All Hallows Eve

No doubt you’ve gathered that I love all things Hallowe’en. The cheesy cinematic frightfests, the symphonic renditions of the Dies Irae, the kids’ costumes, the scary cocktails and appetizers, the whole silly business.

Yet on the actual night of the 31st, you won’t catch me out partying. For me it’s a high holiday — a spiritual tide I want to hitch a ride on — and thus a time for meditation.

Though the usual concept of the holiday’s antecedents is that it was about frightening about away unwanted spirits, there’s more to it than that. The basic idea, for the ancient Celts, was that at this time of year, the membrane between the seen and the unseen was thinnest. Sure, you might want to take precautions about unwelcome spooks, but what about those you would want? Your ancestors, in other words, or the recently departed.

I have a few of both I’d like to hear from again. So later tonight, when the street noise has died down and the kids are back at home sorting through their plunder, I’ll be listening closely for a word from some people I very much miss.

Toward that end, here’s a little music, courtesy of Harold Budd and Brian Eno (from their album The Pearl) for all you October people.

All Hallows is here

And what better way to pay tribute to it than with this paean to the god and goddess within all of us, composed and performed by a woman who’s immortal herself.



What, you were expecting the Monster Mash? Please! Enjoy your Irish New Year, and give a thought to your ancestors tonight; in Gaelic tradition, the veil between their world and yours is more transparent now than during the whole rest of the year.

Halloween Countdown #2

Terribly late here for getting you my penultimate post for this year's All Hallows soundtrack … look for the last one in just a few hours! I’m tardy because of an exciting meeting this morning, the contents of which are so top secret that I can’t even share them here until November of 2011. Really! Two years off. But I share that much right now just to engender wonderment, annoyance and general pique.

For this post I bring you the amazing Lyke-Wake Dirge, which I first mentioned last All Hallow’s Eve on Mighty Toy Cannon’s fabulous music blog. This is a dirge, all right, but so haunting and with such a gradual build as to become spellbinding – which is, in fact, probably its original function.

In terms of its written history, this song dates back to England’s medieval period, but some believe its origins are much older. The pre-Christian version is reputed to be a culling song – a spell, of sorts, whose addictive power Chuck Palahniuk explores deftly in his novel Lullaby. It’s not hard to see how you could adapt the dirge to your own fell purposes …

Halloween Countdown #3

"One from the vaults."

Halloween Countdown #4

A lush, lapidary Talking Deads composition from 1979 – 30 Halloweens ago, yikes. Reportedly David Byrne achieved the disjointed quality of his voice here by wearing a recording device while jogging.



I should warn you that this video starts with an inexplicable 30-second lead-in. Bear with it; it goes away soon, and the music's worth the wait.

Halloween Countdown #5

Another classic, composed by Grieg for a production of Ibsen’s unstageable Peer Gynt. Reportedy, when Ibsen attended the premiere, the person sitting next time expressed admiration for Grieg’s version. To which Ibsen replied: “Oh, you think that’s good, do you?”

I know what he meant. But for sheer storytelling theatricality, you can’t beat “Hall of the Mountain King.”

Halloween Countdown #6

You see? This is what happens.

Halloween Countdown #7

Alas, this is a latter-day adaptation of the opening music for Kubrick’s adaptation of Stephen King’s The Shining, not the mysteriously unavailable original. Wendy Carlos wrote that – clearly basing it on the “Dies Irae” – which was disturbing almost to the point of being unlistenable…

Halloween Countdown #8

An oldie but moldy, for your delectation. Much of ’60s psychedelia had a sweet tooth for thanatology, which went hand in hand with its penchant for minor keys. Here’s a fun example by the immortal Candadian band Procol Harum.

Halloween Countdown #9

The Munsters are to The Addams Family as beer is to Beaujolais.

Compare. Contrast. Discuss.

Stopping by Portland on a snowy evening

Got to love Portland. In this town, Halloween decorations start going up around September 1, and in many households, don’t go away for months. They just coexist with the Christmas trappings. So that now, in mid-December, with snow straight out of central casting falling all over the town, you walk past porches festooned with fir garlands….and pumpkins still holding down the front steps. Many windows still have construction paper witches taped to them – but now the witches share the honor with cut-out snowflakes.

