May Your Band Play On

A Solstice to Remember

It’s so hot the governor has declared a state of emergency. The heat clings close and sticky, like some sort of dastardly saran wrap. Our pond simmers. To manage a hint of cool, you must swim to the jets of spring water and stay there, treading water, admiring the zipping blue dragon flies and ducking below the surface when the horse flies near.

We are lucky. We have air conditioning. We have electricity. We were not hit by the deadly tornado that caused such grief in Clark Mills. We are not being bombed or dragged off to detention centers. We are sleeping in our own beds on land that we love, rain or drought, hot or cold. We snap the scapes, water the tulsi, pick the raspberries, watch the red winged blackbird dip over the field, touch down on a stalk of grass, then alight once more. We listen to the frogs and sit in the shade. We–or at least I—tend to the happiness we brewed over the weekend.

Back in January, I made a New Year’s card with a collage of Miranda singing and the rest of us backing her up from the deck of the Titanic. May Your Band Play On was the message. The point being that we must keep loving, keep making art, keep remembering how big the world is, how tiny a screen is, how mysterious a heart is, how predictable a tyrant is… even if certain ships may be sinking.

May your band play on. After the president declared my lifework illegal, it felt necessary to follow my own advice. So I sent out this note:

Help create some magic and hope this summer by coming up to the farm on the solstice and reading a part from A Midsummer Night's Dream. Outside with the fireflies and a bonfire, or inside in our great new Felix house: either way will be great. We've got the beauty, the places to crash, the delicious food, we just need the people...

This is a low pressure reading--there will be like one zoom read through beforehand, it's all about spontaneity and fun and being together and celebrating all that is good in the world and flouting all that is bad.

The concept wasn’t new. Maybe a dozen years ago, at our house in Brooklyn, a bunch of us, all toga-ed and liquored up, had read A Midsummer Night’s Dream for an audience of friends. It is a delightful, ridiculous marvel of a play and we had such fun that I’d tried to pull it off again, but schedules, budgets, health issues, etc. got in the way and I just couldn’t get enough people to fill out the cast. This year, however, the response was tremendous. The yeses came pouring in, along with notes: “less weeping and panicking, more Shakespeare al fresco” “Magical dreaming is apparently exactly what I needed in my life today. I am 100% yay yay yay.” Apparently I was not the only one sorely in need of community, irreverence, and magnificent writing.

June swept around and I started to plan. I really wanted to do it outside in the Everyone Garden, under the oak tree, a hope that seemed increasingly farfetched what with the torrential rains, strange, cold, clammy weather, forks of lightning, and aforementioned tornado. But right between those chilly thunder struck weeks and Monday’s heat wave, on the 21st of June, the solstice, the weather sorted itself out and produced a perfect summer day—and night. A fluke? Perhaps. But we were celebrating the earth after all, her steadfast cycles, her mastery of lightness and darkness, her infinite intricate creativity. Perhaps the weather simply wanted to lend a hand.

Over fifty people came, my daughter and her friends, my son and his girlfriend, my Lonely Worm Farm family, Hyde Park neighbors, Brooklyn neighbors, friends from my husbands’ work, friends I’ve known since high school, since long defunct punk rock group houses, since Extreme Kids, since care farming… The birds sang their evening songs. Strains of music from the Victory Camp revival echoed over the wetland. We lit torches. We drank water and wine. We took turns reading lines that have been exquisitely over the top and right on the mark for well over four hundred years. Lovers ran blindly through the woods. Fathers demanded outrageous punishments. The fairy king and queen vied over an adopted child. Jealousy and desire, cunning and mirth, betrayal and reunion… and so much laughter. Yes, in other parts of the world, the worst of our angels were ascendant, but at Lonely Worm Farm, the lovers were dreaming and Titania was lusting for a talkative ass. Thank you, friends, for making this possible. For those of you who couldn’t be there, I hope these pictures will cheer your day and maybe get you in the mood to play…