I was at a Chanukah party recently wolfing down the potato latkes and watching the world’s most adorable 4 year old finger painting on her iPad. Taking all this in, I drifted off into a reverie of the future: “When she’s my age she’ll reminisce with her friends about how cute and antique it was that once upon a time you actually had to touch the screen with your finger to do something rather than just think about it via the microchip implanted in your cerebral cortex.”
Anyway, as I was dreaming away, a friend who I hadn’t seen for a while came up and said two things:
1. “Good to see you again!"
2. "Hey, your blog posts are slowing down!”
In response I immediately had two reactions:
1. That sense of surprise I always have when I realize there actually are people out there who might be reading what I’m writing.
2. The realization that he was right. My blog posts are slowing down… which may, ahem, also mean I’m slowing down. Yikes!
So, being a good little analytical Virgo type, I started thinking about why this might be the case. Several theories immediately sprung to mind:
• “Bidness” has been better lately, and thus much more time consuming – for which I am profoundly grateful (as are my creditors!)
• We re-financed on our house (which was only slightly less irksome and all absorbing than asking Comrade Stalin for the required papers to leave Mother Russia at the height of the Great Purge.)
• Beatrice has been in France for the last three months helping her folks – so there’s just been more on my plate in terms of the day-to-day stuff involved in administering our… ahem… “estate”… (I was going to say “dacha” – not that we have one – but just because I kind of like the term…. Very Chekhovian.)
• Our koi pond sprung a leak! And if there’s ever a multi-dimensional challenge, involving digging ditches, employing inductive/deductive and reductive reasoning, as well as engaging in intense sessions of prayer and contemplation, it’s trying to troubleshoot and fix a leaky koi pond!
Before moving on though I’d just like to say how much help I received from our neighbor, Brice Hansen, on fixing the koi pond. He was so incredibly generous with his time and physical labor and troubleshooting smarts. What a guy!
After considerable brooding, I’m now leaning to the conclusion that the real reason for my “slow down” is that I’m simply feeling overwhelmed by things… • There’s also seems to be a “wintry feeling” in my heart which may have something to do with the season, a sense of waiting for Spring perhaps, and an overall malaise about the direction that life and the world is taking.
… which brings me back to my last blog post on John Maynard Keynes…
So perhaps I’ll wind up 2010 with a few last thoughts on why Keynes is such an attractive figure to me now. Largely I think it’s because he realized:
1. That the ultimate purpose of studying economics was to provide as many people as possible with what he called “the good life”; e.g., to live “wisely, agreeably, and well.”
2. How uncertain and crazy the future is and that “markets” are not driven by people who possess perfect information and behave rationally but who are often driven by terror and folly.
3. That a horrible gap exists when “self-correcting markets” are lurching towards some kind of pre-ordained “equilibrium” between supply, demand, and full employment and that during those gaps some rather unpleasant things such as… Well… err… fascism… can occur.
4. That everyone should have a basic understanding of economics just as they should know about all other areas of human discourse (religion, science, the arts, philosophy, morals, etc.)
5. That, as a result, economics should be written as clearly and simply as possible and not hide its insights beneath impenetrable “professional” jargon and a blizzard of mathematics.
6. That we are all victims of the “paradox of thrift”; e.g., we start to cut back on spending and want to hoard our gold in times of economic crisis. Of course this is precisely the behavior that will result in the crisis deepening as the demand for goods and services (and thus for employed workers) goes over a cliff. And thus we have the need for the government to step in as the actor of last resort and do a little of that good old stimulating “deficit spending” when everyone else is hiding their money under the bed.
7. That money isn’t simply a convenient means of exchange for getting good and services but rather is a measure of our feelings about the world we live in; e.g., “our desire to hold money as a store of wealth is a barometer of the degree of our distrust of our own calculations and conventions concerning the future. It operates…. at a deeper level of our motivation. It takes charge at the moments when the higher, more precarious conventions have weakened. The possession of actual money lulls our disquietude; and the premium which we require to make us part with money is the measure of the degree of our disquietude.”
“Disquietude” being another way, as I reckon, to say “lending freeze” or “credit crunch” – no matter how much money we may throw at the Financial Services Industry.
Well, that’s just my take. If you’re interested, there is a wonderful short book about Keynes and his relevance to the modern economic crisis. It’s written by Robert Skidelsy, who also wrote a massive three volume biography of JMK for those who really want to take the “deep dive.” Anyway, the shorter book is called:
Keynes: The Return of the Master: Why, Sixty Years After His Death, John Maynard Keynes Is the Most important Economic Thinker for America
You can find it here:
http://www.amazon.com/Keynes-Return-Master-Robert-Skidelsky/dp/158648897X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1293743276&sr=1-1
Meanwhile all best wishes for a wonderful 2011 to everyone out there still reading! Hopefully, we'll all pick up speed as we head into a lovely and bountiful 2011!
Friday, December 31, 2010
Monday, November 29, 2010
Thinking about Keynes
As some of you may know, Béatrice has been in France over the last couple of months. She’s been helping her Dad and Mom who are 93 and 85 years old respectively. Her Dad has been waging a battle with congestive heart failure and Béatrice is doing her best to help him keep his fighting spirit intact. So if you have a moment to send some thoughts, prayers, good vibes, and positive wishes wending their way to the southwest of France, we’d greatly appreciate it!
In any case, being in “bachelor mode” has left me with some time on my hands. And, hey, there’s only so much Sports Center one can watch in a given day! So I’ve been thinking about Keynesian economics to keep myself out of trouble. It’s funny, isn’t it, how one returns to childhood themes and thoughts? My Dad taught economics and was, I believe, a bit of a “Keynesian” himself. I think Dad liked the fact that Keynes was a bit of an outsider in economic circles and not so much a professional academic as someone who had a foot in multiple camps, including, ethics, politics, philosophy, and the arts. Hey, anyone who hung out with Virginia Woolf and Bertrand Russell and made them both feel like “dim bulbs” in comparison must have had something going for him!
For what it’s worth, it was kind of fun being the only kid in my circle who knew who Keynes was – not that that got me any dates or anything. I also think the name “John Maynard Keynes” had and still has a kind of atavistic power for me. As such, he shares that distinction with Eugene O’Neill. When I was a kid, both of their names gave me something of a frisson or existential shiver. Maybe it was because Dad was studying Keynes at USC while my step-mom was simultaneously studying O’Neill at “Valley State” (since dubbed Cal State Northridge). I also think this combination of an interest in economics and theater is what compelled me to write not one, but two plays where the hero was an economist (WWJD? and Safeway Encounter). That probably also has something to do too with the total indifference with which the wider theater world (not to mention the Econ crowd!) has greeted these humble efforts. But there you go….
Of course, Dad was an actor before he became an economist. So that link was there as well.
If you’d like to see my Dad on film, just go to the link below. He comes up at the 3.55 mark. He’s the hard-nosed upper upperclassman who gives Burt Lancaster a hard time about his mighty sloppy bed…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-hmsxznWMw&feature=related
For many reasons, I wish my Dad was still here. But one of them is that we could talk about Keynes. When I was younger, I was too far impatient/bored/full of myself to want to go into any of the macro-micro-miso elements of economics. But now I wish I could ask Dad what he thought of Keynes’ place in our very fractured and heartsick modern world. Above all, I also wonder what Dad would think of the fact that Keynes has been enjoying something of a “comeback” lately.
Everything is kind of a stock market, isn’t it – including the bauble/bubble of reputation? For many years after World War II, Keynes’ name and policies were “golden”. They were linked for most Americans to the deficit spending programs of the New Deal that kept the Great Depression from devouring us all. As such, Keynes was lumped together (on this side of the pond at least) with FDR. It’s funny how both men excite the same passions in folks on the Left and Right. To the arch conservatives, they’re both “closet Commies” who introduced the virus of invidious, insidious “socialism” into the Body Politic. Therefore, they are both devils - which you would think would make them figures of honor for most Progressives. However, for many people on the Left, they are highly ambiguous figures who are often condemned for “saving” a capitalistic power structure that might better have teetered and tottered on down into the Abyss of History. And the fact, that Keynes was kind of withering in his estimation of Marx’s technical “chops” as an economist didn’t endear him greatly to many Lefties either. But, for me, that’s one of those arguments – like, “Did Ornette Coleman really know how to play the saxophone?” - which is far above my pay grade to adjudicate!
In any case, Keynes’ “stock” plummeted during the Reagan/Thatcher/kinda-sorta-Bill-Clinton/Bush1-Bush2 years. Meanwhile, Milton Friedman’s theories about the dynamism of free markets held greater and greater sway. Get rid of those cumbersome regulations! Tear down the wall between commercial and investment banks! Get government out of managing the economy (except for a very limited role in setting interest rates to ensure price stability). Cut those deficits! Lower those taxes! Balance that budget! Lift that barge! Tote that bale! And get out of the way! Government is slow, cumbersome, unwieldy, and always fighting the last war. Markets are dynamic, self-correcting, armed with better information, and always moving in a rational way towards an ideal equilibrium where (except for the, ahem, occasional “shock”) there is happiness and full employment for all (if, ahem, at slightly lower wages than some might wish). In this paradise on earth, the occasional “bubble” (if such a thing even exists) is quickly pricked by super-rational investors armed with perfect information and neat computer models that precisely calculate risk and quantify investing like some glorified kind of life insurance where one can predict “actuarial” variables down to the last percentile of finger-lickin’ good accuracy.
Most of all, you will never see the “black swan” of a full-fledged market collapse (except at very, very long intervals and certainly never twice in the same century). Make it more like once every… every… Well, how old is the universe again? Well, longer than that!
I think we all know how that worked out….
So what about Keynes in all this? Does he have something to offer us still? I know buckets/gallons/tsunamis of ink have been spilled on this but I have been thinking about it more than a wee bit myself lately. In particular, the moral, ethical and philosophic implications of some of his thinking have been rattling around inside my little kuh-noggin. But I see that I have come up to the end of my self-imposed blog limit. Can’t be too long and windy in these blog posts! This is an era of short-attention spans! Beginning with my own! And besides a “very special episode” of “Buffy” is about to come on the SciFy channel! So I’ll hold those thoughts until next time. Tee, hee! That will also give me a little more time to brood and ponder on what to say next!
Is that a manipulative cliff-hanger or what? Shameless!
Speaking of shameless, here’s another piece of video for you on a (somewhat) related (and quite mean-spirited) topic. But it does speak to how well many of us learned about "the dismal science" back at school:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouXB-tvUF4w
In any case, being in “bachelor mode” has left me with some time on my hands. And, hey, there’s only so much Sports Center one can watch in a given day! So I’ve been thinking about Keynesian economics to keep myself out of trouble. It’s funny, isn’t it, how one returns to childhood themes and thoughts? My Dad taught economics and was, I believe, a bit of a “Keynesian” himself. I think Dad liked the fact that Keynes was a bit of an outsider in economic circles and not so much a professional academic as someone who had a foot in multiple camps, including, ethics, politics, philosophy, and the arts. Hey, anyone who hung out with Virginia Woolf and Bertrand Russell and made them both feel like “dim bulbs” in comparison must have had something going for him!
For what it’s worth, it was kind of fun being the only kid in my circle who knew who Keynes was – not that that got me any dates or anything. I also think the name “John Maynard Keynes” had and still has a kind of atavistic power for me. As such, he shares that distinction with Eugene O’Neill. When I was a kid, both of their names gave me something of a frisson or existential shiver. Maybe it was because Dad was studying Keynes at USC while my step-mom was simultaneously studying O’Neill at “Valley State” (since dubbed Cal State Northridge). I also think this combination of an interest in economics and theater is what compelled me to write not one, but two plays where the hero was an economist (WWJD? and Safeway Encounter). That probably also has something to do too with the total indifference with which the wider theater world (not to mention the Econ crowd!) has greeted these humble efforts. But there you go….
Of course, Dad was an actor before he became an economist. So that link was there as well.
If you’d like to see my Dad on film, just go to the link below. He comes up at the 3.55 mark. He’s the hard-nosed upper upperclassman who gives Burt Lancaster a hard time about his mighty sloppy bed…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-hmsxznWMw&feature=related
For many reasons, I wish my Dad was still here. But one of them is that we could talk about Keynes. When I was younger, I was too far impatient/bored/full of myself to want to go into any of the macro-micro-miso elements of economics. But now I wish I could ask Dad what he thought of Keynes’ place in our very fractured and heartsick modern world. Above all, I also wonder what Dad would think of the fact that Keynes has been enjoying something of a “comeback” lately.
Everything is kind of a stock market, isn’t it – including the bauble/bubble of reputation? For many years after World War II, Keynes’ name and policies were “golden”. They were linked for most Americans to the deficit spending programs of the New Deal that kept the Great Depression from devouring us all. As such, Keynes was lumped together (on this side of the pond at least) with FDR. It’s funny how both men excite the same passions in folks on the Left and Right. To the arch conservatives, they’re both “closet Commies” who introduced the virus of invidious, insidious “socialism” into the Body Politic. Therefore, they are both devils - which you would think would make them figures of honor for most Progressives. However, for many people on the Left, they are highly ambiguous figures who are often condemned for “saving” a capitalistic power structure that might better have teetered and tottered on down into the Abyss of History. And the fact, that Keynes was kind of withering in his estimation of Marx’s technical “chops” as an economist didn’t endear him greatly to many Lefties either. But, for me, that’s one of those arguments – like, “Did Ornette Coleman really know how to play the saxophone?” - which is far above my pay grade to adjudicate!
In any case, Keynes’ “stock” plummeted during the Reagan/Thatcher/kinda-sorta-Bill-Clinton/Bush1-Bush2 years. Meanwhile, Milton Friedman’s theories about the dynamism of free markets held greater and greater sway. Get rid of those cumbersome regulations! Tear down the wall between commercial and investment banks! Get government out of managing the economy (except for a very limited role in setting interest rates to ensure price stability). Cut those deficits! Lower those taxes! Balance that budget! Lift that barge! Tote that bale! And get out of the way! Government is slow, cumbersome, unwieldy, and always fighting the last war. Markets are dynamic, self-correcting, armed with better information, and always moving in a rational way towards an ideal equilibrium where (except for the, ahem, occasional “shock”) there is happiness and full employment for all (if, ahem, at slightly lower wages than some might wish). In this paradise on earth, the occasional “bubble” (if such a thing even exists) is quickly pricked by super-rational investors armed with perfect information and neat computer models that precisely calculate risk and quantify investing like some glorified kind of life insurance where one can predict “actuarial” variables down to the last percentile of finger-lickin’ good accuracy.
Most of all, you will never see the “black swan” of a full-fledged market collapse (except at very, very long intervals and certainly never twice in the same century). Make it more like once every… every… Well, how old is the universe again? Well, longer than that!
I think we all know how that worked out….
