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Friday,
December 29, 2006

A lovely thing

The newest issue of Helix is up, a couple of days early because we made a command decision that none of us wanted to spend our New Year's Eve proofreading and checking links. With this announcement, I would also like to present an absolutely lovely essay from one of the writers featured in the Fall '06 issue, the beauteous and talented Peg Robinson, who explains why you should toss a penny in the hat.

Here We Come a-Wassailing
By Peg Robinson

I am, as seems too often to be the case, being subversive.

Will Sanders and Lawrence Watt-Evans have made it clear, and more than clear, that if I dare try to sneak a penny into the old man's hat — or even a ha'penny — it will come back to me with such increased velocity as to challenge Einsteinian physics. I have presented a piece of work to Helixsf.com, and from henceforth my money is no good in that bar. Indeed, they are paying me: in coin of the bloody realm, and in all the graciousness of being treated as an honored fellow of their effort. So I can't make a donation, no matter how freakin' good I think their goals are or how much I think they deserve to succeed — and think we need them to.

Hell with that bullshit.

Lawrence has made it plain that Janis Ian turned poor Will's head so far around it made one wonder if he'd turned owl in his old age. I'm all for Janis Ian, but I've got other lyrics that haunt me. Joni Mitchell's "Playin' Real Good, For Free," with its haunting contrast of a professional musician passing a street-corner player, has become one of my soul-songs: one I come back to again and again. Her recognition that the value of his art is as great as hers — maybe even, somehow, magically greater — for being offered for free, in the hope that gratitude and deep joy will offer back a nickel, a dime, a dollar bill in the old fedora, and in the burning knowledge that the music was worth it, regardless. That there is a real, time-honored covenant between the artist, the art, and the audience that overrides all other issues.

I don't know how it works for you. For me? When I pass a busking player, and I have any time at all, I listen. If he or she is any good, I try to show it. If there's paper money in my pocket — the artist gets some. If all I have is coin — even a penny will do. When I'm cold stony broke, I try to find a silent moment between sets to say to the corner player, "That was real good." If that's not even possible, I at least try to throw the "thumbs up" as I go by, knowing that it's too hot, or too cold, or too humid, or too windy, or too lonely, or too dangerous, or just too damn everything on a street corner — but that someone loves the pure sweet sound of what they're doing enough to busk with it, rather than break into houses or flip burgers.

And I do it because I know that everything new started out in a slum, on a street corner, scribbled on a cocktail napkin in a bar. It stumbled, unexpected, across a high-school auditorium stage, flew into the mind of a prim, totally unlikely math tutor, danced wild and new and free on a honky-tonk piano, and rattled the windows of the suburbs as some garage band turned up the amps and really set out to ROCK!

So Helix comes a-wassailing, and you have to decide, as established professionals, as promising beginners, and as just plain loving readers, if it's worth flipping a coin in the fedora. If it matters to you that there are forums where no-names and the Big Names can play what they love, because they love it, and give you a chance to see what you might never see any other way then flip in some coin. Because Helix has provided a street corner where artists can "play real good for free — or for whatever you can afford to toss in the hat."

The most honored S.O.B.s who edit that worthy work won't let me dunk a penny in…and this testimonial won't add a single penny to the check they've already sent me in the mail. I have nothing to lose but my honor if I stay silent, and nothing to gain — but my honor — if I choose to do a little shilling, since they won't accept my dime. So. Here it is. My honor, my one, white plume if you get the litr'ary reference.

"We are not daily beggars who beg from door to door,
But we are neighbors' children, whom you have seen before,
Love and joy come to you,
And to you glad tidings too,
And we're playin' real good, for free."

If you read Helix — even if you don't read Helix — put a penny in the hat, and invest in that silent, holy covenant with the audience that brings jazz out of the bordellos and honky-tonks, and rock out of a garage band made up of six kids of poor complexion and uncertain age and gender, and pure, perfect art out of a blind sax-player on a street corner.

And Will and Lawrence, you can make all the bloody rules you like and I will honor them — as I honor you. But I will continue to be my subversive self and support the extraordinary, because, damn it, if I don't then not even that one pure, white plume is left to me. So there.

For some reason, I'm baking

Before Christmas the Bodacious Brit mentioned wistfully that he really had a taste for mince pie (a British treat, it usually includes apples and raisins in a sweet brown sauce), so last night I successfully baked a batch of miniature mince pies, at left, which he has sampled and declared completely nummy.

This has apparently kicked off a heretofore unknown baking gene. Earlier this year a friend bought me a cookie/appetizer press, which has sat fallow in the kitchen pantry for lo these past few months. Today I decided to pull it out for no apparent reason, follow the included recipe for spritz cookies, and make some nifty shaped cookies complete with pretty multicolored sugar.

This is faboo, of course, but there's one little problem -- spritz cookies, yummy as they are, are primarily butter, sugar and flour, which I'm really trying to avoid right now after realizing over the Christmas holiday that I look like a bowl of peach-colored Jello. So I asked the Bodacious Brit if he thought he could bring in a container of cookies for his coworkers.

Which just goes to show that I've been away from the tech sector for way too long, because he gave me a long, disbelieving look. "Petal, I work with engineers," he said patiently. "They live for free food. Give me whatever you like, and I can promise you that it'll be devoured within the day."

The cookies are currently cooling and will be packed into an airtight container for January 2. I've had one, and it will do nicely. Lyndon has had three, and suggest that I will become the cookie goddess of his office. It's all good.