The Lord Have Mercy Show

A Mother's Grief.
A Mother's Love.
The healing power of words. 

After performing poems for 10 years in places as spread apart as Berkeley and Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, and in venues as varied as Banfill-Locke Center for the Arts in Fridley, Chicago's Green Mill Jazz Club, Borders Bookstores and BarB hiphop club  in Santa Fe,  I felt that it was time to take an artistic risk. I perform my poems by asking myself how the poem wants to be performed. I memorize it while considering the character I am portraying: is she feisty and bold, subdued with grief, bowed or uplifted by fate, moving and transformed, sensual and yearning, questioning, questing, affirming, contemplative, remembering? I accentuate the rhythm of the lines and language with movement, ritual, shawls, long skirts, aprons, and jewelry to bring attention to my hands as they gesture. There are the times when my ideas didn't work: the time the shawl wrapped around me and the mic, incapacitating my movements; the time I totally went blank even though I had performed the same poem to the previous English class; the awkwardness of my steps and my balance after hip surgery that was very different for me after being accustomed to heels, a passion for dance that led to late nights at the disco in my youth, and even rooftop bars in Puerto Vallarta in 2006.

But the nervous sensation of my stomach doing flips with worry that I will get it right, that I will connect with my audience, are no longer noticeable. Of course I still feel nervous, especially in a new venue and I still wonder if I will grab their attention but I know where the poems will take me. To the magic and the joy of communication. I will survive any mistakes, I do know how to create intimacy. I do land in my own skin.

I want to try something I have never done before and I want to finally transmute my deepest grief, my long journey to the underworld of despair and back. The Lord Have Mercy Show arose from a simple litany I find on my lips often: "Lord, have mercy!" This simple phrase had been a mantra as I moved four times in the past 6 years, from Santa Fe to Puerto Vallarta, from PV to Fridley, from Fridley to North Minneapolis to live with a dear friend, then when her job ended and she moved to Madeline Island, to Saint Louis Park with a housemate whom I didn't know. From the healing after my partner's death through the shattering of my son's, then the deaths of my Mexican husband and my sister, grown children of friends, my son's fiancee, dear friends and poetry peers. "Lord, have mercy" is simply a natural cry of anguish and a cry for help, while at the same time, a cry of fatalism mixed with irony. Life and death are part of the cycles of life and we can't avoid them. I want to allude to the contradictions, the mosaic, the understanding coupled with emotional incomprehensibility. I believe that Death comes to all of us and the anguish of losing someone is a measure of our love and their meaning in our life, that life is eternal and love never ends, yet healing is sometimes only "scotch-taped" over the "fissures of the heart" and the heart is permanently scarred. We never emerge unscathed. We can't stop the desire to keep our loved ones alive and near. We have to let them go and we have to face our own mortality.

There is also the irony or the black humor: What, again? Another time you are calling out to the Lord?
And what is His answer this time?

The Lord Have Mercy Show is a multi-media monologue, with poetry, story telling, dance, music, visuals, video, shadow play and audience interaction which I hope to develop as time goes on with grant funding. (I am thinking of several grants and will also post a kickstarter or USAprojects campaign later this year.) But why wait, why not begin with an excerpt? This is a work in progress and I will present an excerpt as a way to judge audience interest and get moving. 

I am not trained as an actress but I have acted as I performed poetry. I am not a playwright but I have interconnecting poems and a story to tell. Soloist Rachealann Haasken and dancer Linda Lundquist will accompany me at Patricks' Cabaret next month to present a 15 minute excerpt of poetry with music and dance. If you live in the Twin Cities, I hope you will come and ask questions after the show. Let me know what you think and if you believe in the power of words to heal and transform our stories of painful memories into stories of courage, hope, resiliency and love.

After the Memorial

Today I awoke to snow gently falling. After a dry brown winter and a freezing day of below zero temps yesterday, it is a relief to see snow. I sit with hot coffee in hand and think of yesterday’s memorial for Joan Calof. Despite the weather, the synagogue was packed. Joan was a dynamic, vibrant, active woman who passed away three days after her 84th birthday. She had been a social worker. After she retired, she became a performance artist, singing, dancing and telling stories on stages wherever she would find them, from cabarets to nightclubs in exotic locals.