It’s an apt macaronicism, since St Nicholas was originally the Catholic Church’s recuperation of an old folk figure that seemed a tad too Satanic for post-medieval tastes.

Anyway, here in Portlandia, autumn has definitely given way to winter; it’s beginning to look a lot like the Solstice, everywhere you go. In fact today I’m staying indoors and working at home, partly thanks to night-long migraine episode, but partly because the weather outside is frightful. And in between script reports, press announcements and responding to email, my favorite way to heat the house is cooking.

Lunch was a velvety carrot soup, perfect for cleaning out your fridge and also for watching those dire weather forecasts on streaming video. If you want to make it yourself, you’ll need:

· 1-2 tablespoons butter
· 1-pound carrots, peeled and coarsely chopped
· 1/2 cup chopped onion
· ¼ cup (or more) shallots
· 3 cups chicken broth
· 1/2 cup orange juice
· 1 tablespoon orange zest
· 1 tablespoon brandy
· 2 teaspoons of bonnes herbes and/or herbes de Provence, crushed

So:

Melt butter in heavy large pot over medium heat. Add carrots and onion; sauté until onion is soft, about 8 minutes. Add broth; cover and bring to boil. Reduce heat, uncover, and simmer until carrots are tender, 10 minutes or so.

Puree soup in blender (I used an immersion blender) until smooth. If you used a conventional blender, return soup to pot now. Stir in orange juice, brandy, and crushed herbs. Simmer 5 minutes for flavors to blend, then season to taste with salt and pepper.


Notes:
This made just enough for James and I, but we eat supersized portions, alas. For friends or normal people (quick! what’s the literary reference there?), or as a first course, you could probably serve four.

We had garlic bread with this – with impunity, since no theatergoing is possible tonight.

If by some miracle you still have fresh tarragon, I bet that that would make a terrific replacement for the dried herbs. Would make a good garnish, too.

BTW: haul in one of those leftover pumpkins from the porch, roast is and substitute it for the carrots in the recipe, and you'll be ready for New Year's Eve in no time.

Happy, Happy Hallowmas

Sure, you knew that Hallowe’en is an elision of All Hallows Eve, but what about All Hallows itself? Better known today as All Saint’s Day, it’s sort of a European Day of the Dead kind of thing. November 1 honors saints in the broad sense of dead people who have “attained the beatific vision.” It’s a holy day of obligation in some corners of the Catholic dispensation. The following day, All Souls’ Day, is set aside for the “faithful” who are not destined for Hell but who still have a ways to go before acceding to their ultimate heavenly post. Praying for them is understood to help walk them up the stairs, as it were.

My sainted mother was/is Catholic. My father, well….let’s say his spiritual interests were more atavistic. This meant they had in common an uncommon sense of an unseen world impinging upon human affairs. Though I was born on October 10, she took a bit of a risk and waited till Hallowmas to have me baptized. The risk, you see, is that had I died prior to baptism, I would have spent eternity floating around in Limbo, happy enough but ignorant of the limitless bliss I might have enjoyed if not for my parents’ intransigence.

But all went well, and I was formally presented to the unseen world on November 1, in the company of the all the saints.

If you and I are acquainted, you may judge for yourself whether this bit of sympathetic magic panned out as my mother hoped.

Sign of the Times

All right, at this point you can barely tell what's going on here, but this was originally a neighbor's Halloween display: a pretty decent effigy of McCain, liver spots and all, dressed in a Dracula outfit. But now persons unknown have vandalized the poor thing, having shoved something like a carving knife through its face. Scary!

Question is: was it an anti-McCain zealot, or an incensed McCanaanite who took exception to the installation?

Anyhow, you can still make out the headstone at Grandpappy's feet, emblazoned with this legend:

McCain Campaign
R.I.P.

From their lips....

The Feast of All Hallows Eve

Certainly
The children have seen them
In quiet places where the moss grows green
Colored shells
Jangle together
The wind is cold, the year is old,
The trees whisper together

And bent in the wind they lean.

