review of the week

From Slate dot com. on Mamma Mia

What’s great about Mamma Mia! is its complete disconnect from cool. . . The movie’s spirit is somewhere between High School Musical and Hedwig and the Angry Inch; it’s at once dorkily wholesome and proudly slutty. It posits a transgenerational, pansexual paradise that’s so deeply queer that when one of the characters comes out of the closet late in the movie, the revelation seems superfluous. We’ve just spent the last 90 minutes singing ABBA while line-dancing on docks in snorkeling flippers, and you’re telling us you’re gay? Big whoop.

 

for the solstice

I’ve been blessed to be able to travel, and work to keep myself open to learn from new people and places.  At the same time, as the solstice approaches, I’m struck with the joys of a smaller world closer to home, of listening with more presence, of relaxing with more mindfulness, of looking at the familiar with fresh and astonished eyes.

 From a short piece called ‘Sleep-and-poetry’ by Chuvash poet Gennady Aygi (wow – the lyricism of Yeats meets the stutter-step rhythm of Dickinson)

Listening – in place of speaking.   Even – more important than vision, than any vision      (even – in imagination)….pauses are the places of reverence before: the Song

From ‘We Travel’ by Lebanese poet Issa Makhlouf -

We travel to go far away from our place of birth and see the other side of sunrise.  We travel in search of our childhood. . .  we travel so that unfinished alphabets complete. . .We travel so that we can tell those we have met that we shall return and meet again. . .we travel to learn the language of trees that never travel; to burnish the ringing of bells in holy valleys. . . we travel to tell those we love that we still love them; distance cannot overcome our amazement. . . we sit and look into the expanding space, watch the waves jump together like children….

 Rainer Maria Rilke, born in Prague, wrote in German, but was really a wanderer in a pan-cultural space.  The poem ‘Moving Forward’

The deep parts of my life pour onward,

as if the river shores were opening out.

It seems that things are more like me now,

that I can see farther into paintings.

I feel closer to what language can’t reach.

With my senses, as with birds, I climb

Into the windy heaven, out of the oak,

and in the ponds broken off from the sky

my feeling sinks, as if standing on fishes.

With warmest best wishes to everyone and hopes for times filled with climbing birds, jumping waves, and songs written from those formerly unfinished, now complete alphabets.

 

 

rolling thunder

It’s the Sunday before Memorial Day, and, for 20+ years, we’ve had the Rolling Thunder Motorcycle Rally in support of POW/MIAs.  Started by Vietnam Vets, as a motorcycle run to the Vietnam memorial, attracting as many as a half million people from all over the country. 

As the bride and I were driving to work at 10 a.m. on Sunday morning, it was pretty thrilling to pass by several thousand bikes and bikers staged in anticipation of the run at noon.  We also drove next do another several hundred.

Never before have i been near such a conflux of leather jackets, tattoos, motorcycles, and stringy greying ponytails……

 

 

the bluebells and the greybells

 

last weekend, the bluebells were in flower.  quite an amazing sight, since blue flowers, especially waves and waves of them, are not all that common.

the above picture is all in blue and grey.  the irony if that the bride and finnthedog and i are in bull run regional park and the stream is called bull run, the same bull run that gave name to two civil war battles (also known as first and second manassas).   our house in alexandria is on the site of a civil war camp (camp cloudes mill, where union soldiers were mustered out) and often in the misty early mornings, at o’dark thirty, near holmes while walking finnthedog, i often imagine soldiers running around…..

the whole northern virginia region is thick with civil war sites and one or two streets were NOT named after robert e lee…..

below, finnthedog communing with the bluebells….

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

cherry blossoms and hanami

one of the absolute best things about living in washington, dc, is the annual flowering of the cherry blossom trees

a couple of thousand trees, a gift from japan, surround the tidal basin, near the jefferson and FDR memorials.  they bloom for only a few short days, and they’re so lovely that gazillions of people want to see them.   so you have to time it all out, to miss both the human and vehicle traffic, but it’s worth it - sunlight through the trees creates the most lovely light pink light, making us all look younger and more attractive.  beyond that, on a less self-centered note, the gnarled trees and the delicate flowers are impossibly beautiful

the japanese celebrate brevity of the flowering of the cherry blossoms in relationship to the ephemeral nature of life, and even have a word for it - hanami.  happy cherry blossoms to all

 

happy st. patrick’s day, fellow travellers

a couple of years ago, finnthedog was invited to join the ‘irish terrier pet brigade’, part of the annual st. patrick’s day parade here in washington.   i think it was because, with a celtic name and as a dog whose ancestry is in a country whose spiritual leader is in exile, so the irish terriers understood.  he joined a greyhound and a skiperje in the outsiders section of the parade.

we like to think he had fun.  however, since he’s not a terrier at all, the irish terrier behavior confused him - calm and then immediate and angry growling and barking, then calm.  this was also the first time we noted he might make a great therapy dog - when a family invited him to the side of the road to greet the children, he made a beeline for a young man in a wheelchair and put his head in the boy’s lap.

since we’re not going to make the parade this year, thought it would be appropriate to post this picture.

 it’s as the parade participants were getting ready to march and can also be entitled, from the sesame street song: ‘one of these is not like the others’

