Hi friends,
In case you didn’t catch it last week, I wanted to remind you to check out a beautiful short film designed only to inspire gratitude and exploration of Monterey Bay. We are proud to present a short impressionistic film by my friend and Lookout colleague Kevin Painchaud. Give it a look and let us know what you think. We call it “Deep California.”
Now, on with the show.
This Just In!
Pulitzer Prize-winning New Yorker writer Charles Duhigg, now a Santa Cruz local, visits Bookshop Santa Cruz to discuss his new book about the art of conversation and communication, “Supercommunicators,” Feb. 27. Gear up for the Brookdale Bluegrass Festival with the great Peter Rowan on March 15-17.
Be sure to check out Lookout’s carefully curated and constantly updated planning guide, Down the Line, for the staggering riches and amazing choices awaiting Santa Cruz audiences. It’s our look ahead at the best shows, concerts and events through the rest of the year at clubs, stages and venues all over the county.
Here they are, nine necessary know-abouts for the week ahead. It’s the B9:
Claire Oshetsky and the art of carrying on
I had the thrill earlier this week to chat with Santa Cruz writer Claire Oshetsky, who takes the dais next week at Bookshop Santa Cruz to talk about their new novel. Claire, who uses they/them pronouns, is still swimming in the wake of their well-received debut novel, published in 2021, titled “Chouette,” a haunting tale of a woman who has a sex dream featuring an owl, then gets pregnant with an owl baby which she must nurture alone.
Next week, Claire will unveil their follow-up to “Chouette,” a new novel titled “Poor Deer,” which hits stores Tuesday, just two days before their appearance at Bookshop.
The book’s protagonist is a young girl growing in the mid-20th century in a remote mill town in Maine. The girl, Margaret, experiences the harrowing accidental death of another girl, a friend, which she may or may not have been able to prevent. Margaret copes with the burden of the tragedy by summoning a creature through her imagination, called Poor Deer.
To say that the book is about a young person dealing with a childhood trauma is, says Claire, to employ therapeutic language that the people of that time and place would not use.
“Those people just carry on,” they said of the people who populate “Poor Deer,” “so I don’t think ‘trauma’ would resonate. There was a question I was trying to answer here, which is, ‘How do we forgive ourselves?’ I was very explicitly thinking about the way when we get older, it just feels that all these things have accumulated over the years: You know, things I feel bad about and never really completely get over, like that bird that flew into my windshield. I started to think about that in the puzzle of writing a book — making something really bad happen to someone early in life, and figure how do they make it through?”
Claire, 65, worked for many years as a science journalist before moving to Santa Cruz about 15 years ago to raise their family. They said returning to journalism after the long layoff was daunting, figuring all the economic and technological changes in the field. So, they began writing fiction. “Chouette,” they said, was written with no expectations that it would ever get published. The book was not only published, it was long-listed for the 2022 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction.
The experience of writing “Poor Deer” was, as you would expect, quite different: “Two things that made it harder: I had the ambition to be published again. So, it wasn’t just fun or, ‘Oh, this doesn’t matter.’ It mattered to me to write a book that people wanted to read. The other thing I didn’t want it to be the same book, but I wanted it to be adjacent somehow.”
Come see Claire Oshetsky at Bookshop Santa Cruz on Thursday, Jan. 11, where they will be in conversation with fellow Santa Cruz novelist Elizabeth McKenzie.
The Rydells are here
Santa Cruz County has a wonderful tradition called the Rydell Visual Arts Fellowship. The awards are the brainchild of the late Roy and Frances Rydell, a pair of visionary artists and community activists who left behind a legacy of helping serious visual artists in Santa Cruz County, and is now administered by Community Foundation Santa Cruz County.
For 18 years, the Rydells have been distributed to 38 artists who received an award of $20,000 to devote to their art. This year, the Rydells go to Santa Cruz native Kajahl Benes-Trapp, Malaysian-Chinese artist Kristiana Chan, multimedia artist Anna Friz and tapestry artist Janette Gross. The four Rydell artists will be the focus of a bold new exhibit at the Museum of Art & History opening Jan. 19.
We’ll have more about these exciting artists and the Rydells’ legacy when we get closer to the exhibit’s opening.
Circus is in town
On New Year’s Eve, my family and I took another spin at the Flynn Creek Circus and its new show, “Winter Myth.” This is a remarkable bit of art and entertainment, in that it sets up in the most mundane of environments, the empty parking lot near the former Sears at the Capitola Mall, and somehow creates a charming European-style cabaret atmosphere. The show itself is built around a winter-themed narrative about a penguin stranded at the North Pole (penguins are creatures of the South Pole, you see). But that’s just the scaffolding on which is built an astounding demonstration of acrobatic arts, from trapeze acts to juggling to balancing. You might view the lowly see-saw in a whole new light, and I was particularly entranced by a glowing, blacklight-lit scene of jellyfish “swimming” in the ocean (costumed performers on the trapeze). There’s one more big weekend before the Flynn Creek big top comes down. Go see it. It runs through Sunday.
Meet Clifford
My friend and novelist Clifford Mae Henderson is releasing her new mystery novel. Check out what she has to say about it, and her dual career as a writer and improv comedy leader.
Earworm of the Week
Next week marks the anniversary of both the birth and the death of the great David Bowie (Jan. 8, 1947-Jan. 10, 2016), so there’s no better time to remember one of the most fearless creative spirits of our times. You know all the hits from the glam-rock years and beyond, but I’ve found myself spending more time with Bowie’s final recording before his death, “Blackstar” (released on his 69th birthday, just two days before his death in 2016, so another January anniversary). The song I keep returning to is “Lazarus,” the video of which was shot just days after Bowie decided to end his cancer treatments and accept his imminent death. In many ways, “Lazarus” is Bowie’s goodbye to the world, as well as to you and me. As a fan since I was a kid, there was always a tiny part of me that believed that if any human could transcend death and somehow live in a state of perpetual and ever-renewing life, it was Bowie. Alas, that was not to be. And, though “Lazarus” is nobody’s idea of a party record, it is an amazing experience (kudos to Santa Cruz-born saxophonist Donny McCaslin, who was part of the “Blackstar” band and Bowie’s final inner circle). Death comes even to the most gifted of us, but few great artists have the opportunity to go out consciously and still able to summon their creative power. Bowie took that opportunity and produced a moving and deeply human final act.
Santa Cruz County Trivia
A 2011 documentary titled “Under the Boardwalk” showcased what well-known Santa Cruz phenomenon?
Last week: Who was the popular Santa Cruz-based party band from the 1980s who often opened for The Tubes on tour and was named after a famous pest that plagued California during Jerry Brown’s first go-round as governor? It was the Medflys (nope, not “Medflies”), named after the Mediterranean fruit fly that nearly brought California to its knees in the early 1980s. The Medflys were enormously popular throughout Santa Cruz and Monterey counties, as well as the larger Bay Area, for their flamboyant theatricality and their relentlessly upbeat ska/new wave sound. Old-timers might best remember the Medflys for their 1986 novelty tune “Don’t Mess With the Mayor,” a kind of cock-eyed tribute to Clint Eastwood after he was elected the mayor of Carmel.
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That’s all I got, friends. Come at me with comments, ideas, complaints, or thundering insights. Thanks to all Lookout members for your faith and support, and please, spread the word on what we’re doing.