Here is the Fire + Water story:
Moving On in the Spirit of Life, Love
by Josh Shear
After eight years, The Fire & Water Cafe and Performance Space, located at 5 Old South
Street in Northampton, will close on November 30. On the last day, people are invited to
share their experiences in the space.
NORTHAMPTON œ Theirs is a story of life, art and love. It is a story of people ... of beautiful
people, for and from whom beauty is felt, not seen. And it is the story of a project they are
ready to finish.
Star Drooker and Trish Overstreet met 10 years ago and immediately put their heads, hearts
and dreams together. Within 24 hours, they were engaged to be married. Trish was a
California woman, a chef, a photographer. Star was a New York City baker and artist ... a
photographer, film-maker and musician. Trish wanted to open a restaurant. Star was ready
to open a performance space.
Here\'s how the plan was to work: They would get married, travel the country, and find a
location for what was now to be their restaurant/performance space. In that space, they
would raise their child, whom they would name Jesse. It was to be a four-year project. Call it
performance art.
Circumstances put the couple in Northampton in the middle of a snowstorm in the first half of
the 1990s. They had found their location. And Trish was pregnant with Jesse.
While Trish was at home reeling with the effects of morning sickness and with the things thatv needed to be done around the house, Star was in a Northampton basement building what
was to become the Fire & Water Cafe and Performance Space (which we\'ll call F&W for
brevity\'s sake).
"Fire & Water was meant to be a conceptual ... art piece," Star told me, as he and Trish sat
down with me at the cafe. "That\'s a good reason why F&W feels unique."
The concept became a reality as 1993 became 1994. The cafe opened, and in February, Jesse
was born. Everything had gone as planned. Except: Jesse\'s first experience in the world was
open heart surgery. He lived 19 days.
While Trish, Star and Jesse were in Boston during that time, some friends chipped in to run
the cafe. When they returned to Northampton, the most common comment they heard was
that Jesse\'s passing was a tragedy.
Star, having learned from the experience, refused to see his son\'s short life as such, and like
a father who had built a nursery for his son ... for that\'s really what F&W was ... he tapped
into Jesse\'s spirit and welcomed people into the cafe as though they were in Jesse\'s
playhouse, for, in reality, they were.
Trish, on the other hand, had a harder time of it. "It was hard for me to see ... he came from
my body," she said. "It was hard for me to be at Fire & Water. I wanted to be with [Jesse],
but not here. Star was the one who connected with his spirit. Star saw an opportunity. I
didn\'t think I could face walking in here again."
Star, meanwhile, had ... and still has ... the memory of having physically built the space. He
hammered nails, hung pictures, and plugged in refrigerators. But for him, too, it wasn\'t just a
cafe. "I wouldn\'t have built the space without the notion of Jesse coming," he said. "It\'s built
with the impulse of a parent\'s love for a child."
Looking back from eight years out, Trish said that "Jesse\'s life confirmed ... more than
informed or educated ... our beliefs, drives, dreams. More than creating a new vision, it
confirmed it."
Sometimes when one is putting together a piece of art in a live setting, things change.
Jesse\'s passing certainly made Star and Trish rethink the way that they would live and the
future of F&W.
A year after they had their experience with Jesse, Trish became pregnant again. She had a
miscarriage, and hemorrhaged badly. "I thought I was going to die," she said. She didn\'t. A
year after that ... nearly three years into a conceptual piece that was meant to be four years
long ... she got pregnant again. The couple kept the pregnancy quiet. They didn\'t want to get
anybody\'s hopes up. Then, they had a son, Rain Arrow.
They brought Rain into the space. Before they knew it, four years had passed. There were
offers to buy the cafe. There were chances to move on. But there was the promise of a new
patio, and the chance to watch Rain grow up in F&W\'s atmosphere, which by then included
friends and musicians and poets and writers and artists who understood that Jesse\'s spirit
inhabited the place.
Rain has spent his first five years in the space. He plays with toys, talks to people, he plays
the piano, he watches, he listens and he learns. He has even been known to make some
introductions at the Wednesday night open poetry reading, Trish said. And in those five
years, she added, even when there is a performance going on, no one has asked Rain to
stop doing what he\'s doing, ever.
Rain is very aware that he has a brother who didn\'t live. Jesse\'s photo hangs above Rain\'s
bed. Trish said that the photo was on a different wall, and Rain asked that it be moved to
where it currently hangs.
