Welcome to bookchat where you can talk about anything...books, plays, essays, and books on tape. You don’t have to be reading a book to come in, sit down, and chat with us.
Our MT Spaces has published a Memoir, The Great Salt Lake Mime Saga and Amsterdam’s Festival of Fools: Memoir and Memorabilia. See the Note below for details.
When I read a memoir, I also pause to think about my own life. What was I doing in the same years? How did my vision of life overlap with the author’s? Good memories, hard memories, regrets, sympathy…all are part of my reading as the author shares his life.
In this book, I see memories of people who did the hard work of becoming entertainers, who reached out to the world and shared their vision and skills. It takes courage and joy to produce a show. The challenge of setting up in varied venues from the street to small stages, to high schools is a great one. Finding enough money to live on while honing the material and getting known is very tough.
This memoir is an intimate look from the inside that touches the heart the more you read about how the young artists began and worked together to create their shows. The author saw it all from the beginning in Salt Lake City to the shows in Amsterdam. He did lots of jobs to keep the show going strong such as doing art work, stage lighting, juggling, running off programs, and keeping the bus driver awake at night on bad roads.
I visited Amsterdam for a few days in 1972 so I know a little bit about the bustle of that city; the trams, the bicycles, the flower market and the buildings. It is a lively city and the Mime Troupe made it livelier.
Thanks to MT Spaces’ gift of this book, I enjoyed a time travel trip back into the 70’s when dancers, mimes, clowns, and musicians were burgeoning with creative enterprise and daring the odds to show their stuff.
Thank you, MT Spaces!!!
When I read a memoir I often think of these words:
GARDEN SONG
CHORUS:
Inch by inch, row by row,
Gonna make this garden grow.
Gonna mulch it deep and low,
Gonna make it fertile ground.
Inch by inch, row by row,
Please bless these seeds I sow.
Please keep them safe below
'Til the rain comes tumbling down…
Words and Music by David Mallett
©1975 Cherry Lane Music Publishing (ASCAP)
All the words are here:
http://www.oldielyrics.com/...
Peter, Paul and Mary, Pete Seeger, John Denver, and Arlo Guthrie have all sung the song and it lives inside me as one of the best songs I know about life. This is what we do. We plant seeds though we may never see what grows. Memoirs themselves plant more seeds so that by watching courage in action we may have the courage to try new things. It is hard work to plant and care for gardens and yet it also sets us free when we pursue what matters to us.
Hear David Mallett, the author, sing it:
https://www.youtube.com/...
Hear Pete sing it here:
https://www.youtube.com/...
Hear John Denver sing it on The Muppet Show here:
https://www.youtube.com/...
OK...Arlo does it with panache as only he can:
https://www.youtube.com/...
What are your favorite memoirs?
I have read 18 on this list of memoirs:
http://www.ranker.com/...
My favorites over the years:
Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! by Richard Feynman
Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich
Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books by Azar Nafisi
All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot (and the sequels)
Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen
Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt
The Hare with Amber Eyes by Edmund De Waal
Dreams from My Father by Barack Obama
Call the Midwife by Jennifer Worth
Brother, I Am Dying by Edwidge Danticat
One Hundred Names for Love by Diane Ackerman
My Invented Country by Isabel Allende
Hemingway Book Club of Kosovo by Paula Huntley
Something to Declare by Julia Alvarez
The Night Country by Loren Eiseley
An Ordinary Man, autobio of Paul Rusesabagina with Tom Zoellner
Update: How could I forget this one? Another DKos author:
Belonging: A Memoir by Robert W. Fuller
My review:
http://www.dailykos.com/....
Diaries of the Week:
Write On! Family edition
by not a lamb
http://www.dailykos.com/...
A Day in the Life of an Inner City High School Teacher
by IvoryTusk
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Note: A big congratulations to MT Spaces for having his book published.
“The First U.S. Edition of The Great Salt Lake Mime Saga and Amsterdam's Festival of Fools was officially published on St. Patrick's Day 2015.
(information on how to order.)
https://greatsaltlakemimesagaplusadamfestivalfools.wordpress.com/...
Standing invitation to my Bookflurries posse -- if anyone is sincere about writing a review of this theatrical memoir, please send me an email via the link above.”