Which mask is yours, and what is under it?

There are stories behind the masks. Not just the ones you’ll see hanging in restaurants and shops over the next couple of weeks in downtown Panama City, or those at the Mask Parade gala, but also those we don each day when we stand in front of the mirror to decide what face we’ll put forth in the world.
These are the stories we hide with our masks, stories not in the mask itself but in the decision behind it. Look in the eyes behind the holes in the mask and you can see the story. Sometimes, then, when only the mask remains behind, we must use it to interpret the story by reading the negative spaces — sure, the mask has things to say, but what about things it doesn’t say? Things it was designed to hide?
These are the stories we tell with our masks, the bright things hidden, dark things revealed.
These are the sorts of ideas I mull when I consider the blank slate of a plaster mask for Covenant Hospice’s annual Mask Parade. I’ve been privileged each of the past four years to paint or otherwise construct a piece of (questionable) artwork around one of their blanks, and maybe I’ve thought too much about such things.
Maybe, considering the outcomes, I’ve thought too little.
You can be the judge this weekend, as the community is invited to the opening reception of Covenant’s Mask Parade Tour and Exhibit on Friday from 3:30 to 5 p.m. at the Visual Arts Center, 19 E. Fourth St. After a recep tion, guests can participate in a guided walking tour of masks on display at The Pink Alligator, Olde Towne Antique Mall and Chef Imondi’s, with a final stop at Modeo’s for hors d’oeuvres and beverages.
According to a news release, the Mask Parade features more than 80 one-of-a-kind masks created by local artists and national celebrities, including Paul Brent, Roland Hockett, Courteney Cox, Ray Romano and Bill Cosby. The Junior Museum also has an exhibit created by children as part of the Junior Mask Project.
Admission to the tour is free. For more information, call 785-3040. The masks will be on display at these locations until Feb. 9, or to see them online, go to www.convenanthospice.org/mask
The fourth annual Mask Parade Gala is Feb. 11 at the Edgewater Beach Resort in Panama City Beach. Tickets are $75 per person. Attire is semi-formal. For tickets and information, call 785-3040 or e-mail maskparade@covenanthospice.org
The gala includes dinner, bidding on the masks, and vignette performances based on the sights and sounds of destinations around the world. Backgrounds for performances in the “golden age of travel” are the creations of art students from each of Bay County’s high schools. Proceeds benefit Hospice efforts in the Panama City area, providing services to patients and loved ones coping with end-of-life issues and illnesses, when masks are stripped away and only our stories — our memories — sustain us.
Peace.

The preceding was my "Undercurrents" column for today's News Herald.

Fan mail can save your life

This came in the mail today at work, in a small green envelope, written in a steady hand in clear print on lined three-ring notebook paper:

Sunday, September 18, 2005

I’ve always loved writing. My words told what my art work couldn’t. I’m 16 now, a junior in high school, still trying to decide what to do with my life. Writing would be my first choice, but I never thought I’d make it, so I kind of gave up on excelling in it. (Don’t get me wrong, that didn’t stop me from writing.) You can’t stop your stream of consciousness.

One day I found your column. “Listening about our generations,” was the name of the article. The best if I have ever seen it! Now, that article among others are tacked up on my bulletin board. The subjects you write about and the way you write about them is what got me reading. Your articles used to be just a part of my Sunday morning routine. Now they’re an inspiration.

Thank you for showing me that I can be whatever I put my heart into.

As you say …
Peace.

(Name withheld to protect the minor)

****

And here’s the column she to which she refers:

“Undercurrents”
Sunday, January 16, 2005

“Listening about our generations”

There came a time when he couldn’t find his CDs until he looked for them in his children’s rooms — often Tori Amos and The Cranberries in the girl’s room, Iggy Pop and David Bowie in the boy’s room. His parents never had this problem, the man thought.

But then something shifted with the seasons, and he recognized a special, strange moment of time, a turning of the slow metronome.

Listen to this, the boy said, and put on a CD by a band called The Killers. My friend Laura loaned it to me, the boy said. Listen to this, he said, and put on a CD by a band called The Postal Service.

Can I borrow your Garden State soundtrack, the old man asked? Can I borrow your Keane? Your Cure? Any friends loan you anything else?

Sure, the boy now buys his own Nirvana — a sign of the old man’s influence? — and he listens to Sinatra, though the man wondered if that’s because of his own sometime Sunday mornings playing old big band platters and jazz or if it’s because of school exposures to stage plays and Guys and Dolls.

And he wondered, where does the parent end and the child begin?

On a recent Saturday morning, the boy came back from a garage sale lugging a cassette carrier filled with a hundred 20-year-old tapes. Among them: Eurythmics, Thompson Twins, Talking Heads, Thomas Dolby, Fun Boy Three, Adam Ant, Elvis Costello, more Bowie and Pop, The Motels, Til Tuesday, Cyndi Lauper, Lene Lovich, The Police.

(So much alike, the boy and the man. The man thought he had better warn the boy about that, but knowing himself he figured the boy would not understand.)

This was music of the old man’s day. He had much of it on vinyl. He could tell stories about these albums and times surrounding them.

So he told stories and thought about how music really is the universal language, though everyone speaks it differently. Some recognize it from a distance, and some know it only subliminally. Others may not play, but they speak it straight from the soul. (“I got soul, but I’m not a soldier,” so the song goes.)

That is — music plays some people like an instrument, evokes emotions and memories, informs their lives. It can be so much a part of them that, even if they can’t carry a tune or pluck a string, it’s inseparable from their personalities.

They need music. They relate it to times in their lives. They feel it deep inside where empty places need to be filled. They use it to get through their days and nights. When they can’t talk, at least they can listen. And sometimes they can listen together and begin to understand.

Or at least borrow each other’s CDs.

Peace.

Wanted to be needed ...

... wanted to be necessary, but became merely ubiquitous.
... wanted to be desired, to be a beloved entertainment, but made of myself a summer rerun, a tired peep show.
**
It’s one of the laws of television that, if there’s a regular series that you seldom watch or a program you enjoy but have missed for several weeks, then the episode that you tune into on a bored and lonely night will be one that you’ve already seen.

That was me. I was that episode.
Every day.
Familiar, tired, seemingly full of energy but actually a rerun, an electronic ghost repeating its final actions again and again throughout eternity.

Hell as TV Land.

When Dick Van Dyke dies, he’ll go to Nick At Night and spend his hereafter tripping over foot stools. And me ... I'll do what it is I do. Forever.

Just for giggles...

Because someone had to say it ...

Word up to my homies:

A friend sent me this list of winning words from the Washington Post's "Mensa Invitational," which asks readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or
changing a letter, and supply a new definition. Here some favorites from the list:

Intaxication: Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize it was your money to start with.

Reintarnation: Coming back to life as a hillbilly

Bozone (n.): The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future.

Cashtration (n.): The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period.

Sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.

Inoculatte: To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.

Hipatitis: Terminal coolness.

Karmageddon: It's like, when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it's like, a serious bummer.

Decafalon (n.): The grueling event of getting through the day consuming only things that are good for you.

Glibido: All talk and no action.

Dopeler effect: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.

Arachnoleptic fit (n.): The frantic dance performed just after you've accidentally walked through a spider web.

Beelzebug (n.): Satan in the form of a mosquito, that gets into your bedroom at three in the morning and cannot be cast out.

Caterpallor (n.): The color you turn after finding half a worm in the fruit you're eating.

And the pick of the literature:

Ignoranus: A person who's both stupid and an asshole.

Memory does not serve...

We serve it.