A Conspiracy of Clothes

One of the most delightful parts of speech is the collective noun.  Herd of turtles, a pod of whales, a flock of geese, a den of thieves, pack of hyenas, etc... the ultimate, of course, being a murder of crows.  Hey, is it a "suicide of emos," "a judgement of hipsters?"  Holy smokesies, making up collective nouns is a fun game- but I digress.

As I have been putting my domestic life together after a tumultuous five years of all work and no play, and only-essential housework, I have those moments when I think: where the hell is that shirt?  Or those pants?  I had them on Isle au Haut/in Portland/in Sullivan?  When did I last...

Buying an old farmhouse with attached barn, means that surely you could/should consolidate your belongings under this one rambling roof- even organize them so they pack in efficiently.  All "everything has a place, and everything in it's place."  We've now owned the house for almost exactly two and half years, and it has taken that 32 months to do some renovation, updates, cosmetic fixes... and simply unpack the stuff we brought over from Isle au Haut.  I am pretty sure we could now count the boxes not yet unpacked on one hand.  Victory!  Sort of.

It took us this long, because like most Americans of this age, we have accumulated a lot of stuff.  Which we are typically too busy to use.  For Dave and I, we're talking at a combined 77 years of "why not just get this?"

Community closet: he likes hunting, I like history...

Since leaving my salaried job, I have spent a lot of time thinking about how in the world Dave and I can build a sustainable lifestyle where we work together, and make ends meet.  How to increase income and staunch the monetary bleeding that is now pretty normative in modern America, even while in The Great Recession.  There's a whole lot of "hey girl, time to get serious about want vs. need."  And the more I look around, clean up, reorganize, and do Goodwill weeding, the more I realize: "dude, you seriously have everything you need.  Honestly, more than you need... you've collected for 34 years, how about you maybe try to coast a while on that... maybe even stop to use/repurpose it?  Because this, my dear, is verging on obscenity."

Morgan- what on earth does this have to do with collective nouns- other than that you are going on about how we collect things?  And nouns are literally just names for things?

Let me explain: While I was packing away winter stuff and pulling out summer clothes (yes, New England does require bi-temp dressing), I knew that somewhere- under this roof, there was a whole group of shirts that I was missing.  I remembered them, but I had no idea where they were hiding.  Somewhere, there was this conspiracy of clothes, playing the old parlor game "Sardines."  Now, was my summer wardrobe wanting for the lack of these shirts?  Hell no.  Even with all of the phantom pullovers, tee shirts, and blouses missing except for the memory, I was doing just fine getting dressed in the morning- whether going out on the boat, or going grocery shopping.

A few weeks later, I was cleaning up The Great Gingerbread Meltdown (expect a future post on this), when I opened a bureau to find- not only my lost marble (!) - but also that particular conspiracy of clothes- which even included clothes I had almost completely forgotten.  AHA!

Fast forward to the last 24 hours, when I have been binge-reading articles and posts on historicalsewing.com.  I love clothes.  Always have, always will.  As a little kid, I pored over What People Wore, a huge historic compendium of how people dressed, from the skin out, and including headwear, footwear, and hairstyles.  This formative book forever after helped me tell time in terms of centuries and decades.  By the time I was a teenager, I owned and read A History of Underwear, which is something of an academic tome; think PhD rather than pornography.  I was in the early stages of what would also develop into a serious love of non-fiction.  Making shit up is awesome- don't get me wrong- but the world as it exists and has existed is the most bizarre and marvelous, brilliant and beautiful thing.  I could spend a lifetime just gorging on the details of... well- life as people have lead it.

I am not alone in either of these passions.  Also firmly in the saddle atop a clothes horse is my friend Lauren, who is much better at riding out in her clothes than I generally manage to be.

 Theater was how I endeavored to be dressed up with somewhere to go.  My college education actually included how to construct clothes, walk in trains, and involved spending quite a few hours in corsets and rehearsal skirts.  In theater, however, you are very much at the mercy of the story the show is telling.  So I've slumped out in prison stripes (BTWs the dye process involved uric acid, fun smells in the costume shop!), and strode out in a gown rented from the Metropolitan Opera.

Yours Truly in Elizabeth Rex- totally a costuming win, if you like the fancy stuff.

Also... you have memorize pages and pages of dialogue.  It's a lot of work not directly related to the clothes.  As you might have noticed, I am also pretty intense about the written word, so I am clearly not only in it for the clothes.

Lauren is way better at self-determination and setting her own damned stage.  The plus side is she gets to assemble (not just wear) the clothing.  In theater, you only get to spend the hours with the materials, problem solving if you are working as a costumer- not as an actor.  Our species is compulsively creative, and for many the clothing compulsion isn't just about wearing, it is about making.  In Lauren's case, creating goes beyond the costume.  Because she is often creating the entire event.   She's meticulous and holistic in a way that a theater geek like me can appreciate, though with a slightly different bent- she's also thinking food, set, accessories, cocktails, photography and company.  Afterward, she will spend hours happily building photo albums- it is her own personal creativity continuum- planning, to party, to photo assembly.

