tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-232672672024-03-13T17:59:35.892-04:00something to be desiredan anti-blog, like anti-matter, or the undead, or the unconscious....Luciferushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03713206391521280301noreply@blogger.comBlogger164125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23267267.post-9561646642834455042019-06-09T13:24:00.001-04:002019-06-09T14:34:12.983-04:00Happy Pride, 2019, Everyone<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQSeOyE6vcRee9Cz8kTb-PkIBCEkFOioioPm_bljpsRVWjzKI9T_kAc5bwY_Z3T8FsN6JPNzwxRHtaqqvUEBKVmQhPD4jmRZIJnaVMLx0c7uUUtC_eeYIg53q0KfMFb3uP9NI/s1600/Pride+2019.jpg"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQSeOyE6vcRee9Cz8kTb-PkIBCEkFOioioPm_bljpsRVWjzKI9T_kAc5bwY_Z3T8FsN6JPNzwxRHtaqqvUEBKVmQhPD4jmRZIJnaVMLx0c7uUUtC_eeYIg53q0KfMFb3uP9NI/s640/Pride+2019.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Who are the people who celebrate, promote, support, or fellow-travel with the notion of "straight pride"? <br />
<br />
<br />
Among other reasons, the word "pride" was chosen because gay people lived--and many still live--in a world that shamed them, that shamed, not just their choice of partners, other choices and associations, and actions but their very existence. When news of their existence became public, shame spread like a contamination upon their parents and family, friends, neighbors, associates, employers, co-workers, churches, schools, and hometowns, and, in the hands of the correct observer or interpreter, even to the state or the nation, even to the world or the species, itself. In this framework, the introduction of storms, flooding, fires, droughts, and disasters was understood as the consequence of the presence of the homosexual, a character so unnatural, so antithetical to reality itself, that the weather, that Nature, recoiled or revolted in response, as the body's immune system does when it rejects a foreign object, contaminant, or infection and seeks to eject, expel, or destroy it. In a related, less metaphorical, and more recent formulation, weather disaster has been seen as a response, a punishment, from a deity more exercised by the presence of the homosexual than that of poverty, war, the poisoning of the planet and its inhabitants, the taking advantage of the poor and political systems by the rich, murder, rape, and hatred, as such. If one imagines war, poverty, and hatred as yet more punishments for not toeing some other purportedly moral lines, then it should be asked what the point is of having a God so much more invested in negative responses than positive actions, where and how free will exists in such a relentlessly punitive universe, and why God's Will, in Susan B. Anthony's very memorable formulation, seems to cleave so closely to the worldview and prejudices of the people who promote it so assiduously. I have digressed. <br />
<br />
<br />
Living in a world of shame, in which shame is encountered, or potentially encountered, or, most often, implicitly encountered in interactions with ones parents, grandparents, siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins, brothers-in-law, and other family; with mentors, ministers, priests, teachers, coaches, doctors, and others one has taken as role-models, even while not, and sometimes while, being molested by them; with neighbors, friends of parents, parents of friends, friends, high school and college girlfriends, fiancées, and wives; with acquaintances, people one barely knows, bullies, enemies, arch-enemies, former childhood friends, and closeted individuals who would rather destroy you than ever be mistaken for someone like you; with the other boys on your high school wrestling team or baseball team or basketball team or soccer team or swim team or football team; with some of the faculty advisors, some of the boys, and sometimes the girls you worked with on high school theater productions; with business owners, shopkeepers, clerks, librarians, bookstore employees, adult bookstore employees, other shoppers in a department store or shop, other members of the theater or movie audience; with your taxi driver, the driver in the car next to you on the freeway or stopped at the light, adolescent or adult passersby on the sidewalk, men or boys in groups or individually; and the worst of betrayals, with your best friend, your boyfriend or girlfriend, your lover, your ally, the person you trusted the most, and your very existence, itself. <br />
<br />
<br />
It is this last contention--plus, probably, almost every other example I have raised, but most especially the question of one's existence, itself, as such--which serves as a rebuke to ones existence, that forever separates and describes the yawning void between gay pride and straight people's notion of "pride" in their sexuality. <br />
<br />
<br />
While some people--some of whom we have learned or been encouraged to call "straight"--may feel that the presence of gay pride--or, if one must be frank, the presence of gay people, or to be perfectly bald about it, the experience of the idea of the presence of gay people--does a violence to them, that experience is merely an inconvenience to them, whereas, for some or many but not all gay people, straight people's belief that gay people as an extant thing, that gay people as such, cause straight people an emotional violence is experienced by gay people as an actual--sometimes physical--violence upon their actual bodies, their actual employment or employment opportunities, their actual relationships with their families, their social worlds, their access to healthcare, their actual last wills and testaments, their actual legal relationship to their actual children, their actual legal relationship to their actual spouse, and so on. What straight people experience as a loss of privilege doesn't actually exist, what their reaction to it causes is an actual loss of or resistance to basic human rights for gay people. To draw any commensurate comparisons between the two functions as a blind idiocy. <br />
<br />
<br />
Gay pride has always existed as a rebuke to straight shame--both the shame that straight people feel about us and the shame that they try so very hard--sometimes, often, unconsciously--to make us feel about ourselves. Gay pride has always been an attempt to discover a place not that was once there, but that has never been there. To find a place that is not only not shamed, but that is a nourishment to one's existence, instead of an argument against one's existence, can never be compared to a sexuality that was so taken for granted as the sine qua non of all humans that its only experience of loss is a jealously regarded one of someone else's gain. Straight people should be thanking the other sexualities for helping them to see they are not alone in the universe, instead of trying to hound us out of existence.<br />
<br />
What--what, exactly--do you have to be so proud of?</div>
Luciferushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03713206391521280301noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23267267.post-27779410194405974432019-03-31T19:25:00.002-04:002019-03-31T19:25:47.871-04:00So many Spring<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVOZzXnlvPbpHQmUrEHJLdTLgIc7ACt31Zts0jPYp9ZcSbFNvyhuy1m9fLgJ9a8LW34jjv4DnXIQQcl8oDyhSXns60GLrZA2SUvQzBb0UmOHFEzUMIj5tVfdlwKGzzhuL_gm8/s1600/so+many+spring.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="768" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVOZzXnlvPbpHQmUrEHJLdTLgIc7ACt31Zts0jPYp9ZcSbFNvyhuy1m9fLgJ9a8LW34jjv4DnXIQQcl8oDyhSXns60GLrZA2SUvQzBb0UmOHFEzUMIj5tVfdlwKGzzhuL_gm8/s1600/so+many+spring.jpg" /></a></div>
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<br />
<span aria-live="polite" class="fbPhotosPhotoCaption" data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" id="fbPhotoSnowliftCaption" tabindex="0"><span class="hasCaption">So many <br />Spring Marie <br />Antoinettes, <br />so little<br />time, in a<br />time of too<br />much Winter.</span></span><span class="fbPhotoTagList" id="fbPhotoSnowliftTagList"><span class="fcg"></span></span>Luciferushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03713206391521280301noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23267267.post-59521056946419126792019-03-31T15:46:00.000-04:002019-03-31T15:46:05.186-04:00Recognition <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhE_ue_zw6TFa9VU-S85unJ_tkRoqrF2sq6IEDgUVhlq70hP96NYzoKLEm1meT0ICSzUuHcKCJ6zYkHJFSg6OLs89E_pac_NeWDlmgAZEFGpGAjLwu_dLFH4oezdMLnGK9uXC8/s1600/Patty+Duke+and+Helen+Keller.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="525" data-original-width="525" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhE_ue_zw6TFa9VU-S85unJ_tkRoqrF2sq6IEDgUVhlq70hP96NYzoKLEm1meT0ICSzUuHcKCJ6zYkHJFSg6OLs89E_pac_NeWDlmgAZEFGpGAjLwu_dLFH4oezdMLnGK9uXC8/s1600/Patty+Duke+and+Helen+Keller.JPG" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span dir="ltr"><span class="_3l3x"><span>I remember the first time I saw this picture, I didn't know who its subjects were. Already the image really struck me: the great difference in the age of the two subjects, the strong energy between the two, the suggestion of an intimacy and a distance at the same time, as though they didn't know each other well, but were somehow connected. Then I saw the caption, and I finally recognized Duke as the young girl, and the thing sort of exploded in my mind because I hadn't known that Keller was still alive when The Miracle Worker first appeared on stage. They are not just holding hands, </span></span></span><span dir="ltr"><span class="_3l3x"><span><span dir="ltr"><span class="_3l3x"><span>if my memory serves, </span></span></span> this image also captures, without being able to truly show it, a moment of silent, private connection, despite its being recorded on film, as they communicate--through a method invented by Annie Sullivan that only a very few people on the planet know how to use--a word that held the most powerful, foundational place in Keller's lexicon, in her very understanding and experience of the world, as Patty Duke finger-signs T-E-A-C-H-E-R into Helen Keller's hand.</span></span></span></div>
Luciferushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03713206391521280301noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23267267.post-11232234717942193682018-09-04T20:32:00.001-04:002018-09-04T22:11:11.705-04:00Conversations with my niece<iframe allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/w0rFN-JplzA" width="560"></iframe> <br />
<br />
I wonder as I wander out under the sky,<br />
How Jesus our Saviour did come for to die,<br />
For poor on'ry people like you and like I;<br />
I wonder as I wander out under the sky.<br />
<br />
When Mary birthed Jesus 'twas in a cow's stall<br />
With wise men and shepherds and farmers and all<br />
But high from God's heaven, a star's light did fall<br />
And the promise of ages it then did recall.<br />
<br />
If Jesus had wanted for any wee thing,<br />
A star in the sky or a bird on the wing,<br />
Or all of God's Angels in heaven to sing,<br />
He surely could have had it, 'cause he was the King.<br />
<br />
I wonder as I wander out under the sky,<br />
How Jesus our Saviour did come for to die,<br />
For poor on'ry people like you and like I;<br />
I wonder as I wander out under the sky.<br />
<br />
<br />
<iframe allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/qRMSmaA-1-I" width="560"></iframe><br />
<br />
<br />
I wonder as I wander out under the sky,<br />
How Jesus our saviour did come for to die,<br />
For poor on'ry people like you and like I;<br />
I wonder as I wander out under the sky.<br />
<br />
When Mary birthed Jesus 'twas in a cow's stall,<br />
With wise men and farmers and shepherds and all,<br />
But high from God's heaven, a star's light did fall,<br />
And the promise of ages it then did recall.<br />
<br />
If Jesus had wanted for any wee thing,<br />
A star in the sky or a bird on the wing,<br />
Or all of God's angels in heaven to sing,<br />
He surely could have had it, 'cause he was the King.<br />
<br />
I wonder as I wander out under the sky,<br />
How Jesus our saviour did come for to die,<br />
For poor on'ry people like you and like I;<br />
I wonder as I wander out under the sky.<br />
<br />
<br />
<iframe allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/E-Z8cmo7cbs" width="560"></iframe><br />
<br />
<br />
Blow the wind southerly,<br />
Southerly, southerly,<br />
Blow the wind south o'er<br />
The bonnie blue sea.<br />
Blow the wind southerly,<br />
Southerly, southerly,<br />
Blow bonnie breeze<br />
My lover to me.<br />
<br />
They told me last night<br />
There were ships in the offing,<br />
And I hurried down<br />
To the deep rolling sea;<br />
But my eye could not see it,<br />
Wherever might be it,<br />
The bark that is bearing<br />
My lover to me.<br />
<br />
Blow the wind southerly,<br />
Southerly, southerly,<br />
Blow bonnie breeze o'er<br />
The bonnie blue sea.<br />
Blow the wind southerly,<br />
Southerly, southerly,<br />
Blow bonnie breeze<br />
And bring him to me.<br />
<br />
Is it not sweet<br />
To hear the breeze singing<br />
As lively it comes<br />
O'er the deep rolling sea?<br />
But sweeter and dearer<br />
By far 'tis when bringing<br />
The bark of my true love<br />
In safety to me.<br />
<br />
<br />
<iframe allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Z4wTylAZhxw" width="560"></iframe><br />
<br />
<br />
Ombra mai fu<br />
Di vegetabile, <br />
Cara ed amabile, <br />
Soave più. <i>[x2]</i><br />
Cara ed amabile<br />
Ombra mai fu<br />
Di vegetabile<br />
Cara ed amabile<br />
Soave più, soave piú<br />
<br />
Oooooo<br />
De vegetabile<br />
