The Wilderness Line by erogerscello

By Esther Rogers

Quilt, book, camera, cell phone, I pulled open the squeaky front door and stepped outside into the cool grey-blue of early morning to watch the sunset and call my boyfriend. Am I in the wilderness?

This first week in the 'desert wilderness of Colorado' has been different than I originally expected, complete with hot showers, ice-cream, box springs and mattress, internet. Our discovery of the wilderness so far has not been through the window of a tent but I have been learning so much. 

At the Dolores Brewery we were again asked (by Marietta the field manager this time) what we hoped to gain from this experience. In an attempt to answer this question we talk about our work, our hopeful productivity, but more and more about what we learn from the dialogue and conversation with the scientists we are getting to know. These conversations range around every possible topic, and many of them are funny, over my head, fascinating, deep... I want to record them, and have tried to use my Nascam or camera video to hold them in concrete for future review, but like often special performances and improvs left unrecorded by not hitting the magic button or the batteries running out, these conversations seem destined for the now, for the vapor of our present interaction, and their impact will be left in the impressions made in our souls, to our artwork, to some un-quantifiable inquiry about the value of our work.

In our wilderness collaboration here we dialogue with scientists entrusted with the care of the wilderness...  we talk about ideas and lots of questions. We talk about...

- Bat observances with sound wave recorders; what level frequency are they? can two waves be picked up simultaneously? are feeling and hearing separate things? can we hear without a brain?
- Can an archeological landscape which is estimated to have had (60?) thousand people at one time and now is designated as a wilderness preserve with no residents, actually be wilderness?
- What are people coming cities most afraid of when they enter a wilderness?
- What shapes social responsibility and morals in a time when traditional moral voices are being less effective?
- The people living here long ago: what did they think about their existence? was it amazing to live in a cliff house, were they afraid of each other, were they all artists?
- The Navajo belief that all people are artists, that life is an art, there are no separate vacationed artists.
- How do we preserve the smell of the wilderness?
- Who should be granted access to the wilderness?

Yesterday I rode the intern house mountain bike to the closest point at which Canyon of the Ancients National Monument can be accessed. I couldn't tell from the map whether I could enter the park at the end of County Road W or not, so I thought I'd wander that direction and find out. I still couldn't tell when I got there- no signs to mark public or private, though I could see the canyon landscape in about 1/4mile. I made a phone call to see if I could get access there or not. (If I was on my own representation I would have just hiked in anyway, but seeing as my picture was in the paper representing a government agency, an art organization, a research institute, and a museum, I figured I better not do anything stupid.) In the end I was told I couldn't get into the monument there- or anywhere nearby because it was surrounded by private lands and some land owners are violent about trespassers.

I thought about The Wilderness Line- that point at which the land is labeled wilderness instead of rural or whatever bureaucrat label "the other" is given. How do we gain access to "the wilderness" and who gives it to us? CANM seems like a secret wilderness that is intentionally being isolated from the public to preserve it, and yet it is legislatively NATIONAL property. I have to admit I was pretty ticked off that after my pedaling I couldn't go for a hike, and I blamed everybody, while full knowing that there are incredibly complicated issues consciously being worked through by intelligent people regarding access.

From my vantage point I write a piece, and others sign papers, map routes, document land use, and raise funds. The conversation continues...

Canyons of the Ancients

Really Happening

By Esther Rogers

Getting really excited for our adventure in CO! Each new bit of information confirms that it is really real, that I am actually a part of this incredible collaboration, coming together of unique, wonderful people! Yay!
I've started reading up on the place we will be, and the people who were, and the land that is... I don't know how far I will get in the book list, but every bit I read helps me to feel more in humble awe of this opportunity, of the place...
Contract signed and mailed...
Packing list in the works. I add to it every few days as I think of something else, or change my mind about some odd item.
Counting down with my list of projects and items to complete before I set off on Amtrak from Rochester. Today I have rehearsal, teaching, then I drop off Scubba (my cello) at the cello doctor to have a repair made.
Really happening!