Aging means more than accumulating stuff- experience means improvement, refinement of technique.  When we were fifteen, Lauren totally tried to throw the ultimate New Year's Eve party, complete with formal dress, opera playing in the background, little gourmet ham tartlets, and a few delightful rounds of charades to keep things lively.  Sadly, this was in 1995, all of her invitees were born in the final wave of Gen X: grunge was the predominant fashion, and Deer Isle-Stonington the predominant culture.

My homegirl Lauren, 6 years before the NYE party...

It was a hilarious night for her ironic-minded friends, who gobbled up the absolutely delicious tartlets, and gaffawed at her attempts to make high school boys act civilized.  I am pretty sure they mostly wanted to smoke pot and make dirty jokes.  And wear jeans.  Parlor games, like theater games, only ever work if everyone buys in- otherwise they are just painful.  And her friends weren't buying.  It was a rough night for Lauren.  But, Scarlett O'Hara stubborn, I am pretty sure on that night, as she went to sleep, she raised a fist and vowed never to throw her entertainment pearls before swine again.

Twenty years later, she is marrying her love of general fancy-pants fabulousness to her love of museums, and is one of the founding members of the Victoria Mansion's Gaslight League.  No, theater/movie geeks, it's a not a group devoted to making other people think they are going crazy, it is a group devoted to bringing a younger/wider set into philanthropy for the museum...  By hosting costumed cocktail events at the museum.  This is not a leap for Lauren, who held her wedding there.

The girl grows up and makes her own way... Dave holds my bouquet...

The League's pilot party: a steampunk themed Halloween soiree.

This will be my first Halloween in three years not to be stolen by directing a show, and needing to build a set.  Hell yes, I will be getting my costume geek on.  Hell yes, I will surrender myself up to another of my friend's carefully curated experiences.  Blessed are the people who do the work so that you can just show up.  In costume.

But here's the thing about costume geekery: your eyes get really big.  Your visions are shiny.  And you start going down the rabbit hole of research.  Pies fly in the sky (it's crazy- DUCK!).  Your inquisitive nature starts steering you toward the acquisitive... curiosity and creativity are a wonderful things, but can lead down a primrose path that leaves you miles from moderation.

The next thing you know,  you have somehow added more to your stash, and the purchase of bits and bobs have added up (I spent what, now?).  Our curiosities compel our collecting- our hobbies add to our hoarding.  I am stoked to build a steampunk costume, and the stitcher in me is dying to dive into sewing projects (as I have now managed to set up my sewing machine, in a room, on a table... it was collecting dust behind the pellet stove).

But hold on kitten.

What do you need?  Damn you, clothes!!!  I need not to spend money on notions (literal sewing notions or figurative ones), and I need not to spend autumn hours on costume construction, when I had promised myself I'd be spending those hours on paragraph construction.  Because giving up the white-collar job and benefits, and making the move to manual labor was intended to free my mind and time up for writing, and part of making up the difference in income, means making a difference in spending.

The Battle...

...of the Work Stations

Writing is free.

Obviously, it isn't only one thing or the other.  Life is just a series of compromises you make with yourself and the world.  The solution of course, is already inside the problem.  Clothes may be a conspiracy to tempt me into spending, but the conspiracy of clothes already cluttering my closets are the answer.  Because in the world of general costuming- as opposed to historical costuming- you build on existing pieces.  I have those in spades (and incidentally at my parent's house in Sullivan- what was that about consolidation, Morgan?).  So after the hours of binge reading the work of a historical costumer, I pulled my head out of the clouds, slapped myself into practicality, and began to dig.

Which is why earlier this morning, Dave found me in a layered ensemble of corset/dress/vest/jacket... over my pajama bottoms.

Um... Wifey?

It's terrible when people walk in on your first draft.

Which is how I ended up breaking it to him that at the very least, I would be going to a Halloween party in Portland (his attendance is 100% optional), whole months before the actual event.  Usually he finds out about my plans for him much later... speaking of conspiracy, I tend to only inform him of events and company once it is truly Need-to-Know.

Now, having written.  It's time to get dressed.

And to keep in mind a useful mantra:

Use.  What.  You.  Have.

A Company Job

So it recently occurred to me that lobster fishing is a bizarre job in that many people actively want to go to work with you.  Volunteer job shadowing!  How much fun is it to go out and help someone do their work- for free!

