“Bass players know how to do shit,” was the ready reply of my longtime college roommate, whether he was returning, very late, from a date with the new, unapproachably beautiful girl on the quad — or bagging the lead in the spring musical without ever having taken a drama class.
Local Pagosa bass player Michael Coto knows how to get things done as well.
In short, you just do them.
Poet and musician Michael Coto, posing in a corner of the Pagosa Baking Company "performance space." |
Whether playing bass for a number of regional groups as they play musical chairs, building geothermal greenhouses, or dealing personably and quickly with the lift line of breakfasters at the Pagosa Baking Company, Coto displays an open, friendly but not unedgy artistic temperament.
There has been a lot of talk about Pagosa as an arts town in recent years. And a number of silly studies and gargantuan funding proposals. Yet, arts towns aren’t created by 6th Avenue consultants and wealthy second-ranch owners. In short you need to create a town where artists want to live, and can afford to live. You have to be willing to live with artists, as well. Which might include inviting a few visual artists on to your design review and planning boards. An artist or two might even prevent the historic preservation district from remaining a mausoleum of mediocrity.
There are, by my informal count, about 100 corners in Pagosa buildings that could easily stage half the Off-Broadway dramas playing this Saturday evening. Ten unbound performers and one hundred folks willing to pay as much for a ticket as an entrée, and you have a theatre.
It’s really a question of what we are hungry for.
Michael Coto, Kathy Keyes and friends hope Pagosa is hungry for some simple corner readings at the Pagosa Baking Company on the first Thursday of each month from 6-9pm (pretentious but true — but if you are already consulting your mental TV Guide, you can probably stop reading right now).
So, Coto and Keyes have set aside one corner of the bakery.
“What we are hoping for — our main goal — is to bring a little more art into Pagosa Springs. Freewise. No charge. Giving people a venue where they can express themselves,” Coto explained when we spoke about ‘Hearts and Minds,’ the monthly program kicking off this Thursday.
“We have a lot of free music around town — now — and growing support for our artists in that way, but not really much right now when it comes to spoken word.”
Coto recounted the beginnings of the project, typically informal and unfinanced: “Basically, the idea occurred here one day after my friend Dave McDonough had read his poetry for some folks at the bakery. Well, these folks were friends with our owner Kathy and they called her, and were inspired — ‘That was really fascinating to come into your bakery and meet a poet willing to speak his stuff.’ So Kathy asked me if I could invite a few more poets and put something together.”
“It is an open invitation. We are going to start up with any spoken word. I would prefer that people share their own work, but that’s not necessary. I’d like people to be able to express artistically from this area their ideas and concepts locally.”
Coto hopes everyone can make Monsieur Jourdain’s discovery — “These forty years now, I’ve been speaking prose without knowing it!” Everyone is invited to speak. Everything from letters to Santa to Part One of your personal “Paterson” is welcome.
“But I know it’s tricky for people to feel comfortable,” he explained. “So if people want to come in and read the work of someone else first, and free themselves up a little bit, we want to give them that opportunity. We are going to be getting together on the first Thursday of every month for 6-9pm. We’ve scheduled three hours but we’re not punching a clock, and if enough people sign up we can go until ten or eleven o’clock.”
 A light dessert menu and coffees and espressos will be available. Coto, in his appealingly diplomatic but decisive manner, explained that a very light musical menu is preferred. “This not a musical thing, but if someone wants some minor accompaniment, a mandolin, acoustic guitar or hand drum, that’s totally cool. This is spoken word and not songs, though.”
There are few rules, other than well-timed, but not impeccable, manners: “We want to try and keep the first couple hours on the family-friendly side. Hopefully, we will have more and more kids here each month. We are asking people with any profane language and edgier subjects to wait until a little later in the program.”
“One of the things we are trying to avoid — and it is really big now in the poetry world — is one of these poetry slams where there is a real competitive aspect. One of the things we are not providing is a venue and a competition where someone can prove how good they are.”
Coto likes the small start. In a corner. “We don’t expect a huge turnout but we are hoping that slowly more and more folks will come out of the woodwork. That’s the way it worked out here musically.”
The Four Corners Folk Festival, it is recalled, started out in the corner of a bakery, right? |