Tidbits

By Esther Rogers

*Constantly in the back of my mind,are miscellaneous disorganized tidbits.
-disorganized tidbits of ruminating about this Colorado trip...
*

H asked if four corners was where the kivas are. Kiva: "A large underground or partly underground room in a Pueblo Indian village, used chiefly for religious  ceremonies." In what ways will learning about the tradition of spiritual practice by the Anasazi and Pueblo - so intricately connected with the famous kiva structures themselves - influence my music, or my own faith? * Cluster harmonics/Singing or tonalizing while playing cello/Sounds of wind, echoes/Resonances. "Esther and Scubba in a canyon creating/composing melodic lines ready for orchestration at a later date..." (B) *"The problem with Tompkins wasn't his plan to save the land, it was his plan to freeze the people in place. The conflation of a natural ecosystem with a 'natural' culture was dangerous, it condemned the Chileans to not becoming what they might become." (Patrick Symmes) How will I participate in wilderness preservation but also contribute to a modern, current art? * Rosin Tuner Music stand. Can I borrow a music stand from someone in the area community rather than packing mine? (for when I'm not on site) Zoom recorder. G says I have to learn to control the amount of conversion... * How many snacks will I need to pack for my 2 day journey on the train??  *

Response-Work

By Esther Rogers

Over the last few weeks as I have tried to explain what I will be doing in Colorado to my friends and family I have been thinking about response work, and have been aware that I am anxious about the unknowns of the creative work I will be doing in Canyon of the Ancients.

The majority of my work, and the work of most musicians, is to take a written composition and interpret it- much like an actor who takes a written script and then works to bring it alive through the way they speak, move, gesture, etc. I work to find the way to turn a phrase to sound the way I want it to, or to find the composer's intention. In the wilderness art and science residency I won't be interpreting someone else's composition. I will be composing my own works for myself. I also will not be composing for musical reasons; I won't be starting with a framework of a particular musical form or goal. Instead I will be focusing on responding to what I see and experience.

Response work is very exciting. It trusts that if I fully experience/think about/embrace/take into myself an idea, place, object, an event... that I will have a response, that I will have inspiration and my own questions and ideas and reactions that I will want to explore or express. It is exciting because it is about allowing oneself to process/feel/intuit something and to use that response as fuel for creative work. Response work allows for possibility, curiosity, change. It gives me the freedom to create new work which doesn't have to fit into a particular box of musical expectations... a certain key or mode or genre or way of playing... rather, the expectation is that I will be fully aware of myself and the particular element I am responding to and have the honesty to create from there. ( ! )

How do you prepare for that??

I want to get ready, to prepare the score for rehearsals, to make sure I know my part, to be responsible.

How do you get ready to experience something?
There is no score... yet.

I'm afraid I won't be creative enough. I won't have anything to say. I might not do it well enough.

How do you respond well enough? Can you tell yourself to respond well ?

It makes you feel like a beginner, in a way. While I know that in two months I will still know how to play the cello, I will still remember how to write notation, I will still have a body of musical and creative professional experience in my pocket, and I will still have the ideas for musical things I want to try.... there is that element of starting at the very beginning where you have no idea what will happen. Author Julia Cameron says: "The stringent requirement of a sustained creative life is the humility to start again, to begin anew... willingness to once more be a beginner..."

But what if I don't know what I'm doing? What if I forget how to respond? What if I don't know what to do?

But isn't that where great creative innovators have started? Isn't that the point? Isn't that explorative research? Music maker Brian Eno said in a lecture that in his work with musicians he asks himself: "how can I reframe the creative process so that people find themselves in a place they don't recognize?" Intentionally? You mean, he intentionally wants people to 'get lost' ?

