Rapping with the Ringmaster

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johnathanleeiverson

Ringmaster Johnathan Lee Iverson | Photo Credit: Feld Entertainment

Until last year, I hadn’t seen a proper circus since I was ten. (Cirque du Soleil is awesome, but it’s not a circus in the historical sense). Then, a couple of years ago, I stumbled across the blog of a man who was (at the time) the Boss Clown of one of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus’s train tours. (Ringling runs three tours: Red and Blue are train tours and travel on two-year tours, so if RED is in your city this year, BLUE will be there next year. The Gold tour is a truck caravan, and visits venues too small for a full three-ring circus.)

That experience taught me that clowning is really just another application of the same skills we use in improv: mime, humor, irony, and “yes, and.”

It also made me want to see the circus.

Conveniently, the Ringling Bros. tour comes to my city around my birthday every year. Inconveniently, it took me until 2011 to make it to a show, but it was worth it.

In preparation for my experience, I followed the twitter feeds for Ringling Bros., and for the ringmaster of the tour I was going to see: Johnathan Lee Iverson. His feed is a blend of fan shout-outs, daily updates, and interesting observations about life in the circus and life in America.

I contacted him via Facebook, he put me in touch with the publicity folks at Feld Entertainment (the Ringling parent company) and earlier today, in the newest issue of All Things Girl, he’s our man of the moment.

He’s my favorite interviewee that I did by email.

An excerpt from the piece is below. You can read the whole article here.

ATG: Aside from your existing training as a performer, did you have to learn any new skills in order to succeed as a circus performer, or in order to understand all the different types of performers you work with?

JLI: The single greatest thing you need in the world of the circus is an open mind. Every performance is like an organism, meaning it’s a living thing. No two shows are ever alike. When you are performing with so many performers from all over the world who possess specialty crafts with particular needs, you must have a mind that is braced for the unexpected.

Recovering

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A week or so ago, all my sites were hacked, and loaded with mal-ware that served a tasty menu of Russian porn. I’m in the process of recovering from the forced blow-out of my whole host account. Back before you know it.

30 Days to Creativity

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30 Days to Creativity

Are you bored with your blog? Does your journal need juice, or your diary need dressing up?

We all fall into creative slumps from time to time, sitting at our desks and feeling like the blank page or screen is taunting us. What we need, we think, is a jump-start. Something to get things flowing once more. Something to reignite the creative spark.

What if I offered you just such a tool to rekindle your flame?
What if I promised thirty days of interesting, creative blog/diary/journal prompts?
What if I told you that with my friend Debra Smouse, I’ve created a course called 30 Days to Creativity: Inspirational ePrompts to Unleash Your Creative Spirit that launches Tuesday, February, 7th, with a focus on better blogging (or diary/journal writing)?

What if this was more than just “what if?”

Experts would tell you that it takes about 21 days to form a habit.

Debra and I invite you to spend 30 days forming a habit of daily writing. Whether you’re a blogger writing for an audience, someone who just wants their journal to be a little juicier for posterity, or a budding novelist looking to hone your skills, these prompts will give you a month of creative fodder, and our challenges will help you find the creative fire that might, sometimes, seem more like so many wisps of smoke.

30 Days to Creativity: Inspirational ePrompts to Unleash Your Creative Spirit is 30 days to better blogging.

January Wrap-Up

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I’m back in the writing groove this month, with a lot of work for ATG, and the voice project I mentioned earlier that went live.

Also: beginning in February, my friend Debra and I are offering the first in a series of eight e-classes to help boost your writing. Watch this space for more info or check out 30 Days to Creativity.

LINKS:

Fresh Starts

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Blank blogs have almost as many possibilities as brand-new spiral notebooks. Ever since I bought this domain, I’ve been trying to balance my personal blog, my book blog, and find something to write here, as well. It was too much. I felt divided. I stopped writing everywhere.

I made the decision to re-start this blog just to keep people up-to-date with what I’ve been doing – what I’ve been writing, where I’ve been writing, any new voice stuff I’m doing – and some special projects.

It’s still January for a few more days. The year is still young.

But it’s never too late for a Fresh Start.

Half-way Out of the Dark

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The writing staff from Dr. Who might consider Christmas to be the point of the year at which we’re half way out of the dark, and while I suppose it’s true from a “well, you know, the winter solstice” point of view, for me, that midpoint comes a little later – on New Year’s Eve. You know, tonight. I guess it’s because we’re flipping a calendar page and crossing off days in a new year, and hoping that – with or without specific resolutions – we’ll all be better from the new day forward.

