9/29/10

Fundraising for New Play

I'm on the last push to raise the final $1695 to meet my goal for funds for my upcoming project, I THINK I LOVE YOU, AN ALL NIGHT ROUND DANCE. If I don't raise the whole amount I will not receive any of the approximately $8000 I've raised so far. Please help. And thanks to all who have assisted!! We're going to have a good time as this moves forward. You can also send checks. See my Website for more information http://www.joyharjo.com/TheaterFilm.html

and Donate at: http://projectsite.unitedstatesartists.org/project/i_think_i_love_you_an_all_night_round_dance


ChazSkins http://www.chazskins.com has donated a beautiful hand crafted leather coat to raise funds for the new play. There is video of photos on YouTube : http://www.youtube.com/mekkopoet#p/a/u/0/cIkjTza3AA0

You can bid on this coat on EBAY:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=200524724937


9/20/10

Beautiful Leather Jacket being Auctioned by ChazSkinz for support of my project: I Think I Love You, An All Night Round Dance

As you might have heard, I am raising funds to create a new original musical play called I THINK I LOVE YOU, AN ALL NIGHT ROUND DANCE. The money raised now through October 10 will help fund the first draft of this play including three original tunes, sessions with premier dramaturge Shirley Fishman, and a reading of the first draft of the play at the Public Theater in New York City.

ChazSkins has donated this coat to raise funds for the new play.
There is video of photos on YouTube : http://www.youtube.com/mekkopoet#p/a/u/0/cIkjTza3AA0

Bid on this coat on EBAY
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=200522004638

I could really use your support. Our deadline is October 10.

Find out more at http://www.joyharjo.com/TheaterFilm.html

Find out more about the play and make a tax-deductible donation at http://tiny.cc/tp7gm. This is an important story to tell. I hope you can help me make it a reality.



——
About This Custom Designed Leather Hand Cut & Crafted

for Joy Harjo

Analine Leather Slang Jacket
sz 6/8
Tsalagi Design Hand Loomed Beadwork on Cuff & Collar
Traditional Hand Loomed Shoulders w Contemporary Design
American Indian Wars Cuff Buttons
Bison Horn Star "Wax Method" Buttons Down Heart Sleeve
Featured (worn) by the Artist on Joy Harjo's New Album

RED DREAMS, A Trail Beyond Tears
(an autographed copy of the CD is included with the jacket)

9/17/10

Joy Harjo presents: “Wings of Night Sky, Wings of Morning Light”


Thursday, September 23, 2010
7:00 — 9:00 pm

Aaronson Auditorium
http://www.tulsalibrary.org
Central Library, 400 Civic Center, Tulsa, AZ 74103
*Fourth Street and Denver Ave.
918-549-7323
FREE/Open to the public
*Download Poster

Joy Harjo, accompanied by Grammy Award winning producer, engineer and guitarist, Larry Mitchell, will present this deeply compelling work of struggle, displacement, self-discovery, and healing. Invoking spoken word, storytelling and song, Harjo combines character-driven narratives with tales inspired by the traditions of her people—and takes a few turns blowing a mean jazz saxophone. An allegorical work of tremendous power, “Wings” demonstrates how theater and art can bring life full circle.
Book signing immediately after the program.

The Chronicle of Higher Education Story:UNM Professor/Dominatrix Scandal



This story by Peter Schmidt details some of the UNM creative writing program story. I resigned my position over it last year and was awarded unemployment based on the untenable workplace situation. UNM appealed my unemployment and strangely "won", despite nearly seven hours of testimony stretched in a process that went on over six months on my behalf from co-workers, and students who had been approached by the professor to work in the sex trade. In the decision by the presiding judge, none of the testimony or exhibits, including photos backing up my claim, were not taken into consideration. UNM had one witness. UNM said I didn't deserve unemployment benefits because I quit my job.

I appealed again and Wednesday September 15th my case was supposed to have been heard by a panel. I got a letter that same day saying that the decision was final and I have to pay back $11,000 in unemployment benefits with a bill attached. Either the letter is wrong, or the process was overridden. There appears to have been an interference in the process from the appeal. This is a small state and UNM is one of the biggest employers, so it has clout. Mine isn't the only story. There are others that are similar.



Excerpt from "Crazy Brave" (working title)

In the midst of fundraising I am writing daily to finish a memoir by the end of the month---here's an excerpt.

Soul Music

(excerpt from CRAZY BRAVE, LOOKING FOR A VISION, c Joy Harjo 2010)

I was following Sandra Cisneros and her mother through their house in Chicago, making introductions, when I heard my soul singing.

“What are you doing there, soul, I asked?” I felt naked and blown open without my soul fastened in its usual, hidden and dark place.