Cara ed amabile<br />
Soave più, soave più.<br />
<br />
<br />
<iframe allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/tKjkxl6un3U" width="560"></iframe><br />
<br />
<br />
Hay and a clean stall<br />
and ivy on a garden wall<br />
and a sign saying sold<br />
and no coat for the bad cold.<br />
<br />
I believe in you.<br />
Do you believe in me?<br />
What do you want to do?<br />
Are we leaving the city?<br />
<br />
On the black road,<br />
through the gold fields<br />
while the fields are plowed<br />
towards what we are allowed.<br />
<br />
The bridle bends in idle hands<br />
and slows your canter to a trot.<br />
We mean to stop in increments,<br />
but can’t commit. We post and sit in impotence.<br />
<br />
The harder the hit, the deeper the dent.<br />
We seek our name, we seek our fame<br />
in our credentials, paved in glass,<br />
trying to master incidentals.<br />
<br />
Bleach a collar, leech a dollar<br />
from our cents.<br />
The longer you live, the higher the rent<br />
beneath a pale sky,<br />
beside the red barn,<br />
below the white cloud<br />
is all we are allowed.<br />
<br />
Here, the light will seep,<br />
and the scythe will reap,<br />
and spirit will bend<br />
in counting to the end.<br />
<br />
In December of that year,<br />
the word came down that she was here.<br />
The days were shorter,<br />
I was sure if she came round,<br />
I’d hold my ground.<br />
<br />
I can do what they alluded to,<br />
a change that came to pass. And<br />
Spring did range, weeping grass<br />
and sleepless broke<br />
itself upon my winter glass.<br />
<br />
And I could barely breathe for seeing<br />
all the splintered light that leaked.<br />
A fish is fleeing, launched in flight<br />
but starched in light,<br />
bright and bleeding, bleach the night<br />
with dawn deleting in that high sun,<br />
after our good run,<br />
when the spirit bends<br />
beneath knowing it must end.<br />
<br />
And that is all I want here,<br />
to draw my gaunt spirit to bow<br />
beneath what I am allowed,<br />
beneath what I am allowed. Luciferushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03713206391521280301noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23267267.post-26365222143417153402018-08-20T19:26:00.001-04:002020-05-26T17:28:35.524-04:00On Johann Sebastian Bach's Six Suites for Unaccompanied Violoncello<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNNiMpMVqrlXG6lVgX-ONsCx0ttD0tMCU7H1OWNR26dHWMgum6FVAppEtIMMqzJjWhBRpruIcQ5EHzpS6lh35FjIpXW-gS4tDbFfhi4787NeVkin2oC3yPAGbn6NTEU-2vr0c/s1600/Frontespizio_Cello_Suite.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="478" data-original-width="425" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNNiMpMVqrlXG6lVgX-ONsCx0ttD0tMCU7H1OWNR26dHWMgum6FVAppEtIMMqzJjWhBRpruIcQ5EHzpS6lh35FjIpXW-gS4tDbFfhi4787NeVkin2oC3yPAGbn6NTEU-2vr0c/s640/Frontespizio_Cello_Suite.png" width="568" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="mw-mmv-title">Title page of <a class="mw-redirect" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Anna_Magdalena_Bach" title="Anna Magdalena Bach">Anna Magdalena Bach</a>'s manuscript of the Six </span><span class="mw-mmv-title">Suites for Violoncello Solo without Bass. Dated before 1750, the author (Anna Magdalena Bach) is dead more than 70 years ago. So it is in the public domain.</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<span data-offset-key="3ffhb-0-0"><span data-text="true">tl:dr</span></span><br />
<div data-contents="true">
<br />
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="bgdld-0-0" style="text-align: justify;">
<span data-offset-key="bgdld-0-0"><span data-text="true">Approximately thirty-three years ago I took my first--and, as it turns out, last--college-level music appreciation class with, my friend, </span></span><span class="_247o" data-offset-key="bgdld-1-0" spellcheck="false" start="138"><span data-offset-key="bgdld-1-0"><span data-text="true">Kristen</span></span></span><span data-offset-key="bgdld-2-0"><span data-text="true">. The class was taught, unusually, by a professor-musician in the music department, a cellist, who presented the course in a rather free-wheeling, very personal manner, which was casual, almost facetious on the subject of coursework, homework, and testing student knowledge, but had an easy intimacy, a pleasant spontaneity, and an honest but usually frustrated curiosity about the opinions, feedback, and real-time reactions of the class to statements and comparisons he made or to the work of composers or performers he played for us on recording. I loved it. And Kristen and I found a way to not only be attentive to much of the material but crack each other up constantly. It was probably the other way around, in all honesty, and being equally honest, it was hardly the most respectful mode one could apply to a pedagogic setting, and our guide through the course material would shoot us an amused or unamused look of exasperation from time to time. What we liked about the course--the absence of any substantive demands--is what allowed us to play off each other, sometimes to the point of obnoxiousness, but it was also the dimension that allowed the course to, at its best, truly be about the appreciation of music, through knowledge of its history and evolution, theory and application, changing roster of instruments and styles, generic and musical categories, performance traditions, cultural impacts and influences, gossip and legends, and the work of its various contributors, which we were frequently invited to listen to, consider, and appreciate. Rather than take notes or study for an exam, he really wanted us to listen, not just hear; not just think but experience.</span></span></div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="e06j4" data-offset-key="2hk6a-0-0" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="2hk6a-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="2hk6a-0-0"><br data-text="true" /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="e06j4" data-offset-key="32cck-0-0" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="32cck-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="32cck-0-0"><span data-text="true">One day, he brought along his cello, and proceeded to speak about and to play for us, right there, on his instrument sections from J. S. Bach's Six Suites for Unaccompanied Violoncello.</span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="e06j4" data-offset-key="1khvu-0-0" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="1khvu-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="1khvu-0-0"><br data-text="true" /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="e06j4" data-offset-key="66jvm-0-0" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="66jvm-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="66jvm-0-0"><span data-text="true">First, it must be said, the experience of being in the same room with a cello as it is being played was an immediately exciting, even physical, experience, as you could actually feel the vibrations from the strings passing through your chest and torso, through your head, through your heart, through your body, as though it were a medium--because, it is--and you could feel the vibrations of these strings in your hair and on the surface of your skin and in the hairs on the surface of your skin.</span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="e06j4" data-offset-key="3vhvh-0-0" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="3vhvh-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="3vhvh-0-0"><br data-text="true" /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="e06j4" data-offset-key="e9osk-0-0" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="e9osk-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="e9osk-0-0"><span data-text="true">When our instructor first described what we were to hear--six suites, which are Baroque dances, for solo cello, played on a cello and just that one cello with nothing else--my heart sank, having cut my teeth and ears on the enormous, layered sound and drama of the Mozart Requiem and Beethoven's second symphony. This was also the first time we'd heard music that wasn't on a recording. This was *live*. It was alive, and you could not escape the fact that a person was playing this for you, in the room with you, nearby. A breathing, real person, with a pumping heart, and a body, who, before he drew his bow across the silent, waiting, taut, straining strings of his cello with an incredible delicacy, yet with a precision, a placement, and the infinitesimal specificity of muscle, of power, he took a deep breath, as though he were about to speak, or sing. Because, as I learned years later from my friend, </span></span><span class="_247o" data-offset-key="e9osk-1-0" spellcheck="false" start="910"><span data-offset-key="e9osk-1-0"><span data-text="true">Chase</span></span></span><span data-offset-key="e9osk-2-0"><span data-text="true">, a dancer, who would always do the same thing before she danced a phrase, that is exactly, of course, what one is doing. Of course.</span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="e06j4" data-offset-key="ejhb5-0-0" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="ejhb5-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="ejhb5-0-0"><br data-text="true" /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="e06j4" data-offset-key="d1570-0-0" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="d1570-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="d1570-0-0"><span data-text="true">Everything about his playing was physical and real, breathing, and moving, and sweating, and there. And you were there.The slightest tap of the bow sent ridges or jitters or colors of sound through the room and the people in it. And one had the impression that the strings, before they were played, were already vibrating, already straining to release something out of them, into the air, into the world, through you and out into the world, because the slightest touch of the bow or finger was immediate, experiential, and thrilling. This there-ness of it all, you, and he, the cello, the sound, the feeling of the sound, the dark, varnished, warm, sonorousness of wood, both enclosing you as a reflection, as a comfort, and holding you at a certain arms length, as art can do, was indistinguishable from deep intimacy, and connection. It was like being in love and profoundly alone at the same time.</span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="e06j4" data-offset-key="bafal-0-0" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="bafal-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="bafal-0-0"><br data-text="true" /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="e06j4" data-offset-key="7mbue-0-0" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="7mbue-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="7mbue-0-0"><span data-text="true">Bach wrote six suites for the solo cello, each with six movements, each in the Italian style of the Baroque dance suite, except for the two movements, in the gorgeous and melancholy fifth suite, composed in the French style. Our teacher played the prelude to the first suite. It is likely you have heard that prelude in different commercials or as the underscoring in various films, and so it is likely the best known of the thirty-six movements Bach composed. I can't help feeling it to be the signature of the work, because it was my entry point to it, and because its omnipresence functions as the sign for the whole. Ask anyone if they know Bach's cello suites for solo cello and she or he will sing you the familiar, <i>DAH-bah-dah-bah-dah-bah-dah-dee-dah</i>, of its opening, not any of the equally or surpassingly beautiful passages from any of the rest of it. And that is okay. By rights, the sixth should count as the signature, of the composer, and the end of the sixth, especially, since the suites become more expressive, more complex, nuanced, and demanding on several of several levels, for the cellist, as they go. For the listener, it is a different story. Unencumbered by the enormous interpretive, performative, and technical demands of playing them, we are allowed the opportunity--if we choose to take it, and you must choose to take it, for, while some passages of some of the movements of some of the suites will grab you and demand your attention, others, most of them, will only reveal themselves to you if you give yourself to them--of floating and plunging or soaring through a series of sounds that are a line of sound coming from two people through one specific instrument at one specific time. There are three people actually involved, however. The first is always Johann Sebastian Bach, the composer, the second is the cellist, always, and the third, the third always is you.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span data-offset-key="7mbue-0-0"><span data-text="true">Let us hear Pablo Casals, the sine qua non of our current understanding of the suites, play the prelude to the first suite:</span></span><br />
<span data-offset-key="7mbue-0-0"><span data-text="true"><br /></span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="e06j4" data-offset-key="1h8om-0-0" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="1h8om-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="1h8om-0-0"><iframe allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/rIzKdmDxdD0" width="560"></iframe><br data-text="true" /></span>
<span data-offset-key="1h8om-0-0"></span><br />
<span data-offset-key="1h8om-0-0"><br data-text="true" /></span>
<span data-offset-key="1h8om-0-0">The prelude to the first suite ends at 2:26. You may of course listen to the entire suite, as you prefer.</span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="e06j4" data-offset-key="1l8p-0-0" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="1l8p-0-0">