But before there’s the day, we have to have the night. New Year’s Eve…when drunk people sing a song they don’t understand, off-key, loudly, and in public.

Well, not at my house.

We thought about having a quiet night, just the two of us, and watching movies, but the reality is that I wanted to ring in the new year with friends, so we had a quiet soiree, with two other couples, and another friend. I provided cheese, crackers, chips, salsa and beverages that came in hot, cold, alcoholic and alcohol-free. Ms. M.S. showed up with grocery bags, and proceeded to cook us a special meal to be eaten after the year had turned over, sharing her personal traditions with us.

There were black-eyed peas, for luck and collard greens for prosperity (money), and sauerkraut with chunks of tender pork just because she had grown up eating that, and, because none of us has yet learned to cook less than a metric ass-load of anything, there was enough for each of us to have some leftovers.

And so, on this cold, clear night, while the wind whispered love songs in the trees, and the birds roosted in the thickest, most sheltered branches, we talked and laughed and drank and ate. In Mexico, friends of my parents made sure to walk around the block with their empty suitcases, to ensure a year of travel, and while we didn’t do that, we did do some symbolic sweeping away of 2010, and we did toast the new year with sparkling beverages (asti for some of us, sparkling cranberry for others) and shared kisses with each other, and the dogs, and cleaned up, and then had mochas to send those driving on their way.

Fuzzy’s sick, so we sent him to bed early, but everyone else stayed til just after two, and while part of me wanted it to be one of those talk-til-dawn kinds of nights, where everyone crashes in one house, I’m glad to have the still, quiet of my own space back, and I’m looking forward to undecorating the house. I don’t usually do this on New Year’s Day, preferring to keep everything up til Epiphany, but for some reason, even though it’s the same number of days, having the holidays fall on weekends has made the time seem longer, and I’m ready for signs of Christmas to be bundled back into boxes until next year.

“Things have to end. Otherwise nothing would ever get started,” said the 11th Doctor in last week’s Christmas episode, a Dr. Who riff on Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, and that’s true of everything: childhood, vacations, weekends, Christmas…years, seasons, winter…everything.

2010 was not the worst year ever for me, but it was particularly challenging and held far too many disappointments. I’m hoping 2011 will be better for everyone.

And as for me, it’s four in the morning on the first day of a new year, and I’m sitting in bed typing on my laptop will my husband and our dogs sleep nearby. I’m sipping the last of the asti, and getting ready to give myself some dreamtime, and as tired as I am, I still have the warm glow of friendship surrounding me.

Because we’re half way out of the dark, and the sunlight that’s coming is bright and clean and new.

Happy New Year.

Half-Remembered Names and Faces

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He died when I was five, and to this day I’m not sure if I really remember my great-grandfather or if the stories I’ve heard are so powerful that they’ve created the illusion of memory. Sometimes it’s as if I was a ghost-child in my grandparents house in the months before I was born, because I seem to have vivid recollections of events I never could have witnessed.

And then there’s the dog. My grandparents had a dog named Misty, and I’m almost certain she died before I was born, but I remember her dog breath and her wagging tail, and somehow I think it’s those memories that set me on the path to being a Dog Person, and not a Cat Person, despite the fact that I’m a LEO (and I have the mane to prove it).

But when it comes to him, I remember him as impossibly old (though he was probably only in his eighties), impossibly tiny, with a small voice. He smelled like coffee and tobacco, and sadly, it wasn’t the sweet scent of pipe tobacco, or the heady aroma of la gloria cubana cigars, but the stale, old smell of cigarettes – and American cigarettes at that. Note to all half-remembered old men: if you want your descendants to have fond memories of you, and you can’t deal with a good pipe, at least choose a clove cigarette, or, failing that, smoke Gauloises. They still reek, but at least they have a literary cachet. Orwell and Fleming smoked them, and I think Fleming gave his own habit to that character he created…you might have heard of him…Bond, James Bond.

But anyway, I have this picture, scanned by my auntie, digitized and data-sampled and all that, and I love it, not because I have any close association with my great-grandfather (though, I see now that there’s a definite THERE there in his eyes…) but because it seems so iconic…the ultimate little old Italian-American man picture.

And it tells a story, but I haven’t yet figured out what the story is.

But I think it begins with, “We called him ‘Little Grandpop’ when we talked about him.”

Thursday 13: RED

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I’m in a thematic mood today, and the color red is speaking to me, so for my last Thursday 13 of 2010, and my first in months, I’m celebrating that color.

