Greetings, One & All~
The first quarter of 2020 continues to trend from stage to classroom (the ultimate stage, where our future is dreamed into being) in a month punctuated with an exclamation point by one giant Leap Year leap into performance mode. Enjoy this short and sweet February issue of your A 440 Newsletter!
Myths & Masks
From Tuesday February 18th through Friday February 28th I will conduct my 24th annual Myths & Masks Artist-in-Residency at Cheyenne Traditional School in Scottsdale AZ, celebrating nearly a quarter-century of tradition and innovation in arts education with a new crop of budding fourth grade maskmakers and poets.
Vibe Tribe
On Leap Year Saturday February 29th the new world music dance band Vibe Tribe will debut at Solar Culture in Tucson AZ, performing for a gallery opening at 7 PM. Billed as Dance Music for a Whole New World, Vibe Tribe seasons its sumptuous menu of original material with choice a la carte covers, and features a line-up of some of The Old Pueblo’s best-known players blending with some fresh new faces you’ll want to meet.
Scott Anderson~Chelsie Bonifer~Joe Townend~Robert “Swami” Peizer~Chris Screven~Will Clipman
Poem of the Month
My January Artist-in-Residency schedule necessitated rising at 4 AM most mornings, which seemed daunting at first, but which soon became a welcome ritual of awakening and awareness that gave rise to the composition of your February Poem of the Month.
It’s Good to Be Awake
I awaken in the middle of the night and hear them:
all the whispered words I wish I’d listened to
before the whisperers were forever gone.
It’s good to be awake in the hours before dawn
with only coyotes, a great horned owl and
the Southern Pacific’s mournful wail,
not because I cannot sleep (that portentous glimpse
of infinite peace) but because I have something
more important to get up for and do.
Everything in motion eventually comes to rest
and everything that lives eventually dies.
Don’t fret, others will move and live!
The absence of pain is the most exquisite pleasure:
embrace the space it leaves; get up and do
what you do until you can’t anymore.
Be like the waning daytime crescent moon, who knows
the rising sun will soon obliterate its paling light
yet holds its form and is content.
© Will Clipman 2020
Photo of the Month
As Ansel Adams demonstrated beyond any shadow of a doubt, there is a subtle mystery and majesty in nature that can only be revealed in black and white. This image of saguaros and cholla haloed by desert sun against a wind-swept sky was captured by R.C. Clipman on New Year’s Day in the Tucson Mountains just west of Rancho Improvisoso.
photo courtesy R.C. Clipman Photography
~May our individual and collective vision be 2020 this year~
Sorrow is the soil from which joy springs.
~Guillaume Henri
Will Clipman
poet ~ percussionist ~ maskmaker ~ storyteller ~ performing artist ~ educator
www.willclipman.com
williamclipman@aol.com
facebook.com/willclipman
520.591.0776