I heard Sandra’s brothers talking behind closed doors of their rooms. It was Saturday morning. They were supposed to be cleaning. I heard the traffic and the city. I heard everything as if it were singing. And above them and over and through all of us, weaving the song together, I heard my soul, a saxophone.

Who is that singer of my soul? I wanted to ask. Instead, I asked, “Who’s that on saxophone?”

“It’s my brothers’ music”, said Sandra. “It’s Gato Barbieri.”

I had wanted to play saxophone since junior high school. I loved the sultry sound and longing of the sax. It is in adolescence you begin to come into full consciousness of your sensual being.

I’d played clarinet in elementary school, one hour a week for a few years. I used the same couple of reeds and labored with the rest of the small group of students who played either clarinet, flute or trumpet without enough practice and with lots of squeaking, missed notes, and inattention to the beat. What kept me going was that perfect song I kept hearing, just beyond the field of knowing. I felt moments of it, as my breath attempted to make the clarinet into a living being.

At the beginning of my first junior high semester when the band teacher asked for students to play alto sax, my hand shot up. Girls can’t play sax, he explained as he choose boys to be players. I gave up then on saxophone. I walked away from music. And then I met Gato and his sax in Sandra’s house in the late seventies.

Gato and I make a circle with our spirits. I tell Gato and his saxophone that I have escaped from the Iowa Writer’s Workshop for the weekend. I tell him I feel lost without mountains, desert and the memory of white birds. I confide in him the longing I am afraid to name. I tell him I write poetry to leave tracks so that love can find me. I tell him that poetry is lonely without the music. I want to tell him and his saxophone everything, the way you do when you meet a lover who is going to open up all the doors in your heart. You compare stories. No, you intertwine them so they can grow together for a while.

And then I argue with myself. You cannot say everything, what will he think of you? Besides, to speak everything is to exhaust mystery.

Or is it? Can everything ever be spoken? Or are some things better spoken without words?

Whenever a saxophone begins to sing in a story it signals the door opening to romance. Soon there will be lovemaking. We will see a blur of bodies caught in an urge to experience the joy of creation of joy. For a time we will no longer move about so lonely here, far away from the house of the sun, moon and stars.

Gato listens with his horn perched on his lap. Like most men, he keeps his thoughts to himself when it comes to women and love. And he’s Argentine. He loves women ferociously. And he’s a horn player. He hears melody in longing. He hears how the rhythm of the heart plays against the rhythm of traffic in a northern city on a Saturday afternoon. He feels the fire at the center of the earth.

One time I was making love, I wanted to tell him, and I forgot myself and gave in to the music. I saw cities full of lovers and how though the earth held them close with gravity, they became birds, flying together above the city, their jobs, their bills, the why-aren’t-you’s and the “you-should’s”, into openings in the sky that only two people can open together.

“Ah, but what about the earth and how we move about the earth”, he sang with his horn? And he broke my heart with his longing.

It was some years before I picked up a horn and blew spirit into it.

The first horn I played was a King Super tenor saxophone. My then lover, a horn player wrote out the G blues scale for me and I began there, in the heartache of the Americas. In that scale are ships from Africa and Europe. In it are my people dancing in a widening spiral beneath circles of star nebula, giving birth to the swing. I walked up and down the scale, past babies crying in the night for milk, lovers waking in the dawn for more.

I left that relationship, that apartment, that city and kept going with my horn and with the bottom line of that gee blues.

I still talk with Gato whenever I pick up my horn. He’s older, and wiser in the way that we all become wiser when we lose what we love and learn to keep going.

“One way to look at it”, he told me one day as I sawed through scales to make muscle for flying, “is we are all lost, we were already lost the day we were born. In music, we can become tragically and beautifully lost, and found again.”

I thought of all the doors that had opened and closed. I thought of how Sandra’s mother and father were no longer on this earth. I thought of all of my mother’s songs looking for a place to live, I thought of all the Saturdays in the world and how terrified I am of opening my heart again. I started with “G”, and rounded the bend at B flat. I followed my soul.

9/14/10

Reward Levels for U.S. Artist Donations for Harjo's Project: I Think I Love You, An All Night Round Dance

Everyone:

I've upped the rewards. They're retroactive for those who donated before this announcement. Please consider donating. It's tax-deductible. And you'll be supporting several artists as this develops: the writer, musicians, recording engineer, actors, and so on.

Thanks.

Joy

Support of $25.00 unlimited

CD of your choice and Bi-weekly blog updates beginning October 2010

Support of $50.00

Limited to 25 / 11 Available

Above, plus an electronic download copy of my first play "Wings of Night Sky, Wings of Morning Light"

Support of $75

Above, plus a CD copy of the song demo.

Support of $100

Limited to 25/16 available

Above, plus a signed copy of one scene of the play

Support of $500

All of the above plus a signed copy of the first draft of the play

And a complete set of Harjo CD’s.

