Zoom zoom, and the season is gone! We have done amazing things..., like play taiko for 200 public school administrators faced with dire funding cuts, saying "we can help you bring critical arts and cultural programming to your students, and even help you find money!" Amazing how their faces lit up! We supported the usual array of beloved New Year event, then performed alongside most of the state's taiko players at the Phoenix Matsuri.... And then it's time to write grants so we can keep doing it all again.
We've worked stupidly hard..., I think we've calulated this past year's audiences at over 14,000 people, about a third of those being kids. We've maintained one of the few artist owned performing arts incubator spaces, found underwriting for kids scholarships and begun exploring about 5 new school residency programs on top of 40+ performances and so on.
And, yes, we're pooped.
I've been up to my armpits in planning to road manage the 5-week Shidara tour, having to know exactly where and when each meal is happening, what days we do laundry, how to get to the Wells Fargo in Rexburg, Idaho. My brain is awash with data, and that's not even the stuff I have to set straight in my own life to leave it for so long.
Not that I'm complaining. I know by now (after 20 years of doing this kind of thing) this is what you have to do to make something as incredible as a group like Odaiko Sonora or a Shidara tour happen. I mean, we really whipped this all up out of nearly nothing. I could just sit on my hands and keep letting nothing happen, and think if "it's working fine, why mess with it?" Or I could do what I am compelled to do, which is to explore human potential, engage people in thought and action, drive to connect, make something out of nothing....
I'm sure Tucson would have been fine for many many years (if not forever) without a taiko group. But why shouldn't Tucson have a taiko group? And if it's going to have one, why shouldn't it be one its residents can be proud of? One that strives to honor the art form, the culture it arose from, the way the world has shaped and molded it, the spirit and the love and the energy that is at its heart, and the community it arose within?
That's why I love Shidara. From amidst the toil and grief and joy of their labor, they have honed a gift that they never, ever fail to deliver to us as audience. Their courage and heart is as unfathomable, as their skill and endurance, and their generosity in sharing it.
And don't we want them — those touched by such drive and such gifts — to carry our visions and dreams of perfect expression forward to the human extreme of excellence?
Of course we do, because, in all honestly, not many of us terrestrials are built for the abuse it takes to get to the extremes of human excellence. We'd have to give up jobs, family, security, ease, quiet nights of quiet stars, steady meals and sleep..., not to mention ego and those internal things that keep us from comfortably succeeding.
Although, I'm thinking, someone should probably make me give up this computer....
... which, btw, FELL OFF MY KITCHEN COUNTER about two weeks ago, onto my tile floor. That was harsh. Now my ee key, which should bee a singular e key, keeps spitting out multiple eees eeverytime I hit it. I have to go back and delete all theese ees.
As though....
1 comment:
So now you have a neurotic e key that panicks easily... Trauma can emotionally damage even the most resilient keyboard. In seriousness though, you have articulated so clearly how Tucson benefits from Taiko. I am immensely proud to have been a member (which I will forever be in spirit), and every day I think of what a phenomenal gift we continue to give this city, and on top of our "day jobs"! As you said, no North American group can match Shidara, but even at our much smaller scale, we, and the city, could not ask for more. You are role models to all of us in the group who follow long, arduous paths in pursuit of a dream.
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