So what about Keynes in all this? Does he have something to offer us still? I know buckets/gallons/tsunamis of ink have been spilled on this but I have been thinking about it more than a wee bit myself lately. In particular, the moral, ethical and philosophic implications of some of his thinking have been rattling around inside my little kuh-noggin. But I see that I have come up to the end of my self-imposed blog limit. Can’t be too long and windy in these blog posts! This is an era of short-attention spans! Beginning with my own! And besides a “very special episode” of “Buffy” is about to come on the SciFy channel! So I’ll hold those thoughts until next time. Tee, hee! That will also give me a little more time to brood and ponder on what to say next!
Is that a manipulative cliff-hanger or what? Shameless!
Speaking of shameless, here’s another piece of video for you on a (somewhat) related (and quite mean-spirited) topic. But it does speak to how well many of us learned about "the dismal science" back at school:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouXB-tvUF4w
Monday, November 8, 2010
Post Election Blues
Musing on the “Republican wave” of last Tuesday, I got to thinking about a question that has haunted me for my entire adult life. Why doesn’t the white working class seem to feel any attachment/attraction to the progressive message of fairness, social justice, and truly equal opportunity? This haunts/troubles me deeply because I feel that if the folks who are often labeled as the “guns, gays, and God” crowd ever did get behind the progressive message this country would be utterly transformed in the blink of an eye. I like to tell myself too that it hasn’t always been this way. Texas once had a thriving progressive Democratic party and FDR was seen as virtually a saint in many parts of the deep, deep, South. So why is it now that “red state” and “red neck” seem virtual synonyms? Searching for answers, as always, I thought I’d turn to country and western music and see what I might learn. So here we go….
Merle Haggard: Big City
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ou5tnqSLNlM
You have to start with Merle because he is the high priest of a certain libertarian/progressive mixture that characterizes what I think is a profound confusion/discord between embracing the idea of fairness on the one hand and engaging in a kind of cranky “I’m going to bite my nose off to spite my own face” distrust and hatred of any kind of organized, formal response to social injustice. This song illustrates it perfectly. So we have “some lyric” (as Merle might put it) that completely expresses working class frustration:
“Been working every day since I was twenty/And not a thing to show for everything I’ve done./There’s folks who never work and they got plenty./Think it’s time that guys like me…”
Well, you think for a second that Merle might finish this line with “go out and get a gun…” But instead he says, “should have some fun,” which is a different thing altogether. Sigh… Then, with the chorus, Merle goes entirely off into libertarian la-la-land:
“Turn me loose and set me free/Somewhere in the middle of Montana./Give me all that I’ve got coming to me./And keep your retirement and your so-called Social Security./Big city, turn me loose and set me free.”
Can anyone tell me what those lines mean and who they are addressed to? Social security is somehow the problem? Boy, I just don’t get it. When you hear Merle Haggard classics like “Hungry Eyes”, you can’t for a moment doubt that this man knows what it’s like to feel hunger and class snobbery and deprivation in his bones. But who is responsible for it? If you listen to a song like “Fightin side of me…” you get the answer that it is those “squirrely guys who don’t believe in fightin…” Hearing that my heart sinks into my shoes.
Gretchen Wilson: Politically Uncorrect
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZu0nExoN9s
Merle Haggard actually makes an appearance in this one so it’s kind of a hand-off to the “new generation” of country music as represented by Gretchen “Redneck Woman” Wilson. Again, there is this sense of total identification with the people who work and toil and suffer every form of exploitation. But what is the remedy? The Bible? The Flag? The Forefathers’ plan? Oh, that’ll do it, alrighty! That’s just the ticket! And again there is the sickening feeling that the people who are not giving any “respect” to the “workin’ man” or the “single Mom raisin’ her kids” are the people who make up the progressive movement itself. So there’s always this feeling that the responsible parties are the very ones who might be seen as allies in another dimension/space-time continuum.
Josh Thompson: Way Out Here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0sYnro_3Rc
Josh Thompson is part of the C&W rear guard that is fighting a (mostly losing) battle to preserve the “outlaw” roots of the music; e.g., Willie, Waylon, and the boys. So he is very much struggling against the boy bands and Brittany-style-cutie-pie-clones that make up most of the horrible country schlock on the radio. A couple of his lyrics in this song really stand out for me:
“Our houses are protected by the Good Lord and a gun/And you might meet ‘em both if you show up here not welcome son…”
It’s a shocking and defiant line and one likely to raise the hackles of a lot of people. However, when I heard it, I remembered being in Bullard, Texas, with my Aunt Fay. We were driving out in the country and she was looking for the house that my grandfather had built back in the 30s and where my grandmother, Aunt Fay, and my mother grew up during the Depression after his early death from “tuberculosis of the bone”. We finally found it – a tiny place really – way out in the middle of nowhere - when two rather large men emerged from inside who looked like your prototypical denizens of the “backwoods.” With a look of real suspicion, they asked who we were and what did we want. “Oh, boy, “ I thought, “I’m going to get to be in my own real life Flannery O’Connor story. Lucky me!” However, my Aunt quickly explained that I had come out all the way from California to learn about my Texas roots and to see the house where my Momma was raised. Well, within 10 seconds, we were inside getting a tour of the house and ended up sitting out on the porch with those “good old boys” and their family and eating homemade peach ice cream. So I guess the flip side of this line is that if you are welcome, Son, you’ll see a level of hospitality and genuineness that is often lacking in our soulless “big cities.” So go figure…
“We’ve got a fightin’ streak that’s a mile wide but we pray for peace/Cause it’s mostly us who end up servin’ overseas.”
If you ever watch the News Hour on PBS, you’ll know how they sometimes run memorials to the war dead in Afghanistan and Iraq. Just heartbreaking stuff where they show all these (now dead) 22-year-old kids with their beautiful, young, fresh faces. Next time you watch it just count how many of them are from the South. Usually, it’s about 50%. When you realize what a small proportion of the country Southerners really are, that figure brings home the truth of Thompson’s words. At the same time, who is the “son” who is being advised to not show up “not welcome?” Hard, hard not to believe it’s us… the liberal/progressive community. And, once again, the remedy is only a kind of nostalgia that the country should be run “the way it used to be/the way it oughta be…” But what does that mean? And when was that anyway? Anybody got a clue?
So there you have it. What seems to be a profound contradiction between valuing the poor and hating the very people who claim to want to work on their behalf. Any solutions to this dilemma? Any ideas? Let me know. Meanwhile I’m going to go soak my head in some Tennessee sipping whiskey and listen to some Jimmy Rodgers…
"But my pocket book is empty./And my heart is filled with pain./A thousand miles away from home/Waiting for a train…"
Merle Haggard: Big City
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ou5tnqSLNlM
You have to start with Merle because he is the high priest of a certain libertarian/progressive mixture that characterizes what I think is a profound confusion/discord between embracing the idea of fairness on the one hand and engaging in a kind of cranky “I’m going to bite my nose off to spite my own face” distrust and hatred of any kind of organized, formal response to social injustice. This song illustrates it perfectly. So we have “some lyric” (as Merle might put it) that completely expresses working class frustration:
“Been working every day since I was twenty/And not a thing to show for everything I’ve done./There’s folks who never work and they got plenty./Think it’s time that guys like me…”
Well, you think for a second that Merle might finish this line with “go out and get a gun…” But instead he says, “should have some fun,” which is a different thing altogether. Sigh… Then, with the chorus, Merle goes entirely off into libertarian la-la-land:
“Turn me loose and set me free/Somewhere in the middle of Montana./Give me all that I’ve got coming to me./And keep your retirement and your so-called Social Security./Big city, turn me loose and set me free.”
Can anyone tell me what those lines mean and who they are addressed to? Social security is somehow the problem? Boy, I just don’t get it. When you hear Merle Haggard classics like “Hungry Eyes”, you can’t for a moment doubt that this man knows what it’s like to feel hunger and class snobbery and deprivation in his bones. But who is responsible for it? If you listen to a song like “Fightin side of me…” you get the answer that it is those “squirrely guys who don’t believe in fightin…” Hearing that my heart sinks into my shoes.
Gretchen Wilson: Politically Uncorrect
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZu0nExoN9s
Merle Haggard actually makes an appearance in this one so it’s kind of a hand-off to the “new generation” of country music as represented by Gretchen “Redneck Woman” Wilson. Again, there is this sense of total identification with the people who work and toil and suffer every form of exploitation. But what is the remedy? The Bible? The Flag? The Forefathers’ plan? Oh, that’ll do it, alrighty! That’s just the ticket! And again there is the sickening feeling that the people who are not giving any “respect” to the “workin’ man” or the “single Mom raisin’ her kids” are the people who make up the progressive movement itself. So there’s always this feeling that the responsible parties are the very ones who might be seen as allies in another dimension/space-time continuum.
Josh Thompson: Way Out Here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0sYnro_3Rc
Josh Thompson is part of the C&W rear guard that is fighting a (mostly losing) battle to preserve the “outlaw” roots of the music; e.g., Willie, Waylon, and the boys. So he is very much struggling against the boy bands and Brittany-style-cutie-pie-clones that make up most of the horrible country schlock on the radio. A couple of his lyrics in this song really stand out for me:
“Our houses are protected by the Good Lord and a gun/And you might meet ‘em both if you show up here not welcome son…”
It’s a shocking and defiant line and one likely to raise the hackles of a lot of people. However, when I heard it, I remembered being in Bullard, Texas, with my Aunt Fay. We were driving out in the country and she was looking for the house that my grandfather had built back in the 30s and where my grandmother, Aunt Fay, and my mother grew up during the Depression after his early death from “tuberculosis of the bone”. We finally found it – a tiny place really – way out in the middle of nowhere - when two rather large men emerged from inside who looked like your prototypical denizens of the “backwoods.” With a look of real suspicion, they asked who we were and what did we want. “Oh, boy, “ I thought, “I’m going to get to be in my own real life Flannery O’Connor story. Lucky me!” However, my Aunt quickly explained that I had come out all the way from California to learn about my Texas roots and to see the house where my Momma was raised. Well, within 10 seconds, we were inside getting a tour of the house and ended up sitting out on the porch with those “good old boys” and their family and eating homemade peach ice cream. So I guess the flip side of this line is that if you are welcome, Son, you’ll see a level of hospitality and genuineness that is often lacking in our soulless “big cities.” So go figure…
“We’ve got a fightin’ streak that’s a mile wide but we pray for peace/Cause it’s mostly us who end up servin’ overseas.”
If you ever watch the News Hour on PBS, you’ll know how they sometimes run memorials to the war dead in Afghanistan and Iraq. Just heartbreaking stuff where they show all these (now dead) 22-year-old kids with their beautiful, young, fresh faces. Next time you watch it just count how many of them are from the South. Usually, it’s about 50%. When you realize what a small proportion of the country Southerners really are, that figure brings home the truth of Thompson’s words. At the same time, who is the “son” who is being advised to not show up “not welcome?” Hard, hard not to believe it’s us… the liberal/progressive community. And, once again, the remedy is only a kind of nostalgia that the country should be run “the way it used to be/the way it oughta be…” But what does that mean? And when was that anyway? Anybody got a clue?
So there you have it. What seems to be a profound contradiction between valuing the poor and hating the very people who claim to want to work on their behalf. Any solutions to this dilemma? Any ideas? Let me know. Meanwhile I’m going to go soak my head in some Tennessee sipping whiskey and listen to some Jimmy Rodgers…
"But my pocket book is empty./And my heart is filled with pain./A thousand miles away from home/Waiting for a train…"
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
The Splendors and Miseries of Girl Singers
After I posted my “country and western job aid,” a friend asked if I could write about the great women of C&W. That got me thinking about “girl singers” in general. This is a topic near/dear to me as my stepmother was a “torch singer” who specialized in the Julie London repertoire of “100 proof misery”; e.g., “I’ve got it bad and that ain’t good because of the man who got away during all that stormy weather.” She used to bring her band, “The Pat Brady Trio,” to rehearse at our house when I was a wee tyke. Let me tell you, there are worse things for an impressionable youth to do than hang out with a bunch of smoking, drinking, God-unfearing musicians! Yowza! So, in that spirit, here are 5 “girl singers “ for your consideration (with the requisite YouTube references).
Violetta Parra: Gracias a la vida
To me, Violetta is one of the titans of the last century, transcending all genres and classifications. She was a Chilean poet who wrote and performed her songs with the utmost simplicity and clarity. In a better world, we’d all embrace her songs with our hearts and souls and life would be utterly transformed. Unfortunately, the footage of her is pretty scarce on YouTube. I’ve put in a link below to her singing her most famous song. There are more celebrated versions by Mercedes Sosa and Joan Baez, but Parra’s rendition is/was/always will be my favorite. She never “gets in the way” of the song. It just comes rattling down Track Number 9 and knocks you on your butt forever.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiRbLejE4gs&feature=fvw
Charlotte Gainsbourg: 5:55
Charlotte is primarily known as actress. Her “debut” film, L'effrontée, is one of the best films about adolescence emerging into adulthood/sexuality ever. But she has also been a singer starting with her work with her famous dad, Serge, back in the ‘80s. They did a little tune called “Lemon Incest” which… ahem.. was about an… ahem… somewhat… close father/daughter relationship. (Okay, I can feel my eyeballs squirming inside my head so let’s change the subject!) Charlotte has the tiniest, smallest, most intimate, whisperiest voice ever. I can’t imagine her performing “live” somewhere unless it’s in a closet. Still there’s something so free and unforced about her singing. Here she is performing at her breathless best.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcjVcck3nZE
Nina Hagen : Spirit in the Sky and Jhonny
How can you describe Nina Hagen? She’s just your basic a-pop-a-lyptic chanteuse with the range of an opera singer and the sensibility of an anarchist. I’ve included a couple of her videos here to give an idea of her range. I remember seeing her at a concert in Berkeley in the ‘80s. It was one of the rare times I actually went out and paid money for the pleasure of having my ear drums reduced to blood pudding while the drunk guy behind me kept yelling, “Fuckin-A” during every song. But it was worth it! Nina, ich liebe dich!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJ2UROhv-PI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSriPDRkRpo&feature=related
Patty Loveless: You’ll Never Leave Harlan Alive
Has there ever been a country singer with a better name? For me, Patty has always fallen into that dreaded category, “Talented people that an industry town (be it Nashville or Hollywood) never quite knew what to do with it.” As a result, many of her albums are the kind of “country pop” that is such a letdown from the “three chords and the truth” we all crave. But here’s Patty at her mournful, Appalachian, “I just crawled my way out of the coal mines with my bloody fingernails” best.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obzFmkzgt2E
Misia: Lagrima
Did anyone ever to see a Misia concert and say afterwards, “Well, she just mailed it in tonight”? Talk about leaving it all on the court! If you look up “commitment” (in either your English or Portuguese dictionaries) you’ll see Misia’s picture there. If you’re not familiar with a style of singing called “Fado,” Misia makes a wonderful tour guide. It’s not to everyone’s taste and not for the faint of heart. In fact, you might say it’s the polar opposite from Violetta Parra’s work style-wise. But what they hey? Isn’t a “foolish consistency the hobgoblin of… of… of….” Oh, it’s the hobgoblin of something! But I can never remember what!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcqHWfA1BuI&feature=related
That’s all for now! Please let me know if there are any “girl singers” out there that you treasure. Would love to hear from you!