—“Witches Hat,” Robin Williamson

Got to love Portland, a town after my own heart. When I went to Kaua’i in early September, it was beastly hot, like it could never be anything again but the top o’th’summer. And when I returned eight days later, autumn was in full swing, with leaves turning color, the sky bruise-purple, and rainrainrain……ah, so good to come home.

More importantly for my pagan soul, the night I returned – and this was September 17, mind you – I passed a porch with a jack-o-lantern on its top step. Yes, I mean a carved pumpkin with a burning candle in it, leering at me madly. And all over the neighborhood were homes already festooned with Halloween regalia: strings of orange lights, spooky construction paper cut-outs taped to windows.

Leaving PCS this evening, it thrilled me to feel the excited atmosphere of the downtown – traffic conspicuously absent, people rushing around, some in costume, even. The sense of festivity in the air. And in Irvington, where I live, black-clad kids rushing from door to door, the smell of wood fires and candle wax and burning pumpkin in the air.

No trick or treat for me, though. Coming home to a dark house that we kept that way all evening, I proceeded to celebrate in my own way. Nothing too wild; my days as card-tearing, broomstick-riding, cauldron-stirring witch are dormant, for the time being. But I still observe that hour of meditation, when I visit with Those Who Must Be Remembered. My much-missed grandparents, Irene and Joe. My high school buddy Mike Prosek, who died of lymphatic cancer shortly after we graduated. Randy West, of Storefront fame, the first person I knew (of many to come) to die of AIDS.

The whole impetus for Hallowe’en, you know, is that it’s the night of the year when the veil between the spirit world and ours is the thinnest. If you’re ever going to make contact with someone who has passed on before, this is the time to attempt it. For years I performed a Dumb Supper on this night, an achingly beautiful ritual in which you prepare a meal – in complete silence – for you and the missed one, and you eat together in wordless communion. For me, sometimes this coming together is simply sensed; other times it is movingly palpable. And healing.

It makes exquisite sense to me that the ancient Irish considered Samhain (that’s Halloween to you) the end of the old year and the start of the new one.

It's beginning to look a lot like Hallows.....

PlayGroup is PCS’s writers’ unit, which meets every other week to read new member writing, commiserate, talk about theater issues, and generally be of support to one another. Our latest provocation is an outrageous group show, devised just in time for Halloween, entitled Frenching the Bones. The title refers to an actual culinary term about scraping meat off ribs. Yikes!

We are indebted to member Sam Gregory for the ooky concept, centered around a nine-course dinner. Each playwright drew a course name out of a hat, and was therewith charged with writing a short playlet that somehow combined the substance of that course with ... horror. We start with an insouciant amuse-bouche, and gnaw and gnash our way to the heady “wine & spirits” course at the end.

The spirit of the Grand Guignol lives on!

Sam’s brainchild is free of charge, and all are welcome. Here are the details:

-------------------------------------

WHO: Portland Center Stage PlayGroup
WHAT: Frenching the Bones
WHEN: Tuesday, October 30, 2007 -- 8 PM
WHERE: CoHo Theater, 2257 NW Raleigh, Portland OR

HOW MUCH: Free!

Frenching the Bones: A Night of New One Acts on Horror & Food

On October 30, PlayGroup presents a reading of nine brief one-acts exploring the twisting connections between horror and food.

Comic and Grotesque, Touching and Horrifying, Tasty and Tasteless, the nine courses on this menu run the gamut of sensations.

Four talented actors take all 28 roles.

The evening will be directed by Matthew B. Zrebski, with stage directions voiced by Virginia Belt.

The playwrights include William S. Gregory, Hunt Holman, Althea Hukari, Shelly Lipkin, Ellen Margolis, Steve Patterson, Patrick Wohlmut, Nick Zagone and Matthew B. Zrebski.

The cast includes Sharon Mann, Chris Murray, Gary Norman and Cecily Overman.

The show starts at 8 PM, and runs under two hours.

We are indebted to OREGON CULTURAL TRUST for supporting the work of PlayGroup, and to COHO PRODUCTIONS for providing us with a place to perform as a way of encouraging original playwriting.

See you at CoHo!