<br />
<span data-offset-key="1l8p-0-0"><span data-text="true">The suites were more or less forgotten to time and hearing, when, in the early twentieth century the great Catalan cellist, Pablo Casals, as a thirteen-year-old boy, discovered them in a thrift shop, and studied them carefully for many years until he felt he was ready to record them between 1936 and 1939. Before this time, they had always been considered studies or etudes--lessons--unsuitable for public performance. There was the added "problem" that the suites do not exist in an autograph score (in the hand of the composer), but only in the hand of his second wife, Anna Magdalena Bach, who, after Bach's death faced financial hardship, little to no help from his children of his first marriage, or her own, except for her stepson, C.P.E. Bach, and who is understood to have died penniless, homeless, on the street, buried in an unmarked, pauper's grave at Leipzig's Johanniskirche. which was destroyed by Allied bombing during World War II. Without the hand of this discarded woman, we would know nothing of a work considered to be one of the sublime expressions of humanity. Think about that for a while. Not even her unmarked grave exists.</span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="e06j4" data-offset-key="8bgfv-0-0" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="8bgfv-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="8bgfv-0-0"><br data-text="true" /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="e06j4" data-offset-key="979k7-0-0" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="979k7-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="979k7-0-0"><span data-text="true">Casals recognized the quality of the Suites, and because of the quality of his name and reputation, other cellists recognized it as well, and recorded it as well. It is only in the twentieth century that these six pieces were finally given their due, six pieces for unaccompanied cello, which in 1980 the British music critic, Wilifrid Mellers, called, in a very memorable phrase, "Monophonic music wherein a man has created a dance of God." Cellists since the time of Casals have recorded them, some of them more than once, because their understanding of them has evolved over time. They are not notated in a way that gives very much direction to the performer, so fast or slow, Romantic or not, sensual, austere, dance-like or not, it is given to the interpreter to make these choices.</span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="e06j4" data-offset-key="faeib-0-0" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="faeib-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="faeib-0-0"><br data-text="true" /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="e06j4" data-offset-key="9hsnv-0-0" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="9hsnv-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="9hsnv-0-0"><span data-text="true">So. When I learned that Yo Yo Ma would be playing all six suites at Blossom--the outdoor, summer, amphitheater home of the Cleveland Orchestra--I suggested to my parents, who always get a collection of tickets to Blossom, that we should go, and more or less forgot about it. Flash forward to last Sunday, when my parents; my sister, her husband, and their family; and I all went to hear these remarkable pieces played by one of the great cellists of the day, outside, as the evening turned into night, and the light turned into dark.</span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="e06j4" data-offset-key="966es-0-0" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="966es-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="966es-0-0"><br data-text="true" /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="e06j4" data-offset-key="dipms-0-0" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="dipms-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="dipms-0-0"><span data-text="true">I am not a fan of Ma's account of the suites. I do not find them perfunctory, but in the word of someone else, I do find them "bland." He has recorded them three times, and I only know his first recording, which he did when he was quite young. Mstislav Rostropovich, the great Russian cellist--understood by some to be THE cellist of the twentieth century--only waited until he was quite old to attempt them. And people don't like that recording, either, calling it "too reverential." With the suites, you cannot win.</span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="e06j4" data-offset-key="9pisd-0-0" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="9pisd-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="9pisd-0-0"><br data-text="true" /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="e06j4" data-offset-key="bh7pv-0-0" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="bh7pv-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="bh7pv-0-0"><span data-text="true">I have been to Blossom many times to hear the Cleveland. I heard them play an account of Beethoven's fifth symphony, under Dohnányi, that blew my mind, because it was like hearing it for the first time, and because I wasn't looking forward to hearing *that* overplayed work again. Normally, at Blossom, there are people trying to find each other on the hill leading down to the covered amphitheater--where most people sit, where we usually sit--with children playing, dancing, and calling to each other. It is not what I would call a "riot of activity," but it is a very active space, a very social space. People are largely respectful of what is going on, but they're also not crazy about being respectful. Last Sunday, I have never, ever, been more impressed by an audience's silence and focus during a performance.</span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="e06j4" data-offset-key="a42s7-0-0" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="a42s7-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="a42s7-0-0"><br data-text="true" /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="e06j4" data-offset-key="btu2e-0-0" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="btu2e-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="btu2e-0-0"><span data-text="true">Ma played six solo cello suites, each with six movements--in his account, a ninety-minute evening--to my astonishment, and my everlasting respect, without intermission. And almost no one made a sound. In fact, it was so quiet on that hill, that when someone did make a sound, you knew exactly where it was coming from, and they never did it again, with the exception of the child, further up from where we were, who visited a small section or roughly half of the suites with an indeterminate wailing, that bothered me not at all. Was it the same child? At the end of the day, all wailing children suffering through a concert they don't understand are the same child. So, yes.</span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="e06j4" data-offset-key="2sqpt-0-0" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="2sqpt-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="2sqpt-0-0"><br data-text="true" /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="e06j4" data-offset-key="b0ljd-0-0" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="b0ljd-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="b0ljd-0-0"><span data-text="true">I sat, perched on that hill, perched, in almost utter silence, in a sea of people, and listened to these incredible pieces, played for ninety minutes, almost without interruption, and was rapt by all of it. Things accumulated a stillness in this space. A horsefly, or a very large dragonfly, hummed its way over my right shoulder and straight down the hill, several times, over the course of the evening, almost rhythmically, once during every other suite. The clouds were static after a day of rain, and every time I glanced up at them, they had formed only a slightly different position. The light crept away from us, softly, and without incident, and informed the music, as it played, in a single line, from one instrument, by two people, to one person, who was each of us. I. I sat. Perched on that hill of time. A hill that became more steep and less so over the course of ninety minutes. As a horsefly, or a very large dragonfly, kept its time to the music. And a child cried in the distance to a rhythm of Bach, copied out for us by the hand of a wife, buried in a destroyed, unmarked pauper's grave, whose children and step-children, except for one, thought better than to help her after their common father died.</span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="e06j4" data-offset-key="3a35t-0-0" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="3a35t-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="3a35t-0-0"><br data-text="true" /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="e06j4" data-offset-key="4kgf5-0-0" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="4kgf5-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="4kgf5-0-0"><span data-text="true">I cannot tell you how profound it was for me to share this extraordinary experience with my family. Imagine what it might be like to know something profound--something so beautiful, that you have difficulty speaking about it. Something that, on a very specific level and in a very specific way is core, is central, to who you are and who you have become. Something that is such a sine qua non, you can no longer remember a time when it was not a part of you, because it has backwards formed itself into the time before you knew it. Something you have sat with, and thought about, and listened to, and derived sustenance from, and studied. For thirty-three years.</span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="e06j4" data-offset-key="58b7-0-0" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="58b7-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="58b7-0-0"><br data-text="true" /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="e06j4" data-offset-key="fnrou-0-0" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="fnrou-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="fnrou-0-0"><span data-text="true">Now, I know. I know my family didn't have the same experience that I did, and how could they? In my mind, to play even one movement from one of the suites would be an accomplishment. To have them hear all of them at once, to have them be confronted by this monumental, marathon work, in one night, without intermission, without ever having heard them before? Unspeakable. And the amazing thing is, though I did not know I had expectations, they did not let me down. Which is really tough to do! I wasn't able to talk to my sister and brother-in-law, but they enjoyed it, and they said so, and I believe them--it's a hard, demanding thing to do, all six suites, without intermission. Even I registered fatigue at certain points.</span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="e06j4" data-offset-key="b338-0-0" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="b338-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="b338-0-0"><br data-text="true" /></span></div>
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<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="e06j4" data-offset-key="917l3-0-0" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="917l3-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="917l3-0-0"><span data-text="true">It was my parents--with whom I had traveled to Blossom that night--who spoke volubly, with interest, and with specificity about what they had heard. Is there any better example of why one should be happy that one had the parents one had? Some people have the tools to understand the world without what was given to them. I am not that person. I can only understand the extraordinary world before us with the tools I was given by the people who made me. And while those tools take me places they don't understand, there is always a place that they do. So, I guess, thanks, Mom and Dad.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span data-offset-key="917l3-0-0"><span data-text="true">The Baroque suite was considered an old-fashioned form in Bach's time, but the cello was an undiscovered country. Bach, whose patron at the time was a Calvinist who had little use for religious music--Bach's prime form, as a devout Lutheran (a Lutheran who composed Masses, mind you)--put Bach in the odd position of getting paid to do almost whatever he wanted, and so he composed secular music: the suites, the pieces for unaccompanied violin, and others. It is up to the listener to decide if she or he feels these works are truly secular. I hear nothing of the secular about them, and I say this as a proud atheist. Moreover, they partake of a simultaneously old-fashioned sound as well as a thrillingly austere modernism--even, if you like, a postmodernism, in their repetitions and juxtapositions--and yet that austerity gives way to passion and an expressive, deep emotionality. You will be hard-pressed to find a more paradoxical, elusive, moving, or exciting series of pieces called one work. If you are new to the suites, good luck on your new adventure, should you choose to embark on it. If you know the suites well, welcome home.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span data-offset-key="917l3-0-0"><span data-text="true">Now, for some examples:</span></span><br />
<br />
<span data-offset-key="917l3-0-0"><span data-text="true"><span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g">I
begin with Yo Yo Ma. What do we find in the prelude to the third suite?
