A story of love...Sarah and Jeff tie the knot

photos by Brady Willette

It really WAS the most beautiful wedding I’ve ever been to.  And I’ve been to some pretty great ones.

My niece Sarah Reimann married Jeff Likens, and now they’re Mrs. and Mr. Sarah and Jeff Likens!  The service was held at Westminster Presbyterian Church in downtown Minneapolis – a place sacred to our family because my sister Alice and hubby John were married there in 1978.  My dad Otto’s funeral gathered 650 there in 1999.  And it’s a place where many great ecumenical speakers have spoken.  Plus, it’s a gorgeous sanctuary, with big stained glass windows arranged around a central dome. 

First of all, the people were gorgeous.  Michelle Obama’s obesity campaign not much needed here.  The wedding party could all be models.  Many attendees, too.

 My nephews Johnny and David look on as Alice lights a candle

Second, we were treated to luminous music played by my cousins Charlotte Wuepper (on flute) and Francia Mann (on violin), with Francie’s husband Brian accompanying them on piano for one of my favorite pieces (Delibes’ wonderful Flower duet) while the couple lit their own "union candle" and blew out the two their mothers had lit before.  Tears trickled from my eyes.

Reverend Richard Phenow, married to one of Alice’s friends who danced with her in the Edina High School Hornettes precision dance line, officiated in an intensely personal, humorous, affirming, down-home way.  Practical spirituality.  He encouraged a long, heart-melting kiss.

Click on the photo and see if you recognize anyone...

Afterwards, the crowd blew bubbles as the couple exuberantly burst out of the church and headed to the Minikahda Club, where I had learned to swim as a child and where we’ve celebrated many weddings, funerals, and high school reunions. 

John Reimann introduced the wedding party, who sat at their own long table while the rest of us sat at round 10-tops which seemed more intimate than most because the stunning flower arrangements, featuring mock orange, carnations, and hydrangia, were on high “towers” that allowed you to see everyone at the table.  He said, "Before we walked down the aisle, Sarah turned to me and said, 'I'm so ready for this!'" -- and it showed all night.

  Gordon & Mark celebrating on the terrace at the Minikahda Club - the weather was great!

The best men (Jeff’s older brother T.J., and his best friend Brandon Heider) gave heartfelt talks which were revealing about Jeff’s dry humor.  Sarah’s bridesmaids gave moving and hilarious reminiscences about her bawdy leadership at a young age.  The dinner was over-the-top, with Minnesota walleyed pike and boneless beef rib, a vegetable mélange with white and green asparagus, an amazing salad, and chocolate brule for dessert.  (The cake was small and only for the wedding party.)

Sarah and Jeff dreamed up an apt theme of  “new story,” and invited people at the tables to tell stories of first dates, weddings, and about Sarah and Jeff themselves.  Many told hilarious tales.  Jeff, a professional hockey player whose latest gig’s in Ingolstadt, Germany (about an hour from Munich), had a number of his childhood and hockey friends at the wedding.  He and Sarah will live in Germany with their bulldog, Quinn.

 Helen, Alice & Steve at the Club

Sarah, and my sister Alice and her husband John Reimann, have so many friends in Twin Cities area that they had to severely limit the number they could afford to invite. 

One of my favorite moments was when the excellent band played a Lady Gaga tune, and my nephew David rocked out like one of her dancers.  My mother Helen danced along.  Many of us are still dancing.

I wonder whether this generation of young adults – many of whom have lived together and wait until later in their 20s to get married – will have a lower divorce rate than we boomers.  Time will tell.

Gratitude for All

Why is Thanksgiving my favorite holiday?

It’s about gratitude, which makes for a salubrious attitude.

It’s about friends, it’s about connecting over great food.

It’s about great questions like the one Orlando asked at our feast: “What do you appreciate about your mother?”

And as usual at Soundcliff (our home), it’s about poetry, music, improvisation, and everyone contributing a course. The meal usually starts at 1 p.m. and flows until 10 p.m., including breaks for hikes, conversations, and fun sharing.

