Litquake’s Barbary Coast Award 2010

[smutterly]

http://litquake.org/event...arbary-coast_ferlinghetti


Quote:

Please join us for an evening of tributes, poetry, music, and laughter as Lawrence Ferlinghetti and City Lights Booksellers receive Litquake’s Barbary Coast Award. Poet, author, and rock-n-roll high priestess Patti Smith takes the stage with guitarist Lenny Kaye to pay tribute along with Winona Ryder....Michael Horowitz...

Anyone going to try to make it?

[CHRIS B]

 I want to go SO BADLY!!! Winona, Ferlinghetti and I also heard Tom Waits is going to be there!!!! I have no way of getting there!

[smutterly]

You and me both Chris 

I hope the organisers and attendees post lots of videos of it on line.

[Don]

I'd love to go, but all the tickets are sold out.   

Apparently they sold out within one day.

[lainy]

I want to go SO BADLY!!! Winona, Ferlinghetti and I also heard Tom Waits is going to be there!!!! I have no way of getting there!

Do you live in CA, Chris B?

I would totally go if I lived on the west coast.

[ty]

so wish I could be there
hopefully we'll get some good pics tonight

[Don]

I GOT IN!!!!

Even though the tickets had sold out, I decided to go to the city  to see if I could get some returns. I arrived in a foggy San Francisco 2 hours before the show. The show was in a lovely historic old theater called the Herbst Theatre. Fortunately there was a guy selling some tickets they didn't need, and there was only one couple ahead of me. I was thrilled to get the ticket!!!

I stood in line chatting with my fellow Litquakers for about an hour and a half. There was a girl who had flown down from Vancouver specially for the show, and another couple who had driven in from Manteca in the Central Valley. Finally they let us into the theatre. As I was waiting for the show to start I noticed a very beautiful lady in black appear at the VIP entrance to the left of the stage. Winona! She and her family headed straight up to the left balcony.

Here is a short video which captures the atmosphere in the theater nicely.

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/1-enB55TgOg" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/1-enB55TgOg</a>

The first hour was poetry readings, and one of the early speakers was Winona's Dad Mike Horowitz. He spoke about his time with Ferlinghetti, and told tales of keeping Timothy O'Leary's archives out of the hands of the FBI.

The second half of the performance had short musical performances from Patti Smith and Tom Waites. Finally, right at the end of the tribute, Winona appeared on stage. I'll write more tomorrow, but here is a picture.

[smutterly]

I GOT IN!!!! I'll write more tomorrow, but here is a picture.

Well, well, well!!

To quote a certain Heather:

"F@ck me gently with a chainsaw"

 

Is it tomorrow yet?

[oinone]

Voooow Don! I can't find the words.. lucky you!

[phil]

Fantastic, Don!
Jazz, Poetry, Winona...I would've been in Heaven.

[Gary]

That's cool Don - good going.

[Don]

In the second half there were several musical tributes.

Patti Smith :



Tom Waites:




Winona read a poem, and then gave her own tribute. She was very focused on her reading and rarely looked up from the podium.



 When she finished she looked around at the picture that was on the screen behind her and said something like, "Ooooooh, that's me!"





Ironically, Lawrence Ferlinghetti was unable to attend the ceromony, so he recorded a brief message for the audience which played on screen. Then Winona presented the Litquake award to Ferlinghetti's companion who accepted it on his behalf.

[smutterly]

VERY cool. You don't happen to remember what the poem was called by any chance?

Gods how I love Patti Smith. She was one of my first crushes when I was a kid 

[smutterly]

Link to report of Award


Then Winona Ryder took the stage, and in front of a giant picture of the actress as a little girl on Ferlinghetti’s shoulders, she read from Americus I. Her reading was personal and raw—she smiled intermittently and at times stumbled over the beautiful prickly language. Here is an excerpt (just imagine):

“… No end to the sea-bells tolling beyond the dykes of the calling of bells and empty churches and towers of time. No end to the calamitous annunciation of harry holy man / Endless the ever-unwinding wash-spring part of the world shimmering in time through space / No end to the birthing of babies for love and lust has lain / No end to the sweet bird of consciousness, to the bitter deaths in vain. / No end, no end to the withering fur and fruit and flesh so passing fair and neon mermaids singing each to each somewhere the fires of youth and the embers of the rage of the poet born again / No end to the muted dance of molecules / All is transmuted / All is muted and all cries out again again! / Endless the wars of good and evil flips the fate / The trips of hate / Nukes and faults and all failings safe and chain reactions of the final flash where white bicycles of protest still circle around / For there will be an end to the dog-faced gods in wing-tipped shoes and Gucci slippers and Texas boots in tin-can hats in bunkers pressing buttons / For there are hopeful choices still to be chosen in the dark minds in stonewall bars and green giants of chance / The fish-hooks of hope and the sloughs of despond / The hills in the distance and the birds in the bush / The hidden streams of light  and unheard melodies / The sessions of sweet silent thought stately pleasures droned decreed in the happy deaths of the heart every day / The cocks of clay / The feet in running shoes upon the quay. / And there is no end, no end to the doors of perception still to be opened and the jetstreams of life and the upper air / The spirit of man in the outer space inside us, shining, transcendent into the crystal night of time / In the endless silence of the soul / In the long loud tale of man in his endless sound and fury / signifying everything / the dancing continues / there is a sound of revelry by night.”

Ryder then added that she always thought of City Lights as

“A beacon, an oasis—the light in City Lights like a lighthouse flashing and gathering all those great minds in search of hope and creative shelter. It is a living monument to the ideals that inspire and protect those writers. It’s hard to imagine a world without the profound courage and the deep, deep conviction of a man who went all the way to court to defend Ginsberg’s “Howl,” and his own right to publish it, for all of us and for all future generations to enjoy and to be inspired by it. Every writer, poet, and artist to this day is indebted to Lawrence and his deep commitment to freedom of press, and because he helped insure that all our work would have a chance to find its own audience, and in the end, in the end that’s all any writer [or] artist can ask—to have the chance to be seen and to be read and to be heard. So I thank you Lawrence, I’ve been so privileged to know you my entire life, and I salute you and I love you very much.”

Lawrence babysat Winona in City Lights and she was audibly shaken.

- Evan Karp

[CHRIS B]

Thanks for that Don and smutterly!!


Here are some more photos of Winona!

http://www.flickr.com/pho...91127422/with/5049621265/