Violetta Parra: Gracias a la vida
To me, Violetta is one of the titans of the last century, transcending all genres and classifications. She was a Chilean poet who wrote and performed her songs with the utmost simplicity and clarity. In a better world, we’d all embrace her songs with our hearts and souls and life would be utterly transformed. Unfortunately, the footage of her is pretty scarce on YouTube. I’ve put in a link below to her singing her most famous song. There are more celebrated versions by Mercedes Sosa and Joan Baez, but Parra’s rendition is/was/always will be my favorite. She never “gets in the way” of the song. It just comes rattling down Track Number 9 and knocks you on your butt forever.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiRbLejE4gs&feature=fvw
Charlotte Gainsbourg: 5:55
Charlotte is primarily known as actress. Her “debut” film, L'effrontée, is one of the best films about adolescence emerging into adulthood/sexuality ever. But she has also been a singer starting with her work with her famous dad, Serge, back in the ‘80s. They did a little tune called “Lemon Incest” which… ahem.. was about an… ahem… somewhat… close father/daughter relationship. (Okay, I can feel my eyeballs squirming inside my head so let’s change the subject!) Charlotte has the tiniest, smallest, most intimate, whisperiest voice ever. I can’t imagine her performing “live” somewhere unless it’s in a closet. Still there’s something so free and unforced about her singing. Here she is performing at her breathless best.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcjVcck3nZE
Nina Hagen : Spirit in the Sky and Jhonny
How can you describe Nina Hagen? She’s just your basic a-pop-a-lyptic chanteuse with the range of an opera singer and the sensibility of an anarchist. I’ve included a couple of her videos here to give an idea of her range. I remember seeing her at a concert in Berkeley in the ‘80s. It was one of the rare times I actually went out and paid money for the pleasure of having my ear drums reduced to blood pudding while the drunk guy behind me kept yelling, “Fuckin-A” during every song. But it was worth it! Nina, ich liebe dich!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJ2UROhv-PI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSriPDRkRpo&feature=related
Patty Loveless: You’ll Never Leave Harlan Alive
Has there ever been a country singer with a better name? For me, Patty has always fallen into that dreaded category, “Talented people that an industry town (be it Nashville or Hollywood) never quite knew what to do with it.” As a result, many of her albums are the kind of “country pop” that is such a letdown from the “three chords and the truth” we all crave. But here’s Patty at her mournful, Appalachian, “I just crawled my way out of the coal mines with my bloody fingernails” best.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obzFmkzgt2E
Misia: Lagrima
Did anyone ever to see a Misia concert and say afterwards, “Well, she just mailed it in tonight”? Talk about leaving it all on the court! If you look up “commitment” (in either your English or Portuguese dictionaries) you’ll see Misia’s picture there. If you’re not familiar with a style of singing called “Fado,” Misia makes a wonderful tour guide. It’s not to everyone’s taste and not for the faint of heart. In fact, you might say it’s the polar opposite from Violetta Parra’s work style-wise. But what they hey? Isn’t a “foolish consistency the hobgoblin of… of… of….” Oh, it’s the hobgoblin of something! But I can never remember what!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcqHWfA1BuI&feature=related
That’s all for now! Please let me know if there are any “girl singers” out there that you treasure. Would love to hear from you!
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Back in the Saddle
Sorry for the delay since my last “transmission.” It’s been a hectic September with lots of house bidness, instructional design work and koi-pond related chores. So blogging was definitely on the back burner. Anyway, here’s what’s been going on in the proverbial nutshell:
First, we put up a new fence in the back yard – even though the old one had kind of that “ivy in Wrigley Field” charm to it. By that I mean, the ivy was basically holding up the fence and not the other way around. For all its nostalgia value, though, it had to go – especially as our adjacent neighbor decided to sell his property. I can just see the realtor now, “And one of the quaint features of this home is the fence falling down into the neighbor’s property. But they’re really nice people and I understand the husband writes a most amusing blog….”
We also had the tree trimmers come out and do a little whacking away at our avocado and magnolia trees which were both getting pretty out of hand too – although I have to say that raking up all the leaves did put me into something of a Zen-like state of transcendental calm. As in: “Carry water. Cut wood. Rake leaves.”
On the business front, I went over to Stanford to monitor a 3-day course called “Executing Complex Programs.” Although the title did conjure up some macabre visions, it was a fascinating experience to share a lecture hall filled with 70-80 extremely smart program managers from all around the country/world. It was a very cosmopolitan vibe and I found it very stimulating to talk with folks from organizations ranging from the Brazilian Navy to Walmart. It also brought home how fortunate I am to be living/working in this intersection between the theater world and the “corporate” environment. I guess my dream is that somehow the two worlds could be integrated in some way and learn from each other. But quien sabe anyhow?
Next, we did a “partial clean” on our koi pond. In the course of doing so, we discovered that our tree trimmer was also into fish and had a pretty empty pond of his own out near the wilds of Morgan Hill/Gilroy. So we transferred over to him something like 15-20 of our fish. Go with god, my finny friends!
We also had Mike, the “fridge guy,” come over a number of times to try and get our old Maytag working again. Basically, the freezer would be frigid and fine but the bottom part was as warm and muggy as DC in August. Turns out that this is a fairly common complaint with old refrigerators. Poor Mike had to make three trips but we think we have it licked now. But keep your fingers crossed. Every time I open the door I pat the milk carton apprehensively just to make sure it’s still cool and not curdled. But so far, so good!
We also did a flurry of last minute errands and packing and housecleaning to get Beatrice ready for an extended visit with her Mom and Dad. Her Daddy-o is 93 and has been going through a little bit of bad patch lately. So please send all sorts of prayers, good wishes, positive vibes, and personal checks to Saint-Paul-les-Dax care of la famille Brodberger.
Okay, okay! I’m kidding about that personal checks part… kinda/sorta….
Finally, and most painfully, our beloved “tuxedo” cat, Figaro Dakota, passed away from kitty cancer. It’s very painful to write much about this but I’m sure all of you who have had wonderful animals in your life know what I’m talking about here. The following note from a friend beautifully captures Figgy’s spirit:
He was a real huge presence and soul. I'll never forget the night he came into (your guest) room and snuggled me and then drank my water, the little Dickens! There are cats and then there are those cats who are somehow more than cats. They really seem to be different souls trapped in a cat's physical body. They're too big to be satisfied just to do "cat things". Figgy was one of those.
Figaro also inspired me to write my first play, “Nocturne with Apples,” which was the first time I really discovered something of my own voice as a writer for the theater. So I owe that to him too as well as 15 years of happy comradeship. Figgy also inspired this haiku:
Black cat with a mouse.
How proud the mighty hunter.
Yellow lanterns shine!
Okay, time now for me to have a good cry! I'm sorry but there it is! I promise to be more cheerful next time. According to my master plan for blogosphere domination, my next post will be on the “splendors and miseries of girl singers.” You can think of it as kind of a sequel to my “country and western job aid” that I did for the boys!
First, we put up a new fence in the back yard – even though the old one had kind of that “ivy in Wrigley Field” charm to it. By that I mean, the ivy was basically holding up the fence and not the other way around. For all its nostalgia value, though, it had to go – especially as our adjacent neighbor decided to sell his property. I can just see the realtor now, “And one of the quaint features of this home is the fence falling down into the neighbor’s property. But they’re really nice people and I understand the husband writes a most amusing blog….”
We also had the tree trimmers come out and do a little whacking away at our avocado and magnolia trees which were both getting pretty out of hand too – although I have to say that raking up all the leaves did put me into something of a Zen-like state of transcendental calm. As in: “Carry water. Cut wood. Rake leaves.”
On the business front, I went over to Stanford to monitor a 3-day course called “Executing Complex Programs.” Although the title did conjure up some macabre visions, it was a fascinating experience to share a lecture hall filled with 70-80 extremely smart program managers from all around the country/world. It was a very cosmopolitan vibe and I found it very stimulating to talk with folks from organizations ranging from the Brazilian Navy to Walmart. It also brought home how fortunate I am to be living/working in this intersection between the theater world and the “corporate” environment. I guess my dream is that somehow the two worlds could be integrated in some way and learn from each other. But quien sabe anyhow?
Next, we did a “partial clean” on our koi pond. In the course of doing so, we discovered that our tree trimmer was also into fish and had a pretty empty pond of his own out near the wilds of Morgan Hill/Gilroy. So we transferred over to him something like 15-20 of our fish. Go with god, my finny friends!
We also had Mike, the “fridge guy,” come over a number of times to try and get our old Maytag working again. Basically, the freezer would be frigid and fine but the bottom part was as warm and muggy as DC in August. Turns out that this is a fairly common complaint with old refrigerators. Poor Mike had to make three trips but we think we have it licked now. But keep your fingers crossed. Every time I open the door I pat the milk carton apprehensively just to make sure it’s still cool and not curdled. But so far, so good!
We also did a flurry of last minute errands and packing and housecleaning to get Beatrice ready for an extended visit with her Mom and Dad. Her Daddy-o is 93 and has been going through a little bit of bad patch lately. So please send all sorts of prayers, good wishes, positive vibes, and personal checks to Saint-Paul-les-Dax care of la famille Brodberger.
Okay, okay! I’m kidding about that personal checks part… kinda/sorta….
Finally, and most painfully, our beloved “tuxedo” cat, Figaro Dakota, passed away from kitty cancer. It’s very painful to write much about this but I’m sure all of you who have had wonderful animals in your life know what I’m talking about here. The following note from a friend beautifully captures Figgy’s spirit:
He was a real huge presence and soul. I'll never forget the night he came into (your guest) room and snuggled me and then drank my water, the little Dickens! There are cats and then there are those cats who are somehow more than cats. They really seem to be different souls trapped in a cat's physical body. They're too big to be satisfied just to do "cat things". Figgy was one of those.
Figaro also inspired me to write my first play, “Nocturne with Apples,” which was the first time I really discovered something of my own voice as a writer for the theater. So I owe that to him too as well as 15 years of happy comradeship. Figgy also inspired this haiku:
Black cat with a mouse.
How proud the mighty hunter.
Yellow lanterns shine!
Okay, time now for me to have a good cry! I'm sorry but there it is! I promise to be more cheerful next time. According to my master plan for blogosphere domination, my next post will be on the “splendors and miseries of girl singers.” You can think of it as kind of a sequel to my “country and western job aid” that I did for the boys!
Monday, August 30, 2010
The Last Infirmity of Noble Minds
We’ve been having altogether too much fun lately with our forays into “low culture”. So let’s get back on the high road of fine art, shall we? Specifically, I’ve been thinking of that #1 “buzz killer” of English Literature, Mr. John Milton. As you may recall, he wrote that great epic poem, “Paradise Lost”. Perhaps you read it in Freshman Lit – as in, “From Beowulf to Shakespeare to Milton”?
Hey, that sounds like a great infield for the Cubs!
You may remember the poem relates how Satan rebelled from God and plunged into the lake of Hell with his “generational cohort” only to make a comeback as the serpent in the Garden of Eden where things took something of a U-turn for humanity… as in…
“Of man’s first disobedience, and the fruit of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste brought death into the World and all our woe, sing Heavenly Muse!”
Pretty heavy stuff! And quite a spell binder – at least as long as Milton’s talking about those bad, bad Devils! The parts on the joys of Heaven are sadly a bit of a snooze fest as “goodness” is somewhat hard to make very dramatic. But all in all a good read - although Samuel Johnson once remarked, “A great poem surely but no one ever wished it any longer.” At least I think it was Johnson. Maybe it was Oscar Wilde… or Mark Twain… or Benjamin Franklin… or Jon Stewart. But it was one of those guys.
Anyway, I’ve been thinking of how Milton also wrote that “fame is the last infirmity of noble minds…” By that I believe he meant that long after lust, wrath, gluttony and the desire for our own personal fleet of Maserati Quattroportes have fallen away, we’d still like to see our names up in their lights enshrined with the great immortals. This attraction seems especially strong for us so-called “creative types.” Poets, novelists, playwrights, all test off the charts on the Meaning of Life Survey Question #491b, “How important is it to you your work endures after you shuffle off this mortal coil?” There’s also that added sense that many of us… ahem… regional… not to say local… not to say unknown… writers have that posterity will right the wrongs and restore us to a posthumous notoriety denied by… well… reality…
I mean it happened to Beethoven, didn’t it? Well, if not to him, somebody else, right? Van Gogh? Yeah, I’m pretty sure about him. And I’m sure there are several others I could name if I just fired up Wikipedia… or Google… or Skype…
What makes this especially poignant for me is I recently had an interesting dream. Okay, I know, I know... If you look up “boredom” in the dictionary, you’ll find that definition 4a(1)c is “A state of stupefaction induced by listening to other people’s dreams.” But please hang in there! In my dream, I was dead, dead, dead… which rather surprised me as I was still very much aware of what was going on. In addition, I was able to see quite far into the future as my sense of time and space was vastly expanded. And, in my dream, I saw that my future “executor” was going through all our stuff so he could sell our dear little home. And my heart was moved with pity as I saw him wrestle with the question of what to do with all my posthumous “literary words and works.”
Just to give a sense of perspective, when it comes to the writing life, I am the equivalent of one of those poor wretches on “Hoarders.” So I have…. ahem… a lot of manuscripts lying around – all in my utterly indecipherable script. So my poor Executor was trying to decide what to save and what to toss. Finally, the poor sod said, “What the hey! I’m tired. It’s time for lunch. And who can read all this scribbling anyway?” And so my “collected works” went into the “1-800-Got-Junk” pile along with a one-way ticket to oblivion… the great void… non-existence… The End….
Then I woke up.
“Ah, another restful night!” I said to myself as I stretched and yawned and made my morning cup of tea. “Thank goodness that was only a dream…”
And then I realized, with utter certainty, it wasn’t a dream. It was a prophecy… one I knew was an absolutely accurate prediction of the future.
“Well, that’s interesting,” I said to myself as I sat down for my morning writing session, “I wonder what I should do next?”
Hey, that sounds like a great infield for the Cubs!
You may remember the poem relates how Satan rebelled from God and plunged into the lake of Hell with his “generational cohort” only to make a comeback as the serpent in the Garden of Eden where things took something of a U-turn for humanity… as in…
“Of man’s first disobedience, and the fruit of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste brought death into the World and all our woe, sing Heavenly Muse!”
Pretty heavy stuff! And quite a spell binder – at least as long as Milton’s talking about those bad, bad Devils! The parts on the joys of Heaven are sadly a bit of a snooze fest as “goodness” is somewhat hard to make very dramatic. But all in all a good read - although Samuel Johnson once remarked, “A great poem surely but no one ever wished it any longer.” At least I think it was Johnson. Maybe it was Oscar Wilde… or Mark Twain… or Benjamin Franklin… or Jon Stewart. But it was one of those guys.
