Please note: The February 3 issue of Willamette Week‘s listing for this performance states that there is a “$5 suggested donation.” This is false.  We are grateful to be listed in the paper, but 3 Friends Mondays is a free event, and we never ask for a cover charge or a donation at the door.

Love Outlives Us

A. Molotkov, Bruce Greene
and the Moonlit Guttery Team

an evening of words with music

Bruce Greene:
text, spoken voice

The Team:

Shawn Austin:
text, spoken voice
David Cooke:
text, spoken voice
Ragon Linde:
guitar, electric guitar, percussion, musical direction
Carrie-Ann Tkaczyk:
text, vocals, spoken voice

A. Molotkov:
text, spoken voice, vocals, duduk, percussion, handsonic

Luke Lefler:
sound

Based on texts by A. Molotkov, Bruce Greene, Shawn Austin, David Cooke and Carrie-Ann Tkaczyk, “Love Outlives Us” is a symbolic exploration of the value and meaning of a human life, the character-defining nature of human interaction, and each individual’s responsibility for the world in which they conspire to exist. The tone of this performance is balanced around a stark contrast between A. Molotkov’s mysterious and laconic verses and Bruce Greene’s real life stories, in this case his experiences as a teacher in the years following the war in Vietnam. Shawn Austin, David Cooke and Carrie-Ann Tkaczyk contribute their own unique visions to make up a whole that has a sense of unity, despite its many edges. Ragon Linde’s musical contribution and several sung compositions by A. Molotkov expand the palette. Backed up by music, words acquire a greater levity, contributing to the listener’s ability to be entranced and whisked away on an hour-long tour of self-discovery through meaning and metaphor. Several audience participation numbers allow the listeners to become part of the performance in a more tangible way than possible in a passive listening mode. “Love Outlives Us” seeks to engage the audience on all levels, to ask questions that will linger in one’s mind long after the performers have left the stage.

love outlives us

like trees

love outlives us

like the air we breathe

Bruce Greene, David Cooke, Carrie-Ann Tkaczyk and A. Molotkov are members of The Guttery, www.theguttery.com.

Shawn Austin and A. Molotkov are the founding members of The Moonlit Poetry Caravan, www.meetup.com/MoonlitPoetry.

Luke Lefler is the Digital Media Producer for Show and Tell Gallery.

Bruce Greene

Bruce Greene taught English, history, and psychology in the Bay Area  for many years. He now works with beginning teachers at Marylhurst University. In his eclectic writing career, Bruce has been a correspondent for a national thoroughbred horse magazine and published everything from poetry and  educational research to creative non-fiction and memoir.  He is always looking for another river to fly fish, coffeehouses conducive to writing, and an agent for his recently completed memoir, Above This Wall: The Life and Times of a VISTA Volunteer 1969-70.

Shawn Austin

Shawn Austin would like to thank his wife for putting up with and supporting him. A poet first, Shawn draws on an eclectic approach to poetry stemming from work in the Social Services, Mental Health field, and also from his youth where he credits his poetry, “Being nurtured from the kneecaps of parties.” Much of those perspectives can be found operating in his poetry today. Shawn sees great poetry much like the kitchen, patio, refrigerator, or a toilet; “An inflected space” in a strange house where the reader steps into and interacts. Shawn is a founding member of a poetry meetup group in Portland called “The Moonlit Poetry Caravan” and has started an artistic movement in poetry, called “Inflectionism.”

David Cooke

David Cooke is an award winning poet living in Lake Oswego, Oregon.  His poems have been described as vivid, assured, startling, sustained, lucid, satisfying, lyrical, gorgeous, beautiful, and mysterious.  The poems are complexly layered while preserving a first reading cohesiveness.  His facility at blending everyday language, puns, and natural images with the scientific, mythical, and religious is enviable.  “Edges” received the Ruth Stone Poetry Prize in 2009. “Mentimos Cuando Soñamos” and “Elliptic” will appear in Discretion, the first collection of his poetry. He hopes that you will be quite smitten with each poem.

Italics drawn from written comments by Charles Atkinson, Miciah Bay Gault, and the staff at Hunger Mountain Journal.

Ragon Linde

Ragon Linde is a musician specializing in eclectic jazz. He plays the guitar, drums, and bass. Ragon moved to Portland in 2006 from Tulsa, Oklahoma where he lived most of his life. While in Oklahoma, Ragon played in a wide range of musical groups over the last 35 years whose styles included big band, psychedelic jazz, heavy metal, acoustic folk, classical, and western swing. Much of his work has been recorded and his latest album of work titled My Own Private Jihad can be found on his MySpace site. Ragon is particularly excited about the February 8^th performance as this is his first since moving to Portland three years ago.

Carrie-Ann Tkaczyk

Before landing in Portland, Carrie-Ann Tkaczyk lived all over. She learned kickboxing in Turkey, faced-off with a rhino in Nepal, discussed the weather with Queen Elizabeth in England, and was chastised by Mother Theresa in India.  She’s now proud to declare herself a coffee mug carryin’, microbrew drinkin’, Powell browsin’, environmental stumpin’, trail hikin’ Portlander.  She writes novels about the adventures that occur when the will of the individual and the collective muscle of a culture clash.

A. Molotkov

A. Molotkov is a writer, composer, filmmaker and visual artist.  He lives in constant stress, torn between a multitude of projects in various art forms – way too many for any one sane individual to handle.  Born in Russia, he moved to the US in 1990 and switched to writing in English in 1993.  He is the author of several novels, short story and poetry collections and the winner of the 2008 E. M. Koeppel Short Fiction Award.  The winning story “Round Trip” has been nominated for the 2009 Pushcart Award and accepted by Intramel for publication in Italian.   A. Molotkov’s poetry and short stories have appeared in over a dozen publications, both in print and online.  His inclination to break the rules and his interest towards blending art forms tend to get him in trouble a lot, including the challenging performance of Love Outlives Us.  Visit him at www.AMolotkov.com if you have a second or a week to spare.

7 p.m., Three Friends Coffee House
SE 12th and Ash, Portland, Oregon