A minimal figure that turns at 1:42 into a wonderful floating line that
plays until 2:08. It works through the figure, and the recurrent theme
of, believe it or not, scales, and a series of false endings, before actually ending at 3:27. That is the third prelude.<br /><br />I
call the phrase that begins at 1:42 the money shot. And the suites are
full of them. It is the place where I, or you, get grabbed, and a place
from which backwards, and/or forwards, you start listening differently.
It is the kernel around which the movement seems to be formed, and by
which your curiosity draws you into the rest of that movement. It is the piece of sand that around which the pearl is formed. Find it, or them, in each movement, and you will spend the rest of your life listening to the Suites, as I have.</span></span></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span data-offset-key="917l3-0-0"><span data-text="true"><span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><iframe allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/icx52BLixaw" width="560"></iframe> </span></span></span> </span></span><br />
<br />
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody">Now,
we have Mischa Maisky playing the third prelude. Maisky is my Master when it comes to the Cello Suites. I bought his recording while still attending the class I mentioned at the beginning of this post, and he has never let me down.</span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody">His third prelude is a much more
muscular and playful version, to be sure. At 2:04 the money shot begins,
considerably later than Ma's version, and can your hear, between the
big notes, a song that makes itself known in even bigger notes? A static figure of repetition in a song? Wonderful. And listen to how
he turns those false endings into a dramatic series that resolve
themselves into an ending. The Prelude ends at 4:16. You may, of course, listen to the rest of the entire suite, as you prefer.</span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody"></span></span></span><br />
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody"></span></span></span><br />
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody"><iframe allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Rc7rj1OOVgI" width="560"></iframe></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<br />
Heinrich Schiff plays it at a remarkable clip.<br />
<br />
<iframe allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/hFzb06yuYTs" width="560"></iframe><br />
<br />
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody">And then there is the incredible and elegant, the indispensable, Pierre Fournier.</span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody"><iframe allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/7MB-q3g97Yo" width="560"></iframe> </span></span></span></div>
</div>
</div>
Luciferushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03713206391521280301noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23267267.post-75868842197100999292018-05-10T20:47:00.000-04:002018-08-22T18:51:23.057-04:00she is locked up, beaten, and flung about the room<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjg_eRQ7r8J2wPWAx5s0-UuMCVZbakDrMLpxJDAM8xyUZjT0MJbp0Q4r-CrevYO-lTivIDRFLC4VGQUjVILkmf_HGYJEpaiHUddDexHwYgOXHDm2Wnw4w8SqavI3aKe9ZXlpWg/s1600/locked+up+beaten.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="466" data-original-width="593" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjg_eRQ7r8J2wPWAx5s0-UuMCVZbakDrMLpxJDAM8xyUZjT0MJbp0Q4r-CrevYO-lTivIDRFLC4VGQUjVILkmf_HGYJEpaiHUddDexHwYgOXHDm2Wnw4w8SqavI3aKe9ZXlpWg/s1600/locked+up+beaten.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">April 13, 2018 | A major
donor with close ties to the White House resigned on Friday as deputy
finance chairman of the Republican National Committee after the
revelation that he had agreed to pay $1.6 million to a former Playboy
model who became pregnant during an affair. The deal was arranged in the
final months of 2017 by President Trump’s personal lawyer and fixer, <a class="css-1g7m0tk" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/10/us/politics/michael-cohen-trump.html" target="_blank" title="">Michael D. Cohen</a>. Under the terms of the deal, the Republican donor, <a class="css-1g7m0tk" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/25/us/politics/elliott-broidy-trump-access-circinus-lobbying.html" target="_blank" title="">Elliott Broidy</a>,
would pay the woman in installments over the course of two years, and
she would agree to stay silent about their relationship, two people with
knowledge of the arrangement told The New York Times. The deal was
first reported by The Wall Street Journal. From <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/13/us/politics/elliott-broidy-michael-cohen-payout.html" target="_blank">The New York <i>Times</i></a>.</td></tr>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
I look at this man--everything that seems visible about him: the insistent PEPPERDINE photo-op backdrop; the poor physical and social health evident in the skin color, the mirthless pools of black that are his eyes, the grimace which at some point forgot to disguise itself as the signal of a pleasure in the world, which is to say, as an smile, rather than the wincing expression of a forbearance of, a steeling against, the world; I look at that "haircut"--I look at this man and I feel sorry for the "Playboy model," who, with those two words, is surgically caricatured into nothingness, into dismissal, as the barely described but overly present sine-qua-non--the that-without-which--pretext for the humiliation, the failure, the weakness, the desire of another, the barely described pretext for the humiliation of a man, who, as we well know, is the only another, the only other, that matters.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I look at this man, and I see the women not on his arm, in this frame or in any other frame: no surplus of disappointed wives or expensive mistresses or disappointed, expensive mothers will ever be enough to make him believe that he is a success, that he is a man, that he is alive, that he is real, that he is a real boy, alive, and not someone else's fantasy of a man, not some father's fantasy of a boy, not some father's fantasy of himself, made of painted wood and string, a fantasy whose lies are forever revealing, forever announcing, the degree to which they arouse him by his shameful erection, which is as clear as the nose on his face. </div>
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It is, of course, the height to which he has risen; the richness of his investment and achievement; the scope and number of his responsibilities; the reputation and the dignity of--the admiration for--his family, both up (parental, ancestral) and down (spousal, childrel: inherital), which is to say, his very name, its currency and value, its reference and intelligibility; his ability, his dependability and responsibility, his ability to influence others, which is to say his word; his respect, his solidity, his fearsomeness, his strength, his resolution, his intensity, his fecundity, his power, which is to say, his maleness, his manhood, his sex, itself, all coming into question; it is the threatened or actual loss--even just the news of the threat of the loss--of these things that makes the story tragic, that gives it any value at all, that makes the story worth knowing or repeating, because the story's very iterability isn't affected at all by it's depressing and clichéed reiteration that it is news if/that/when a man falls from grace by partaking of his association with a [insert any two words here that describe a woman, but in this case:] Playboy Model. Every time, the loss, the tragic fall, the story occurs to, the story is about, an individual, a subject, a person of interest, or notoriety, of value, a person in whom I should be interested if only by dint of the fact that someone has decided to repeat the story of his loss of value to me. In the story, in his story, the (actual/potential) loss of his status--his value or usefulness in politics, industry, finance, faith, or law; his value as a leader or thinker or role-model; his value as a husband, father, son, and man--is presented as though it hadn't just happened to this other asshole yesterday, it is presented as though it were happening for the first time, when, depending on the timing it is only just happening for the first time today. And the lady--all the women, of course, for the most part--but the lady in question is just the stock character of Fallen Woman, just a two-word dismissal as a description, because it doesn't matter who she is, she doesn't have a story, she doesn't need a story, she is not important, except in one way and one way only: as the pretext for the (threatened, perhaps actual) loss of a man's status, family, fortune, word, name. Her presence in his story--because she doesn't have a story, she doesn't need a story, and no one cares about her story, except that there must be some suggestion, some hint, some suggestion to the suggestible, that she's just the least bit tawdry, or a shopgirl, or a divorcee, or an actress, or working class, or a coed, or a latina, or a european, or a prostitute, or a woman--signals his loss and is the cause of his loss. She exists--she serves--merely as a function in his story. She exists to serve. </div>
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Certain kinds of psychoanalysis have a word for this state, which is often translated into English as a state of "abjection": she is abjected--in truth, before the story is told, she is already in an abjected state, always already--humbled and rejected, ejected outside of accepted, acceptable, informed, available, permissible or possible discourse. He is not. He has many more than two words to apply to his highest level of attainment, or any attainment, in the social spheres. He has many more than one sphere, he has many more than one title, many more than one role, and more than one name by which to call him, but his names, titles, roles, and spheres and his ability to move among them, capitalize upon them, and use them to his advantage and others' is damaged by his association with the storyless, abjected lady in question. Her story is unavailable and unimportant because she is abjected, and she is abjected because of some now-unimportant but singular detail of her now-unimportant and abjected story: she has no story, and it is as though his story, he, himself, takes on some contamination, partakes of some contaminating quanta of her abjection, and thus becomes, in some sense, abjected himself. So, gents, beware of Fallen Women.</div>
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But if we're really honest with ourselves, it is not difficult to see that the abjection of which Fallen Woman takes is not due to her fallen state, but due to her state as woman, as her hypothesized-but-the-hypothesis-is-enough fallenness is hypothesized on her hypothesized unreliable, unstable, untrustworthy, weak, flighty, fickle, faithless, unteachable, ignorant, dissembling, dangerous, dark, mysterious, unknowable womaness. The hint of falleness is the addition that is not an addition because it serves to call out what we all know women already to be, or be capable of, which is tacitly the same. The Fallen Woman is all women. She doesn't have the same value as a man, and her as-few-details-as-possible story only exists as a non-story to affect the story of a man. Woman is the property of someone else's story. She is property. That is why she is paid less on the dollar than a man for the same job; that is why she doesn't have her own name but has the name of her father or her husband; that is why she is defined most powerfully by her relationship to men, as daughter, wife, mother, mistress, widow; that is why when she is raped it is because of the way she was dressed or because she has had more than one sexual partner or any sexual partner, or because she is a lesbian, or a woman; that is why our vice president does not allow himself to be alone in a room with a woman who is not his wife; that is why when she is beaten by her husband it is because she must have done something to cause it; that is why we have difficulty encouraging or imagining women in physics, chemistry, mathematics, medicine, law, law enforcement, the military, sports, music composition or in leadership roles in these fields, or any field; that is why she cannot be elected president because she seems cold, seems untrustworthy, seems ambitious, and doesn't smile enough; that is why, in Virginia Woolf's memorable formulation in <i>A Room of One's Own</i>, she is locked up, beaten, and flung about the room. </div>
