Even Cowgirls Get the Blues--The Stage Production

Even Cowgirls Get the Blues Bookcrossing release at Book-It stage production of the book, originally uploaded by MaryWit.

I entered the theater with a cynical attitude, fully expecting to be disappointed--how could they dare to presume to capture the essence of a Tom Robbins book? Sacrilege! But from the first moment, the first chord of Jo Miller's guitar, the first words of her narration as "Dr. Robbins," I was smitten. Everything was perfect--they got it--the paradoxes, The Point. From the cast, to the costumes, the score and the dialogue, this production was as if they had entered the reader's (my) mind and made the impressions manifest.

I was suprised at the shocked murmerings of some audience members (primarily the coiffed, blue-haired old biddies and their creaking, rigid husbands) who had clearly never read the book and were unfamiliar with TR's work. They had lived for so long inside their dark, tight boxes that the vivid ideas presented before their very eyes was nearly more than they could bear. They tsk-tsked and puckered disapprovingly at not only the appropriate, sweet and delightfully brazen nudity, but at the ideas, paradoxes and challenges presented in stark glory--forcing them to come face to face their own prejudices, presumptions and prudery.

My unemployment benefits are quickly running out, they'll end in a few short weeks. My savings are gone. I've applied and interviewed for many jobs, but none have come through (it's hard to stand out when 2-300 people are applying for the same jobs!). Still, I'll say this, if you're going down in flames, there is no better way to go down than with the vision of wild, wild Cowgirls and the Chink before your eyes. In TR's own words, "So you think that you’re a failure, do you? Well, you probably are. What’s wrong with that? In the first place, if you’ve any sense at all you must have learned by now that we pay just as dearly for our triumphs as we do for our defeats. Go ahead and fail. But fail with wit, fail with grace, fail with style. A mediocre failure is as insufferable as mediocre success. Embrace failure! Seek it out. Learn to love it. That may be the only way any of us will ever be free." Amen. And it was in that spirit that I bid on two Cowgirls outfits in a silent auction to benefit Book-It theater--complete with bent-up cowgirl hats and dusty, hard-worn cowgirl boots.



I released a copy of the book in the theater lobby and had the great pleasure of seeing the finder find it, open the "free book" bookcrossing bag and tentatively tuck it into her own hand bag. After the play, I saw her stop, take it out of her bag, open it, read the BC label again (did she wonder if it was really ok to take it?), smile, and leave with the book. This morning, she had left a BC journal entry. I had hoped that someone who hadn't read the book before would find it and discover the delights of Tom Robbins's writing. She was that person! And even better--she, too, had visited the Blue Moon in the 70s ("a girl wearing peter-pan collers") TR was writing the book, and remembered his friends (including Darrell Bob Houston? Ray Collins?). She was excited to have found the book--said it reminded her of something TR would do--and can't wait to finally read it. It was perfect.

Tom Robbins and The Corpus Clock

Ticking off the minutes before Stephen Hawking unveils the Corpus Clock today in Cambridge, one is struck by the pundits' failure to connect this marvel with Tom Robbins's clockworks in his 1976 novel, “Even Cowgirls Get the Blues." Oh, sure, Stephen Hawking is a brilliant scientific mind, but of equal brilliance is beloved and esteemed author Tom Robbins. His literary and philosophical brilliance is of another kind entirely. Both masters shine dazzling light onto the masses. If this were a just world, the two would share the unveiling equally--TR on the left, SH on the right.

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Take now the clockworks… The clockworks, being genuine and not much to look at, don’t generate the drama of an Earth-tilt or a flying saucer, nor do they seem to offer any immediate panacea for humanity’s fifty-seven varieties of heartburn. But suppose that you’re one of those persons who feels trapped, to some degree, trapped matrimonially, occupationally, educationally or geographically, or trapped in something larger than all those; trapped in a system, or what you might describe as an “increasingly deadening technocracy” or a “theater of paranoia and desperation” or something like that. Now, if you are one of those persons… wouldn’t the very knowledge that there are clockworks ticking away behind the wallpaper of civilization, unbeknownst to leaders, organizers and managers (the President included), wouldn’t that knowledge, suggesting as it does the possibility of unimaginable alternatives, wouldn’t that knowledge be a bubble bath for your heart?”

~Tom Robbins, “Even Cowgirls Get the Blues”