We met at a workshop soon after I moved to the Twin Cities and Joan introduced me to the Twin Cities Women Writers & Poets. Other opportunities branched out from the women in this group and from Joan, the nudge to check out Patrick’s Cabaret. We read together for my book launch of transparencies of light at True Colors bookstore this last spring and her story about the women’s Turkish bath complimented the poems I had chosen about the Middle East. Her poems making fun of aging never ceased to delight me. She made me laugh even after I had heard them many times over. It was Joan’s dynamic, sparkling personality that infused her poems and made them come alive. Lately I have had an inspiration of bringing fast poetry into local businesses, a quick poem and get-away, and I think Joan would approve.

At her memorial, her books, The Lyrical Curmudgeon and Tales of a Well Seasoned Traveler, were given away. For some reason, this struck me. I felt its poignancy: the blessing of her books, labors of love, a message sent to us, remaining for us to hold her close. As I read her poems, I hear her voice and see her small compact body moving and dancing. Like me, she had hopes of selling them at her performances. I thought about the box of my books in my basement. If something happened to me, they would also be given away, a wonderful tribute to my creative force, a way to remember me when I am gone. But that of course is not what I want.

It is difficult to walk that spiritual path between letting go and letting God and wishing with all of my heart for the golden ring of acknowledgment, success, and adding to my income so that I can continue on my journey of creative inspiration. It is hard to admit that at times I just want to be as famous as Billy Collins or Sharon Olds, or OMG, Lawrence Ferlingetti, whom I heard read in a small venue years ago. I want to be noticed and loved for my work and I also want the communication that happens between the poet and her audience, her readers, her fans. As a woman who has been silenced for years, I yearn to have my voice—MY voice—heard.

The silencing came from years of communal living and being told that my opinions didn’t matter and it was vain to think they might, followed by living with a man who was bi-polar and incessantly analyzed his traumatizing past, his turbulent present, and his frightening future. I fell in love with him because we could talk about anything but as his illness progressed, the dialogue became a monologue. He told me that he didn’t want a conversation, he just wanted me to listen. He woke me up at dawn to report every thought he had had for hours before I got out of bed to make us coffee, make his breakfast and head off to work. His death was a relief from the grueling care taking and a deep sorrow of knowing that no, love cannot cure everything. Only those who wish to heal can be healed.

Is it gluttony to now want more? I have performed poetry 13 – 20 times a year in various locations such as cafes, bookstores, galleries, schools, churches, cultural centers, cabarets, and even once in a parking lot, from here to Mexico, from NYC to Berkeley. I have collaborated on poetry events with other local poets and musicians, I have created bilingual events. Forty people at Tribes Café with Word Dancers and a standing ovation, thirty people at the gallery in Puerto Vallarta for my Día de los Muertos performance, 200 in the audience at Patrick’s. I have achieved my dream of bringing poetry to unique venues, to present poetry to people who don’t think they like poetry, to be accessible. I have heard people in the audience weep, hold their breath, laugh and sigh, holding me in their attention as I shared my journey through words.

And yet—the desire to leave a lasting legacy is on my mind as I ride the bus home from Joan’s memorial. Joan is remembered for her chutzpah, her kindness, her ability to draw people out and connect them with each other. There is a resonance between our souls; we are soul mates. Joan always told me she admired my transparency on stage. Joan, you see, made up characters to inhabit but I embody my own experience, my emotions, my confusion and grief and joy and passion. I create an intimacy with my audience that brings us heart to heart, if you are willing to go on the journey with me. The reason I prefer intimate circles to the bright lights of a stage.

Joan, if you are smiling down from Heaven, what do you see?

Year End Review

The window for advance sales for transparencies of light is closing today. However, that doesn't mean you still can't order a copy; only that it doesn't count towards my print run. For those of you who have ordered it, bless you for supporting my endeavers to be a voice for women who are silenced by their cultures, their families or their own inhibitions.
http://www.finishinglinepress.com/ under new releases

Now with the intensive promoting behind me, I am preparing for spring readings.

Check my website. Each reading will feature different poets reading with me or musicians or dancers. This is still in process and not finalized. If you would like me to join your book club or writer's group to share my poems, my writing discipline and practice, my experience with publication and marketing, please contact me for setting something up after March 1st.
Of course, I am still reading selections from Ceremonies of the Spirit as well. What a joy that book has been for me!!!


I am also available for blog touring...if you have a blog and set up a date for me to be interviewed or post and be available for comments from your guests, that can also be arranged.