We bring folks out on the boat at least a few times a season, and Dave does actually do a couple of charter trips a year, when he is paid to bring people to work with him.  He's also brought out school trips, and we've often brought out cast and crew members from the Opera House's Shakespeare shows.  Friends, family- all aboard.

That's how I started- over coffee at the cafe on Isle au Haut, I wrangled an invitation to go out and fish.  Poor Dave was just never able to politely make me leave the boat.  I am pretty sure he finally married me to make sure he'd be the beneficiary if (while distracted by making up stories, monologues, songs, and essays- or gazing at the water for porpoises) I ever went overboard.

So what is the lure of lobster fishing?  Getting up close and personal with large quantities of herring?

The sound of the diesel engine?  Rope sweeping by your feet as it is pulled overboard?


No- perhaps the super early wake-up?  Who doesn't like setting their alarm for 3:30am, and then actually getting up for it?

The more I think about it, the more I think the truth is age-old.  Some percentage of us feel the call to the ocean.  It doesn't necessarily fit into the everyday lifestyle of the modern American, but it is there- funding cruise lines, underwriting research vessels, paying for pleasure craft.  And while many people make their living in salaried, scheduled jobs, (and for most of my life this has been the case), they fantasize on occasion about chucking at all and running away to sea.  Every day I have spent on the water- from when I was a little kid in a row boat, to when I was in my early 20s, getting in my once-a-year-day on a power boat for the lobster boat races- I have stoppered up the experience in my mind, each day bottled up and stored as a day I felt like I really lived.  People come out to experience one of those days.  We are happy to give them that- the work can be long, monotonous- company keeps it fresh.

Incidentally, company will come from in the water as well- the fleet has more or less adopted this half-blind gray seal... or has she adopted us?  BTW, she's gotten picky about bait, and will only continue to beg if we've got the good stuff.
  

Breakfast on the Bay

The time between leaving the mooring and making it to the first trap is one of the best parts of the day- once I've baited up about a box worth of bait bags, it is just commute time.  Nothing much for me to do but look out the window; except, in my case there's no window, there's the stern platform.  I finish my coffee, check out what sort of sunrise is happening (fishermen become sunrise connoiseurs), look out over the water.

Lately, this last bit has been fairly captivating.  On days we are fishing down the west side of Isle au Haut, we're steaming over a broad expanse of open water.  The mornings have been what is referred to as "flat ass calm" and the water has been alive with schools of herring- rippling silver out of the surface of the water.  Where there's small fish, there's soon the animals that break their fast on small fish.

The sparkle of sardines on the water draws the terns, with their rilling "pew, pew, pew, pew!" and gliding dives.  Soon the seals are circling and harbor porpoises are making their measured dives; a few degrees of sun light later, the puffins are buzzing in from Seal Island flying for all the world like bombers.  On the second day of the schooling herring, far off the starboard side, I saw not a porpoise.  It was dark and finned, but much longer, and even more leisurely in its dive than a porpoise.  There was just- more body to deal with.  Surely I had seen a whale.  I voiced the sighting to Dave, and by and by, he saw it, and affirmed I had not lost my mind, but had in fact noted a minke whale.  Which is not a harbor porpoise.

That was my first identification win of the week.  A few days later, I noted another not-quite-porpoise that was far lighter in color than any self-respecting harbor porpoise, and was downright jaunty in its dive.  "Um, are there... dolphins around here?"  "Yep, Atlantic White-Sided Dolphins."

I WIN!  AGAIN!  I can officially tell when something is (probably) not a harbor porpoise.

So while I watch the various marine creatures snack on the herring, which must also in turn be snacking on something else- I am typically drinking coffee (at this point lukewarm), and wishing I was having breakfast too.  Recently, a friend brought pickled herring while staying at the house with us, and while I am of 25% Swedish extraction, I don't watch herring school and crave that particular cultural offering.  It would totally fit in my reduced-carb diet, but I am much more Mainer than 3rd generation Swedish-American.  Give me a freaking doughnut.  Or poutine.  Is the low-carb version of poutine just melted cheese and gravy?

Happily, before I get too hungry, we are full tilt into the fishing day.  The day before yesterday, the weather had turned on us, and the smorgasboard on the bay was not so ebulliantly on display.  The sky had turned grim, and the wind over the water had picked up.

Exhibit A: Conditions go all broody
.  Very Swedish.

The past few nights have been "super moon" nights where the moon is full and particularly close to earth, which means super tides- 13 footers.  We'd made it down to our traps off the south end of Isle au Haut- deep water, with a ripping tide will suck down the gear, making buoys vanish and reappear like Houdini.


As we neared the first pair of one string, we saw the left-overs of someone's breakfast, snagged in the line and buoy.  It was half a harbor seal.  Go a link up the food chain beyond seals consuming herring, and you have sharks consuming seals.