Because several folks have inquired about this year’s menu, here it is:

Cocktails: Hard and soft cider, carrot-ginger juice, Chai, Ginger Tea, Margaritas, white wine

Pu-Pus: Cheeses, Belle’s homemade chicken liver pate, smoked eggs, chips with salsa, artichoke & cabbage dips (by Tom and David)

Oysters: Raw on the half-shell & cooked with Indian palak, parmisan & cream (Malcolm)

Salad: Fresh greens (spicy mustard, lettuce, cilantro, parsley, brocolini, etc.) with triticale berry mix topped with crab cake (Malcolm & Stephen)

Bruschetta: French bread with cheese, sun-dried tomatoes, and basil (Whitney)

Turkey: Roast brined garlic turkey (Gordon) with Sequoia’s cranberry relish and candied yams, garlic mashed potatoes, triticale salad, shaved brussels sprouts with almonds

Mead: fabulously fermented one-year-old mead (honey wine) by Tom

Dingle Sticky Toffee Pudding: an amazing cake with toffee and vanilla whipped cream (Chris)

And dessert all through the days: Michael Hathaway’s lime-coconut bars and cardamom lemon cookies.

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Among the readings:

WHAT IS MY HEART’S DESIRE?

A beautiful quiet place in Nature, self-sustaining,

Where loving people pass their time in inspiration,

Do what’s needed, living well, mastering skills

As we help each other heal this world,

Preparing still richer worlds for all who care to share:

Where The Magical breathes in every heart

And reflects through all our faces, eyes and limbs,

Where Love and Wisdom have been discovered to be innate,

Where there’s time for wit and fun,

Where work and play and reverence are one,

Where we appreciate ourselves as Divinity that’s manifesting,

Where we create – live out – explore

the full, full wonder of our destinies,

Where we – serenely or ecstatically –

Where we – yes – truly walk in beauty

All the days of our lives.

- Michael Hathaway

**

Around the table: Chris, Michael, Sequoia, Whitney, Gordon, Tom, David, Orlando, Malcolm

And of course, from James Broughton:

Sing Out for Eros

You on your seat there

sit up and sing out

Sing Out for Eros

Love is unbelievable

so it must be believed

Believe your own loving

your passion and folly

your incredible hopes

Praise the marvels of

joy tube and love pump

If you must feel tortured

respect your misery

and be happy about it

Only the nonsensical is

at east with the Absolute

Listen to your angels

ripening your secrets

Come to beautiful terms

with the god in your body

with the body of your god

Share flesh with others

Wake love Make love

Clasp hearts Exuberate

And never look back till

you are far out of sight

*

Blessings to all for a holiday season with plenty of time for rest, introspection, wit, fun, and joy.

A birthday poem

When I got up this morning, a bald eagle swooped by and perched in the tree I can see from my bed... He's still there!

Radical

Unearth your roots

Shake ‘em at the sky

Uphold your traditions

Hold up your radical

Hold down your fort

Breathe easily, not queasily

*

Find and mine what’s obvious

By opening your eyes wider

Wide enough to take in

What you thought was forever outlawed

Wide enough to put out

A part of you you forgot

*

Love more

Love your weird self

Love what’s aching to come out

Love what struggles to get in

Unbind your weariness

And offer it to the sunrise

Express your weird self but

Keep it simple

Don’t be afraid to ask

And unlearn whatever’s holding you back

-- Stephen Silha, April 9, 2010 (my 60th birthday)

Psychic house cleaning

The living room at Soundcliff, transformed into temporary office...

Spring has definitely sprung in the Pacific Northwest. We’re seeing premature magnolia blossoms, tulips, daffodils, rhododendrons, cherry blossoms and more!

It definitely lifts the moods of everyone I can see. Gordon and I have been introducing color into our house, after 12 years of living in a house painted entirely Navajo White. After painting our living room wall a warm bricky red, we decided my office needs a red wall, too.