In the meanwhile, we are headed towards the cold, dark part of the year. Here in Minnesota we got over a foot of snow. The streets are silent and the only people who are out have to be. It is quiet in my home. I have lit a candle for La Virgin de Guadalupe, as it is Her Day, in honor of the Feminine Divine. I have been catching up with my blogs and my emails and next, maybe I will be couragous enough to tackle that box of notebooks full of scribbles from various writing sessions: the Mid-town Writers Group, the class at Face to Face, the women's retreats. And get back to scanning my memoirs, written on a word processor. (It seemed like the latest at the time, who knew that in a few years, those disks would be useless?) With the gift of a laptop from my good friend Chicago poet Ned Haggard, life is much easier and will be during recuperation from hip replacement this January.

I want to reflect back over my year, what I have accomplished and what has sustained me and urged me on. All writers know there are rejections and I am persistently rejected by some of my favorite publishers and literary journals, still I get off my knees, dust myself off, find another avenue. I want to acknowledge two amazing community efforts that did accept my work: Poets for Living Waters at http://www.poetsgulfcoast.wordpress.com/ and Saint Paul Almanac. Also Mississippi Crow, edited by my good friend Nadia Giordana who never stops coming up with new ways to promote not only her own work but others, especially women. Her blogtalkradio interview with me can be heard on my website: http://www.wendybrownbaez.com/ on the interviews page.
And Finishing Line Press accepted my manuscript for transparencies, for a spring birth.

I didn't do as many performances this year but Heal the Earth was my way of honoring and celebrating with a deep sense of gratitude our Mother Earth. It was amazing to work with 12 other women to make these events happen, to feel the energy shift as we created sacred space and shared our passion for the natural world.

The readings with Saint Paul Almanac were fun, I got to meet other writers and poets whom I had heard of and had never met. Especially Julia Klatt Singer, whom I knew from http://www.northography.com/. I have always admired her poetry and she will be part of my book launch in March, along with Joan Calof, story teller extraordinaire.

My biggest accomplishment was installing In the Shelter of Words, a multi-media art installation created by at risk youth from a writing workshop I taught. It showcased a CD of their words and was installed at Altered Esthetics Gallery, as part of Night On the Street and at Mid-town Global Market. Passers-by could catch a glimpse of what it means to be a teen who may not have a home, may be parenting and going to school, may be struggling to overcome choices made in the past. The sukkah is now in my garage, and someday it will be brought to another community venue with more poems added.

For the first time I read a poem while Sarah Arneson did an interpretive, intuitive dance. That was amazing, to see my words come to life and I want to do more.

This year has also had its troubles: my sister passed away form pancreatic cancer, my friend Wayne Crawford was also diagnosed with it, and the first anniversary of my husband Alejandro's death reminded me of how much I miss his vitality and being with him in Mexico. But I did take a Spanish class with the intention of interweaving more Spanish into my poems and gave a presentation at The Works: a Writer's Salon on Versos de Calaveras.

The poetry salon at All About the Journey http://www.allowharmony.com/ was a great opportunity to speak with writers and share my insights. Guess what I told them? Discipline! If you want to break out from writing to publishing, you have to be disciplined about submitting, editing, being critiqued, and blogging or keeping up your social networks. We are all in this together, my friends! Writing is a way to connect, to build bridges between us, to create understanding and awareness where there was once judgement or distance. We all have a story---but the stories are sort of the same story--overcoming adversity, appreciating how precious beauty is, wanting love and validation, wanting to give of ourselves deeply and with honor, peace and justice, truth and magic.
Don't you?

The year 2011 is approaching fast and I want to fling confetti this new year's eve. I have lived through my own story of deaths and loss and rejections and yes, self-doubt. But I am here, and I have a story to tell. Listen.

Join us for an evening of extraordinary performance art!

An evening of multi-cultural, dynamic, cutting edge performaces

by 6 talented women:

Dance and story-telling Xpression-Inspiration by Maia Maiden

Performance poet Wendy Brown-Baez in La Noche del Amor

Dance Textured memories by Renee Copeland

Spoken Word by Deja Stowers in Black Girl, one world

Stand up comic Farheen Hakeem

Dance by Aneka Mcmullen

Patrick's Cabaret

3010 Minnehaha Ave S Mpls

Friday April 3, Saturday April 4

http://www.patrickscabaret.org/