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For her to be acceptable, she must be the paragon of fidelity, fealty, faith, compromise, kindness, supportiveness, selflessness, nonexistent opinions, disregarded thoughts, and uncomplaining labor: In the terms of <i>King Lear</i>, she must only be Cordelia, whose back is a bridge for men, for men and children, for male children, a bridge for men; otherwise she is those monstrous other sisters, Goneril or Regen, it seems, by default. It would be best for everyone if she died in childbirth. For there will always be another woman to marry--as they are interchangeable--who will teach the daughter her place, or beat her into it, because she can be counted on not to love her as her own. Because we must always force women into competition with other women, for everything, but especially for the attention of the Man, who is the hero of the story, the narrator, the author, the publisher, the bookseller, the critic, and the reader. And he has made the notion of Fallen Woman--precisely because there is no real distinction from Woman, precisely because Woman is, at every moment, in danger of submitting to her nature, like a scorpion--to distinguish interchangeable women from one another. If you believe that the purpose of sex is not pleasure, a dimension accorded only to men, but solely for the reproduction of men, sons to carry the name only they may keep and to safeguard the property only they may inherit, upon your body, which is the purpose of your body, by the man you were given to by a man, through the painful labor of your body, which is the only labor you are to be allowed; if you are Cordelia and make an incubator of your body, a bridge of your back, and suffer beautifully with your muted voice and your cramped agency, a jealously restricted purview that is mostly the execution, reinforcement, and extension, as their agent, of someone else's interests, desires, prejudices, and will; if you defer to, maintain, celebrate, supplement, and anticipate those interests without question, because they are, and must be, your own; if your every action and expression is toward keeping things the way they are, then you will be called "respectable"--a precarious high-wire act of a designation--and your origins, your class, your poverty, your ethnicity, your foreignness, your sins, your past, your woman-ness will not be held against you. You will not be fallen.</div>
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Luciferushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03713206391521280301noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23267267.post-88427142149141090052017-05-30T05:04:00.002-04:002017-05-30T05:04:43.826-04:00On Memorial Day<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEie4dJQQVpx29ihmWY4AvqFjRA34hMSUqzKVp8phPhc3XfX-ES-ViK_k-tQIcNa2sGXlEuYl6ZPBUsTmXNb16JooUHR4n9xrnotEOZzbAuqJfHIZNAEFPISwr6r5L0Etfdujl4/s1600/taps.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="743" data-original-width="964" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEie4dJQQVpx29ihmWY4AvqFjRA34hMSUqzKVp8phPhc3XfX-ES-ViK_k-tQIcNa2sGXlEuYl6ZPBUsTmXNb16JooUHR4n9xrnotEOZzbAuqJfHIZNAEFPISwr6r5L0Etfdujl4/s1600/taps.jpg" /></a></div>
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Why does God permit suffering?</div>
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The State tells us that the murder of ourselves by ourselves is acceptable, or, rather, neccessary. And so, on Memorial Day, in America, we might wonder if we should suspend this question or interrogate it.</div>
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In memoriam, in marmoreal memorial, today, our war dead, we remember, and those who made war and lived through it. Even if your sacrifice meant little to you, it means a great deal to me.</div>
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We remember you, today.</div>
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Luciferushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03713206391521280301noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23267267.post-31902323748270088312017-05-16T18:18:00.003-04:002017-05-16T18:18:54.533-04:00On David Brooks on Jane Addams<div style="text-align: justify;">
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaNjqSF-PjOzXIdcT7OhaZgVWjhq_r8Xu5qSwTZDmlOSsFe4U7BWtcnbw_PQ0MuV54-WsxKOh0z11y00NUQeDrS2fMlUL-BJgzZ8wum3tlrA4aedUIakNSmgpFpuZKfbbLm-A/s1600/Hull+House.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="219" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaNjqSF-PjOzXIdcT7OhaZgVWjhq_r8Xu5qSwTZDmlOSsFe4U7BWtcnbw_PQ0MuV54-WsxKOh0z11y00NUQeDrS2fMlUL-BJgzZ8wum3tlrA4aedUIakNSmgpFpuZKfbbLm-A/s320/Hull+House.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hull House, Chicago</td></tr>
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I have criticized him, sharply, over the years, and it has been fascinating to watch his Times pieces evolve through Bush II, the Republican Congress with Obama, and Trump. At base, through dilatory, piecemeal self-expressions--as "the conservative" voice at the Times, through his initial excuses for the Right, followed by his subsequent bewilderment at the madness and obvious venom of their agenda, which was an agenda of inaction-as-sabotage-and-brinksmanship, when it wasn't one of plutocratic self-interest at the expense of, well, anything, everything, else--Brooks has slowly revealed himself to be a classic, true conservative--who does not put party before country--and the kind we need many more of.</div>
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I'm not a liberal, I'm a radical, but I respect a real, conservative movement, that seeks to conserve, that doesn't need the appellation "compassionate" before it to find the spurious taste of being palatable. We have come to a place where "conservative" means something it was never meant to mean. It's an insult to conservatism, as such. Let's just call it the Far-Right, and be done with it. And don't forget, there are--or were--both Right and Left conservatives. Oh, how I miss texture, nuance, investment, and thought.</div>
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David Brooks! I might start liking you one day.</div>
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From the New York Times, in its <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/25/opinion/the-jane-addams-model.html" target="_blank">entirety</a>:</div>
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The Jane Addams Model</div>
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April 25, 2017</div>
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These days everything puts me in mind of Jane Addams. Many of the social problems we face today — the fraying social fabric, widening inequality, anxieties over immigration, concentrated poverty, the return of cartoonish hyper-masculinity — are the same problems she faced 130 years ago. And in many ways her responses were more sophisticated than ours.</div>
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Addams was born to an affluent family in Cedarville, Ill., in 1860. She was a morally ambitious young woman who dreamed of some epic life of service without much idea about how it might come about. In her teenage years, she earnestly set to reading — “Pilgrim’s Progress,” Plutarch’s “Lives,” “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” — but in her twenties she was one of those young people who don’t get to themselves quickly. They spend years in study and in acquiring degrees with a vague sense they are preparing for something, without actually leaping into what it is they might want to do.</div>
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Addams took a Grand Tour of Europe and found herself in a vegetable market as the leftovers were being tossed to a crowd of paupers, who stood with their grasping hands upraised. The image had a powerful effect on her. Forever after, the sight of hands raised up, even in dance and calisthenics, caused her to feel the pain of poverty and want.</div>
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In London, she visited a place called Toynbee Hall, a settlement house where rich university men organized social gatherings with the poor in the same way they would organize them with one another. Addams returned to Chicago and set up Hull House, an American version of the settlement idea.</div>
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As today, it was a time when the social fabric was being torn by technological change. Addams moved her family possessions, including the paintings, books and heirloom silver, into a large mansion in a blighted district. The idea was to give the dispossessed the same sort of refined and cultivated home environment that she had known, and thus create a network of family and neighborly bonds. Before long, 2,000 a day were streaming through the place, taking and teaching courses, offering and receiving day care, doing the housekeeping, conducting sociological research.</div>
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This was not rich serving the poor (Addams hated paternalism). It was rich and poor, immigrant and old stock, living and working in reciprocity, and as a byproduct bridging social chasms and coming to understand one another. For example, Addams thought it was especially important to put immigrant adults into the role of teachers, because it affords “a pleasant change from the tutelage in which all Americans, including their own children, are so apt to hold them.”</div>
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There were classes in acting, weaving, carpentry, but especially in art history, philosophy, and music. Addams was convinced that everyone longs for beauty and knowledge. Everyone longs to serve some high ideal. She believed in character before intellect, that spiritual support is as important as material support. And yet “the soul of man in the commercial and industrial struggle is under siege.”</div>
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High culture was her way to elevate the desires and tastes of all who passed through. Residents were surrounded with copies of Rembrandts and presented with Greek tragedies and classical concerts. One new immigrant walked in and Addams handed him an Atlantic Monthly and recommended an essay he could barely understand. But it was a sign of respect and equality, and access to a different world. Even poor kids, she believed, should “share in the common inheritance of life’s best goods.”</div>
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Our antipoverty efforts tend to be systematized and bureaucratized, but Hull House was intensely personalistic. She sought to change the world by planting herself deeply in a particular neighborhood. She treated each person as a unique soul.</div>
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Addams had amazing capacity to work from the specific case to the general philosophy, and had the ability to apply an overall strategy to the particular incident. There are many philanthropists and caregivers today who dislike theory and just want to get practical. It is this sort of doer’s arrogance and intellectual laziness that explains why so many charities do no good or do positive harm. Addams, by contrast, was both theorist and practitioner.</div>
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In her day, like our own, public life was dominated by manly men who saw politics as a competition between warriors and who sought change through partisan chest thumping and impersonal legislative action.</div>
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Addams was certainly political, but she defended the primacy of the “woman’s” sphere. People are really shaped by dense intimate connections. People thrive in “familied contexts.” As Jean Bethke Elshtain wrote in her biography, “The world of women was, for her, a dense concoction of imperatives, yearnings, reflections, actions, joys, tragedies, laughter, tears — a complex way of knowing and being in the world.”</div>
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Tough, Addams believed that we only make our way in the world through discipline and self-control. Tender, she created an institution that was a lived-out version of humanist philosophy. In today’s terms, she was a moral and religious traditionalist and an economic leftist, and an incredible role model for our time.</div>
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Luciferushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03713206391521280301noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23267267.post-38241889500104526162017-05-08T23:14:00.000-04:002017-05-09T14:42:31.116-04:00The White Dogwood<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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In the posttwilight blue,<br />
The white blossoms of<br />
The dogwood hang in<br />
Silence--only for the<br />
Car that winds by, in<br />
The night--like memory,<br />
Like ghosts on the line.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">L. Steve Schmersal, <i>The White Dogwood</i>, May 2017.</span></div>
Luciferushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03713206391521280301noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23267267.post-33709908403477765232017-04-25T22:16:00.003-04:002017-04-25T22:16:58.282-04:00What is Jazz? This is Jazz. Happy Birthday, Ella Fitzgerald.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Jazz Appreciation Month 2017, Day 25</div>
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Today marks the actual Fitzgerald centenary. Happy Birthday, Ella Fitzgerald.</div>
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What is Jazz? This is Jazz.</div>
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I heard this song on the radio on the way home from work this afternoon and was kinda knocked out--a young Fitzgerald, singing, "Don't Worry 'bout Me," doing some fairly Billie Holliday scooping and singing in fine, 1938 period form. Just smashing.</div>