  1. The cloth cover, long since unprotected by any dust jacket, of my copy of Winnie the Pooh, by A. A. Milne. I’ve had it since forever.
  2. The pair of Keds sneakers I had when I was five or six, and ran around the yard twirling and singing the theme song from ZOOM.
  3. The tea kettle that sits on my stove, and whistles at me. It’s overall shape is reminiscent of the FTD logo, but that’s okay, because I love flowers.
  4. My crock pot that I typically use for heating cider or making chicken soup. Pot roasts, on the other hand, I make in the oven.
  5. My favorite cardigan sweater, especially when worn over a red, black, grey, and white striped shirt.
  6. My much-mourned-for favorite bra: demi-cups, rhinestones tracing the contour, and it gave me the perfect ‘lift.’ I had to toss it after the plastic tube it had instead of under-wire snapped in two.
  7. Cranberry juice, my juice of choice, because I love the sweet-tart taste as much as I love the color.
  8. The holiday cups at Starbucks. Once they appear, you know the magic months have begun.
  9. Maximus’s collar and EZ-Walk harness. He’s a black and white (really a blue merle) Pointer/Boxer mix, and he looks so handsome when decked for walkies.
  10. The ink in one of my favorite Sarasi pens, given to me by a friend who said that if I used it to write, my writing would be better and more authentic. Also, it just makes me happy.
  11. Classic Coca-Cola cans: who says you can’t bottle joy?
  12. My Dell Studio laptop and my Dell Studio Hybrid desktop. I compose at the keyboard. Using red computers is almost as potent as using red ink, right?
  13. Bonny Doon Syrah, my favorite every-day wine. It’s difficult to find in Texas, but you can order it from their website.

The irony? As I write this, I’m dressed in black and Slytherin green.

Like this meme? Play along at the Thursday 13 website.

My Favorite Things

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While today was a work-day for me, the gentle rain outside was lovely company, and since – for a change – the precipitation did not come with a side of migraine, I was able to reunite with my old love. Until about two years ago, stormy weather was MY weather. I lived for the sound of raindrops on roses…or rooftops, or decks, or sidewalks, or car hoods, or, or or… While I’m fairly certain I’ll have more storm-related headaches in the future, I’m glad that the lack of one this week meant that this unseasonably warm, wonderfully wet Wednesday was a red-letter day for me.

Actually red-letter isn’t entirely accurate. Read-letter is, maybe, because I received a Christmas parcel from my auntie in Connecticut that made me teary, wistful, and happy, all at once. She and I have a shared love of Winnie-the-Pooh, you see. I mean classic Pooh. Pooh from before Disney turned him into a cartoon. Pooh from A. A. Milne’s books, which I still have upstairs in the Word Lounge. In hard cover. (Though the dust jackets disappeared eons ago.)

Anyway, she sent me a Christmas card, Pooh-themed that said something cute like “Christmas is a togethery time of year,” and a small book with a lovely Christmas story in it, and a newspaper clipping about a journalist who used to work as a publisher for the American publishing house that managed Milne’s works, and how that publisher owned the ACTUAL stuffed animals that had inspired the story, and how on her last day the caretaker of the Milne-agerie (my term) had let her HUG Winnie-the-Pooh, and she thought they’d reverted to private ownership decades ago, but a year ago she learned that they’d been donated as a permanent display to the New York Public Library, where they remain today.

It was such a sweet little essay/memoir/thing, and so full of the innocence of youth and the unabashed love for our favorite childhood things that never really leaves us, and I was moved by it (and it’s also THAT time of the month, so I’m emotional ANYWAY) and I left her a weepy voicemail thanking her.

And…yeah.

But it’s also a Written-Letter day in MissMelissa-Land, because in addition to this blog post, I wrote twelve articles for work and a 1600-word (give or take) chapter of this TNG fanfic piece I’m writing over at FanFiction.net, and which I just clicked “publish” on about twenty minutes ago. And yes, it would have been better if I’d spent that time working on one of the Original Projects I’ve got simmering away, but it’s been weeks since I’ve written anything NOT for work, and sometimes playing in someone else’s sandbox is the best use of an hour.

And now? Now I’m going to let cool, damp air waft in through the open windows, and I am going to lie in the lovely valley between the sleeping breaths of my husband and my biggest dog, and I am going to dream amazing things, and smile in my sleep because today was a rainy day, and there was tea and literature and a conversation with a friend, and another conversation with another friend, and so many words and so many ideas, and I found a new muse living in the back of my brain, and he whispers plots to me in a Scottish accent.

And among my favorite things are days like today…when nothing happens of any real import, and yet the whole day feels full of wonder.