Bill Palmer masks the room in preparation for painting the office wall

Bill Palmer, our wonderful neighbor who is an exacting painter, agreed to spend an extra day painting my office wall if I would clear it out. It was a dare.

Bill Palmer, the amazing neighbor, painter, storyteller, father and raconteur

Those who know me know that my office looks like a cycloned paper junkyard. Not any more.

What surprised me most was that I discovered (duh!) that I write hundreds of notes, to-dos, and names of people on small scraps of paper, then bury them in my piles. Having unearthed most of my piles, I now have a to-do list that may number 200 things, but it’s organizable!

Now both walls are red -- the house harmonizes! (Thanks again, Gordon/Bell!)

This is revolutionary for me. Stay tuned to see how long it lasts…

Perspectives by the Bay

The amazing Golden Gate Bridge, which we crossed a number of times on our way to and from digit productions, where we rented gear

San Francisco and its gorgeous surrounds was where James Broughton spent most of his life.

It’s always fun to go there and meet people who were influenced directly and indirectly by him. You can still feel his spritely spirit dancing around the city.

Eric Slade, Big Joy documentary director, and I swung through for two interviews after our time in Los Angeles and Santa Barbara. Art Adams worked skillfully behind the camera.

Keith Hennessy is an amazing performance artist, dancer, and queer theorist who considers Broughton one of his ancestors and inspirations. “There’s a queer scene and an artistic scene that I’m in, where Broughton has always been present,” Hennessy told us before a dress rehearsal for his current performance, CROTCH.

“The more I see him as someone who helped set up the conditions – the material, the psychological, the imagistic, the psychic conditions under which I operate, as both as an artist and as a gay person—the more I start to perform out of that place, to extend that lineage.”

Keith Hennessy at Dance Mission before he took off his clothes for (part of) the performance, "Crotch"

“He has a kind of child’s eye view on the body and sex and God and the earth and all their interrelations. He brings a combination of innocence and curiosity to each of those pursuits.”

Here I am with Anna Halprin, at the beautiful Marin County home she and her husband Lawrence built in the 1950's

Friday, we got to visit Anna Halprin, the dancer and choreographer who was part of James’s life from the 1940’s on. In a way, she was his muse – the dancer he always wanted to be. And she danced to his poetry, as you can see in a brief scene in the Big Joy trailer.

Anna was married to Lawrence Halprin, one of the great landscape architects of the 20^th Century, who passed on last October. Together, they inhabited a creative space in Marin County, where we interviewed Anna.

She and James were part of the “San Francisco Renaissance” after World War II – an important story we’ll be able to tell in the Big Joy film. She described the creative environment: “We were very free and open-ended, not very self-aware. There was a lot of fun, excitement, cross-pollination between us.

“In New York, the dance scene was more traditional. I was working alone, but in connection with the painters, the poets, architects, the actors’ workshop – looking for stimulation, cross-fertilization. The word multi-disciplinary came up as a description of the work we were doing.

“James and I had a special relationship because we both enjoy wit. I never could take anything too seriously around him. … We both dealt with serious subjects in a witty way.”

We shoot Anna dancing James Broughton's poetry at San Francisco's Palace of Fine Arts in Broughton's film "Four in the Afternoon" (1951)

Being with Anna in her beautiful home was inspiring to me, and gave me a better sense of the community she and Lawrence shared with James Broughton, Alan Watts, Imogene Cunningham, Richard Brautigan, and others.

California dreaming ...

Cinematographer Ian Hinkle and Director Eric Slade line up the perfect shot of the Pacific Ocean, a spiritual soulguide for James Broughton

Eric Slade and Ian Hinkle and I just finished three days of shooting in Los Angeles! We barely escaped the rains, and had lovely weather and an amazing host.

