MacArthur Boulevard, An Old Love Affair

We all grew up somewhere. Places in our coming of age travel with us in the stories of our days, a patchwork quilt, scenes in our memories, the stuff of our nostalgia,ethereal flash cards, that make our memories whole. If my dramatization here in stories and music, mime and dance succeeds for you, it will take you back to your MacArthur Boulevard, your old love affairs. My telling here comes of a lifelong compulsion to come toterms with the too early passing away of my father, his passing before I got to know him as an adult, before I came to know myself whole, to leave him with a good impression of me in his last days. MacArthur Boulevard is a road in Washington, D.C. where I grew up.The road originates just north of Georgetown at Foxhall Road and runs next to the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal, the Potomac River and the Potomac Palisades,and ends at the Great Falls of the Potomac River. Metaphorically, figuratively, MacArthur Boulevard is an artery in my consciousness, so much of my young life played out all along that road. MacArthur Boulevard An Old Love Affair, began as a musical evocation of particular places along its length, Chain Bridge, Brookmont, Hilltop Tavern, Glen Echo Amusement Park, Bannockburn, Cabin John Bridge, Great Falls of the PotomacRiver…with powerful emotional associations from my personal history up to about my thirtieth year.

Street Theater.

I would select one such place to dwell on among my memories and improvise out of my feelings as I meditated, horn in hand, to my lips. From these musical meditations, I recorded six movements, a prelude, “Nostalgia” and “Nostalgia, The Finale”, vocal rendition sung by Irene Goodnight. Intrinsically, there is a narrative quality to the musical compositions.The compositions were made impromptu and spontaneous and recorded on the first take. There is some over dubbing, but no revision. Herein is a loose web of a script of sorts, more accurately the prompts for musicians, players, mimes, dancers to extend my evocation of my passages in time played out along MacArthur, coming of age, into an oratorio of a universal experience. Herein are gleanings, evolutions of musical narrative into poems, vignettes, sketches/drawings, imaginings and musings, prompts for street theater. My compositions are scored and included in this script for whatever purpose that may serve. There is no particular order to the script which is intended to be approached at random and interjected by the players’ inclinations, street theater…

Street theater.

Shawnee Boyd