Anyway, I’ve been thinking of how Milton also wrote that “fame is the last infirmity of noble minds…” By that I believe he meant that long after lust, wrath, gluttony and the desire for our own personal fleet of Maserati Quattroportes have fallen away, we’d still like to see our names up in their lights enshrined with the great immortals. This attraction seems especially strong for us so-called “creative types.” Poets, novelists, playwrights, all test off the charts on the Meaning of Life Survey Question #491b, “How important is it to you your work endures after you shuffle off this mortal coil?” There’s also that added sense that many of us… ahem… regional… not to say local… not to say unknown… writers have that posterity will right the wrongs and restore us to a posthumous notoriety denied by… well… reality…
I mean it happened to Beethoven, didn’t it? Well, if not to him, somebody else, right? Van Gogh? Yeah, I’m pretty sure about him. And I’m sure there are several others I could name if I just fired up Wikipedia… or Google… or Skype…
What makes this especially poignant for me is I recently had an interesting dream. Okay, I know, I know... If you look up “boredom” in the dictionary, you’ll find that definition 4a(1)c is “A state of stupefaction induced by listening to other people’s dreams.” But please hang in there! In my dream, I was dead, dead, dead… which rather surprised me as I was still very much aware of what was going on. In addition, I was able to see quite far into the future as my sense of time and space was vastly expanded. And, in my dream, I saw that my future “executor” was going through all our stuff so he could sell our dear little home. And my heart was moved with pity as I saw him wrestle with the question of what to do with all my posthumous “literary words and works.”
Just to give a sense of perspective, when it comes to the writing life, I am the equivalent of one of those poor wretches on “Hoarders.” So I have…. ahem… a lot of manuscripts lying around – all in my utterly indecipherable script. So my poor Executor was trying to decide what to save and what to toss. Finally, the poor sod said, “What the hey! I’m tired. It’s time for lunch. And who can read all this scribbling anyway?” And so my “collected works” went into the “1-800-Got-Junk” pile along with a one-way ticket to oblivion… the great void… non-existence… The End….
Then I woke up.
“Ah, another restful night!” I said to myself as I stretched and yawned and made my morning cup of tea. “Thank goodness that was only a dream…”
And then I realized, with utter certainty, it wasn’t a dream. It was a prophecy… one I knew was an absolutely accurate prediction of the future.
“Well, that’s interesting,” I said to myself as I sat down for my morning writing session, “I wonder what I should do next?”
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
The “Seduction” of Country Music
With a “shout out” (in the best DJ fashion) to “Claudine in Santa Rosa.” I thought of you in your beautiful garden while I wrote this – and maybe you were listening to a little C&W at the same time?
As we say good bye to the world of music videos, I’ve been thinking about another seduction that’s always been near/dear to my heart: Country and Western music! As a kid, I remember my Dad playing it late at night on the radio when we were driving home and we’d all sing along to help him stay awake:
“Pop a top my friend/Let’s have another round….”
Naturally, I loved the outrageous language and puns and the heightened emotion! So, riffing off my work in instructional design, I’ve done a “job aid” so you can always tell my favorite male singers apart - in case you get confused – which could happen!
They are, in no particular order:
• Roger Miller
• George Jones
• Merle Haggard
• Johnny Cash
1. If you ran into them in prison, what would they be in for?
Roger: Underage drinking (chug a lug, chug a lug!)
George: DUI (and livin’ in a honky-tonk prison).
Merle: Armed robbery (and doin’ life without parole).
Johnny: Murder (probably of some no good, triflin’ woman like that Delia).
2. Based on their music, how do they feel about Jesus?
Roger: Doesn’t come up that much, hard to imagine the “Roger Miller Gospel Album.”
George: Just wants a closer walk with Him, after he (George) dries out a little.
Merle: Kind of a working man? Carpenter? Got screwed by the bosses?
Johnny: Washed in the Blood, drenched in the Blood, just a whole lot of Blood.
3. What are their politics?
Roger: Anarchist
George: Oblivious
Merle: Libertarian
Johnny: Red (with some white and blue mixed in from that Ragged Old Flag)
4. What will they be in their next incarnation?
Roger: A dragonfly, a hummingbird, anything bright and brilliant that moves!
George: A jug of Pappy’s home squeezin’, mighty, mighty pleasin’… ooooooh.... white lightning’!
Merle: A hound dog riding on the old S&P with that lonesome whistle blowin’.
Johnny: The ink on some badass’s neck tattoo when it just has to be scratched.
5. What was their biggest hit?
Roger: King of the Road
George: He Stopped Loving Her Today
Merle: Okie from Muskogee
Johnny: I Walk the Line
6. If you only listen to one song, let it be…
Roger: The Last Word in Lonesome Is Me
George: Choices
Merle: Mama Tried
Johnny: Delia (how can you not love a murder ballad?)
7. Based on their songs, what’s most important to them?
Roger: Creativity and enjoying his own mind (as Dwight Yokam once put it, “Writing with Roger is to know what’s it’s like to be a pickup next to a Lear Jet…”)
George: Drying out and being loved by the right woman.
Merle: Dyin’ beside the highway and rottin’ away like some old high line pole (with the occasional pretty woman to serve him coffee and rub his back).
Johnny: The rebirth of the universe in a Christ-centric loving totality where all God’s children feel happy – except when that little bit of Satan still inside starts itching to come out and you just gotta kill somebody.
8. What will they be best remembered for?
Roger: For being the greatest genius in C&W history.
George: For having the best voice God ever gave a country singer.
Merle: For writing more good country songs than anyone who ever lived – and still not feeling very happy about it.
Johnny: For being the only man who could make a room go crazy by saying, “Hello, I’m…”
For further reference:
For Roger Miller, doing a “medley” of his hits (with chorus!):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5cDuzselc4&feature=related
For Merle doing his rambling thing, btw, was there ever a better C&W band than The Strangers?:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIcOSgTyOfE&feature=related
For Johnny Cash, talking about murder, in Manhattan no less:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNPp2IBO-T0
For George Jones, asking a highly pertinent question to end this post:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_c1PYbuBrUM&feature=related
Special Roger Miller bonus video, one time only!
Poor Roger – so stereotyped as the “goofy guy who wrote novelty songs”. The man could write anything! Blues, ballads, torch songs, “twangers”, Broadway scores, you name it. For proof, check out a very young K.D. Lang doing the great Miller tune, “Lock, Stock and Tear Drops”:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Z7io1W_IEs
As we say good bye to the world of music videos, I’ve been thinking about another seduction that’s always been near/dear to my heart: Country and Western music! As a kid, I remember my Dad playing it late at night on the radio when we were driving home and we’d all sing along to help him stay awake:
“Pop a top my friend/Let’s have another round….”
Naturally, I loved the outrageous language and puns and the heightened emotion! So, riffing off my work in instructional design, I’ve done a “job aid” so you can always tell my favorite male singers apart - in case you get confused – which could happen!
They are, in no particular order:
• Roger Miller
• George Jones
• Merle Haggard
• Johnny Cash
1. If you ran into them in prison, what would they be in for?
Roger: Underage drinking (chug a lug, chug a lug!)
George: DUI (and livin’ in a honky-tonk prison).
Merle: Armed robbery (and doin’ life without parole).
Johnny: Murder (probably of some no good, triflin’ woman like that Delia).
2. Based on their music, how do they feel about Jesus?
Roger: Doesn’t come up that much, hard to imagine the “Roger Miller Gospel Album.”
George: Just wants a closer walk with Him, after he (George) dries out a little.
Merle: Kind of a working man? Carpenter? Got screwed by the bosses?
Johnny: Washed in the Blood, drenched in the Blood, just a whole lot of Blood.
3. What are their politics?
Roger: Anarchist
George: Oblivious
Merle: Libertarian
Johnny: Red (with some white and blue mixed in from that Ragged Old Flag)
4. What will they be in their next incarnation?
Roger: A dragonfly, a hummingbird, anything bright and brilliant that moves!
George: A jug of Pappy’s home squeezin’, mighty, mighty pleasin’… ooooooh.... white lightning’!
Merle: A hound dog riding on the old S&P with that lonesome whistle blowin’.
Johnny: The ink on some badass’s neck tattoo when it just has to be scratched.
5. What was their biggest hit?
Roger: King of the Road
George: He Stopped Loving Her Today
Merle: Okie from Muskogee
Johnny: I Walk the Line
6. If you only listen to one song, let it be…
Roger: The Last Word in Lonesome Is Me
George: Choices
Merle: Mama Tried
Johnny: Delia (how can you not love a murder ballad?)
7. Based on their songs, what’s most important to them?
Roger: Creativity and enjoying his own mind (as Dwight Yokam once put it, “Writing with Roger is to know what’s it’s like to be a pickup next to a Lear Jet…”)
George: Drying out and being loved by the right woman.
Merle: Dyin’ beside the highway and rottin’ away like some old high line pole (with the occasional pretty woman to serve him coffee and rub his back).
Johnny: The rebirth of the universe in a Christ-centric loving totality where all God’s children feel happy – except when that little bit of Satan still inside starts itching to come out and you just gotta kill somebody.
8. What will they be best remembered for?
Roger: For being the greatest genius in C&W history.
George: For having the best voice God ever gave a country singer.
Merle: For writing more good country songs than anyone who ever lived – and still not feeling very happy about it.
Johnny: For being the only man who could make a room go crazy by saying, “Hello, I’m…”
For further reference:
For Roger Miller, doing a “medley” of his hits (with chorus!):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5cDuzselc4&feature=related
For Merle doing his rambling thing, btw, was there ever a better C&W band than The Strangers?:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIcOSgTyOfE&feature=related
For Johnny Cash, talking about murder, in Manhattan no less:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNPp2IBO-T0
For George Jones, asking a highly pertinent question to end this post:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_c1PYbuBrUM&feature=related
Special Roger Miller bonus video, one time only!
Poor Roger – so stereotyped as the “goofy guy who wrote novelty songs”. The man could write anything! Blues, ballads, torch songs, “twangers”, Broadway scores, you name it. For proof, check out a very young K.D. Lang doing the great Miller tune, “Lock, Stock and Tear Drops”:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Z7io1W_IEs
Monday, July 26, 2010
Top Ten Music Videos from the 1980s - Part Two
It’s time to continue my list of the greatest videos of all time (or at least from the 1980s.) So let’s do it!
6. The Bangles: The Hero Takes A Fall (1984)
Hard to believe, but there was a time when people argued about who was “edgier” - the Bangles or the Go-Go’s! I was always a bit of a Bangles man - and seeing Susanna Hoffs again in that little French maid’s outfit only confirms it! Yowza! I think my head would fall off too if she gave me a little peck on the cheek like that. But can I confess that my heart truly belonged to Michael Steele, the bass player? Was I the only guy in America who felt that way? It’s just she looks so smoldering in that 1980s “power” suit!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WTjBdRtM2U&feature=related
7. The Go-Gos: We Got the Beat (1981)
Okay, I’m feeling bad because I don’t want anyone to think I’m disrespecting the Go-Go’s. So here they are in all their early ‘80s glory. You can make up your own minds as to which ‘girl band’ was the best! In my next lifetime, however, I want to come back as Jane Wiedlin – spinning like a whirling dervish as she plays the guitar on all these catchy tunes! Did she see God doing this? You have to wonder!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_1BGKNk85M
8. Once in a Lifetime: Talking Heads (1980)
I hesitated on including this as some people might think it’s actually… Well… good. But I have such a fondness for the old style TV evangelists of my youth that I decided to overlook that.
Speaking of which, did you know the golden altar here at our church at the corner of Figueroa and 114th Street is the most powerful force for prayer in the history of the universe? It only looks like it’s made of aluminum foil that’s been pasted on ply board and spray-painted. No, it’s solid gold! From the Ark of the Covenant! Or Noah’s Ark! Or one of those arks! If don’t believe me, hold your hand to your computer screen and I’ll heal you of any and all of your invisible ailments. Deafness? Neuralgia? Headache? Feeeeeeeee-male troubles? No problem! And if you want your pie in the sky, you call somebody else. But if you want your pie right now, with ice cream on top, you come and see me! Because Jesus wants you to be rich!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1wg1DNHbNU
9. David Bowie: Let’s Dance (1983)
Wow! A criticism of commodity fetishism, Third World imperialism, racism, and nuclear war - all in one video! Plus a great beat! Who could ask for more? Love the final shot too.
BTW, can you imagine David Bowie buying pants? “Excuse me. Do you have anything with a 12 inch waist? No? We’ll, just give me a size 24 and I’ll cut ‘em in half.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0paUlhI2wts
10. The English Beat: Save it for Later (1982)
“Doctor, I keep having this dream. I’m in this claustrophobic little cellar that doubles as a night club. And this adorable guitar player is singing this catchy ditty but I can’t understand a word of what he is saying. ‘Sooner or later?’ ‘Send her a letter?’ ‘Sell me a ladder?’ But it doesn’t matter because everybody is young and beautiful - even the people who are supposed to be the “old fogeys” are beautiful! And I try and try but I can’t quite figure out what books the ‘snobs’ are reading. Is that really, “Das Capital?” Pretty heavy! Then again I always liked a little Mark and Engels while digging some cool tunes. Don’t you, Doc? Doesn't everybody? And there’s a Brigitte Bardot movie poster too. Hubba, hubba! So what does it all mean? Is it a reflection of my ambivalence between high and low culture? Or is it something deeper? Please Doc, you got to help me! I’ve been having this dream since 1982!”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bM0wVjU2-k
Two last things:
1. I had tremendous fun writing these posts. I hope you’ve enjoyed them too!
2. I also feel incredibly sad. All those perfect unlined faces! Are they really wrinkled geezers now? Like me? Impossible!
6. The Bangles: The Hero Takes A Fall (1984)
Hard to believe, but there was a time when people argued about who was “edgier” - the Bangles or the Go-Go’s! I was always a bit of a Bangles man - and seeing Susanna Hoffs again in that little French maid’s outfit only confirms it! Yowza! I think my head would fall off too if she gave me a little peck on the cheek like that. But can I confess that my heart truly belonged to Michael Steele, the bass player? Was I the only guy in America who felt that way? It’s just she looks so smoldering in that 1980s “power” suit!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WTjBdRtM2U&feature=related
7. The Go-Gos: We Got the Beat (1981)
Okay, I’m feeling bad because I don’t want anyone to think I’m disrespecting the Go-Go’s. So here they are in all their early ‘80s glory. You can make up your own minds as to which ‘girl band’ was the best! In my next lifetime, however, I want to come back as Jane Wiedlin – spinning like a whirling dervish as she plays the guitar on all these catchy tunes! Did she see God doing this? You have to wonder!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_1BGKNk85M
8. Once in a Lifetime: Talking Heads (1980)
I hesitated on including this as some people might think it’s actually… Well… good. But I have such a fondness for the old style TV evangelists of my youth that I decided to overlook that.
