Spotlight: April 3, 1998

They say politics make strange bedfellows. Given the amount of press and attention devoted to sexual scandal in America today, I think that politics makes ABUNDANT bedfellows, to say the least. But that's not my point.

I think music makes strange bedfellows, too. I've been thinking for a couple of weeks about two women who couldn't be more different from each other, though both are intimately acquainted with Santa Cruz as the perfect stage for their artistic vision. I'm talking about Marin Alsop, Music Director for Cabrillo Music Festival and Laura Ellen Hopper, Program Director for KPIG radio.

My introduction to the Cabrillo Music Festival had been gradual, until a few weeks ago, when I was fully immersed in an education only a few people are blessed to receive. I've interviewed Marin and five composers so far, and I marvel at the breadth and scope of the festival's vision…which is to say Marin's vision, for she is director, conductor, architect and seamstress of the most unique celebration of living orchestral music in America. There is literally no other festival in the country who does what CMF does. Moreover, before Leonard Bernstein died, he passed the baton to her. She is a phenomenal woman.

And then there is my friend, Laura Ellen. We've all just breathed a huge sigh of relief that KPIG avoided being butchered by clueless out-of-towners who reconsidered their greed only when faced with an exodus of listeners that would make the Pied Piper of Hamlin look like the Maytag repairman.

Can you imagine being so dense that you come to a town like Santa Cruz and start giving orders about how much cooler and better you're going to make the coolest radio station in the world BEFORE you've even made a Hog Call? Can you imagine not understanding that all the jokes about pigs, swine, mud, troughs, getting dirty, or porking are just code words for the elite (kind of like a secret club for cool people) that only the humorless don't get?

Worse still, try imagining being a life-form who thinks that "playing greatest hits" is doing a service to our lives. (You can ask Marin or the composers what being required by the Suits to "play what sells" does to your soul.)

The more I think about it, the more I realize that Santa Cruz is the perfect place for CMF and KPIG to co-exist.

In trying to describe the spirit of Santa Cruz to some of the festival's visiting composers, I've thought long and hard about this town. I just can't bring myself to think of Santa Cruz as a "city," because it doesn't have that feeling. I think of it more as a jewel, a cocoon, a secret, or a planet of its own. It feels like there is a membrane that protects us (somewhat) from the influences of Silly-Koan Valley.

For so many of us who live here, we do so because we simply couldn't live anywhere else. There are world-class talents here who didn't want the in-your-face urban lifestyle that fosters competition and smothers (or strangles) a certain species of collaborative creativity.

I myself was expected to go to New York City after high school, so I could pursue the acting and writing career everyone predicted for me. Failing to muster even a molecule of ambition to compete in that jungle, I meandered around (aimlessly, pointlessly, unconsciously and somehow successfully) for years. I watched my older sister forge a career in which I'd been anointed, and I languished in New Age doldrums.

I've been in Santa Cruz nine years now. I admit that I've taken for granted all the wonderful things that happen here (and the ones that have happened to me). I'm thinking of Sleepy John, Kuumbwa, the Blues Festival, Gourd Music, Mount Madonna Choir, Hearts for the Arts, and people like Stan Rushworth (teaches writing at Cabrillo College), Dresden (Nancy LeVan is a towering goddess: poet, presence, and vocalist without compare); Maude Meehan; Felicia Rice; Rick Turner; and thousands of others who live and breathe art as freedom, art as life.

I think there is a common thread that runs through Santa Cruz's creative DNA, and I would sum it up thus: "I can think for myself." I don't want someone telling me that "this is a masterpiece" or that "classic rock is what the masses want to hear." I don't want to hear the masses, thank you. The saleswoman at the car lot completely lost me as a customer forever when she tried to sell me a sports-utility vehicle (doesn't that sound like a baseball that's been through the washing machine?) by saying, "It's the most popular unit in America." Popular? Masses? I can think for myself. My idea for a good radio station motto would be, "No Celine, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week!"

What I am interested in, and apparently most of Santa Cruz is, is in what is authentic, individual, original and still flavorful. We are a community of some intensely creative people who don't need to make the big splash or dress up to do so. (That will be a separate column. Why CAN'T we dress up more? Am I the only woman in town who gets ticketed for violating the "no pantyhose on a public street" ordinance?)

As long as I'm in Santa Cruz, I'm just so glad we have people like Laura Ellen Hopper and Marin Alsop calling the tunes.