Support of $1000

All of the above plus a private reading of the play.

Support of $2000

All of the above plus a collection of all books and CD’s, signed.

9/13/10

I have 28 Days to raise $7,573.

Okay, here I am. In person.
As you can see, I'm in the middle of raising money to write my new play and create music for it.
United States Artists has set up a site for me to fundraise.
I have 28 days to raise the balance of $7,573.00
There are gifts at different levels, AND I will let you into my gigs for free (not just the free ones!!), AND will put you on a list of the I Think I Love You, An All Night Round Dance Circle that will be included in the handout for every play. There are other levels of gifts. See the site.
The monies from the coat donated by leather artist Chaz will be donated to the project. Mvto, Chaz!
Please click on link for more info.
You can donate directly to the site or via check.

(Please send any checks to: United States Artists, 5757 Wilshire Blvd. Suite 580, LA, CA 90036. Include a note that states you wish it to go to my project (by name). You will get a letter of confirmation and tax deduction info. Mvto. Thanks!)



Thanks for your help, and please pass on.

Joy


Auctioning off custom leather coat to raise $ for a new Play by Joy Harjo






















A video of the beautiful custom leather coat ChazSkins has donated to help fund MY new play is up on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/mekkopoet#p/a/u/0/cIkjTza3AA0 -- please take a look and share with anyone who might be interested in bidding on it. I am raising funds to create a new Play called I THINK I LOVE YOU, AN ALL NIGHT ROUND DANCE. The coat is up on EBAY http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=200519349407

Since the Ebay auctions only go for a week. The link to the listing for the coat will change weekly up until the Oct 10 deadline.


I could really use your support. Find out more about the play and make a tax-deductible donation at http://tiny.cc/tp7gm. This is an important story to tell. I hope you can help me make it a reality.

9/8/10

Help Bring Joy's New Play Into Being

We've raised $1,827 towards the goal of $9,500. We need to raise $7,673 more. Every little bit helps. Your contribution will help pay for the research, the writing of the script, the writing of 3 original songs, meetings with Shirley Fishman, and a reading of the first draft of the play at the Public Theater in New York City. More about the project: http://tiny.cc/tp7gm and http://www.joyharjo.com/TheaterFilm.html

————

WAYS YOU CAN SUPPORT MAKING THIS BEAUTIFUL STORY INTO A PLAY

Make a tax-deductible donation: http://tiny.cc/tp7gm


Purchase or Bid on the jacket worn by Joy Harjo on her New CD, RED DREAMS, A Trail Beyond Tears (see photo on this page).

We are auctioning it off on Ebay to raise money for the Play: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=200515718937&ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT

*More photos here: http://www.joyharjo.com/TheaterFilm.html

Custom Designed Leather Hand Cut & Crafted by ChazSkinz
Analine Leather Slang Jacket, Tsalagi Design Hand Loomed Beadwork on Cuff & Collar, Traditional Hand Loomed Shoulders w Contemporary Design, American Indian Wars Cuff Buttons, Bison Horn Star "Wax Method" Buttons Down Heart Sleeve. Includes an autographed copy of the CD.


*Thanks to everyone who has contributed!

9/3/10

Raising Funds for a New Play

I am looking for funds to complete a first draft of an original musical play (I THINK I LOVE YOU, An All Night Round Dance), including three original tunes, and sessions with premier dramaturge Shirley Fishman. These funds will also go toward a reading/performance at the Public Theater in New York.

I need to raise $9,500 by October 11. Please go http://tiny.cc/tp7gm to donate to the project and help us make this play.

A ONE-OF-A-KIND CUSTOM DESIGNED LEATHER COAT has been donated by http://www.chazskinz.com to be auctioned off to raise funds for I THINK I LOVE YOU, An All Night Round Dance.

This is a Hand Cut & Constructed ¾ Leather Slang Coat, Burnt Sienna Aniline (the best of the industrial dyes and dye process) & Golden Veg Tan Goat Skin, Design & Hand Loom Beadwork done exclusively for Joy Harjo, African Bison Horn Star Buttons, Hidden side pockets w/cell phone & “extras” inside pockets. *Will include a signed copy of Red Dreams, Joy Harjo's latest CD release. THIS WILL BE UP ON EBAY TODAY WITH A RESERVE PRICE OF $2,500 + SHIPPING.

More information and photos: http://www.joyharjo.com/TheaterFilm.html

9/1/10

Harjo on Air next Week

Through the Eyes of Women with Joy Harjo will air on KHSU, Monday, September 6th, 2010 at 1:30 pm and will be archived on khsu.org for the following two weeks.

KIDE will air the program on Wednesday, September 8th, 2010 at 9:30 and 5:30.

Beth Rogers
Executive Producer
Through the Eyes of Women
KHSU-FM
707 407-5355