Grady

1-19-97

Ann,

The vid or video is a simple document. You lay a sound track on supervideo 8 and then video-insert photos or stills off the tv, or a movie, or any other image. That is all there is to it.

A very quiet revolution is going on today in the suburbs. Cable tv of a village nature.

Canton probably is the best and most creative station in the area. Tania Willow is the coordinator of a piece of that operation and her artistic, political, magical sense of the town is unparalled. She is but a remarkable and funny, young woman whom I hope you get to know. She inspires me always and has had a big impact on Dover, which-all she is not aware of, because I never told her. I forgot.

She puts on the air every single, scheduled, town committee meeting. All of them. I got that idea from her and I scurry around Dover looking for grant money to pay someone a pittance to video tape a Conservation, or Board of Health or School Committee meeting. I just got three hundred bucks from Jimmy Schneider, head of Nutop Kitchens of Whiting Road, Dover, which means we can do ten programs on different town commitees and pay someone thirty bucks for taping a meeting I choose.

The towns of our region tape things like the first day of school which I did a few years back on the Chickering School, our lower grades school, where my kids went some years ago; town parades; concerts; traffic through town; tours of the town and its people along with building; you get the drift. This is a visual history as well as a loving look by citizens of their town. Much of it is erased. A term that is used is the ominous "bulked out." That is what they did to some of the work I did in Wrentham. I just got erased.

That happened to much of Stan Chilson's work in the thirties, forties and fifties in Franklin and environs. A lot went to the dump.

History repeats itself. Always.

You just became a category in my computer, Ann. I don't know if that is good or bad. I hope good for you and the sisters. Grady is in the computer, 'cause I enjoyed talking to you.

Here is my only word of caution. There will be no others, I hope, as I am prone to Jeremiads and hate myself for it. Like "the world is going to hell in a bucket," and "the stinkers bulk out the good work, for a ballgame or a show on the latest, and for me, disgusting rock band as in Wrentham, where the group being featured, distinguishes itself with some four letter word uttered at the top of some freak's lungs amid some clamor of what they euphemistically label a musical instrument."

Ann. Sistren, I mean sisters as opposed to brethren. Never, never think of one piece of work, but only of a series that won't end until you do. Explain. I have done forty or so pieces on contemporary Greek poetry in the American Diaspora. Ten pieces or so on Stan Chilson and counting. Several on American artists and thinkers. Some on tv shows I have seen like "Cybil," or on movies like "Gump" and "Nell." Spike Lee's "Crooklyn." The films of the Italian-American, Nancy Savoca.

So just do a modest document on the business of Regis of some twenty photos and an accompanying text and then another. Think of it as a series, and not as one great opus that has to be got right. The thing is so easy as falling off a rock.

My end? The proverbial hidden agenda? I just wanna boogie. And that means if I can get any town group to discover village tv, I am happy. Sorry if I disappoint you by locating your order, college, group, with the Boy Scouts, a local garden club or reading group, but at some level you are but a piece of a community. Like Harvard, the Garden club or a local Board of Health and it is my mission to turn every and all persons on to local tv.

I have to go now to Briggs's farm in West Medway for milk. He's got cows. Some thirty-one. To the dump in Dover. To drop my latest vid on Greek culture to a member of the regional school committee. Seems she grew up in Chicago and calls grandma some Greek woman she claims is her godmother. She, Claire Mc Cully is not Greek but thinks she is

Hope we can do some business together. Free community art. The best there is with not a taint of the dollar. Once some long years ago, some sister of your order let me and my daughter sell silver jewelry outside your cafeteria. We had no money at all and were trying to bring in a buck. She let me set up for free. Did not charge me any rent. I never forget a kindness and ever since have had a soft spot for your place.

I went and used the library a few years back and no-one threw me out. I guess I am not minded when I come in and out of the cold in January as I have the last few years. I can't peddle t shirts in the cold that easy and the forces at Regis don't seem to mind if I sit there. Plus people I now know leave me be for hours as I dream up new vids on Chilson and the Greek culture.

So nice to know ya.

Paul Campanis, 36 Miller Hill Road, Dover 02030 508-785-1008. At cha service.

PS Forgot something. I only do positive tv. No violence or gore or putting someone down. Democracy relies on that and I don't object, but I only do the tv of love. The Greek poet, Vaphopoulos talks of the "pryamida tys haras, " the pyramid of joy and that is the horse I prefer to ride. I just wanna have fun and your project on the history and accomplishments of your order is in that category as far as I am concerned. It truly is important to save the stories of our communities before the photos and we turn to dust, as is the inevitable. The photos mold. Videotape will soon be able to be digitized cheap and so your story, the one of Regis, will, as you, last forever. However long that is.

1-26 When you look at a photo you are taking your sanity in your own hands. I found this in my notes from last week. The work is something you get lost in. Like a crazy person's view of the world. Letter I almost wrote the sister.