GJ Willis' Art Notes

Today, I decided to venture out into the world and see a play at Center Stage. The play I saw was Kwame Kwei-Armah's, Elmina's Kitchen. I knew little about the play or playwright before seeing it. The only assumption I made was that the playwright Kwei-Armah must be African American. I was wrong he's actually British African Caribbean.

The only thing I knew about the play itself was that it had something to do with West Indians. If I haven't said it before my family is from the West Indies. So I admit I had a vested interest in seeing this play. It turns out that the play is about three generations of West Indian men living in Britain. It's about there lives on the Murder Mile in Hackney, London where they run a restaurant called Elmina's Kitchen.

After the play was over the playwright was available for a Q&A session after the show. I found him to be vibrant, lively, and extremely intellegent. He was so good that I'm surprised he's not running for public office.

In all the years that I have worked and seen shows at Center Stage I can not recall a writer being so accessible to the public. Then again Kwei-Armah isn't a run of the mill writer. He started off as an actor. He was a long time series regular on Casualty. Casualty is like the UK version of ER. Of the two I believe that Casualty has been on the air longer. Also he was famously booted off of Fame Academy. Fame Academy was a show that pitted UK celebrity against celebrity. His failure to make the finals caused a major public uproar. The reason I know all these things is because I spend way too much time on UK message boards and I Google.

Overall, Elmina's Kitchen was like seeing an August Wilson play filtered through the lense of the British Afro-Caribbean experience. This I found was no accident because Kwe-Armah explained during the Q&A session that he is an admirer of August Wilson's work. Also I learned that he wrote the first three pages of the play in Baltimore. So coming here to him was like coming full circle. He had come to Baltimore a couple of years ago to see an August Wilson play and to see a lecture Wilson was giving.

I will be posting a more detailed review of the show later in the week.

WHAT I'M WEARING:Today, I have on a red sweater. Under the sweater I have on a white turtle neck. The pants I'm wearing are black. My shoes are black canvas tennis shoes.

Today, is a very special day for me. IT’S MY BIRTHDAY! That’s right, I’m celebrating the big 3-5! I’m now five years away from the big 4-0!

The one thing I’ve never really liked about my birthday is it’s close proximity to Christmas. When my birthday rolls around people are usually flat broke. The last birthday party I ever had was for my 9th birthday.

I’m not really angry or upset about this. I’m autistic and I feel uncomfortable in social situations. So in a since it’s been a blessing that no one has ever forced me to be sociable on my birthday. To me, my birthday, has always been a day of reflection.

So this year I took the day off from work as well as the two days following it. I’m mainly doing this so that I can use up all my vacation days. I hope that I will have still have a job when I come back to work on Monday. I always hear about people who come back from long vacations and find they’ve been fired. I hope this doesn't happen to me.

The reason why I’m giving this three day vacation thing a try is that last year, I had the privilege of attaining three weeks vacation. At the end of the year I was surprised to find out that I had a couple of days left that I wasn’t aware of. I couldn’t do anything about it because it was in the last week of December that I found out my unique situation. So this year I thought I’d try to use up every single vacation and personal day I have available.

As per usual I’m off on the first days of spring, summer, fall, and winter. To further pad things out, I’ve added Inauguration Day, Earth Day, Halloween, and the birthday’s of ex-boyfriends.

The last thing I want this year is to find out in the last week of December that I have extra vacation days left that I never took. You have no idea how horrible that felt. I absolutely do not want to relive that nightmare ever again.

WHAT I’M WEARING: Right now, I have on a cream colored long sleeve waffle knit shirt that has a picture of a cute teddy bear wearing jeans and red shirt that says Authentic Bear Wear. I’m also wearing blue jeans. Since it’s my day off I’ve been flitting around the apartment in red flip flops.

I got to the bus stop again five minutes early. The bus arrived at around 5:58. According to the bus schedule the bus was supposed to arrive at 5:46. It's my second day of taking the bus and already it's late. Then again for all I know maybe it was on time for that particular driver and yesterday was just a fluke or mabe a fill in driver. I don't know anything for sure because I don't usually take this bus line to work. All I know is that the bus got me to work 15 minutes late today. I hate this!

I hope that Brian, my supervisor, doesn't hold one of those group meeting were he gathers us all together and tells us that we have to be on time for work. I always feel like those meeting are directed at me the sole MTA rider in the group.