Speaking of which, did you know the golden altar here at our church at the corner of Figueroa and 114th Street is the most powerful force for prayer in the history of the universe? It only looks like it’s made of aluminum foil that’s been pasted on ply board and spray-painted. No, it’s solid gold! From the Ark of the Covenant! Or Noah’s Ark! Or one of those arks! If don’t believe me, hold your hand to your computer screen and I’ll heal you of any and all of your invisible ailments. Deafness? Neuralgia? Headache? Feeeeeeeee-male troubles? No problem! And if you want your pie in the sky, you call somebody else. But if you want your pie right now, with ice cream on top, you come and see me! Because Jesus wants you to be rich!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1wg1DNHbNU
9. David Bowie: Let’s Dance (1983)
Wow! A criticism of commodity fetishism, Third World imperialism, racism, and nuclear war - all in one video! Plus a great beat! Who could ask for more? Love the final shot too.
BTW, can you imagine David Bowie buying pants? “Excuse me. Do you have anything with a 12 inch waist? No? We’ll, just give me a size 24 and I’ll cut ‘em in half.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0paUlhI2wts
10. The English Beat: Save it for Later (1982)
“Doctor, I keep having this dream. I’m in this claustrophobic little cellar that doubles as a night club. And this adorable guitar player is singing this catchy ditty but I can’t understand a word of what he is saying. ‘Sooner or later?’ ‘Send her a letter?’ ‘Sell me a ladder?’ But it doesn’t matter because everybody is young and beautiful - even the people who are supposed to be the “old fogeys” are beautiful! And I try and try but I can’t quite figure out what books the ‘snobs’ are reading. Is that really, “Das Capital?” Pretty heavy! Then again I always liked a little Mark and Engels while digging some cool tunes. Don’t you, Doc? Doesn't everybody? And there’s a Brigitte Bardot movie poster too. Hubba, hubba! So what does it all mean? Is it a reflection of my ambivalence between high and low culture? Or is it something deeper? Please Doc, you got to help me! I’ve been having this dream since 1982!”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bM0wVjU2-k
Two last things:
1. I had tremendous fun writing these posts. I hope you’ve enjoyed them too!
2. I also feel incredibly sad. All those perfect unlined faces! Are they really wrinkled geezers now? Like me? Impossible!
Thursday, July 15, 2010
Top 10 Music Videos from the 1980s – Part One
In my post on “silly seductions,” I mentioned how I enjoyed (preferably cheesy) music videos from the 1980s. I have been subsequently chastised for not giving examples. “I felt seduced and abandoned,” one friend wrote. “Come on! The devil’s in the details!” So I’ve decided to yield to “popular demand” and give my personal Top 10. To keep this post from being ridiculously long, I’ll do 5 this time and 5 the next. There are some rules, however:
• Each video must be on YouTube for easy viewing.
• They must be early 80's. After that, things got waaaaaay too professional.
• No Madonna, no Michael Jackson, and a minimum of mullets.
• They don't all have to be "good" – otherwise what’s the point?
So here they are… in no particular order of merit… I love all my children equally! Because they are all special!
1. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers: The Waiting (1981)
This was the first music video I ever saw. It came on after a late night movie as filler to get the station to the end of the hour. At the time, it “blew my mind.” “Wow,” I thought, “You can hear the song and see a little story at the same time! What a concept!” It’s a catchy tune, don’t you think it? And Tom Petty has an adorable overbite. And the budget must’ve been $1.89 – mostly for the spilled paint and the colored ropes. And I love it when he swings his guitar and breaks through to the dimension of hidden guitar solos!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMyCa35_mOg
2. Bananarama: Robert De Niro’s Waiting - Talking Italian (1984)
First off, these girls were absolutely beautiful. They also could sing – which was something of a plus. Again, the budget is … ahem… modest. It includes a ratty Italian sports car from Guido’s House of Wrecks. And the guy they hired to be “Robert de Niro” seems more like Beaver Cleaver in pinstripes. Talk about cheesy - this one even features a pizza as the big finish! And would you like pepperoni with that, Mr. De Niro?
Did I say those girls were beautiful?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDXtM8XaSKw
3. Eurhythmics: Love is a Stranger (1982)
I was going through some “heartbreak” of my own at the time and this song really touched me. Of course, I now think, “Heartbreak? What heartbreak? I was young! How could I have been heartbroken? Waking up with your hip always hurting, that’s heartbreak!” But this video brought me solace – as well as Annie Lennox, dressed in furs, wigs and black leather, playing with sharp objects and doing the robot in her Saville Row suit.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6f593X6rv8
4. The Motels: Only the Lonely (1982)
Did anyone ever do anguish better than Martha Davis? I feel anguished just writing this. I can’t imagine her ever being happy - even if she ordered a bowl of soup, she’d be anguished. In fact, sometimes you’re just so anguished you can’t even keep your little black pillbox hat with the charming black veil on your head! You just have to tear it off and wave your hair around in the air-conditioned breeze! Oh, the humanity!
And is that an earthquake that happens in this one? Or is all that anguish so strong that it just moves mountains (and martini glasses)?
BTW, if they ever do a remake of this, I want to play the bartender. Love that snappy salute! Not to mention that orange bow tie/white suit combo. He looks like a human Creamsicle!
BTW2, was being a “Motel” the easiest job in the world? Just strum your guitar and let Martha sing!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZaPTELylZ1s
5. Fun Boy Three– Our Lips Are Sealed (1984)
I know the Go-Gos had the hit, but I preferred this version. Much to love here, including:
• Terry Hall (who co-wrote the tune) giving new meaning to the word “expressionless.”
• The incredibly hot drummer girl (who gives Terry a run for his money in the “I can be more catatonic than you” sweepstakes).
• The adorable lead guitar player with his Irish cap. He looks so self-conscious and awkward. But what a cutie pie!
• The incredibly hot cello girl sawing dutifully away even though she must’ve known no one could hear her!
So what do you think? Who put a bigger hole in the ozone layer with their hair spray? Cello girl or Terry?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqQT3oKA3v8
Well, next time, it’s Videos 6-10. Meanwhile, I’m curious… any videos you’d like to share? Let me know!
• Each video must be on YouTube for easy viewing.
• They must be early 80's. After that, things got waaaaaay too professional.
• No Madonna, no Michael Jackson, and a minimum of mullets.
• They don't all have to be "good" – otherwise what’s the point?
So here they are… in no particular order of merit… I love all my children equally! Because they are all special!
1. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers: The Waiting (1981)
This was the first music video I ever saw. It came on after a late night movie as filler to get the station to the end of the hour. At the time, it “blew my mind.” “Wow,” I thought, “You can hear the song and see a little story at the same time! What a concept!” It’s a catchy tune, don’t you think it? And Tom Petty has an adorable overbite. And the budget must’ve been $1.89 – mostly for the spilled paint and the colored ropes. And I love it when he swings his guitar and breaks through to the dimension of hidden guitar solos!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMyCa35_mOg
2. Bananarama: Robert De Niro’s Waiting - Talking Italian (1984)
First off, these girls were absolutely beautiful. They also could sing – which was something of a plus. Again, the budget is … ahem… modest. It includes a ratty Italian sports car from Guido’s House of Wrecks. And the guy they hired to be “Robert de Niro” seems more like Beaver Cleaver in pinstripes. Talk about cheesy - this one even features a pizza as the big finish! And would you like pepperoni with that, Mr. De Niro?
Did I say those girls were beautiful?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDXtM8XaSKw
3. Eurhythmics: Love is a Stranger (1982)
I was going through some “heartbreak” of my own at the time and this song really touched me. Of course, I now think, “Heartbreak? What heartbreak? I was young! How could I have been heartbroken? Waking up with your hip always hurting, that’s heartbreak!” But this video brought me solace – as well as Annie Lennox, dressed in furs, wigs and black leather, playing with sharp objects and doing the robot in her Saville Row suit.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6f593X6rv8
4. The Motels: Only the Lonely (1982)
Did anyone ever do anguish better than Martha Davis? I feel anguished just writing this. I can’t imagine her ever being happy - even if she ordered a bowl of soup, she’d be anguished. In fact, sometimes you’re just so anguished you can’t even keep your little black pillbox hat with the charming black veil on your head! You just have to tear it off and wave your hair around in the air-conditioned breeze! Oh, the humanity!
And is that an earthquake that happens in this one? Or is all that anguish so strong that it just moves mountains (and martini glasses)?
BTW, if they ever do a remake of this, I want to play the bartender. Love that snappy salute! Not to mention that orange bow tie/white suit combo. He looks like a human Creamsicle!
BTW2, was being a “Motel” the easiest job in the world? Just strum your guitar and let Martha sing!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZaPTELylZ1s
5. Fun Boy Three– Our Lips Are Sealed (1984)
I know the Go-Gos had the hit, but I preferred this version. Much to love here, including:
• Terry Hall (who co-wrote the tune) giving new meaning to the word “expressionless.”
• The incredibly hot drummer girl (who gives Terry a run for his money in the “I can be more catatonic than you” sweepstakes).
• The adorable lead guitar player with his Irish cap. He looks so self-conscious and awkward. But what a cutie pie!
• The incredibly hot cello girl sawing dutifully away even though she must’ve known no one could hear her!
So what do you think? Who put a bigger hole in the ozone layer with their hair spray? Cello girl or Terry?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqQT3oKA3v8
Well, next time, it’s Videos 6-10. Meanwhile, I’m curious… any videos you’d like to share? Let me know!
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
Some "silly" seductions
A reader of this blog remarked that it’s taken a relentlessly “high brow” tone so far. Mozart. The Mahabharata. Noh drama. Arthur Miller! Oh my! So I thought I’d get off of my high horse and talk about some “silly” seductions that I love - sometimes also known as “guilty” pleasures”.
1. Wedding pictures on Facebook of people I don’t know.
Have you ever had a Facebook friend “tagged” in a wedding photo and lose all sense of time looking at the album of shots? Well, I have – plenty of times! Even though the bride, groom, families and friends are complete unknowns, I happily peruse every shot and cluck, cluck cluck! “My how pretty she looks!” “Where did he find that tuxedo?” “Are those the most adorable bride's maids ever?” So what makes this so fascinating? Why do I start making up stories about the happy couple and their clans? Why do I speculate on if the wedding will “work?” Beats me! But I find it endlessly “seductive.”
2. Black-and-White TV Westerns
Thanks to Netflix, you can now watch just about any episode of any show from the 1950s. Hard to believe but there was a time when all of the Top 10 TV shows were Westerns. People even wrote serious essays about whether Westerns would destroy television as an “art form”…
Well, I guess we dodged that bullet! Yee, haw!
In any case, I love being seduced by my two boyhood favorites…
• First, there’s “Rawhide”. What a hoot! All those doggies getting along! Such gorgeous photography too! And there’s Clint Eastwood as the “ramrod” Rowdy Yates. Most of the time he’s just a goofy, toothy, silly young thing falling in love with every gal he meets and getting bopped on the head by no-good-niks once a show. Every blue moon, though, he shows a flash… and it’s just a flash… of the cold-blooded “Dirty Harry” to come. It’s kind of thrilling/chilling when it happens! “Go ahead, you rustlers, make my day!” Yikes!
• Next, we “Have Gun Will Travel”. That song! It’s still rumbling through my cerebellum. “A knight without armor in a savage land…” What could be better than that? I remember being so naive as a kid that I thought Paladin’s first name was “Wire.” And if you got that joke, give me a call! We’ll dress up in black and sing “dum-dum-dudda-dudda-dum” each time we hand out our business cards. And we’ll quote Shakespeare and Shelley every time we face down an evil-doer! And was there ever a craggier, grumpier, lumpier leading man than Richard Boone? Got to love him!
3. Music Videos from the 1980s
You know you’re a geezer when you remember people talking about music videos as the next great art form! Anyway, I still love the ones from the 1980s when the idea was new and people were willing to try anything. So cheesy! So low tech! So alive! The “Pop-Up Video” show is a particular silly seduction. I love it when those “thought balloons” emerge during a song with some nugget of useless information. And who knew that all the members of Duran Duran had to be resuscitated during the filming of “Hungry Like the Wolf”?
4. The World Cup
Can anything be sillier than watching grown men chasing something called a Jabulani? (That’s a ball by the way and not an exotic carnivore on the endangered species list.) Still I find myself utterly seduced. And it doesn’t matter who is playing. Paraguay? Japan? Serbia? Bring ‘em on! I’m even starting to like the buzz of those silly horns (insert angry insect simile here). I love fuming and fretting about who will win or why they lost or what will come tomorrow. Although I should know it’s all futile in the end. In the words of the immortal Gary Lineker, “Soccer is a game for 22 people that run around, play the ball, and one referee who makes a slew of mistakes, and in the end Germany always wins….”
So I’m curious…
Do you have any silly seductions to share? Anything “relentlessly” low brow?
Meanwhile, “head ‘em up and move ‘em out!”
1. Wedding pictures on Facebook of people I don’t know.
Have you ever had a Facebook friend “tagged” in a wedding photo and lose all sense of time looking at the album of shots? Well, I have – plenty of times! Even though the bride, groom, families and friends are complete unknowns, I happily peruse every shot and cluck, cluck cluck! “My how pretty she looks!” “Where did he find that tuxedo?” “Are those the most adorable bride's maids ever?” So what makes this so fascinating? Why do I start making up stories about the happy couple and their clans? Why do I speculate on if the wedding will “work?” Beats me! But I find it endlessly “seductive.”
2. Black-and-White TV Westerns
Thanks to Netflix, you can now watch just about any episode of any show from the 1950s. Hard to believe but there was a time when all of the Top 10 TV shows were Westerns. People even wrote serious essays about whether Westerns would destroy television as an “art form”…
Well, I guess we dodged that bullet! Yee, haw!
In any case, I love being seduced by my two boyhood favorites…
• First, there’s “Rawhide”. What a hoot! All those doggies getting along! Such gorgeous photography too! And there’s Clint Eastwood as the “ramrod” Rowdy Yates. Most of the time he’s just a goofy, toothy, silly young thing falling in love with every gal he meets and getting bopped on the head by no-good-niks once a show. Every blue moon, though, he shows a flash… and it’s just a flash… of the cold-blooded “Dirty Harry” to come. It’s kind of thrilling/chilling when it happens! “Go ahead, you rustlers, make my day!” Yikes!
• Next, we “Have Gun Will Travel”. That song! It’s still rumbling through my cerebellum. “A knight without armor in a savage land…” What could be better than that? I remember being so naive as a kid that I thought Paladin’s first name was “Wire.” And if you got that joke, give me a call! We’ll dress up in black and sing “dum-dum-dudda-dudda-dum” each time we hand out our business cards. And we’ll quote Shakespeare and Shelley every time we face down an evil-doer! And was there ever a craggier, grumpier, lumpier leading man than Richard Boone? Got to love him!
3. Music Videos from the 1980s
You know you’re a geezer when you remember people talking about music videos as the next great art form! Anyway, I still love the ones from the 1980s when the idea was new and people were willing to try anything. So cheesy! So low tech! So alive! The “Pop-Up Video” show is a particular silly seduction. I love it when those “thought balloons” emerge during a song with some nugget of useless information. And who knew that all the members of Duran Duran had to be resuscitated during the filming of “Hungry Like the Wolf”?