It’s becoming a tradition in the Big Joy Project to start with a challenging interview. The first time we worked together last April on the Big Joy film, we interviewed James Broughton’s ex-wife Suzanna Hart, a wonderful artist who lives in a senior facility in Mill Valley. She seems to be in a state of permanent memory-lapse, so her answer to the first questions was “I don’t remember.”

After we showed her the “program” she created for her wedding to James in 1962, her memory started to return. By the end of the interview, she was so cogent we looked at each other and said, “This interview was worth the trip to San Francisco!” (Ian lives in Victoria, Eric in Portland, and I near Seattle.)

You can see her in the trailer for the film, which we finally got online after YouTube censored it for nudity. (Go figure – if it were grossly violent they wouldn’t censor it. James’s films were also banned in St. Louis and censured by PBS in the 1980’s.)

Poet Robert Peters' portrait was done by Don Bachardy. When he saw the microphone there, Peters asked "Is he going to talk?"

On this trip, we interviewed the preeminent poet and poetry critic Robert Peters, who did some of the best analysis of James’s poetry in the 1970’s and for years taught at the University of California at Irvine. He’s also suffering from some kind of senile dementia. He’s very jolly, has a great sense of humor, but remembers little. However, when he read James Broughton’s poetry, he did it with rare verve:

Are you willing to go to
your own infinity
Willing to relish a really
fine undoing?
What's wrong with going
all the way
for a bangup crucifixion?

As things are now
everyone is mad
asleep or
on the wrong bus

-- James Broughton

It was fun to see Peters and his life partner poet Paul Trachtenberg watching a scene from James Broughton and Joel Singer’s film Devotions where they are lifting weights and doing intimate athletics together in their back yard.

Don Kilhefner in the living room of Michael G's house in LA

We also had a great interview with Don Kilhefner, a therapist and pioneer of the gay liberation movement who really understands James Broughton’s Jungian analysis and his role as an early leader of the Radical Faeries.

The next day we interviewed Mark Thompson, an author and photographer who knew James better than most and who was responsible for convincing me I needed to make a film about James rather than writing a book. “If you write a book,” he told me in 2008, “it’ll take eight years to do it right, and nobody will read it because who’s heard of James Broughton? If you make a film, and it ‘s good, you’ll have an audience if you still want to do a book.”

Obviously, I took his advice. And look at the fine mess I’ve gotten myself into, as Laurel and Hardy would say.

Not quite Laurel and Hardy: Mark Thompson and Stephen Silha

We also got to interview Mark’s husband Malcolm Boyd, the famous Episcopal priest who wrote the best-selling Are You Running with Me, Jesus? and Take Off the Masks. He coined a new word explaining James in our interview: “quadra-sexual.”

Our host in LA was Michael G, and old friend and surely the host with the most. His home, his cooking, and his repartee ware truly inspired. The only downside was that his dogs ate all my energy bars and tried to eat one of Gordon’s bells. (Actually, he only ate the leather cord and the bronze ‘This is It” bell is still for sale at a bargain price on the Big Joy website!)

We also had a wonderful dinner at Vermont, a restaurant which Michael and his partner Manuel created and re-created.

We then drove to Santa Barbara where we interviewed one of my favorite practitioners of Big Joy, the author and poet Michael Hathaway. He’s truly “The Gardener of Eden,” and we got to shoot him in his garden and on the beach.

Michael Hathaway

Michael, Ian and Eric in Michael's garden of eden

More from California coming soon.

Stephen and Ian on the beach at Santa Barbara: messages from the sea coming in

Big Joy Thanksgiving

The table, just before soup course

We celebrated Thanksgiving, my favorite holiday, again this year at Soundcliff (the house where Gordon and I live), as I have every year since I moved here in 1989. (Except the year that the house was under reconstruction, when we moved our ceremonies to James Broughton and Joel Singer’s house in Port Townsend, WA.)

As usual, we began at 1 p.m. and ended the Thanksgiving feast around 10 p.m. Before, during, and after the courses (everyone brought a course), people hiked, read poetry, asked questions.