I remember the response work I have done in the past, the composition I have just finished, and I know I felt the same way before I started then too... and I take comfort as then in the words of theatre director Anne Bogart: "Finding yourself off balance provides you with an invitation to disorientation and difficulty. It is not a comfortable prospect. You are suddenly out of your element and out of control. And it is here the adventure begins. When you welcome imbalance, you will instantly enter new and unchartered territory in which you feel small and inadequate in relation to the task at hand. But the fruits of this engagement abound... A director asks simple and basic questions propelled by curiosity. Curiosity cannot be faked... In travelling outward, in pursuing an interest we experience insecurity. Insecurity is not only okay, it is a necessary ingredient."

Preparations for my Western Adventure

By Esther Rogers

Wednesday morning...
Sitting at my desk in the corner listening to a recording of Gustav Mahler's 3rd Symphony with the Vienna Philharmonic and Leonard Bernstein conducting. It's really quite an amazing recording and is actually homework for my job: In July I'm playing a chamber music version of the symphony for a fascinating gig with Good Luck Restaurant. "A five-course dinner, with wine pairings, will draw inspiration from the final movement of this piece, in which a child recounts his vision of heaven as being a feast for the saints."

Preparations for my western adventure continue... Tickets purchased! Have decided on taking the train from Rochester to Denver where I will car pool to Durango and then I'll fly home. Taking the train on the way there will keep my cost down by about a third and add to the adventure! It's also a little easier with a cello... but it will be LONG! I'm looking forward to the time to focus on preparing my mind for the residency after what I expect will be a really busy month previous...

I have also been doing a little reading about Canyon of the Ancients and am learning lots of new things:

-The most famous cliff dwellings were built by a group called the "Anasazi". The earliest members of this group, known as Basket Makers, began farming in northern New Mexico, northern Arizona, southern Utah, and southern Colorado about the time of Christ. They gradually developed a type of many-storied building called a Pueblo. For this reason, all groups in Anasazi history after about AD700 are called Pueblo Indians.
WORLD BOOK Encyclopedia

-Anasazi is the Navajo name for the people who lived in the Four Corners between AD 1 and AD 1300. The population size varied over time, but at its peak many thousands of families occupied the southwest corner of Colorado. Their modern descendants, the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico and Arizona, prefer the term Ancestral Pueblo rather than "Anasazi." http://www.blm.gov/co/st/en/fo/ahc/more.html

-FALL CONDITIONS:  Autumn may be the ideal season to experience Canyons of the Ancients. The months of September, October, and November are usually dry and sunny with moderate temperatures, and December can be mild as well. Daytime highs are often between 50 and 70 F (10 to 20 C) although nights are significantly colder. The lower angle of the midday sun brings richer color and more dramatic shadow to the canyon landscape.
http://www.blm.gov/co/st/en/nm/canm/blm-canm-visitor_information.html

I'm mentally making note of packing items... staff paper, good pencils, soft cello case in addition to hard- (probably I don't have room?!), hat... Can I purchase extra large paper in Durango?... I am anxious to learn more about exactly where I'll be housed, what I'll need!

Tickets, Dampits, and Wish list

By Esther Rogers

Taking a little break from practicing and thought I would let you in on some of my preparations for the Canyon of the Ancients residency in September.

I'm about to purchase my tickets -Yes, tickets plural - from Rochester to Durango; one for me and one for 'Scubba the cello' who will travel alongside me the entire way, perhaps even getting me a better seat without paying for it if the flight attendants decide it is safer for us to ride in the front of the plane... I get asked all sorts of questions while flying with my cello. 'What does it weigh?' 'Is that a guitar?' 'Are you in a symphony?' etc. Some people are impressed, the rest are annoyed when I board early, or bump them while trying to navigate the aisle carrying my instrument sideways along with my carry-on backpack (or take their seat!). Often the flight attendants insist passionately that I cannot take Scubba on the plane; that he won't fit in the overhead! It takes several times of me patiently waving my TWO tickets in front of them before they relax... since 9/11 you can't gate-check a cello so the only safe option is to purchase a ticket or an incredibly large and almost equally expensive flight case.