***
Walking into F&W, it is clear that it is a unique place. It is a basement space with two rooms
separated by a counter. the walls are brick and concrete. There is a mish-mash of furniture
styles. There\'s a long counter with pastries and coffee and a cash register. The menu by now
is moot; November 26 was the last day of food service, as Star and Trish look toward closing
on November 30.
And there is spirit in the space. For some it\'s Jesse, for others, it\'s the feeling that this was
indeed a stop ... albeit a brief one ... on the Underground Railroad, and for some, it\'s just that
the place is a basement, and who would have thought of putting a cafe in that spot?
I first walked in about seven years ago. Sometimes, it would be months in between visits.
Then, it was every Monday for the Open Stage (not an open mic, because there was no
amplification). Then, it was three or four times a week, depending on who was performing. I
still pop in once a week, sometimes more. Lately it\'s been more ... many of the friends I\'ve
made over the years are going back more often, and the musicians I\'ve met who come
through the room are playing their final shows.
I can\'t list the names of the dozens of people I\'ve met in the room. Some were performers,
some were people coming to listen to performances. Some were people looking for a cup of
coffee. It\'s the sort of cafe that if you need conversation, you can go in, and someone will be
willing to talk to you. About anything. It\'s a place that challenges people to be themselves.
For most of the eight years that F&W has been open, there have been somewhere in the
neighborhood of 15 to 20 performances a week. Some of the artists have moved on to bigger
venues. Some have come from bigger venues because they wanted to play in the room. And
some have learned all about performing.
"Fire & Water is not just a place to play a concert in Northampton," Cambridge-based
songwriter James O\'Brien wrote in an e-mail. "It\'s a challenging room, with expectations and
a bar for quality that has been set a formidable height. As a musician and writer I have spent
my years with the Fire & Water learning and relearning my approach to the audience.
"Star Drooker taught this artist that creation and delivery of art is a learning curve, a friendly
struggle, a negotiation and a process to be revered. He helped me understand that one can
doubt the results, but maintain faith in the effort. As the artist grows, with rooms like Fire &
Water on their side, they become confident that they\'ve earned a right to an audience.
"I will always owe a great debt to Fire & Water because of this truth. It\'s pretty much the first
place I felt I earned my right to stand up and play."
O\'Brien performed his final concert at F&W on November 18. He thanked Star, who joined him
on drums, between each song.
Torontonians Ember Swift and Lyndell Montgomery started playing at F&W in early 2000.
They, like O\'Brien, and like a host of other musicians who have come through, are political
activists who don\'t always agree with the politics of business and profit.
"It is one of the few venues in North America and Australia we have encountered that is so
supportive of local, national and international [independent] music," Montgomery said in an
e-mail. "What a relief it was to pull up the van and trailer in the lane way, load in and know
that the show was going to be about people and music, not about pretense and posing."
***
And for Star and Trish, the people and the spirit are what will continue about F&W. In the
same way that the end of Jesse\'s life did not mean an end to the concept of F&W, or even to
Jesse\'s involvement in F&W. Just because F&W won\'t physically be there anymore doesn\'t
mean the space is gone ... out of sight, out of mind.
Now, the same way that people said that Jesse\'s passing was a tragedy, Trish said that
people are saying, "It\'s so sad that you\'re closing." She would rather people take what
they\'ve learned in the space, and apply it to the rest of their lives.
While Star admits that it will be strange to see the place close, both are ready to move on.
They feel that they\'ve outgrown the space. "When you\'re a business man, you sell the place
and coast," Star said. "When you\'re an artist, you move on, then transform."
"Project done," added Trish. "We\'re graduating."
The next piece of the F&W project is a book. Star said it will be a "personal account, a love
story." Beyond that, they don\'t know what form the book will take. It will likely include recipes
(I\'ve been putting in for the chili) and photos, as well as comments and stories from people
who have been involved with the space.
Another part of the ongoing project will be to see who sticks around. "We\'ve had profound
and brief encounters within Fire & Water," Star said. "It will be a challenge to follow up and
through with connections, without the convenience of meeting at Fire & Water."
They are also looking at another venue. It will be different; it will include a full kitchen at
Trish\'s demand; it will reflect who they are now, not who they were when they opened F&W.
In the end, F&W will have been about Jesse, it always has been, and always will be.
"It\'s really amazing to me at this point ... we can see how Jesse\'s life and Fire & Water are
parallel," Trish said. "They are brothers. Looking at it philosophically, everything I can say
about Fire & Water, I can say about Jesse."
And it\'s about love.
"It\'s about our love for each other," she added, "for Jesse, for Fire & water, and for the
people."
