“I’ve learned so much from my mistakes/I think I’ll make a million more…”
-Walt Curtis
Yesterday, I (and more than 100 or 200 others) went to the memorial for Walt Curtis, Portland’s “Street Poet Laureate,” aka, “Peckerneck Poet”…poet, painter and performer, author of Mala Noche, a novella that was adapted as Gus Van Sant’s first feature film.
The Criterion description of that movie is worth a glance:
With its low budget and lush black-and-white imagery, Gus Van Sant’s debut feature MALA NOCHE heralded an idiosyncratic, provocative new voice in American independent film. Set in Van Sant’s hometown of Portland, Oregon, the film evokes a world of transient workers, dead-end day-shifters, and bars and seedy apartments bathed in a profound nighttime…
Oh, Portland, old Portland! My heart. I think we lived in black and white…in bars and seedy apartments, art and love and bodies…
Anyway.
The memorial was as it should be—a tribute, an open mic, a mix of poetry, music, performance and art, a mix of sacred and profane, fond memories and fucked up moments of twisted comedy, deep humanity, in all faulty love, lust, art, outsider-ness, ragged edges, rough cuts and aspirations.
I think it was Mark Woolley, gallery owner, who used the phrase, “A serious solo show,” talking about Walt’s paintings…and the phrase seemed resonant, a way of looking at life.
Big shout-out of thanks to those who organized the event! You all did a great job, really. I’d name names, but I’m afraid of leaving somebody out…
One moment that was interesting (among many!)—Walt’s sister was there. We all knew him as a talker, a reader, a performer, a provocateur, a brash and sometimes drunk, outspoken challenging artist. His sister said that at home he was quiet, barely spoke at all. She said she learned more about him from his friends at the event than in a lifetime of knowing him. In the stretch of geography from Oregon City to Portland, it sounds like Walt Curtis transformed, becoming himself.
Now for the living, artists, poets, performers and the rest—keep going! It’s not easy, is it. Still. Let’s make stuff. Let’s read and write and dance and celebrate. I’m here.
Sending love.
M