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When I saw Fitzgerald live in 1989 in Cincinnati, we were all seated, respectfully, like adults, and between songs, during a quiet pause, after our applause, a woman yelled out as though she couldn't contain herself another second, " I LOVE YOU, ELLA!!" </div>
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Fitzgerald gave a beat and replied, very simply, in that one-of-a-kind, immersively warm voice of hers, into the microphone, and her voice came from everywhere and nowhere, like God, "I love you too, sweetheart."</div>
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I love you, Ella.</div>
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Forget 'bout Me</div>
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Don't worry 'bout me,</div>
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I'll get along.</div>
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Forget about me,</div>
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Be happy, my love,</div>
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Let's say that our little show is over,</div>
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And so the story ends,</div>
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Why not call it a day the sensible way</div>
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And still be friends?</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
We'll be friends.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Look out for yourself</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Should be the rule,</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Give your heart and your love</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
To whomever you love,</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Don't be a fool.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Darling, why do we cling to this old faded thing</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
That used to be?</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
If you can forget,</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Don't worry 'bout me.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
[dance break]</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Yes, just look out for yourself</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Should be the rule,</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Give your heart and your love</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
To whomever you love,</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Don't don't be a fool.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Darling, why should we cling to some old faded thing</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
That used to be?</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Yes, if you can forget,</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Don't worry 'bout me.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
If you see somebody new</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Someone who looks good to you,</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
You please don't worry 'bout me</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Rube Bloom, music; Ted Koehler, lyrics; Ella Fitzgerald, vocal; "Don't Worry 'bout me," <i>Ella Fitzgerald and her Savoy Eight</i>, 1938.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="480" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/6pFOKrq-OiQ" width="854"></iframe></span></div>
Luciferushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03713206391521280301noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23267267.post-88521726134166639812017-04-05T05:46:00.003-04:002017-04-25T22:19:26.352-04:00 What is Jazz? This is Jazz. Toxic.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOdJajHQ67vcJQR4oYG7zUSyY2PNsTlBAx2gjX4l3iL642a9rbPNOz59kaE05Jmh7g50ReiQKSFmC9hiR9nnaUuxco0On7c6_QmcvzusV10sr86CaJpK5yO1btaCq5dsWF6Qg/s1600/Jazz-Appreciation-Month.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="276" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOdJajHQ67vcJQR4oYG7zUSyY2PNsTlBAx2gjX4l3iL642a9rbPNOz59kaE05Jmh7g50ReiQKSFmC9hiR9nnaUuxco0On7c6_QmcvzusV10sr86CaJpK5yO1btaCq5dsWF6Qg/s400/Jazz-Appreciation-Month.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
What is Jazz? This is Jazz.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I am late to the appreciation of Jazz Appreciation Month, again, the spur, as always, being, my friend, the essential, Rose, who was raised, as I was--a hopeful, white, American child--in a house of Jazz.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I always seek the liminal, the undefinable, the indecipherable, the edge-places, and in-between places. All of the true, American art forms belong to this space of uncertain certainty: they all come from and are beholden to earlier expressions and traditions, yet pose a problem-solution so special that we decide, upon some thoughtful, knowledgeable, respectful analysis that it presents a unique position. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Not even Athena sprang Athena-like from the forehead of Zeus. Her mother, Metis, the Titan of Wisdom, whose progeny would be greater than the father, were that prophecy allowed to take place properly, had been swallowed as the fly into which she'd transformed herself to escape Zeus' amour. There are two great prophecies, that I know of, in Greek mythology, calling out the offspring of the mother as greater than the father, the other being a sea goddess, Thetis. Both prophecies encounter Zeus, who--wily as Odin and the other Skyfathers--sidesteps the prophetic outcome made in the lap of a woman, which is to say, a womb. Who says the Fates can't be denied?</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Metis. Thetis.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
In the case of Thetis, Zeus, who "loved" her but, given her prophetic baggage, was unwilling to chance his throne on his lust, through an incredible public relations coup, relegated her offspring, through a mortal father, King Peleus, to the mortal dimension, as Achilles, mightiest of doomed mortals. Similarly, Athena--as a woman, not a man, as a goddess of wisdom and war, out-does her father in every way; she is her father's favorite--poses no threat to the line of succession and the base of power, since only male offspring pose that issue of issue. And thus, the rape of her mother, and the prophecy about her, was constrained, contained, diffused, and defused into the most fascinating of deities, as a female, always-virgin god.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
All the post-indigenous-people, indigenous, American forms are based on a kind of love, appropriation, and violence: the Blues, Jazz, the Broadway Musical, and Rock and Roll--all of which, constantly, bleed into each other. Miscegenation is our American past and our American future. It is our heritage, our dowry, our inheritance, our legacy, and our estate. Just ask Thomas Jefferson.</div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Welcome to Jazz Appreciation Month.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Toxic</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Baby, can't you see,</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I'm calling.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
A guy like you</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Should wear a warning.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
It's dangerous.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I'm falling.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
There is no escape;</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I can't wait;</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I need a hit;</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Baby, give me it;</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
You're dangerous;</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I'm loving it.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Too high,</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Can't come down;</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
It's in the air</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
And it's all around.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Can you feel me, now?</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
With a taste of your lips,</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I'm on a ride:</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
You're toxic,</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I'm slipping under.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
A taste of your poison paradise,</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I'm addicted to you,</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Don't you know that you're </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
toc-sick,</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
And I love what you do,</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Don't you know that you're </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
toxic?</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
It's getting late</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
To give you up;</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I took a sip</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
From my devil's cup;</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Slowly,</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
It's taking over me:</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Too high,</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Can't come down;</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
It's in the air,</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
And it's all around.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Can you feel me now?</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
With a taste </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
of your lips,</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I'm on a ride.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
You're toxic,</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I'm slipping </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
under;</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Taste of a poison paradise,</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I'm addicted to you;</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Don't you know that you're toxic?</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
And I love what you do,</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Don't you know </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
that you're toxic?</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Intoxicate me, now,</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
With your lovin', now,</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Think I'm ready, now,</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Think I'm ready, now.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Toxicate me, now,</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
With your lovin', now,</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Think I'm ready, now,</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Think I'm ready, now.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Toxicate me, now,</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
With your lovin', now,</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I think I'm ready, now,</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I think I'm ready, now.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I think I'm ready, now.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I think I'm ready, now.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Toxicate me, now,</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
With your lovin', now,</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I think I'm ready, now,</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Think I'm ready, now.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Now.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Now.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Now</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Now.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Now-ow.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Now.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Now</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Now.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Now.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Now</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Now. Now. Now. Now. Now. Now Now. Now. Now. Now.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I think I'm ready, now,</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
With a taste of lips,</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I think I'm ready, now.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I think I'm ready, now.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Intoxicate me, now,</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
With your lovin', now,</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I think I'm ready, now,</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I think I'm ready, now.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Intoxicate me, now,</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