This particular shark was not very frugal in its use of its food, and certainly did not think to re-purpose the pelt to make superior-quality cold weather wear.  Fucking sharks.  In this case probably a Mako, because we suspect that the Great Whites which have been hunting in our waters with increasing frequency would have done a greater job at cleaning up.

We pulled the remains free of the line, and hauled the traps- only to have the tide carry the body directly to our next pair of traps.  Another day on the bay.

To Audition or Not to Audition...

The community theater program at The Grand Theater in Ellsworth is being resurrected this fall with a production of Spamalot, the Monty Python pastiche created for Broadway by Eric Idle.  I just spent last evening enjoying New Surrey Theater's production of Carousel, and have for many reasons been thinking I should audition for Spamalot.

What's my motivation, you ask me?

I have asked that myself.

First:  I am pretty sure that the theatrical condition is like malaria, or herpes.  Lifelong with flare ups.  It goes dormant, sure... and those times are peaceful and productive.  But then.  Something like Spamalot, or oh- say a theater job with salary and benefits (which makes it seem like a grown-up/productive thing), will come up.  And you may find your self systemically unable to fight it.  The next thing you know it's all late nights, manic behavior, pulling away from your family and loved ones, reduced appetite, and flop sweat.

I have this disease- Human Theatrical Virus, and the only way to keep it under control is to regularly say "No."  So technically it is in that shadow land of addiction: is it disease, brain chemistry, poor choice making?  Is there such thing as moderation?

Oh holy hand grenades, it can be a slippery slope, participation in theater.

So why do I want to audition?

- To publicly get back up on the horse, having been kicked to the curb by the job.
- Dude, it's Spamalot.
- To work with Scott Cleveland, who was my musical director for The Pajama Game, and reconnect with Ken Stack, who directed me in Grease and Into the Woods.
- To act, rather than direct and design.
-To be a part of the Grand's community theater comeback.

Why do I not want to audition?

- It's a 50 minute drive in for rehearsals.
-Gas means money, and have I mentioned departing that salaried theater job that left me miserable, but fed me very predictable amounts of money?
-Evening rehearsals may well mean tired/no fishing.
- Seriously, theater is a giant focus suck, and I had been thinking I should focus on work and writing.
- And being a human.

Incidentally, last night I looked on-line for an update about auditions. The last time I checked, a couple of weeks ago, the site said would be held in "late summer."  As of last night's internet check-in, they are yesterday, today, and tomorrow.


Also incidentally:

If you, or someone you know has something like this in the closet, you/he/she may have HTV.

Writer's Block

So here's the trick with writing a blog that is personal narrative, when you are naturally pretty reserved, and raised fairly Yankee- what do you write when the voice in your head says "that makes you sound like an ass hat; who would care about the mulch in your garden; no, that will come across as self-righteous/pompous/asinine/entitled/hollow/hypocritical."  If you don't have something useful to say, don't say it.

Etc.

(Pause to contemplate what exactly the use of an ass hat would be and the design implications... I digress, and parentheses always aid and abet me- but seriously, take a moment and imagine your own ass hat design).

You are welcome for that compelling exercise in imagination.  It was your Xmas/birthday gift for the year.  I love you and it is indeed, it is the thought that counts here.

I have a lot of free time in my mind these days- specifically in my mind, not "on my hands" because my hands are busy.  These days, my hands are cramming herring into baits bags, banding lobsters, or weeding the garden.  This leaves my mind to roam, to revel, to reverie.  The upshot is that story outlining is moving ahead apace.  Characters and content for Tales from the Wilde Isle surface regularly- just this week Jonah, Jinx, and Job showed up on my doorstep, I suspect because their parents didn't want them around.  I have found the outlet for my feelings re: the bigger-and-better boat race and the habit some people may well have of hauling other people's gear to pay for said bigger/better boats, which is a retelling of "The Fisherman and the Draug"- a classic Scandinavian ghost story.

The beautiful thing about fiction is that you can get all the vengeance your little heart desires, and it is entirely legal, and presumably doesn't make your soul all Dorian Gray manky.   And the beautiful thing about manual labor is that you have your mind to yourself.

But what to write for the blog?  You see, I had set a goal for myself- to post at least every week; only by writing can you become a writer, and blogging is a business tool, and a regular writing exercise.  And a couple of weeks have flown by... and... date and time stamps, and any sort of public will keep you honest.

I have not met my goal because I've been over-editing before even sitting down to draft.   This is hilarious, given that the root of my writer's block is anxiety about the audience's reception of me and my little preoccupations.  Everyone is absurd in their passions and preoccupations- perhaps growing up (growing out?) is allowing yourself to be publicly absurd.

And let's be honest, right now that "public" is only friends and family (Hi!- seriously, happy birthday/merry Xmas!) and they are patently familiar with my particular peculiarities.

So sit down, and work through it, woman.