4. The World Cup
Can anything be sillier than watching grown men chasing something called a Jabulani? (That’s a ball by the way and not an exotic carnivore on the endangered species list.) Still I find myself utterly seduced. And it doesn’t matter who is playing. Paraguay? Japan? Serbia? Bring ‘em on! I’m even starting to like the buzz of those silly horns (insert angry insect simile here). I love fuming and fretting about who will win or why they lost or what will come tomorrow. Although I should know it’s all futile in the end. In the words of the immortal Gary Lineker, “Soccer is a game for 22 people that run around, play the ball, and one referee who makes a slew of mistakes, and in the end Germany always wins….”
So I’m curious…
Do you have any silly seductions to share? Anything “relentlessly” low brow?
Meanwhile, “head ‘em up and move ‘em out!”
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Another seductive story
Last time I talked about the seduction of the unknown story. I started thinking about this when I saw Peter Brook’s film of “The Mahabharata”. If you haven’t seen it, it’s a three hour condensation of the nine hour experience he staged at the “Bouffes du Nord” in Paris in the 1980s.
By the way, if you ever get a chance, see a show at that theater! It’s my favorite venue - just alive with energy and ghosts! Check it out at:
http://www.bouffesdunord.com/letheatre.cfm
At first thought, a three hour film from a nine hour play may seem a tad... Well... long. But, if you are familiar with the source material, it’s the merest drop in the tiniest bucket. This ancient Sanskrit epic weighs in at 2 million words - ten times longer than the Iliad and Odyssey combined. Comparatively speaking, it would be like doing a 30-minute sitcom called, “Odysseus in Troy-Land.”
The title can be translated as “the great tale of the Bharata dynasty.” It’s an incredibly complex moral, philosophical, religious exploration via the storyline of two groups of quasi-divine brothers fighting over a shared kingdom. In the middle of the things, just before the great battle to end all battles, Arjuna, one of the main characters, asks the man-God Krishna one of those “What’s It All About, Alfie?” questions. The reply is the Bhagavad-Gita! So the Western analogy would be that just before sacking windy Troy good old Odysseus and Socrates would sit down and talk through “Plato’s Republic”!
As you might imagine, it was “Munson-Heaven” to be exposed to all this. To not know how the Trojan War ends! Oh, my! In fact, one of the first books I remember reading was a “child’s version” of the Iliad. I was in the back seat of the family car while my Dad finished a sales call. As the light failed, I squirmed around in the back seat trying to find a little more visibility to discover who would win – the god-like Achilles or Hector, breaker of horses. So watching the Brook film, I wondered which faction would win the apocalyptic battle. The Kauravas or the Pandavas? Is there anything better than that?
After the film, I watched the “Making of…” feature on the DVD. The screenwriter, Jean Claude Carriere, talked about how one of the attractions of the project (despite its challenges) was it meant encountering a great story that no one had ever heard of…. at least not in the West…
And I got to thinking….
There is this enormous attraction in throwing off one’s cultural “core assumptions” about what a good story is, how long it should take, and how it should be structured. To just shoot that internal “Western story editor” who keeps saying, “Can’t we cut here? How can anybody sit still for that long? And can we lose all the philosophical stuff and stick to the action?” It’s the silencing of that nagging voice that there is a “right way” to tell stories that I find so exhilarating. And that’s also why I love the Noh drama so much, because its way of telling a story is so different (in its focus on heightened emotion) from the “connect the major beats” approach that Aristotle gave us after attending the 5th Century BC Opening of “Oedipus Rex.” So there is a sense of opening to a different way of exploring things, of building an intersection between Western thought and something different, that I find so compelling.
And yet…
No sooner do I think all this than a big bucketful of negative emotions flood my mind about cultural imperialism, “Orientalism,” and cherry-picking other cultures like the World was just one great big LL Bean catalog!
And like Arjuna says to Krishna before the battle, “My mind is filled with illusions. My bow slips from my hand. I will sit here and wait for death.”
So I’m curious…
Have you discovered any great stories from another culture that liberated your thinking?
If so, did you then feel stricken with guilt?
Tell me! I’d like to know!
In the meantime, I’ll be wondering what a modern version of Arjuna’s dilemma might be. If I come up with anything, I’ll share them in the next post!
By the way, if you ever get a chance, see a show at that theater! It’s my favorite venue - just alive with energy and ghosts! Check it out at:
http://www.bouffesdunord.com/letheatre.cfm
At first thought, a three hour film from a nine hour play may seem a tad... Well... long. But, if you are familiar with the source material, it’s the merest drop in the tiniest bucket. This ancient Sanskrit epic weighs in at 2 million words - ten times longer than the Iliad and Odyssey combined. Comparatively speaking, it would be like doing a 30-minute sitcom called, “Odysseus in Troy-Land.”
The title can be translated as “the great tale of the Bharata dynasty.” It’s an incredibly complex moral, philosophical, religious exploration via the storyline of two groups of quasi-divine brothers fighting over a shared kingdom. In the middle of the things, just before the great battle to end all battles, Arjuna, one of the main characters, asks the man-God Krishna one of those “What’s It All About, Alfie?” questions. The reply is the Bhagavad-Gita! So the Western analogy would be that just before sacking windy Troy good old Odysseus and Socrates would sit down and talk through “Plato’s Republic”!
As you might imagine, it was “Munson-Heaven” to be exposed to all this. To not know how the Trojan War ends! Oh, my! In fact, one of the first books I remember reading was a “child’s version” of the Iliad. I was in the back seat of the family car while my Dad finished a sales call. As the light failed, I squirmed around in the back seat trying to find a little more visibility to discover who would win – the god-like Achilles or Hector, breaker of horses. So watching the Brook film, I wondered which faction would win the apocalyptic battle. The Kauravas or the Pandavas? Is there anything better than that?
After the film, I watched the “Making of…” feature on the DVD. The screenwriter, Jean Claude Carriere, talked about how one of the attractions of the project (despite its challenges) was it meant encountering a great story that no one had ever heard of…. at least not in the West…
And I got to thinking….
There is this enormous attraction in throwing off one’s cultural “core assumptions” about what a good story is, how long it should take, and how it should be structured. To just shoot that internal “Western story editor” who keeps saying, “Can’t we cut here? How can anybody sit still for that long? And can we lose all the philosophical stuff and stick to the action?” It’s the silencing of that nagging voice that there is a “right way” to tell stories that I find so exhilarating. And that’s also why I love the Noh drama so much, because its way of telling a story is so different (in its focus on heightened emotion) from the “connect the major beats” approach that Aristotle gave us after attending the 5th Century BC Opening of “Oedipus Rex.” So there is a sense of opening to a different way of exploring things, of building an intersection between Western thought and something different, that I find so compelling.
And yet…
No sooner do I think all this than a big bucketful of negative emotions flood my mind about cultural imperialism, “Orientalism,” and cherry-picking other cultures like the World was just one great big LL Bean catalog!
And like Arjuna says to Krishna before the battle, “My mind is filled with illusions. My bow slips from my hand. I will sit here and wait for death.”
So I’m curious…
Have you discovered any great stories from another culture that liberated your thinking?
If so, did you then feel stricken with guilt?
Tell me! I’d like to know!
In the meantime, I’ll be wondering what a modern version of Arjuna’s dilemma might be. If I come up with anything, I’ll share them in the next post!
Friday, June 11, 2010
The seduction of the new story
Since I last blogged, we had a great reading of my play, “Dearest Frank Lights A Cigar,” at Arclight Rep in San Jose. What a gas – just one of those times where you feel incredibly jazzed to be working in the theater!
It also got me thinking about the question of differing perspectives – comparing what the audience is seeing and feeling with what’s going on in my own head as the observer/writer.
When I look at the audience, there’s this wonderful moment when you sense they are truly “seduced” – and how a major element of this seduction is… Well… now how should I put this?…that they’ve never heard the story before! It’s brand new! What will happen next? Who will live? Who will die? All that good stuff!
Unfortunately, as the writer, I can’t put myself back in that “don’t know how it’s going to come out” space. Sigh… Instead, I’m on my own individual roller-coaster ride – beginning with anxiety and fear and then morphing into a sense of surprise and, yes, joy.
In particular, it’s great to contrast whatever expectations I might have coming in to the reading with the reality of the performance. Of course, each time a play is done it brings out fresh results thanks to the actors and the director. New sensibilities bring new life to the characters! In that sense I do get to discover them all over again:
• So I saw a new sly sexy humor in “the KGB man” from Chad Eschman.
• From Mark Gelineau I saw how “Trofim” holds the mirror up to many of us who wish to be honorable and good but just can’t.
• Johanna Hembry was an almost uncanny incarnation of “Greta” while Elizabeth Hess “left it all out there on the field” with her total commitment to “Varvara.”
• Ravi Soundararajan brought his wit, great good humor, and intelligence to “Henry”.
• Finally, David Koppel showed the “impresario” side to “Frank” that I had never seen before. No surprise perhaps - as David is the Artistic Director at Arclight!
And, as I thought about this trade-off between discovering something for the first time and having a more informed perspective, I had a “flash back” – to junior high school – oh, so long ago, when we still had things like, “Music Appreciation.”
Not that we appreciated it very much!
Oh, yes! I remember being led to the “music room” – all of us shuffling along in the “condemned prisoner” mode. Culture! Yuck! Can’t we go outside and play? And, as we were eye-rolling about the torture to come, the teacher put on Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony.
Oh, my God! That great and stirring music came flying out of the speakers! For the first time! I had never heard anything like it. It was like thunderbolts from the hand of Jupiter! It was perfect! It was laughter and inexpressible sadness and every other word you can throw at it!
When the music ended, I had to learn more. So I read a biography of Mozart by the great musicologist Eric Blom. I remember how he concluded his analysis of the opera “Don Giovanni” by saying how much he envied anyone who had never heard the opera before. What a pleasure! To not know how the story ended! To not have heard its exquisite melodies! To be continually surprised and seduced! He said he’d trade all of his profound knowledge of the piece just to recapture that thrill of discovery once more.
And I remember, as I read those poignant lines, thinking that I had never heard the opera before. Wow! I would soon enjoy the experience Eric Blom could never have again. And I remember feeling so young and free and blessed!
Of course, as I write this blog, I am in exactly the same fix as poor old Eric! I too wish I could hear for the first time the great Don lift his champagne glass to the sky and sing, “Viva la liberta!”
So, I’m curious...
Have you discovered anything lately that falls into that “Don Giovanni” kind of experience? One that just washed your windows, blew the doors off, and rolled your socks up and down?
If you could choose to experience something again for the first time, what would it be?
It also got me thinking about the question of differing perspectives – comparing what the audience is seeing and feeling with what’s going on in my own head as the observer/writer.
When I look at the audience, there’s this wonderful moment when you sense they are truly “seduced” – and how a major element of this seduction is… Well… now how should I put this?…that they’ve never heard the story before! It’s brand new! What will happen next? Who will live? Who will die? All that good stuff!
Unfortunately, as the writer, I can’t put myself back in that “don’t know how it’s going to come out” space. Sigh… Instead, I’m on my own individual roller-coaster ride – beginning with anxiety and fear and then morphing into a sense of surprise and, yes, joy.
In particular, it’s great to contrast whatever expectations I might have coming in to the reading with the reality of the performance. Of course, each time a play is done it brings out fresh results thanks to the actors and the director. New sensibilities bring new life to the characters! In that sense I do get to discover them all over again:
• So I saw a new sly sexy humor in “the KGB man” from Chad Eschman.
• From Mark Gelineau I saw how “Trofim” holds the mirror up to many of us who wish to be honorable and good but just can’t.
• Johanna Hembry was an almost uncanny incarnation of “Greta” while Elizabeth Hess “left it all out there on the field” with her total commitment to “Varvara.”
• Ravi Soundararajan brought his wit, great good humor, and intelligence to “Henry”.
• Finally, David Koppel showed the “impresario” side to “Frank” that I had never seen before. No surprise perhaps - as David is the Artistic Director at Arclight!
And, as I thought about this trade-off between discovering something for the first time and having a more informed perspective, I had a “flash back” – to junior high school – oh, so long ago, when we still had things like, “Music Appreciation.”
Not that we appreciated it very much!
Oh, yes! I remember being led to the “music room” – all of us shuffling along in the “condemned prisoner” mode. Culture! Yuck! Can’t we go outside and play? And, as we were eye-rolling about the torture to come, the teacher put on Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony.
Oh, my God! That great and stirring music came flying out of the speakers! For the first time! I had never heard anything like it. It was like thunderbolts from the hand of Jupiter! It was perfect! It was laughter and inexpressible sadness and every other word you can throw at it!
When the music ended, I had to learn more. So I read a biography of Mozart by the great musicologist Eric Blom. I remember how he concluded his analysis of the opera “Don Giovanni” by saying how much he envied anyone who had never heard the opera before. What a pleasure! To not know how the story ended! To not have heard its exquisite melodies! To be continually surprised and seduced! He said he’d trade all of his profound knowledge of the piece just to recapture that thrill of discovery once more.
And I remember, as I read those poignant lines, thinking that I had never heard the opera before. Wow! I would soon enjoy the experience Eric Blom could never have again. And I remember feeling so young and free and blessed!
Of course, as I write this blog, I am in exactly the same fix as poor old Eric! I too wish I could hear for the first time the great Don lift his champagne glass to the sky and sing, “Viva la liberta!”
So, I’m curious...
Have you discovered anything lately that falls into that “Don Giovanni” kind of experience? One that just washed your windows, blew the doors off, and rolled your socks up and down?
If you could choose to experience something again for the first time, what would it be?
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
Speed dating for playwrights
When we last left off, I was leaving the “core assumptions” seminar and heading to the playwright/director “speed dating.” Of course, when I initially heard about this, my first thought was, “What should I wear?” I asked friends for fashion advice but the only response I got was, “Show lots of cleavage.” Yikes! Good luck with that!
So I got to the room and it was like high school – 40 people milling around with the boys on one side and the girls on the other – except they were writers and directors. In the middle of the room was a line of chairs – laid out in 20 facing pairs. To fit the small room, the chairs were right next to each other – so you could slide your “buns of steel “from one to the other without ever standing up!
Then the “host” explained the rules.
• It’d be a series of 2 minute rounds.
• Each of us would have a ID code (I was P11) and a scorecard.
• We would "date" another person and decide if they were a “match”.
• If so, we’d write their ID code on our cards.
• Rinse, wash, repeat!
The facilitators would then gather the cards, tally the “matches”, and send out contact info.
Okay, everybody - ready, steady, go!
Immediately I was engulfed in a nosecone of noise as 40 people talked/shouted! I felt I was falling down a deep, dark cavern of sound! I began to float effortlessly without hitting the ground. So peaceful!
Then my first “date” said in a booming voice “I have a question!”