 

surrealistic pillar - and the ‘white house slide’

so, yesterday we were fortunate enough to perform some excerpts from our play ‘chasing george washington: a white house adventure’ at the white house.

this is the 2nd collaboration of three with the white house historical association; there’s  a kids book being written for each; mrs. bush saw the first one at the family theater, and invited us for this one.

it was terrific, an honor and a pleasure, but it also had some VERY surrealistic aspects.  such as:

1) our waiting room was the Green Room, near the Red Room and the Blue Room.  for non-theater people reading this, in a theater, the room where the actors wait is the green room.   2) the conceit of the play is that the three kids on a field trip bump into the famous gilbert stuart portrait of washington, he falls out of the frame, and leads them on a time-travel adventure, and our stage was right next to the real gilbert stuart photo in the east room.  3) as above, we performed in the East Room, and one of the songs is done by an young woman named jenna portraying first daughter susan ford, singing about her high school prom, which was held in the …. East Room.  and the audience included first daughter jenna bush.  4) the opening song is ‘white house field trip’ and we all went over on a ken cen shuttle, sort of on our own white house field trip. 5) the last surrealistic moment was when mrs. bush was doing her intro, and i was standing by the door to the Green Room to bring the actors on, a young woman who looked vaguely familiar stood in front of the door.  i gently tapped her arm and asked her to move, since the actrons were coming through.  she did, and then i realized who she was -  jenna bush……

all went well, which is terrific, considering we had to do this in the middle of previews…adding sort of an overall patina of surreality to the ambiance.

 oh, and the title of the blog comes from, of course, the classic jefferson airplane album from the 60’s and the song from our show sung at susan ford’s prom-in-the-play: “the white house slide”, leading to of my favorite moments, when the disco tune takes a hard left into harpsicord music, and susan and general george move from travolta moves to the minuet.  then back to the disco.  one pill makes you larger.  all we needed were poppers to make the afternoon complete

 

diamonds and rust, and precision

listening to joan baez’ song “diamonds and rust”, about her relationship with bob dylan when they were both young, and then a little older.  with a stilleto of aching sweetness, with the voice of an angel, she tells him she ain’t gonna allow his lying ass back into her life

“now you’re telling me/you’re not nostalgic/then gimme another word for it/you who were so good with words/and in keeping things vague//cause i need some of that vagueness now/ it’s all come back too clearly/yes i loved you dearly/and if you’re offering me diamonds and rust/i’ve already paid”.  End of song.  bye-bye, bob.  NFW. 

i like the song a lot, partially for my own seminal remembrances of dylan and baez from the 60s, partially because the story of the song is about looking back on one’s life.  the line ‘you were so good with words and in keeping things vague’ also gets to thinking about words, language and precision/imprecision.  dylan as a lyricist could (and can) be precise, poetic, and vague, sometimes all at once, and, one likes to think, intentionally. 

remember the great mark twain comment: “the difference between the right word and the almost-right word is really a large matter - ’tis the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning”

have also recently (and often) had conversations with attorneys while looking at contracts - all about thin-sliced clarity and precision.  say what you mean and mean what you say so that we’re all - both metaphorically and literally - on the same page.

i love the ironic juxtaposition of talking to an attorney, especially a smart, articulate one, about art, which is vague and subjective, especially theater, which is ephemeral as well. 

the intersection of these polar opposites - pinning words to an exact point versus making art in all its non-specific glory  - can make for a lovely vibrancy of clashing planes of being.    and it’s fun to boot.

 

a new portrait for president’s day?

today is the holiday called ‘president’s day’ in the USA, cobbled together from previous holidays celebrating the birthdays of washington and lincoln, two of our great presidents. 

this is related to the show currently in production at the kennedy center theater for young audiences -‘chasing george Washington, a white house adventure’ by Karen zacarias and Debbie la puma.  kids on a white house field trip bump into the famous gilbert stuart portrait of Washington, and he falls out of the frame.  the play is an sometimes sassy, sometimes reverent time-travelling romp with GW and the kids, meeting Dolley Madison, Susan Ford, Lincoln, and others.  from the beginning stages of development, 18 months or so ago, I’ve always liked that the kids – a latino boy, a black girl, and an immigrant white girl – comment on how none of the portraits of the presidents look like them.   

now, of course, with the democratic nomination going to either obama or Clinton, it suddenly becomes of the moment. . . .it’s always nice, especially when you don’t plan it, how art and life can sometimes intersect.

 

zen mind, beginner’s mind, daoist mind

one of the classic books from my formative years in college and grad school was suzuki’s ‘zen mind, beginner’s mind’ .  not a text, but what we were all reading, right up there with herrigel’s ‘zen in the art of archery’‘; gary snyder’s version of some of the poems of han shan, AKA Cold Mountain,   (though red pine’s collected songs of cold mountain is a much better translation, and more complete to boot; and various versions of the Dao De Jing (nee Tao Te Ching).  these were all for artistic practice, not spiritual - no offense meant.  about getting to a place where we thought we could find the hottest point of the creative crucible - always approoaching with a mind open to possibilities, filled with both doubt and wonder, fresh, child-like.  ‘teach us to care and not to care, teach us to sit still’ says Eliot. 

we’re of course jumping around traditions and countries here, but i’ve always thought the zen and daoists were similar - where we have all the power and none of the power, where we know all and know nothing, simultaneously