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Posts Tagged ‘music’

An Alternative to Valentine’s Day

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How can live performance heal our sense of isolation?

In my new show, “Alone With All of You: A Valentine’s Alternative,” audience members will begin by entering a labyrinth, an exhibition that isolates them as they travel through. The labyrinth will then transform until we are together, experiencing a concert of original improv music and acting. This show is a collaboration with Benjamin Lloyd at the White Pines Place, featuring musicians Wes Morton and Sam Nobles and actors from Bright Invention: Johnny Smith, Michelle Pauls, Leah Holleran, and Gavin Whitt.

“The Seven Invitations” – an anonymous survey

I started by writing “The Seven Invitations,” which invite people to share their experiences of loneliness and connection. I decided that, instead of questions, which seem more like an interrogation, that I would write unfinished sentences. A question can be a spotlight when you’re naked on a stage, a silent staring audience demanding an answer. Instead, I’m just inviting people to finish the sentences, like, “hey, I ate half of this cookie, do you want the other half?”

Alone with all of you

What’s amazing to me is how similar everyone’s responses were to this survey. In the exhibition, we will display the anonymous responses as a collection. One of my favorite things to do with my performances is to bring the parts of ourselves that we hide in dark shadowy places out into the light, so they can breathe. The purpose of displaying the responses is to share how our experiences of being alone, and the things we wish to hide, are things that we all share. Maybe we don’t have to hide after all!

The Exhibition – entering the labyrinth

Set designer Rick Neidig helped us to actualize the idea of the labyrinth in the White Pines Place. In the exhibition, I wanted to let audience members contribute, in the same way that they’ve contributed to the seven invitations. In this way, every show will be different, and built on the audience’s anonymous contributions. In addition, people attending this concert can make masks to wear, make valentines, and choose to carry out fun “quests” in the labyrinth. Eventually, the labyrinth will shift and change, and our walls disappear.

The Performance – isolation was just a mirage

Our goal in this show is to let the performance develop moment by moment, being truly present with ourselves and the audience. Therefore, much of the music and acting is structured loosely with the idea that we can react spontaneously to each other and to the audience. This is a stretch for me, because I’m much more comfortable with having every detail of a performance rehearsed. I’m challenging myself to allow the music (and lyrics!) to develop as we go. The show features a few new pieces of music, as well as songs from my album “My Own Frankenstein,” songs from 2015, and even a song from the 50-song summer that I’ve never performed live. In addition, I’m playing some new instruments. Sometimes with music, and sometimes in silence, the Bright Invention actors will do improv around the 7 invitations and suggestions from the audience.

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But what will Noelle stick in her eyes?  What will she put on her head?

We all know I love to see how much junk I can stick in my eyes.  How difficult can I make it to actually see and play my instrument while balancing things on my head?  It’s a fun game I like to play.  Anyway, this show revolves around masks, and the idea that we wear different faces to meet different people and different situations. That’s all I’m telling you. You’ll have to come and see!

Take the survey and experience the show

Join us for two shows on Saturday, February 6th at from 8-10 p.m. and on Sunday, February 14th from 2-4 p.m. at the White Pines Place in Elkins Park, PA (just outside of center city Philadelphia). You can buy tickets and find details by clicking here.  We can only seat 45 people, so buy your tickets in advance!

If you can’t come, you can still contribute by clicking here to anonymously answer the 7 invitations.

Photo credits: Top photo by Patty Maher (that’s not me in the photo). Bottom photo by Joe del Tufo (that one is me).

In Defense of Art in the Cyber World: a Spontaneous Manifesto

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“The imagination today is under siege. We are saturated with information; with concepts and opinions that stream ready formed, ready learned from our mouths and are fed to us by the chatter of media networks.” – From Roger Housden’s Why Poetry Is Necessary

In a modern materialist world, we have so much control over our temperatures, births and deaths, appearances, food, and nature in our human terrariums.  We pump money into technology so we can have anything we want whenever we want it, and won’t that satisfy all of our desires?  What place does the artist have in modern society?  Who needs art when all of our needs can already be met by money and science?

1. In our technological convenience, we are disconnected from the earth and our bodies.  Art connects us with our true selves, with what it means to be human.

2. We are constantly connected to each other, yet we have that nagging feeling that we lack community.  Art connects us to each other on a deeper level.

3. Through social media we can all pretend to be experts, but underneath we know how ignorant we are.  Art deals with the unknown and the unknowable.

4. Despite our veil of complete safety, our lives are extremely fragile.  Any natural disaster, sudden illness, or accident can completely uproot us.  In a dangerous and unpredictable world, in which we are completely vulnerable, art gives us comfort.

5. Psychology has demystified our own minds, and medicine has given us anti-everything drugs.  Even though we understand, we are still slaves to our desires.  In a completely logical world, we still go all inexplicably crazy in love and hate and anger and despair.  Art helps us anchor ourselves in a whirlpool of emotions.

6. Atrocities happen.  We think we can never get through this or make sense of any of it.  Art offers no answers, but helps us sit with the question.

7. We all die.  Art deals with mystery and possibility in a life we don’t understand.

Kurt Vonnegut likened artists to the “canary in the coal mine;” artists are “the raw nerve endings of society” who can see in the dark and give early warning signs.  By clicking below you can listen to my song “Canaries,” which is based on this idea.

