take trips; get high; laugh, talk and goodbye

in lieu of a legit recap of my recent "hair" experience, Agent99 gives you a copy and paste of correspondence with LadyB of africa who is in the throws of potentially mounting a production on the dark continent. this is what i said:

lord have mercy, child, i have alot to preach on hur! i must tell you, though, that i'm on my last legs from a very long day (2 hours of recording time doesn't sound like much, but when you up in the booth speaking up for skin toners, cars and diapers for that long, it's alot of damn talking, then followed by an extra long day of talking at my "career jobby" to make up for the time i was talking to the talent buyers of america on my own behalf), :) and i'm hardly able to make sense to myself tonight, so i have to beg a reprieve for a weekend response. and trust, i have a few things to expound upon. have to agree with many of the concerns you have and feel you on being really leery of jumping into this project with the hinderances you can already foresee. namely to me is that there seem to be alot of chiefs already in addition to ones not chiming in, right? feels like there's alot of hands trying to lead the mix already, from my completely one-sided view from a single chain of e-mails. :) all i mean is that opins aplenty about what this show is and should be are already quite varied and i'm not sure exactly how that will pan out. i'm sorry to slink off to bed without going on further, but i did get out my script and listen to the broadway recording tonight to really get my head around this show again to discuss with you. my gut instinct tells me that everyone would be most happy, and you'd still have a type of "hair" experience that would hold some nice memories for you, would be to select the songs that everyone likes the most from the show and arrange some big type of nighttime extravaganza with lots of african drumming out on one of your desert perches for pondering the world. now that would be fierce. you could fill a longer set with more mystic rock songs from musicals. i think it could be really cool, just a way to honor this show that i feel is appreciated by these other voices i'm reading (and of course, do not know, am simply giving my take from a blind read, right?), but i'm not sure that they *get* what's up with this show. my first read on these letters made me feel like there's alot more interest in "entertaining" for the sake of entertaining and including the community in arts -- and there ain't nothin' wrong with that -- but this show deserves more. i can see that you get that already. i'm not certain that your peeps do, though, which isn't necessarily an awful thing. i ain't trying to get my judge on up on nobody. i know you feel what i'm sayin'.

thus, i will check in with more concrete points on how much this show and it's prophetic message will change if much is monkeyed with content-wise. i'm not a big fan of altering a script much, because i feel it disrespects the artist's intent. i don't like to take liberties with a writer's lines much less major chunks of plotline. if some pieces that are deemed too hot to handle from the general public in arusha are yanked out of the script, and seriously, this is some heavy ass content in this show, don't let some of the chipper sounding songs fool you. it's really sad and i cried intensely at that show here last weekend. they really got it and it was a tight production, lots of fun to watch. it's definitely more than dancing hippies (again, i know you get this), but if you try to avoid or put the modification headlock on the script, i feel you're just not giving it the service it deserves.

seriously, i must get some rest! i say goodnight and you say good morn! i hope that you're not reading any crazed malice into my tone above (the real bane of e-mail is not being able to read tone accurately, don't you think?). having the experience last weekend was just the beginning of me thinking about this message again, four years after i ended my two year affair with that tribe, and it's interesting to see where i'm at with it now. you know it was some serious shit in my life, so even though i'm in a different place than i was during that catharsis junction, i give it its props for moving me forward in my life journey. i don't want to come off as stodgey or obnoxious, i'll just let you reserve your thoughts until i rattle off some calculations i was making about the flow of the show if some different elements it sounds like are on the editing block end up hitting the road, jack.

it has been good to stroll down this road less travelled in my memory forest as of late. more when the daytime grind is off my back for a few days.

i'm evolving, i'm evolving through the drugs that you put down.