It turned out he had a very specific need for an existing cast. I didn’t have anything that remotely matched. I thought, “It is like high school. I’m striking out again! But I have a car this time! And a job! Please like me!” I was even ready to lie! “Why, yes! I am working on a play about left-handed Lithuanians! Funny you should ask!” But before I could develop this fantasy further, it was time to move on!
And the game was on! Every two minutes, the “host” would blow his whistle and I’d slide down to the next director. I heard myself talking over and over about Noh drama and medieval morality plays and Monty Python and combining high and low cultures and creating a sense of "counterpoint" between the dialogue and the movement of bodies on stage. These are all things I believe in deeply - but if you say the same thing enough times, it begins to sound absurd! Eventually, I even got bored with myself and wanted to invent a different “Scott”:
“Yes, I write murder mystery plays. I’m a Taurus. I’m into single malt Scotch. How about you?”
Fortunately, I knew some of the directors. So each time I reached one of them we would rest and share notes. I got the impression that the “pressure to perform” was definitely on the playwrights. It was a little like a Hollywood “pitch meeting” where the writer has to catch the director’s attention immediately with some snappy patter, as in:
“My play is like Mourning Becomes Electra but on a space ship – with zombies!”
Hearing this relaxed me in an odd way. I didn’t have a “project” to sell. I was looking more for a “relationship” than a one night stand! So I started looking deeply into the eyes of each director, smiling sweetly, batting my eyes, and saying:
• “Would you like to go first?”
• “Shall we talk about you?”
• “What is your work like?”
• “Who has influenced you?”
And, just as I was starting to enjoy myself, the final whistle blew! Game over!
Time to tally up the results! Oh, no! My scorecard was totally scrambled! Was “D2” the nice Romanian woman or the kid with red hair? Was “D7” the PhD in Comp Lit or the circus acrobat? I’d made a hash of things again!
So I’m curious….
Have you ever done speed dating? Was it in a… ahem… theatrical context? Did you… ahem… “hook up” later? Let me know!
Meanwhile, I’ll be sitting here by the phone! Directors! They never call!
So I got to the room and it was like high school – 40 people milling around with the boys on one side and the girls on the other – except they were writers and directors. In the middle of the room was a line of chairs – laid out in 20 facing pairs. To fit the small room, the chairs were right next to each other – so you could slide your “buns of steel “from one to the other without ever standing up!
Then the “host” explained the rules.
• It’d be a series of 2 minute rounds.
• Each of us would have a ID code (I was P11) and a scorecard.
• We would "date" another person and decide if they were a “match”.
• If so, we’d write their ID code on our cards.
• Rinse, wash, repeat!
The facilitators would then gather the cards, tally the “matches”, and send out contact info.
Okay, everybody - ready, steady, go!
Immediately I was engulfed in a nosecone of noise as 40 people talked/shouted! I felt I was falling down a deep, dark cavern of sound! I began to float effortlessly without hitting the ground. So peaceful!
Then my first “date” said in a booming voice “I have a question!”
It turned out he had a very specific need for an existing cast. I didn’t have anything that remotely matched. I thought, “It is like high school. I’m striking out again! But I have a car this time! And a job! Please like me!” I was even ready to lie! “Why, yes! I am working on a play about left-handed Lithuanians! Funny you should ask!” But before I could develop this fantasy further, it was time to move on!
And the game was on! Every two minutes, the “host” would blow his whistle and I’d slide down to the next director. I heard myself talking over and over about Noh drama and medieval morality plays and Monty Python and combining high and low cultures and creating a sense of "counterpoint" between the dialogue and the movement of bodies on stage. These are all things I believe in deeply - but if you say the same thing enough times, it begins to sound absurd! Eventually, I even got bored with myself and wanted to invent a different “Scott”:
“Yes, I write murder mystery plays. I’m a Taurus. I’m into single malt Scotch. How about you?”
Fortunately, I knew some of the directors. So each time I reached one of them we would rest and share notes. I got the impression that the “pressure to perform” was definitely on the playwrights. It was a little like a Hollywood “pitch meeting” where the writer has to catch the director’s attention immediately with some snappy patter, as in:
“My play is like Mourning Becomes Electra but on a space ship – with zombies!”
Hearing this relaxed me in an odd way. I didn’t have a “project” to sell. I was looking more for a “relationship” than a one night stand! So I started looking deeply into the eyes of each director, smiling sweetly, batting my eyes, and saying:
• “Would you like to go first?”
• “Shall we talk about you?”
• “What is your work like?”
• “Who has influenced you?”
And, just as I was starting to enjoy myself, the final whistle blew! Game over!
Time to tally up the results! Oh, no! My scorecard was totally scrambled! Was “D2” the nice Romanian woman or the kid with red hair? Was “D7” the PhD in Comp Lit or the circus acrobat? I’d made a hash of things again!
So I’m curious….
Have you ever done speed dating? Was it in a… ahem… theatrical context? Did you… ahem… “hook up” later? Let me know!
Meanwhile, I’ll be sitting here by the phone! Directors! They never call!
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Two forms of seduction
Recently I attended the Theatre Bay Area Annual Meeting in San Francisco. These affairs always have a faint whiff of seduction about them. This is also sometimes known as “networking" or "schmoozing” but the idea is the same! Anyway I’d like to write about two forms of seduction that struck me while I was there:
1. The internal kind – where we seduce ourselves by holding on to our own outmoded (yet lovely!) ideas.
2. The external variety – where we try to get others to love us, our work, our potential.
I thought of Form 1 while attending a seminar on the future of arts education. Form 2 was very much on display during a curious courtship ritual called “Speed Dating” between 20 playwrights and 20 directors.
The seminar on arts education was moderated by Edward P. Clapp who is a doctoral student at Harvard. He is investigating the “core assumptions” that can define and limit our thinking. As I understand it, a “core assumption” is something that seems so obviously true that we don’t even think of questioning it. As conditions change, however, these assumptions lose their connection with a constantly changing external reality. So they end up preventing us from adapting to new conditions as we futilely try to apply our old ways of thinking.
BTW, a core assumption has to be held by a group of people in a discipline. So believing your neighbor is sending invisible rays through your walls to communicate with the Supreme Council on Venus might be a deeply-held personal belief but it isn’t a “core assumption.”
So the world is flat. We’re made in God’s image – these were core assumptions at one time. Then Darwin and Copernicus came along and questioned these beliefs and we adapted and survived. Clapp describes this effort to free ourselves from obsolete thinking in an interesting way. He says it’s like being at a dance party where we are swept up in the music and rhythm and all the swaying bodies. He says we need to “get out on the balcony” and separate ourselves from the dancing in order to observe and think new thoughts.
I’m just scratching the surface of Clapp’s ideas here and how they pertain to arts education. I suggest you check him out at:
http://www.20under40.org/
Being a terrible dancer, and having spent more time “out on the balcony” during parties than I care to mention, this all seemed very congenial to me! It was also discussed how core assumptions are so seductive that they end up holding us rather than the other way around. So if we question them they immediately whisper and coo into our ears how “special” we are and why we’re just completely loco to be doubting them in the first place.
On a personal level, I again found this congenial. Being a bit of a… ahem… contrarian… I’ve always enjoyed challenging core beliefs. Often the response is, “Why are we wasting time on this? We’re not here to question the strategy! We’re here to execute it! Get with the program!” So I’m not a roadblock after all! I’m just going out on the balcony!
But as I was marinating in this self-congratulatory stew, I thought how easy and pleasant it is to challenge the core assumptions of others. The hard part is to question our own, isn’t it? So let me trot one out that is especially flattering. If you’re a playwright, I’m sure you’ve heard it many times. You go to a first rehearsal and the director says to the cast, “We’re here to express the playwright’s vision. That’s our job.” Well… hmm… that’s self-evidently true, isn’t it? No need to challenge that assumption, is there? Not that I can see! No sireee, Bob!
Well, I’m running out of gas… No wisecracks please…. So Seduction Form 2 (the playwright/director speed dating) will have to wait to next time. But I’m curious:
Any core assumptions of your own you’d like to challenge?
Don’t you hate blogs that break off in the middle and promise to get to the “good part” next time? I know I do!
1. The internal kind – where we seduce ourselves by holding on to our own outmoded (yet lovely!) ideas.
2. The external variety – where we try to get others to love us, our work, our potential.
I thought of Form 1 while attending a seminar on the future of arts education. Form 2 was very much on display during a curious courtship ritual called “Speed Dating” between 20 playwrights and 20 directors.
The seminar on arts education was moderated by Edward P. Clapp who is a doctoral student at Harvard. He is investigating the “core assumptions” that can define and limit our thinking. As I understand it, a “core assumption” is something that seems so obviously true that we don’t even think of questioning it. As conditions change, however, these assumptions lose their connection with a constantly changing external reality. So they end up preventing us from adapting to new conditions as we futilely try to apply our old ways of thinking.
BTW, a core assumption has to be held by a group of people in a discipline. So believing your neighbor is sending invisible rays through your walls to communicate with the Supreme Council on Venus might be a deeply-held personal belief but it isn’t a “core assumption.”
So the world is flat. We’re made in God’s image – these were core assumptions at one time. Then Darwin and Copernicus came along and questioned these beliefs and we adapted and survived. Clapp describes this effort to free ourselves from obsolete thinking in an interesting way. He says it’s like being at a dance party where we are swept up in the music and rhythm and all the swaying bodies. He says we need to “get out on the balcony” and separate ourselves from the dancing in order to observe and think new thoughts.
I’m just scratching the surface of Clapp’s ideas here and how they pertain to arts education. I suggest you check him out at:
http://www.20under40.org/
Being a terrible dancer, and having spent more time “out on the balcony” during parties than I care to mention, this all seemed very congenial to me! It was also discussed how core assumptions are so seductive that they end up holding us rather than the other way around. So if we question them they immediately whisper and coo into our ears how “special” we are and why we’re just completely loco to be doubting them in the first place.
On a personal level, I again found this congenial. Being a bit of a… ahem… contrarian… I’ve always enjoyed challenging core beliefs. Often the response is, “Why are we wasting time on this? We’re not here to question the strategy! We’re here to execute it! Get with the program!” So I’m not a roadblock after all! I’m just going out on the balcony!
But as I was marinating in this self-congratulatory stew, I thought how easy and pleasant it is to challenge the core assumptions of others. The hard part is to question our own, isn’t it? So let me trot one out that is especially flattering. If you’re a playwright, I’m sure you’ve heard it many times. You go to a first rehearsal and the director says to the cast, “We’re here to express the playwright’s vision. That’s our job.” Well… hmm… that’s self-evidently true, isn’t it? No need to challenge that assumption, is there? Not that I can see! No sireee, Bob!
Well, I’m running out of gas… No wisecracks please…. So Seduction Form 2 (the playwright/director speed dating) will have to wait to next time. But I’m curious:
Any core assumptions of your own you’d like to challenge?
Don’t you hate blogs that break off in the middle and promise to get to the “good part” next time? I know I do!
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
The other side of "seduction"
I got this interesting reply to my last post from Kyle Smith – a good actor friend:
Another lovely post! Would love to give thoughtful answers to your questions, but am in the middle of Hell Week at Broadway West in Fremont. Much like you were hurled into the depths of Hell, I was hurled into the role of Reverend Parris in 'The Crucible' when the actor who was cast dropped out under unfortunate circumstances. I am at the point where I know my lines quite well in the kitchen and the bedroom and the living room and the car, but on stage in costume under the lights - well, it's a bit harrowing.
Kyle is a lovely actor and I’m sure it will all work out wonderfully. I had the pleasure of working with him when he was the history professor in my “Yellow Stripes” at Voice One Studio Theatre. Just a great job, Kyle!
But what a coincidence! I was planning on blogging about my playing Reverend Parris in high school shortly after my hoodlum-wowing experience in "Everyman."
As you may know, the good Reverend is a weak little guy who has a daughter who dances around bonfires and plays “stick the pin in the dolly” out in the dark New England forest! All good clean Puritan fun! But still something of a career killer for dear old Dad!
In an attempt to make me look “middle-aged”, they sprayed a pound of gray paint in my hair. I remember taking a shower afterwards and seeing my legs and feet turn this weird pinkish gray color from all the paint. And the makeup lady liked to furrow these wrinkles and ridges all over my face to give me that “gaunt and wracked with guilt” look. I was told the effect was like “The Wolf Man goes to Salem.” Yikes!
Anyway this is where I learned the dark side of seducing an audience… the side of….
Stage fright!
I’m talking here about that every-pore-in-your-body-is-opening-and-you-are-totally-soaked-in-sweat-terror! Where you are paralyzed from the top of prematurely gray hair down to the tips of your silver-buckled shoes!
It’s a tough opening for the good Reverend to begin with. You have to be weeping and wailing while praying fervently as the curtain rises. Thanks a lot, Arthur Miller! As my… ahem…. “emoting” was causing derisive snickers in the audience, Miss Francis (our long-suffering drama teacher) directed me to simply “pray fervently in silent contemplation.” Then I had to leap to my feet, race across the stage, and accost our black servant with the lines:
“Out of my sight, Tituba! Out of my sight, I say!”
You can imagine how shouting “Tituba” at someone went over with an audience full of teenage boys! Oh, mother!
And then my moment of existential terror arrived. I was cross-examining my daughter Abigail (played by the wonderful Patricia Mattick) about her nocturnal “habits.” She was seated extremely far down stage, in this wooden chair. I was pacing behind her, listening intently… and… as I was pacing… I became… aware… of this… sound…
Soft, indistinct, fascinating!
I asked myself, “What was it?”
And I realized…..it …was…
Them! The audience! Breathing!
And I forgot everything! My name! My character’s name! My lines! Everything!
So Patty looked at me, expecting me to say my next line… which was something like, “Do you expect me to believe this pack of lies?” And she saw only sheer animal terror! Sheer animal terror and a plea for help! Save me, Patty! Save me!
And, cool as cucumbers, she said, “I can guess what you are thinking, Father. What fool would believe such a pack of lies? But tis true!”
And, thank the 17th Century Calvinist Gods that snapped me out of it!
So that was the first time I realized what a beast the audience was! How it lived and breathed out there in the dark! And how naked actors are up there - with nothing but their Wolf Man makeup between them and the abyss!
So I am curious! Any memories of “going up” on stage? Of realizing you had turned from predator to prey? Let me know!
Another lovely post! Would love to give thoughtful answers to your questions, but am in the middle of Hell Week at Broadway West in Fremont. Much like you were hurled into the depths of Hell, I was hurled into the role of Reverend Parris in 'The Crucible' when the actor who was cast dropped out under unfortunate circumstances. I am at the point where I know my lines quite well in the kitchen and the bedroom and the living room and the car, but on stage in costume under the lights - well, it's a bit harrowing.
Kyle is a lovely actor and I’m sure it will all work out wonderfully. I had the pleasure of working with him when he was the history professor in my “Yellow Stripes” at Voice One Studio Theatre. Just a great job, Kyle!
But what a coincidence! I was planning on blogging about my playing Reverend Parris in high school shortly after my hoodlum-wowing experience in "Everyman."
