Despite having a date on the calendar for many months, it took nearly half the year to get “Flight Lessons” back on stage. I’ve been nurturing my bird-themed folk opera for a couple of years now, and it continues to stretch me in new ways. And while I kind of know my process inside and out by now, this latest ride to completion was bumpier in new and different ways.
Originally scheduled for early March at a theater in Santa Rosa, the venue ran into permitting issues and had to close a couple weeks before our date. We quickly rescheduled, not realizing the delay would drag on. After a second date was canceled, I held off for a couple months before rescheduling.
By mid-April, everyone was confident that the venue would be up so we set a date in May and got back to rehearsing. But less than two weeks before showtime, the venue still wasn’t open. What?
I was both upset and determined. I’d already rejiggered the band twice based on who was available. Two of us had passed up on other opportunities in the last time only to not perform at all. I was not going to let that happen again.
My contention is finishing what one started, has its own power, no matter how something is received — why I’m well-acquainted with, and committed to, creative process — but it was beginning to feel like a fool’s bargain. Despite wrestling with not a few doubts about the whole enterprise, I felt adamant that the show would go on somehow.
Three days before the show date, we’d firmed up a new location, but not only was it at a completely different venue, it was in a different town, Sebastopol, altogether! We all wondered if anyone would even show up (while I knew that some folks had held onto their original ticket, more than one had taken a refund).
Fortunately things had turned out better than expected.
“It’s good to see things through,” Peter, who is no stranger to creative process, said on the drive home. Kwame and I always do a post-show review. What went well and what didn’t, what was great or challenging about the audio environment, or the audience, and any lessons learned. After all the delays and rescheduled dates and a venue change, we were all pleased that people had shown up and that our performance had been well-received.
I was mainly relieved: the show had gone on, and I feel like it will go on…after we get home from Alaska.
Keeping the flying theme going, we flew up to Alaska for work and play pretty much immediately after the “Flight Lessons” show. Kwame has work in Anchorage again and left before dawn on Sunday. Given it was our anniversary on Monday, that I’m game for traveling pretty much anywhere (and that I’d booked a gig), I followed the next day.
It was crystal clear when my plane flew in on Monday over snow-capped peaks, and even though it wasn’t my first time here, it was a bit startling.
Alaska, like Hawaii, is its own country really. Anchorage is full of tourists on their way to catch trains or cruise ships, but just beneath that surface is a different, more rugged spirit of those who live here year round, enduring a nearly 10-month winter. In late May, the sun sets at 11pm and rises before 5am, but on the shortest day of the year, Anchorage sees five-and-half hours of sunlight (more than anywhere else in the state). Built to withstand long winters and potentially huge earthquakes, Anchorage is not, structurally, that beautiful a city, but its surroundings are stunning.
Given the potential views, I was happy to arrive to find we had a 12th floor room with a 180-degree view of the Chugach Mountains and part of the Alaska Range. Our room also overlooked a small-craft airport a mile down the road, and right next door, conveniently, was a music store.
Last night we were practicing part of our set, I looked out the window and realized that many planes were coming in for a landing … and then taking right back off. The planes then banked south and back around the base of the mountains and came back in for a landing, or almost landing.
What exactly was going on?
Flight lessons! Literally. I had to laugh.
In this case, the lessons were "touch and go" exercises — practicing landing on a runway and then taking off before coming to a full stop. Landing is one of the most challenging parts of learning to fly (for birds and people) and touch-and-go practice is a standard part of aviation training.
During the next hour, I saw at least two small aircraft perform touch-and go exercises at the airfield, as well as an intermittent stream of other small planes arriving and departing.
Given how big Alaska is (more than double the size of Texas), and the "what" — all those mountains and wildlife and bodies of water — there are to see, flight (and “flightseeing”) is big business here. More than eight thousand licensed pilots live in Alaska and nearly half of them call Anchorage, with its four airports (including Ted Stevens International Airport and a seaplane base), home. Some towns and villages are only accessible by dogsled or biplane.
The last time I flew out of Anchorage, I met a woman in the security line who was catching a flight to Teller. There, she told me, she and her family would meet a bush plane to get to the remote village where she would teach for the year. She and her son walked through the scanner with not only a full-size poodle on a leash, but two fluffy, scowling cats in their arms. Talk about seeing things through! I was impressed.