Meet me at my website to connect amidst what Kerouac called that “Bleak inhuman Loneliness.”

Sing Truth to Power,

Noelle Picara

Delaware’s “Zombie Girl” Noelle Picara to release Debut Album

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Noelle Picara is known to electrify audiences with her passionate style of theatrical piano rock and to “masterfully mesh beauty with death” (Hockessin Community News).  Following the successful release of her single and debut music video, “Zombie Girl,” Noelle is starting production on her first full-length album.  Noelle is excited to collaborate on the album with drummer Brian Viglione of The Dresden Dolls.

Noelle says, “this will not be an album for casual listening.  I want to push people outside of their comfort zones, to make people question the things we fear, our ideas of sex and power, and what it means to be a living and broken human being.  This album is for intelligent, passionate listeners who want to step into their own power and experience something truly transformative.”  The album is expected to be released in the fall of 2014.

To be the first to hear Noelle’s new songs, see her at the Ladybug Festival in Wilmington, Delaware on July 18th.  She will be unveiling her “Medusa” character, the first of several new costumes to compliment her sexy and terrifying performance art.  For more information, visit http://www.noellepicara.com

There is No Such Thing as Writer’s Block

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I am probably going to piss some people off with this post.  And it isn’t even one of my posts about politics or feminism or religion.  I have a feeling, though, that people are going to argue with this statement:

There is no such thing as writer’s block.

A few months ago I was at a concert for singer/songwriters.  One of the songwriters introduced herself by saying, “I’ve finally got some new songs, after having writer’s block for the last three years.”

For some reason, this really got under my skin.  It irritated me.  I had a hard time believing her.  Is she saying that she actually sat down and tried to write every day for three years, but could never think of anything?  This doesn’t seem possible to me.

First, I think, we have to figure out what someone means by “Writer’s Block.”  As far as I can tell, it could mean one of two things.  The first one is that you can’t write ANYTHING.  

If someone is saying they literally can’t write a single word down on a page, then that tells me they are probably operating from the assumption that writing, whether it’s songwriting or novel writing or blog writing, comes down from some divine inspiration.  Some muse blesses you with an idea, and until that idea appears in your head, you’re not going to sit down and write anything.

To me, that’s total bullshit.  We make our own creativity.  Creativity is a muscle.  You have to exercise it by doing creative things.

It sounds very unlikely to me that you can’t write anything at all.  When my students don’t know what to write, I tell them to keep writing, “I don’t know what to write,” until they think of something.  If you keep your hand moving, eventually something kicks in.  You could write lists of names.  Go outside and write down all of the trees and rocks and things.  There are plenty of exercises you can use to start you writing SOMETHING.

So if you’re saying that you can’t write anything at all, I don’t believe it.  What I think you’re really saying is that you’re not WILLING to write at all until you passively receive some brilliant idea.

This brings me to possibility number two – what you mean by “Writer’s Block” is that you can’t write anything GOOD.

This, I can believe.  However, I’m still not going to give you a free pass on this one.

This excuse (and yes, I think they’re both excuses) tells me that you’re letting your critical mind take over your creative process.  You’re judging what you’re writing before it gets out.  You’re crippled by anxiety about writing something good.

I do feel some sympathy for this dilemma, but I’ll give you a good way to get over this – write something terrible.  Write as many terrible things as you possibly can.  Try to write the worst thing you have ever read in your life.  Let go of that critical mind.  Get really drunk and write for hours and hours.  Eventually, something will come of it.

Again, I think this explanation of writer’s block depends on a faulty assumption.  In this case, you’re assuming that everything you write should be good, when IN FACT, those of us who are really working at writing know that you have to write 99 awful things before you get one good one.

Anne Waldman told us once that you do your best work at strengthening those writing muscles when you can’t think of anything good to write about.  When you have nothing to work with, and you keep working anyway, that’s when you develop the skills you’ll need to really make the most of that brilliant idea.  And if you don’t keep working, you won’t get the brilliant idea.  

It’s just like exercising when you’re tired or sick or you don’t want to – the calories still get burned and the body still gets stronger.  When you’re practicing an instrument day after day, and you’re just not getting the notes right yet, you’re still learning.  Even when you’re not enjoying it or feeling like you’re doing a good job.

So, this is why the idea of “Writer’s Block” bothers me so much.

Basically, when you tell me you have writer’s block, you’re saying that you’re not willing to do the work.  You’re not willing to write the mountains of terrible stuff that you have to produce in order to get one little smidgen of something good.  You’re not willing to sit down every day and do the mental pushups and chin-ups of writing until you get strong enough to come up with the good ideas and the techniques to bring them out of you.

You think that writing is some passively received gift that came down from the gods and you either have it or you don’t, and some of us are lucky enough to be blessed with it, and you’re not, because you’re cursed with “Writer’s Block.”

Yes, this whole idea really bothers me, because I didn’t passively receive my songs from some stork dropping them on me from heaven.

I worked for this, bitch.  

Take credit for what you do, or what you don’t do.  

Noelle Picara

http://www.noellepicara.com