With your lovin', now,</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I think I'm ready, now,</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I think I'm ready, now.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Yael Naïm, "Toxic." </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">"Toxic" is a song recorded by American singer Britney Spears for her fourth studio album <i>In the Zone</i> (2003). It was written and produced by Christian Karlsson and Pontus Winnberg (known collectively as Bloodshy & Avant), with additional writing from Cathy Dennis and Henrik Jonback. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/KubXPSZJLKc" width="640"></iframe></div>
Luciferushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03713206391521280301noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23267267.post-12264824602677101442017-03-20T00:07:00.000-04:002018-09-04T17:18:56.826-04:00On the Current Antisemitism<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPjqKYha0L6k1OH7hgldxGSdHNcDg9yTdfRhA9m_56MHnBibaNE9YJcHCK8wB7XtlIXrkCb_McB72TPAmZORIZyfEM5gcknU9zD-fLCcFbIQi92W9cuTQT_4pLv0g7NRq19Cw/s1600/wtfwjd.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPjqKYha0L6k1OH7hgldxGSdHNcDg9yTdfRhA9m_56MHnBibaNE9YJcHCK8wB7XtlIXrkCb_McB72TPAmZORIZyfEM5gcknU9zD-fLCcFbIQi92W9cuTQT_4pLv0g7NRq19Cw/s640/wtfwjd.jpg" width="508" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Okay, so this must be the proof in the pudding. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Since the election, the United States has seen a spike in reported hate crimes and violent acts against a whole array of people--this is reported, countable, legible, provable, and obvious. The high-profile ones are on the national news, but you can see them in your local newspaper, on your city news broadcasts, you can hear about them on the radio, and you sometimes witness them in person, when you are not the victim of them. This is happening. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br />
Obviously, Muslims--or people perceived to be "Muslim"--would be the first recipient of this local (but also executive and, thus, national) aggression: mosques, individuals, islamic organizations.<br />
<br />
Then "immigrants"--but not all immigrants, really, just immigrants of, shall we impolitely call it, in that charmingly, antique phrasing, a "duskier hue": apparently that's Indians (from India), Sikhs (turbans: because turbans are exotic and the exotic is unfamiliar and the unfamiliar is frightening and what frightens us is automatically dangerous), anyone suspiciously Latin (i.e. "illegal Mexican" rapist/murderer/au pair/gardener), and anyone else with brown skin ("Go back to your country!"). </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Then we have African-Americans--you know, "Black people"? You've probably heard of them.<br />
<br />
This comes as no surprise, since targeting black people is a national pastime and seems to be written into our national DNA, when it is not written into our national Constitution. (The horrible words, the curses, the slurs, the lies, half-lies, statistics, the violent words uttered against African-Americans, Blacks, People of Color, and Negroes in this-great-country-against-itself, need never be repeated again, to my way of thinking. We have all heard them, far too much, in our minds, in our homes, in our beds, on television, in books and magazines, and on the street.)<br />
<br />
Okay, there's been a spike in violence against gay people, particularly men ("Trump won! Get used to it!"), which is not <i>that</i> weird, considering the kinds of people we're talking about, and how late the gay have been to the party of even tacit or expected "tolerance"/"acceptance." </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
But the one I really can't wrap my stupid, fucking, American mind around is the spike in antisemitism <i>everywhere</i>, and against long-established synagogues (Sure! Why not attack a neighborhood place of worship? Synagogue=Mosque) and Jewish community centers.<br />
<br />
When people are clearly other by skin color, the cowards go after them, sure.<br />
<br />
Muslim, immigrant, dirty Mexican rapist, black man--I get it. It's asinine and repugnant, but I can at least follow the ham-fisted, racist logic at work, here. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
With our Jewish friends and neighbors, we enter into a strangely different territory.<br />
<br />
This is not just because these individuals and communities have been here, on our shores, for so long (Black people, after the First Nations and Native Americans, after the Dutch, are the people who have lived here the longest: yes, they were slaves in New Amsterdam), but because of Jewish assimilation to American-ness, especially during the postwar period; their imbrication with American culture; their strange invisibility and presence--their frequent ability to pass, especially after entering the current period, where black Irish, Italians, Greeks, mediterraneans, and so on, were no longer considered "animals," in America--and the long, difficult history with and against antisemitism in the United States; our experience and non-experience/our knowledge and non-knowledge/our non-complicity and complicity in the Holocaust; our relationship politically, imperially, territorially, and culturally to Israel: for all these reasons, the sudden temerity in the attacks against Jewish cultural centers and people in the U.S.A., after the election, really pulls the mask off the clown.<br />
<br />
Oh... It's YOU!<br />
<br />
And, even if all the people committing the violence aren't motivated by the same animus, they are each being animated by each others' animus. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
And so, the oldest--the foundational--bigotry in Christendom; that most European of christian hatreds; that two thousand-year-old, murderous rage rises again, after being told to settle down for so long: Jew-hatred; Jew-murder; God-murder; Antisemitism: two-thousand years of death, pogrom, exile-in-exile, status-without-status, nationality-without-nationality. <i>This</i>? Again?</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
To my mind, <i>this</i> is how we should know it's serious.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
What would Jesus do?</div>
Luciferushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03713206391521280301noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23267267.post-12471958889934843682017-03-12T16:16:00.000-04:002018-09-04T17:16:40.255-04:00On "My White Knight"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheLOHKrCkTn8qRkBg7rnkJW0US-aMpafovFn2j_Q0mGdz7Vyyy4z_geUC0Ldg06efMHYnCGANDiQRYTE2QS6lhsfb3KTWwCSpTjWqqlkGxoGtFbkPEasHMnUM2ilIDMS5y8SQ/s1600/B+Cook+C+Hall.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheLOHKrCkTn8qRkBg7rnkJW0US-aMpafovFn2j_Q0mGdz7Vyyy4z_geUC0Ldg06efMHYnCGANDiQRYTE2QS6lhsfb3KTWwCSpTjWqqlkGxoGtFbkPEasHMnUM2ilIDMS5y8SQ/s1600/B+Cook+C+Hall.jpg" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
These lyrics don't exist online--I had to transcribe the whole thing, myself. This is a sort of reconstruction, by Cook and company, for that first, legendary Carnegie concert, of a version that never really existed because there were so many versions of "My White Knight," as they put <i>The Music Man</i> together. My friends, Meredith Wilson and friends: Welcome to the stream-of-consciousness that is Marian the Librarian.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<br />
My White Knight<br />
<br />
All I want is a plain man, <br />
A modest man, a quiet man,<br />
A straightforward and honest man,<br />
With habits<br />
That do not exclude the occasional reading of a book;<br />
<br />
I do not yearn for, <br />
Nor do I await,<br />
Any handsome,<br />
Hand-kissing,<br />
Wine-tasting,<br />
Silk-pillow,<br />
Hookah-smoker;<br />
<br />
No world-traveller,<br />
In fact or fancy,<br />
No show-off,<br />
No clotheshorse;<br />
He need not necessarily be<br />
In uniform;<br />
<br />
Ah, you wait,<br />
No clean-cut,<br />
Weather-beaten,<br />
Square-rigged, white duck<br />
Pants in tennis shoes;<br />
<br />
No plumed hat,<br />
No splendid insignia,<br />
No Moose-, Elk-, Eagle-<br />
Oddfellows-, National Guardsman,<br />
Fire chief, or Highlander;<br />
<br />
Be he from the Arabian Knights,<br />
Or the French Foreign Legion;<br />
No lothario shoe salesman,<br />
No bandleader, no railroad conductor,<br />
Or any other charmer,<br />
Either of me, or anybody else;<br />
<br />
No Chautauqua advance agent,<br />
No vaudevillian,<br />
No depot telegrapher;<br />
I'm not dazzled or for any such a kind<br />
Of fascinating flame.<br />
<br />
All I want is a plain man,<br />
A modest man,<br />
A quiet man,<br />
A straightforward,<br />
<br />
And honest man,<br />
To sit with me,<br />
In a cottage somewhere,<br />
In the state of Iowa;<br />
<br />
And listen with a smile,<br />
To a poem or a song<br />
That is neither a five-line<br />
Limerick about Saint Peter, <br />
And the Man from Duluth,<br />
<br />
Or a sing-song Lament<br />
Of a Purple Cow;<br />
And not every day,<br />
<br />
But just occasionally,<br />
We could walk down by the meadow,<br />
In the twilight-sprinkled dew:<br />
<br />
My White Knight,<br />
Can be blacksmith,<br />
Well-digger, clerk, or king;<br />
<br />
All I want is a plain man,<br />
A modest man, a quiet man,<br />
A straightforward, and honest man,<br />
<br />
With habits,<br />
That do not<br />
Necessarily include<br />
<br />
The chewing of snuff,<br />
Or exploding root beer,<br />
In the cellar, every June;<br />
<br />
And I would like him to be<br />
More interested in me,<br />
Than he is in himself,<br />
<br />
And more interested in us,<br />
Than in me.<br />
And if occasionally<br />
<br />
He'd ponder<br />
What makes<br />
Shakespeare and<br />
Beethoven great:<br />
<br />
Him, I could love,<br />
till I die. Him,<br />
I could love,<br />
Till I die.<br />
<br />
My White Knight,<br />
Not a Lancelot, <br />
Nor an angel with wings,<br />
<br />
Just someone to love me,<br />
Who is not ashamed<br />
Of a few nice things;<br />
<br />
My White Knight,<br />
Let me walk with him,<br />
Where the others ride by,<br />
<br />
Walk, and love him,<br />
Till I die,<br />
Till I die.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Meredith Wilson, "My White Knight," <i>The Music Man</i>, 1957. Book, lyrics, and music: Meredith Wilson. Barbara Cook went through the development process of <i>The Music Man</i> and put this version together, with her music director, from snippets and versions that didn't make it into the final song; from "My White Knight," <i>Barbara Cook at Carnegie Hall</i>, 1975.</span></div>
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/52HBYXmDIBM" width="640"></iframe></div>
Luciferushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03713206391521280301noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23267267.post-43583898376330013582017-03-07T01:54:00.000-05:002017-04-02T23:52:36.733-04:00Non-Laughter, Laughter, Perhaps Syllables, or Only Phonemes in Western Civilization<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGbD8bdFOt2R71SuMM-l8XkXtgPKUsBQGScb37CxYnVaCZPsyNwYxMX0Ys-ExOfzh5I2Tll4utbIru14AhU5nwMJNtXYt-orpg4q1le44v3lTQcMfQjEzogrtqCISpX-k-zM0/s1600/Phonemes.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGbD8bdFOt2R71SuMM-l8XkXtgPKUsBQGScb37CxYnVaCZPsyNwYxMX0Ys-ExOfzh5I2Tll4utbIru14AhU5nwMJNtXYt-orpg4q1le44v3lTQcMfQjEzogrtqCISpX-k-zM0/s1600/Phonemes.jpg" /></a></div>
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I have long been interested in the representation and musicalization of laughter, or that representation of that which we take as laughter. It is a long history, and a rich one. I offer, here, only a small sample, a cross-section, an intersection, of texts, the crossroads, where Death--or its undead refusal, its burial, or the deal with the Devil--and the Devil, as the God, always seems to be, and be in the details.</div>
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My aunt, who is a nun, once said to me, a long time ago, "How can we know what other people know, when we can barely know ourselves?" She has since repudiated this remark, but for me, it was foundational. And psychoanalysis--and our current political situation--bears this observation out. How can we know another, when we can barely know ourselves? We insist on imputing intentions and meanings to others, when we barely understand our own. The lie tells the truth. The tangled web we weave, when we practice to deceive, tells a better truth than when we try to tell the truth. And our understanding of another, tells us so much more about ourselves. Is someone laughing, or just extending her lips and making a sound?</div>
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Of course, we begin with Mozart.</div>
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Der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<i>Der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen,</i></div>
The vengeance of Hell boils in my heart,<br />
<br />
<i>Tod und Verzweiflung flammet um mich her!</i><br />
Death and despair flame about me!<br />
<br />
<i>Fühlt nicht durch dich Sarastro</i><br />
If Sarastro does not through you feel<br />
<div>
<br />
<i>Todesschmerzen,</i><br />
<div>
The pain of death,<br />
<br />