Thanksgivers: Michael Hathaway, Chris Young, Shawn Boley, Whitney Kimball, Malcolm Dorn, Gordon/Belle, Orlando, Tom Pruiksma, David Mielke, Sequoia

Two poems were written for this occasion which I’d like to share. The first, our invocation, from Tom Pruiksma:

The Big Joy

for Stephen

I want

on this day

as they say

of thanksgiving

to give thanks

for love

and for joy

too little of either

in the world

that we’ve made

the world

that covers up

the world

but the joy

that we name

is not the joy

that we know

always

just beyond words

always beyond

what the eyes

can see

what a tongue

with practice

can say

like our friend

the little frog

outside the door

or perhaps

a little inside

the way we go out

or even

between walls

between worlds

his song

keeps our hearts singing

in spite of the new darkness

and descent

of the year

the fear

we won’t make it

this time

all fears

are really fears

of loving

and being loved

are fears

of getting the gift whole

no light

without darkness

and the terrors of seeing

no sight

without sunshine

in the eyes

listen

do you hear

what I say

no sorrow

without its own joy

say one

and the other is

even

in the saying

even

sailing out

from hearth

and from home

even

in the silence

before dawn

health demands more

than a little sorrow

or a little joy

a big sorrow

big enough

for big joy

big joy

a big joy

big enough for sorrow

the freedom

of the frog’s

lone song

and so

today

between past and

tomorrow

I give thanks

for the sorrow

that completes the big joy

the great sorrow

and great joy

beyond words

-- Thomas H. Pruiksma

11/26/2009

Orlando chats with Gordon and Michael as dishes are prepared

We had already had our first course, prepared by Whitney and Shawn, Michael and Stephen:

Bruscetta with avocado, sundried tomato, black bean garlic sauce

Guava chutney on pear slices

Salt and pepper almonds

*

Then:

Earth Root Harvest soup with roasted vegetables atop (David & Tom)

*

Green Tea Kombucha (Tom)

*

Jefferson County green salad with dressing, goodies & tomatoes (Malcolm)

*

Free Range turkey with golden dressing (Gordon/Belle)

Yams (Chris)

Brussels sprouts with bacon, cream and pine nuts (Malcolm)

Candied carrots (Shawn)

Gravy (Chris)

Guava chutney (Michael)

*

Water Kefir (Tom)

*

pumpkin pie (Whit)

marionberry pie (Whit)

pumpkin cake (Shawn)

lemon chiffon sparkling pudding (Michael)

*

After-dinner drinks (Gordon)

During the feast, some questions were put to the group:

· What do you remember about your childhood for which you are grateful?

· What’s your vision or dream for the future, and what are you going to do about it in the next year?

Friday's beach walk allowed us to mull over important questions with Puget Sound

On Friday morning, over Danish Ebelskivers, I read my Thanksgiving Poem:

Thanks and no thanks.

Thanks for aliveness that keeps us alive

Thanks for the ripeness that plumps us and pumps us

Thanks for the bounty of earth water fire

Thanks for the brotherhood burning inside us

Thanks for the questions that quest us inside

Thanks for the music that sings us

Thanks for the motions that speak when words don’t

Thanks for the food that sustains us

Thanks for the courage to go deep and wide

Thanks for the knowing to trust

Thanks for the fears we can carry inside

Thanks for the urges to thrust

Thanks for the wisdom that comes from together

Thanks for the palpable air

Thanks for the wealth of creation and loss

Thanks for the power to breathe

No thanks for the limits of kindness and patience

No thanks for the lack of good ears

No thanks for the eight years of Cheney and Bush

No thanks for the mongers of fear

No thanks for the shortness of days and of breath

No thanks for the corporate greed

No thanks for forgetting our gifts and our health

No thanks for blindness to need

No thanks for overpackaging

No thanks for undermining

No thanks for pollution

No thanks for silence on things that matter