As you may know, the good Reverend is a weak little guy who has a daughter who dances around bonfires and plays “stick the pin in the dolly” out in the dark New England forest! All good clean Puritan fun! But still something of a career killer for dear old Dad!
In an attempt to make me look “middle-aged”, they sprayed a pound of gray paint in my hair. I remember taking a shower afterwards and seeing my legs and feet turn this weird pinkish gray color from all the paint. And the makeup lady liked to furrow these wrinkles and ridges all over my face to give me that “gaunt and wracked with guilt” look. I was told the effect was like “The Wolf Man goes to Salem.” Yikes!
Anyway this is where I learned the dark side of seducing an audience… the side of….
Stage fright!
I’m talking here about that every-pore-in-your-body-is-opening-and-you-are-totally-soaked-in-sweat-terror! Where you are paralyzed from the top of prematurely gray hair down to the tips of your silver-buckled shoes!
It’s a tough opening for the good Reverend to begin with. You have to be weeping and wailing while praying fervently as the curtain rises. Thanks a lot, Arthur Miller! As my… ahem…. “emoting” was causing derisive snickers in the audience, Miss Francis (our long-suffering drama teacher) directed me to simply “pray fervently in silent contemplation.” Then I had to leap to my feet, race across the stage, and accost our black servant with the lines:
“Out of my sight, Tituba! Out of my sight, I say!”
You can imagine how shouting “Tituba” at someone went over with an audience full of teenage boys! Oh, mother!
And then my moment of existential terror arrived. I was cross-examining my daughter Abigail (played by the wonderful Patricia Mattick) about her nocturnal “habits.” She was seated extremely far down stage, in this wooden chair. I was pacing behind her, listening intently… and… as I was pacing… I became… aware… of this… sound…
Soft, indistinct, fascinating!
I asked myself, “What was it?”
And I realized…..it …was…
Them! The audience! Breathing!
And I forgot everything! My name! My character’s name! My lines! Everything!
So Patty looked at me, expecting me to say my next line… which was something like, “Do you expect me to believe this pack of lies?” And she saw only sheer animal terror! Sheer animal terror and a plea for help! Save me, Patty! Save me!
And, cool as cucumbers, she said, “I can guess what you are thinking, Father. What fool would believe such a pack of lies? But tis true!”
And, thank the 17th Century Calvinist Gods that snapped me out of it!
So that was the first time I realized what a beast the audience was! How it lived and breathed out there in the dark! And how naked actors are up there - with nothing but their Wolf Man makeup between them and the abyss!
So I am curious! Any memories of “going up” on stage? Of realizing you had turned from predator to prey? Let me know!
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
My first "seduction"
So I was thinking about my topic matter for this post. My initial thought was to continue the “writer’s conference” theme and talk about when I went to Kenyon – and how it was completely different than Sewanee. “We’re here to write, damn it! Not schmooze with celebrities.” However, as I was brooding, meditating, and fasting, I looked at my calendar for the day and realized I:
• Had a ticket to see the Threshold Project’s matinee of Terroristka.
• Also had a ticket to see my friend Nina play cello with her orchestra.
“Oh, no!” I thought. “I have to choose between music and theater… again!”
Which brings me to my “first seduction”. I was in Junior High and dividing my time between orchestra and acting. For the most part the “band kids” and the “drama geeks” were separate crews, but I never saw a conflict in it. They were both fun and they sure beat “geometry for meatheads” (which was also on my curriculum.) However, December rolled around and it came time for the Christmas Concert/Holiday Play performance. That meant I had to both do a bass clarinet solo in one of those hopelessly over-orchestrated “medleys” of Christmas Carols (think Wagner doing “Jingle Bells”) and playing the role of “Deceit” in the morality play, “Everyman.” It made for a tight costume change as I had to do my solo, extricate myself from the orchestra pit (very quietly!) while the lights dimmed for the opening of the play, hurry backstage, get into my “Deceit” costume (which made me look like an especially malicious kitty kat), and rush on stage just in time to say the first lines I ever uttered to an audience:
“They may think us in mean attire. But that is to our gain. The very lowness of our station profits us.”
Now I was never quite sure what that meant exactly… but it sure sounded sneaky!
And I reveled in it –being bad, playing the villain! Delicious! And I was getting laughs! I was being "hissed". Wonderful! I also remember offering poor Everyman (played by the adorable Roberta Levitow – Roberta! I still love you!) the gift of “false friendship” (which was a rock wrapped in aluminum foil spray-painted gold). She threw it back at me and I “recoiled in dismay” and almost tripped over “Beauty” (played by the gorgeous Sherry Tifft – Sherry! I still love you too!)
Once I was deservedly cast down into the fires of Hell, I had to run backstage, get out of my “cat costume,” wipe off my makeup, put back on my orchestra clothes, slip into the orchestra pit, find my instrument, suck feverishly on my clarinet reed to get it moist, and be ready for the crashing finale: a Holiday salute to Mary Poppins!
Naturally, Mister Ungar, our band leader, grew irritated with all this rushing around. Afterwards, he sat me down and said, “Mister Munson, you have to choose. Theater or music? No one can be good at both. Do you want to play in the orchestra or… (lips curling here)… run around in make-up and wave your arms around while people gawk at you?”
So he had watched my performance! I was flattered! But how could I choose? I loved both playing and I loved acting! What to do? I remember walking around, bewildered and confused …
… until the next day… when…
… Jerry Cannon… the school “hoodlum,” came up, punched me (hard!) in the arm, and jovially said, “Hey Munson! You were good up there!” Really? I was? You liked me? And for the rest of the day, other members of the “bad element” in school came up, hit me, and congratulated me on what a great job I had done messing around with that dorky Everyman! I felt like a celebrity! I was a hit! I had done my first “seduction.” Intoxicating!
So I guess I made my “choice”…
But I’m curious about the following:
• Your “hard choices”: were they real or just forced?
• Your first lines on stage: what was your first seduction? (Of the audience, that is!)
• Rocks wrapped in aluminum: what was the lowest-tech prop you’ve ever used on stage?
And, yes, I still play the clarinet.
• Had a ticket to see the Threshold Project’s matinee of Terroristka.
• Also had a ticket to see my friend Nina play cello with her orchestra.
“Oh, no!” I thought. “I have to choose between music and theater… again!”
Which brings me to my “first seduction”. I was in Junior High and dividing my time between orchestra and acting. For the most part the “band kids” and the “drama geeks” were separate crews, but I never saw a conflict in it. They were both fun and they sure beat “geometry for meatheads” (which was also on my curriculum.) However, December rolled around and it came time for the Christmas Concert/Holiday Play performance. That meant I had to both do a bass clarinet solo in one of those hopelessly over-orchestrated “medleys” of Christmas Carols (think Wagner doing “Jingle Bells”) and playing the role of “Deceit” in the morality play, “Everyman.” It made for a tight costume change as I had to do my solo, extricate myself from the orchestra pit (very quietly!) while the lights dimmed for the opening of the play, hurry backstage, get into my “Deceit” costume (which made me look like an especially malicious kitty kat), and rush on stage just in time to say the first lines I ever uttered to an audience:
“They may think us in mean attire. But that is to our gain. The very lowness of our station profits us.”
Now I was never quite sure what that meant exactly… but it sure sounded sneaky!
And I reveled in it –being bad, playing the villain! Delicious! And I was getting laughs! I was being "hissed". Wonderful! I also remember offering poor Everyman (played by the adorable Roberta Levitow – Roberta! I still love you!) the gift of “false friendship” (which was a rock wrapped in aluminum foil spray-painted gold). She threw it back at me and I “recoiled in dismay” and almost tripped over “Beauty” (played by the gorgeous Sherry Tifft – Sherry! I still love you too!)
Once I was deservedly cast down into the fires of Hell, I had to run backstage, get out of my “cat costume,” wipe off my makeup, put back on my orchestra clothes, slip into the orchestra pit, find my instrument, suck feverishly on my clarinet reed to get it moist, and be ready for the crashing finale: a Holiday salute to Mary Poppins!
Naturally, Mister Ungar, our band leader, grew irritated with all this rushing around. Afterwards, he sat me down and said, “Mister Munson, you have to choose. Theater or music? No one can be good at both. Do you want to play in the orchestra or… (lips curling here)… run around in make-up and wave your arms around while people gawk at you?”
So he had watched my performance! I was flattered! But how could I choose? I loved both playing and I loved acting! What to do? I remember walking around, bewildered and confused …
… until the next day… when…
… Jerry Cannon… the school “hoodlum,” came up, punched me (hard!) in the arm, and jovially said, “Hey Munson! You were good up there!” Really? I was? You liked me? And for the rest of the day, other members of the “bad element” in school came up, hit me, and congratulated me on what a great job I had done messing around with that dorky Everyman! I felt like a celebrity! I was a hit! I had done my first “seduction.” Intoxicating!
So I guess I made my “choice”…
But I’m curious about the following:
• Your “hard choices”: were they real or just forced?
• Your first lines on stage: what was your first seduction? (Of the audience, that is!)
• Rocks wrapped in aluminum: what was the lowest-tech prop you’ve ever used on stage?
And, yes, I still play the clarinet.
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
So why the title?
So why the title, “Seducing the Audience?”
To give some context, and to take a little stroll down the lane of memories, it all started when I tried to write my second play, “Willie and Solange.” My first play, “Owl” had been the typical autobiographical effort about being a kid growing up in Hollywood with my Dad struggling as an actor in the movie business and my stepmom singing torch songs in all the watering holes up and down Ventura Blvd in the San Fernando Valley. As in:
“Don’t know why… there’s no sun up in the sky… stormy wea…”
(dropping down an octave…)
“…ther…. Since my man and I ain’t to…
(dropping down an octave…)
“gether. Keeps rainin’ all the time….”
All sung in the lowest possible throaty angst-ridden existential croak!
I even had some success with Owl. It won a (very) small literary prize and two theaters said they wanted to produce it… sometime… somewhere… eventually… in another space-time continuum… after the funding came in… So it was all a bit intoxicating at first.
When I turned to writing my second play, however, I… ahem.. . actually… had to… err…. you know… Well… try to make stuff up. So I soon grew bewildered and confused. Perplexed, despairing, I submitted it to the Sewanee Writers Conference. A few months later I found myself sitting across a table with Horton Foote, Academy Award winner, Pulitzer Prize winner, and all-around great man of the American theater. It was a stifling Tennessee afternoon in the middle of Summer and there was no air conditioning in the building (or at least it felt that way as I sat sweating in my little chair!) We were there for some “one on one” time where he was to give me “notes” on my humble effort.
Running his hand through his snow white, flowing hair, Mr. Foote began by asking me (in a lovely modulated Southern voice) what I thought of the play. Well, of course, I thought it sucked but how was I going to say that to him? So I meandered on about this and that and the other thing until he finally cut me off and said the lines that I’ve quoted above about my caring only for “seducing the audience.”
And then he added….
“This play is nothing but improvisation.”
And then he added….
“There is nothing of integrity here.”
And then he just took the play apart for the next two hours… line by wobbly line… page by incoherent page… scene by faulty scene…
At the end, he said “I don’t mean to distress you, Mr. Munson.” (What? Distress me? Are you kidding? Never laid a glove on me! Oh, and where did I put that noose to hang myself with when I get back to my dorm room?) “I only want to help you as I feel you have a… a… a… “
He searched for a word here and then finally said…
…. “a facility for this… and I sincerely would like to help.”
I remember staggering back to my room and thinking, “At least it’s settled. I have no talent. Good. I can now go back to repairing mufflers with a clear conscience and a light heart.”
It was only later (after I called my wife, Beatrice, and moaned and groaned and cried a little) that I realized he was trying to help me and that I should take his wise words to heart. Of course I was trying to “seduce the audience.” Of course it was nothing but improv. Of course it was a wee bit short on the old integrity meter! Guilty, your Honor! Guilty as charged!
Perhaps I still am!
And what better way to “seduce the audience” than to write a blog? Will I never learn?
So what do you think, oh readers? Seducing the audience? A worthy goal? Or a shameful pandering? Let me know what you think!
To give some context, and to take a little stroll down the lane of memories, it all started when I tried to write my second play, “Willie and Solange.” My first play, “Owl” had been the typical autobiographical effort about being a kid growing up in Hollywood with my Dad struggling as an actor in the movie business and my stepmom singing torch songs in all the watering holes up and down Ventura Blvd in the San Fernando Valley. As in:
“Don’t know why… there’s no sun up in the sky… stormy wea…”
(dropping down an octave…)
“…ther…. Since my man and I ain’t to…
(dropping down an octave…)
“gether. Keeps rainin’ all the time….”
All sung in the lowest possible throaty angst-ridden existential croak!
I even had some success with Owl. It won a (very) small literary prize and two theaters said they wanted to produce it… sometime… somewhere… eventually… in another space-time continuum… after the funding came in… So it was all a bit intoxicating at first.
When I turned to writing my second play, however, I… ahem.. . actually… had to… err…. you know… Well… try to make stuff up. So I soon grew bewildered and confused. Perplexed, despairing, I submitted it to the Sewanee Writers Conference. A few months later I found myself sitting across a table with Horton Foote, Academy Award winner, Pulitzer Prize winner, and all-around great man of the American theater. It was a stifling Tennessee afternoon in the middle of Summer and there was no air conditioning in the building (or at least it felt that way as I sat sweating in my little chair!) We were there for some “one on one” time where he was to give me “notes” on my humble effort.
Running his hand through his snow white, flowing hair, Mr. Foote began by asking me (in a lovely modulated Southern voice) what I thought of the play. Well, of course, I thought it sucked but how was I going to say that to him? So I meandered on about this and that and the other thing until he finally cut me off and said the lines that I’ve quoted above about my caring only for “seducing the audience.”
And then he added….
“This play is nothing but improvisation.”
And then he added….
“There is nothing of integrity here.”
And then he just took the play apart for the next two hours… line by wobbly line… page by incoherent page… scene by faulty scene…
At the end, he said “I don’t mean to distress you, Mr. Munson.” (What? Distress me? Are you kidding? Never laid a glove on me! Oh, and where did I put that noose to hang myself with when I get back to my dorm room?) “I only want to help you as I feel you have a… a… a… “
He searched for a word here and then finally said…
…. “a facility for this… and I sincerely would like to help.”
I remember staggering back to my room and thinking, “At least it’s settled. I have no talent. Good. I can now go back to repairing mufflers with a clear conscience and a light heart.”
It was only later (after I called my wife, Beatrice, and moaned and groaned and cried a little) that I realized he was trying to help me and that I should take his wise words to heart. Of course I was trying to “seduce the audience.” Of course it was nothing but improv. Of course it was a wee bit short on the old integrity meter! Guilty, your Honor! Guilty as charged!
Perhaps I still am!
And what better way to “seduce the audience” than to write a blog? Will I never learn?
So what do you think, oh readers? Seducing the audience? A worthy goal? Or a shameful pandering? Let me know what you think!
Saturday, April 24, 2010
Getting Started
This is just to get started. I'm at the Stanford Author Boot Camp and setting up a practice blog.
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