell of fresh brewed Trader Joe's Bay Blend drifts through my studio, mixing with the smoke of the Copal melting on a piece of charcoal. It's hot in the usual cool basement space of my Cairn Studio. The two Beringer Truth monitors put out quite a bit of heat. Plus a couple hundred C-7 Christmas lights, and it being August and it's toasty in here.
I'm bent over the keys, waiting for one chord to decay before I attack the next one. It's going well. I hit the D minor, then follow it with an A minor seventh. Good, I think. I take a deep breath. It'll be all right on Saturday.
[Final Note: I was all right on Saturday. Didn't sell that many CDs but that was OK. Made a ton of finger faults but that was fine. No one notices. I was so nervous my hands shook at times, but it was all right. Because something happened that I didn't expect. In spite of my mediocre playing, the hot studio, the couple of buzzed women in the back who talked through my first set. Regardless of everything, something inside was reawakened, that I hadn't felt since the Wobbly Gumbo band days in Art School. I felt The Bug. The Bug to perform. The rush of a live audience. A week later, I played my music for an art opening at the Dinnerware Contemporary Art Gallery here in Tucson. David and Sarah were really happy they said. Smudged the place beautifully, said David or something like that. And Peggy wants me to play at Tohono Chul in November for one of her openings. The Bug is alive and well and being fed.]
Copyright © 2005, Stu Jenks