Last night my parents and I were discussing the work I hope to do in Colorado and Mom was asking how the climate would affect my cello. Wooden instruments respond daily to changes in temperature and humidity. As the wood expands and contracts the sound changes, the level of the strings alters, and the general feel and finicky-ness of the instrument moves around. At a certain level of aridity the wood will crack causing irreversible damage - the instrument will never sound the same again even if repaired. To combat dry conditions string players use rubber coated damp sponges called dampits which are placed inside the instrument, as well as various kinds of humidifiers. I would like to purchase a Stretto hygrometer and humidifier to take with me which are small enough to fit into my cello case and according to this article work as well and better than dampits while also requiring less water. I think with the combination Scubba will be okay.

Another thing on my to-buy wish list is a professional quality hand held sized recording device with microphone (and which is battery operated). I'd love to be able to capture the sounds of the desert as well as the acoustics within structures or rock formations. Sound environments are known historically to influence music creation; the sounds of nature and types of sound objects available as well as the kind of acoustic resonance. My parents asked if I had done any research on the peoples of the canyon and if there were known/assumed musical traditions etc. The "to research" list lengthens...

Well, time to get back to the current project!
Ciao!

 

"Wow!"

erogerscello.com

By Esther Rogers

"So I would like to offer you this residency," the voice on the phone said. He was calling from somewhere in the mountains in Colorado, and I was pacing the hallway in the atrium outside Rochester Contemporary School of Music in upstate New York. "WOW! That's so exciting!" was about all I could get out in response. The phone crackled. About to lose reception again...

My name is Esther and I am a free-lance cellist from Rochester, NY.  It's 12:01AM my time, just barely June 8... It's the middle of the week-end, and as a musician that means its the middle of my work week. This particular week-end includes:

-attending incredible performances at the International Society of Bassists being held in Rochester this year

and coachings from guest bass artists on 'Western Lands' for string bass and cello by Stefano Scodanibbio

-teaching cello lessons

-performing in the Rochester Women's Philharmonic fundraiser concert

-leading an arts exploration work-shop for 5-12 year olds

-making a Kinkos print visit for promotional post cards for an upcoming show

It is a running here and there kind of free-lance week-end. Catching up with emails in-between and taking care of a friend's dog.

So how did a classical cellist in Rochester connect with the Aldo and Leonardo project?

It all started with a blind search for residencies about a year and a half ago. I sent an email to the Colorado Art Ranch to inquire and found out that there weren't any openings. Over the winter I received an email asking me to apply for a wilderness and arts collaboration and I couldn't believe it. While I do a lot of traditional gig work, I have a passion for collaboration and response-work. That is, I love to work together with people on projects and to create new artistic work out of that relationship, and I also love to create performance pieces which respond/relate/react to a topic or idea. I also happen to love the outdoors and hiking, so I couldn't believe my eyes! I applied, and now, here I am, carving out some time in my cello world to start to seep in this new project; begin the adventure of new connections, new work, a new environment, to take place in (paradoxically), the Canyon of the Ancients. I'm thrilled! 

Going to the desert

By Leslie Sobel

I am thrilled to be part of the Art + Science + Wilderness residencies sponsored by Aldo & Leonardo - Colorado Art Ranch’s collaborative residencies with the Aldo Leopold Society pairing artists with scientists in wilderness settings.  I will be spending the month of September at Canyons of the Ancients National Monument along with two other artists - sculptor Ben McCarthy and cellist/composer Esther Rogers.  You can see my work here.

My son asked me today how I would pair my main medium - encaustic - with field work in the desert.  The answer is sequentially!  In the field I’ll draw, do water color studies, keep a journal and shoot a lot of pictures.  Back home in the studio those sources will become finished pieces.  Right now I envision a series of bas relief sculptures and encaustic monotypes but we’ll see how the experience shapes my work.

I’m looking forward to doing some studying to get ready to go.  I’ve spent a lot of time in the desert southwest but this particular park is new to me and has an astonishing number of Ancestral Puebloan sites.  I expect to learn a lot.  It’s a tremendous experiential gift to spend a good chunk of time in the desert and I’m looking forward to it immensely.