December 11, 2006
Maylene & the sons of Ferret Music
I've had some cool experiences lately. Last weekend (a week ago) we had a "summit" with our Marketing/Advertising Director to brainstorm about 2007. During this trip John and I shared several stories, as both of us have plenty of them in our shared history of Christian rock. While running some errands and such I was able to hear an incredible project he worked on a while ago -- he scored the soundtrack for a dance musical for a friend who has a dance studio in the Chicago area. I was duly impressed to hear all the nuances and perfectly crafted highs and lows and gallops and slow movements he created with some computer software. It would be cool to create something like that, which requires so much attention to detail and creativity.
We also took him to the University of Texas campus, where I was happy to show him one of the bullet holes from the infamous Charles Whitman shooting that took place up there in 1967.
On Friday of this past week I spoke at a middle school in Austin. Because it's my day off (I work 4 ten-hour days from Mon-Thur and take a long weekend), I took my two daughters (8 & 10) with me. The leader of the Christian group wanted me to tell the group of about 20 kids about pride and humility, so I started off my talk asking them if they ever listened to Christian music and if they could ever identify with that desire to "turn the world on" to this great artist. Several years ago I was in a band and we had a chance to open for such a legendary group -- The Crucified. Instead of doing what an opening band should do, which is play for 20 minutes and leave the crowd wanting more, we play for over an hour ... and then we coaxed the emcee to ask the crowd to bring us back out for an encore (of two songs). We truly tortured our promoter that night, who we found out later was in the back asking, "How long are these clowns gonna play?" (She might not have called us clowns, but she should have). This was a lesson we learned later about humility. I talked about praise and compliments and accepting both in a proper way.
What was so cool is that we met my wife for dinner afterwards and the girls remarked to her, "It was amazing! What dad said actually made sense." It was funny, because it was intended as kind of a putdown/compliment (in that I apparently didn't make much sense when I talk at other times), but it really made me feel great, knowing I had somehow connected with my own kids. One of the kids remembered me from last year. Both he and his dad love the band Disciple and really want me to let them know the next time the band stays over at my house.
The night kept getting better, as we ate at the wonderful Kerby Lane Cafe near campus and then went to see a Dance Performance Team from the University of Texas. I knew the girls might appreciate it, since they like dance so much, but I wasn't expecting to be impressed all that much. Boy, was I surprised. The dancers were really good, but some of the pieces were written by visiting faculty and were very cool. One was like an existentialist piece, where the dancers emerged in the audience and slowly walked down the front of the darkened hall. They were handing something to various people on the front row. I thought maybe they were handing out cameras for the audience to personalize with their own shots or something. Turns out they were rolls of ribbons, which the dancers had attached to their arms -- pulling them onstage to create some cool visual accents. Later they used these ribbons to make a large square on the stage, which served as a box that the dancers tested the boundaries of. Some narration talked about a normal frog having such a different perspective than the ocean frog. The dancers moved about in some avant-garde moves that were certainly modern moves juxtaposed with classic moves. The narrator described how theologians talked so confidently about something they've never seen. It was pretty cool. Then we saw a short film that the team had made that previews a production they are doing in the Spring. It was funny and put together quite well. The last piece was called "Aria Redux," and it was downright spectacular. I was so glad I was able to see this.
Posted by Doug Van Pelt at December 11, 2006 09:17 AM