It's Fall. I'm back at school. The generational dislocation resumes as I sit in a class where my post-collegiate employment history precedes my classmates' birthdays.
Another friend and collaborator has died. Blondell and I met in 1980. I was hugely pregnant and uncertain about all things future. She was in Waterloo, IA dancing with Bill and on her way to creating her masterpiece, Chicken Soup. We became friends as women do with talk of lovers, past and present, work and life. I eventually moved to New York and worked for her for a while when fax machines were a novelty.
We created 2 pieces together: she commissioned my first dance libretto, Orpheus and Eurydice, and I wrote Act I of For JB (Blondell's meditation on La Josephine). We stayed in touch although not seeing each other much. She kept making work through thick and thin, somehow making a living and keeping herself housed and travelling around the world. She eventually received a Guggenheim Fellowship in recognition of her stature.
When we did chat it was sometimes about work, mostly about the this-n-that of life -- nephews, family, daughters, hair. I sent her to Daughter No. 1 a few years back to have her hair done. (I used to tell my friends, ask for the Dailey's Mother discount. At least I thought it was funny.) Dailey wasn't pleased, she finds most of my friends are too old, too indecisive, too tentative -- to make good customers. Nevertheless, I enjoy sending her people who remember her before she could walk, talk, or make googobs of money.
So, good-bye Blondell, good-bye.
Another friend and collaborator has died. Blondell and I met in 1980. I was hugely pregnant and uncertain about all things future. She was in Waterloo, IA dancing with Bill and on her way to creating her masterpiece, Chicken Soup. We became friends as women do with talk of lovers, past and present, work and life. I eventually moved to New York and worked for her for a while when fax machines were a novelty.
We created 2 pieces together: she commissioned my first dance libretto, Orpheus and Eurydice, and I wrote Act I of For JB (Blondell's meditation on La Josephine). We stayed in touch although not seeing each other much. She kept making work through thick and thin, somehow making a living and keeping herself housed and travelling around the world. She eventually received a Guggenheim Fellowship in recognition of her stature.
When we did chat it was sometimes about work, mostly about the this-n-that of life -- nephews, family, daughters, hair. I sent her to Daughter No. 1 a few years back to have her hair done. (I used to tell my friends, ask for the Dailey's Mother discount. At least I thought it was funny.) Dailey wasn't pleased, she finds most of my friends are too old, too indecisive, too tentative -- to make good customers. Nevertheless, I enjoy sending her people who remember her before she could walk, talk, or make googobs of money.
So, good-bye Blondell, good-bye.
Peace and love to you.
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