WHAT I’M WEARING: Today, I have on a long sleeve purple henley, beige jeans, and brown leather lace up shoes.

I know that I’ve said absolutely nothing about this because I’ve been avoiding thinking about it. The light rail from North Avenue to Hunt Valley will be shut down from now until a year or so. It’s being shutdown so that the trains can run on a double track. Right now there are certain sections of the light rail where there is just one track instead of two. Double tracking allegedly means that the light rail will run faster and smoother.

Today, was the first day of the shutdown. This means that today I had to leave out extra early to catch the #8 bus. I have never taken this bus to work in my entire life.

Instead of taking the #20, #2, or #1 to transfer to the #8 bus. I decided to walk briskly down to the starting point of the #8 bus. Luckily, for me it’s starting point isn’t that far from my house. I’d say it’s about 2 or 3 blocks. One thing I immediately found out is that the time listed on the MTA site for the buses arrival was about 5 minutes off. Also, I noticed the Latino couple that I catch the other buses with got on this bus to. You see they always get off at this stop to catch another bus. I had no idea the other bus they caught was the #8. So if this is the bus that they’ve been transferring to it’s a possibility that I can keep my old sleep wake schedule. For now I’ll just continue walking briskly down the street. Besides, I need the exercise.

WHAT I’M WEARING: Today, I have one a magenta long sleeve scoop neck cotton pullover with khaki pants and brown leather shoes.

This afternoon after I got back from my very liberal church I noticed that the woman that lives upstairs and her husband/boyfriend were both sitting on the steps. This was very unusual because I only seem to see them when there is a possibile threat of a house fire. It seems that she is slightly paranoid of a house fire occurring. I think something bad happened in her past involving a house fire. She seems to be constantly on the lookout to prevent one. So you guessed it there was the possibility of a house fire.

Apparently, the smoke detector on the first floor was going off. She tried with no avail to contact the people on the first floor. She couldn't reach them because they were not home. She even tried calling the landlord to see if he could come by to open the door and turn off the alarm. She couldn’t reach him either. Her one option was to call the fire department.

I felt this was silly because there was no sign of smoke. Besides, I had heard their detector go off last night. It was obviously a case where their battery was running low. I did tell her of my suspicions. She told me that she was just afraid that if she left to where her and her husband/boyfriend were going to that the house would be gone by the time they got back. The poor dear. I felt sorry for her. So there she sat on the steps wringing her hands.

I went inside and ate my lunch and checked back every now and then to see how things had progressed. Eventually, the fire department and two female police officers arrived. I met them at the inside landing. I told them I felt that this was all just a case of the batteries running down. I also told them I had been there for two hours and not once did I smell smoke.

At first they wanted to break down the door. Then they went back outside to talk to the woman. Somehow she convinced them or maybe they convinced themselves that it was all just a false alarm and that there was no need to break into the apartment.

Anyway, I honestly believe that the presence of the fire department helped to ease the mind of the woman upstairs. The fire department’s presence I believe made her feel that everything was going to be ok. She was more relieved and calm after they had arrived. Just after the fire department left she and her husband/boyfriend merrily left to what ever destination they were headed to before the fire alarm went off.

As they were leaving I told them I would buy the people downstairs a battery for their alarm. As you can imagine the alarm was starting to make me a little antsy. I wanted to get out of there. Besides, I needed a battery for my own smoke detector. I was going to buy a 2 pack Duracell and split it in two but the sales lady told me they had a buy one get one free sale on generic batteries. I felt this would be a great deal. They’d have their own pack and so would I.

When I got back home I caught my upstair neighbor’s disease. I found myself anxiously peeking in and out of the front door wondering when the people downstairs would arrive. I was going to leave a note with the batteries attached to their door but decided against it.

I feel that leaving a note would in essence be tantamount to saying, “You’re friggin alarm was driving me crazy! In fact so crazy that I had to leave this freaking house and spend my own money on batteries to quiet that god damned thing!”

In the end I felt leaving batteries was more anonymous and less confrontational. I noticed that when they arrived the beeping of the alarm stopped and the batteries were gone.

I hope they’re not mad at me or retaliate against me. Then again maybe they think it was left by the woman upstairs who’s constantly afraid of fire. I think that would make more sense to them than the very odd woman who avoids eye contact and doesn't say much.

WHAT I’M WEARING: Right now I have on a pair of light blue pajamas with a cloud design on them along with blue fuzzy slippers.