Baylor by Kouros

Baylor by Kouros. Maybe Fall 2014, a still from a film--the semester in Songs and Places that Kouros (Kouros Alaghband--Mr. K) would make a film each week, and show it in class. We'd all be sitting around the big table (several of the maple-top tables grouped together), late in the evening--in anticipation. The hanging lamp dimmed, making for an atmosphere of arrival. Somehow it seemed right from the very get-go that Kouros' film would be the week's finale. He was meticulous in his set-up--bending over his laptop, getting the projection details ready--the same attentiveness he brought to all his work, the lighting and editing, the scripts--but the films themselves were wild. Unpredictable, engaging. His actors--or better, subjects--always members of the class. We never saw how he arranged this, but when the week's offering began--there was the person we all knew, now transformed into one or another mythic being--as above, with Baylor, who had become the essential 19-year old underground man--as recaptured in a cafe in Berkeley. Alternative substances (liquid, powder), yes, and often music (the week's song), these invented character studies were beautiful and revealing. (Noor with an ancient accordion--we're looking down at her toes--who turns and dives from a low cliff into the cobalt waters of Lake Anza--it's a beautiful winter morning, very cold, with tall, shadowy sunlit trees.)  Everyone loved them--and not just because they were home grown. It was obvious that Mr. K. would pursue this for the rest of his days...

And that we might, too...


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And Baylor, of course , who brings his own story. The Woody Guthrie show at Cal (Baylor as one of the Woody's), and his own personal songs--the way he'd sing them for us those S&P evenings, impelled, compelled, propelled. Always a mystery, their Baylor source.  I'd told him I expected work on the wall as well (even though he came as a music man) so after one mad self-portrait on crumpled paper, Baylor, over the following weeks, would nail a shoe to the wall--a soft, Berkeley-student flat-soled slipper type shoe, quite well-worn) marking the spot where he would later stand and sing...! Theater being always a wonderful part of the Baylor persona...


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