<i>So bist du meine Tochter nimmermehr.</i><br />
Then you will be my daughter nevermore.<br />
<br />
<i>Verstossen sei auf ewig,</i><br />
Disowned may you be forever,<br />
<br />
<i>Verlassen sei auf ewig,</i><br />
Destroyed be forever<br />
<br />
<i>Zertrümmert sei'n auf ewig</i><br />
Abandoned may you be forever,<br />
<br />
<i>Alle Bande der Natur</i><br />
All the bonds of nature,<br />
<br />
<div>
<i>Wenn nicht durch dich!</i><br />
If not through you<br />
<br />
<i>Sarastro wird erblassen!</i><br />
Sarastro becomes pale! (as death)<br />
<br />
<i>Hört, Rachegötter,</i><br />
Hear, Gods of Revenge,<br />
<br />
<i>Hört der Mutter Schwur!</i><br />
Hear a mother's oath!<br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">W. A. Mozart (music), Emanuel Schikaneder, (libretto), Lucia Popp (vocal), "Der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen," <i>Die Zauberflöte</i>, 1791.</span><br />
<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/R7naUZ8BHdM" width="640"></iframe><br />
<br />
Glitter and be Gay<br />
<br />
And, here I am,<br />
my heart breaking,<br />
Forced to glitter,<br />
Forced to be gay.<br />
<br />
Glitter and be gay,<br />
That's the part I play;<br />
Here I am in Paris, France,<br />
Forced to bend my soul<br />
To a sordid role,</div>
<div>
Victimized by bitter, bitter circumstance.<br />
Alas for me! Had I remained<br />
Beside my lady mother,<br />
My virtue had remained unstained<br />
Until my maiden hand was gained<br />
By some Grand Duke or other.<br />
<br />
Ah, 'twas not to be;<br />
Harsh necessity<br />
Brought me to this gilded cage.<br />
Born to higher things,<br />
Here I droop my wings,<br />
Ah! Singing of a sorrow nothing can assuage.<br />
<br />
And yet of course I rather like to revel,<br />
Ha ha!<br />
I have no strong objection to champagne,<br />
Ha ha!<br />
My wardrobe is expensive as the devil,<br />
Ha ha!<br />
Perhaps it is ignoble to complain...<br />
Enough, enough<br />
Of being basely tearful!<br />
I'll show my noble stuff<br />
By being bright and cheerful!<br />
Ha ha ha ha ha! Ha!<br />
<br />
Pearls and ruby rings...<br />
Ah, how can worldly things<br />
Take the place of honor lost?<br />
Can they compensate<br />
For my fallen state,<br />
Purchased as they were at such an awful cost?<br />
<br />
Bracelets... lavalieres<br />
Can they dry my tears?<br />
Can they blind my eyes to shame?<br />
Can the brightest brooch<br />
Shield me from reproach?<br />
Can the purest diamond purify my name?</div>
<div>
And yet of course these trinkets are endearing,<br />
Ha ha!<br />
I'm oh, so glad my sapphire is a star,<br />
Ha ha!<br />
I rather like a twenty-carat earring,<br />
Ha ha!<br />
If I'm not pure, at least my jewels are!<br />
<br />
Enough! Enough!<br />
I'll take their diamond necklace<br />
And show my noble stuff<br />
By being gay and reckless!<br />
Ha ha ha ha ha! Ha!<br />
<br />
Observe how bravely I conceal<br />
The dreadful, dreadful shame I feel.<br />
Ha ha ha ha!<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Leonard Bernstein (music), Richard Wilbur (lyrics), Barbara Cook (vocal), "Glitter and be Gay," <i>Candide</i>, 1956.</span><br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/mF3fwp_VrdQ" width="640"></iframe><br />
<br />
<br />
O Superman (for Massenet)<br />
<br />
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha...<br />
<br />
O Superman. <br />
O Judge. <br />
O Mom and Dad. <br />
Mom and Dad.<br />
<br />
Ah, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.<br />
<br />
O Superman,<br />
O Judge,<br />
O Mom and Dad, <br />
Mom and Dad.<br />
<br />
Ah, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.<br />
<br />
Hi! I'm not home right now,<br />
But if you want to leave a message,<br />
Just start talking at the sound of the tone.<br />
<br />
Ah, ah-ah,<br />
Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah.<br />
<br />
Hello? This is your Mother. <br />
Are you there?<br />
Are you coming home?<br />
<br />
Ah, ah, ah, ah-ah, ah, ah.<br />
<br />
Hello? Is anybody home?<br />
<br />
Well, you don't know me, <br />
but I know you,<br />
And I've got a message <br />
to give to you,<br />
Here come the planes.<br />
<br />
So, you better get ready, <br />
Ready to go;<br />
You can come as you are, <br />
but pay as you go, <br />
Pay as you go.<br />
<br />
Ah-ah, ah-ah, ah-ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah.<br />
<br />
And I said: Okay, <br />
Who is this really?<br />
<br />
And the voice said:<br />
<br />
This is the hand, <br />
the hand that takes.<br />
This is the hand, <br />
the hand that takes.<br />
This is the hand, <br />
the hand that takes.<br />
<br />
Here come the planes.<br />
<br />
They're American planes,<br />
Made in America,<br />
Smoking <br />
or non-smoking?<br />
<br />
Ah, ah-ah,<br />
Ah, ah, ah, ah.<br />
<br />
And the voice said: <br />
Neither snow nor rain, <br />
nor gloom of night,<br />
Shall stay these couriers <br />
from the swift completion<br />
Of their appointed rounds.<br />
<br />
Ah, ah-ah,<br />
Ah-ah,<br />
Ah-ah,<br />
Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah-ah.<br />
<br />
'Cause when Love is gone, <br />
there's always Justice;<br />
<br />
And when Justice is gone, <br />
there's always Force;<br />
<br />
And when Force is gone, <br />
there's always Mom.<br />
<br />
Hi Mom!<br />
<br />
Ah, ah,<br />
Ah, ah-ah.<br />
<br />
So hold me, Mom, <br />
in your long arms,<br />
So hold me, Mom, <br />
in your long arms,<br />
In your automatic arms,<br />
Your electronic arms,<br />
In your arms.<br />
<br />
So hold me, Mah-ahm, <br />
in your long arms,<br />
Your petrochemical arms, <br />
Your military arms,<br />
In your electronic arms.<br />
<br />
Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah....<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Laurie Anderson, "O Superman (for Massenet)," <i>Big Science</i>, 1982.</span><br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Vkfpi2H8tOE" width="640"></iframe><br />
<br />
I have written a poem for a woman who rides a bus in New York City. She's a maid. She has two shopping bags. When the bus stops abruptly, she laughs. If the bus stops slowly, she laughs. If the bus picks up someone, she laughs. If the bus misses someone, she AH-ha-ha-ha. So, I watched her for about nine months. I thought, "Mm, uh-huh." Now, if you don't know black features, you may think she's laughing, But she wasn't laughing, she was simply extending her lips and making a sound, Eh, heh-heh-heh! I said, "Oh, I see. That's that survival apparatus. Now, let me write about that to honor this woman, who helps us to survive." By her very survival--Miss Rosie--through your destruction, I stand up. So, I use the poem with Mister Paul Laurence Dunbar's poem, "Masks," and my own poem for old black men. Mister Dunbar wrote "Masks" in 1892.<br />
<br />
We wear the mask that grins and lies,<br />
It shades our cheeks and hides our eyes,—<br />
This debt we pay to human guile;<br />
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,<br />
And mouth with myriad subtleties.<br />
<br />
Why should the world be over-wise,<br />
In counting all our tears and sighs?<br />
Nay, let them only see us, while<br />
We wear the mask.<br />
<br />
We smile, but, O my God, our tears<br />
To thee from tortured souls arise.<br />
And we sing, but oh the clay is vile<br />
Beneath our feet, and long the mile;<br />
But let the world think otherwise,<br />
We wear the mask!<br />
<br />
When I think about myself,<br />
I almost laugh myself to death,<br />
My life has been one great big joke,<br />
A dance that’s walked,<br />
A song was spoke,<br />
<br />
I laugh so hard, Ha-ha! I almost choke,<br />
When I think about myself.<br />
<br />
Seventy years in these folks’ world.<br />
The child I works for calls me "girl";<br />
I say, “HA-HA-HA, Yes ma’am,” for working’s sake.<br />
I'm too proud to bend<br />
And too poor to break,<br />
So, I laugh, until my stomach ache,<br />
When I think about myself.<br />
<br />
My folks can make me split my side,<br />
I laughed so hard, HA-HA-HA, I nearly died.<br />
The tales they tell, sound just like lyin',<br />
They grow the fruit, but eat the rind.<br />
I laugh, AH-HA-HA-HA, until I start to cryin',<br />
When I think about myself,<br />
And my folks, and the little children.<br />
<br />
My Fathers sit on benches,<br />
Their flesh count every plank,<br />
The slats leave dents of darkness<br />
Deep in their withered flank,<br />
<br />
And they nod, like broken candles,<br />
All waxed and burnt profound<br />
They say "But, Sugar, it was our submission<br />
That made your world go round."<br />
<br />
There in those pleated faces<br />
I see the auction block,<br />
The chains and slavery's coffles,<br />
The whip and lash and stock.<br />
<br />
My Fathers speak in voices<br />
That shred my fact and sound,<br />
They say, "But Sugar, it was our submission<br />
And that made your world go round."<br />
<br />
They laughed to shield their crying ,<br />
They shuffled through their dreams<br />
They step 'n' fetched a country<br />
And wrote the blues in screams.<br />
<br />
I understand their meaning,<br />
It could and did derive,<br />
From living on the ledge of death,<br />
They kept my race alive.<br />
By wearing the mask.<br />
<br />
HEH-heh-heh,<br />
Ah, HA, HA, HA, HA!<br />
HA, HA, HA. HA, HA!<br />
Aaah-aaa<span style="font-size: x-small;">AHH</span>!<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Paul Laurence Dunbar and Maya Angelou, <i>We Wear the Mask/When I Think about Myself/Song for the Old Ones</i>, 1892, 19-something, Angelou's poem dating is not coming up on Google, which is its failure. The colloquium on Evil, from which this performance was taken, was held in Texas in 1988.</span><br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ewvcTjTejZ4?t=944" width="640"></iframe><br />
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Luciferushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03713206391521280301noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23267267.post-13334309679813756752017-02-07T21:27:00.000-05:002017-03-07T01:56:06.903-05:00Maya Angelou: We Wear the Mask/When I Think about Myself/Song for the Old Ones<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBSRcJ2nyHJ6OH2Qg_WzqhQVPEbRdjrRxpAfPiekxDll6uux_sHgx_2057qE9OXimCjvgZyX5g-_YK2ZsqfWIFmWdJUeSId1kKahL3qjIb5Tc9S_Id1kyRydweplmnb4O8gSA/s1600/I+know+why.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBSRcJ2nyHJ6OH2Qg_WzqhQVPEbRdjrRxpAfPiekxDll6uux_sHgx_2057qE9OXimCjvgZyX5g-_YK2ZsqfWIFmWdJUeSId1kKahL3qjIb5Tc9S_Id1kyRydweplmnb4O8gSA/s320/I+know+why.jpg" width="172" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
It's Black History Month, all y'all,<br />
And there is some amazing shit to see,<br />
During February, <br />
The shortest month in the year,<br />
And all the year round,<br />
And the world goes round,<br />
And round and round and round and round.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
When I was in high school, back during the last century, Bill Moyers aired a special on PBS covering a colloquium on Evil. Yes, on Evil, itself--these were the sorts of things that interested me when I was in high school. I videotaped it on VHS and still have that videotape.</div>
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It was my introduction to Maya Angelou, that chameleonic, kaleidoscopic, polymath and autodidact of American Letters and performance. I was bound by her spell and her deeply humanistic openness, immediately. I encourage you to watch her segment from that colloquium, in which she reads three poems. <br />
<br />
The segment begins with her reading her poem for Clinton's inauguration; moves to an earlier piece about her home town, Stamps, AK; continues to the colloquium in question, during which she discusses her rape and five-year silence; and ends with her reading of some three poems. I encourage you to watch the entire clip.</div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
Three poems, one by Laurence Dunbar and two by Maya Angelou:</div>
<br />
<br />
We Wear the Mask/When I Think about Myself/Song for the Old Ones<br />
<br />
We wear the mask that grins and lies, <br />
It shades our cheeks and hides our eyes,— <br />
This debt we pay to human guile; <br />
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile, <br />
And mouth with myriad subtleties. <br />
<br />
Why should the world be over-wise, <br />
In counting all our tears and sighs? <br />
Nay, let them only see us, while <br />
We wear the mask. <br />
<br />
We smile, but, O my God, our tears <br />
To thee from tortured souls arise. <br />
And we sing, but oh the clay is vile <br />
Beneath our feet, and long the mile; <br />
But let the world think otherwise, <br />
We wear the mask!<br />
<br />
When I think about myself, <br />
I almost laugh myself to death, <br />
My life has been one great big joke, <br />
A dance that’s walked, <br />
A song was spoke, <br />
I laugh so hard, I almost choke, <br />
When I think about myself.<br />
<br />
Seventy years in these folks’ world. <br />
The child I works for calls me "girl";<br />
I say, “Yes ma’am,” for working’s sake. <br />
I'm too proud to bend <br />
And too poor to break, <br />
So, I laugh, until my stomach ache, <br />
When I think about myself.<br />
<br />
My folks can make me split my side, <br />
I laughed so hard, I nearly died.<br />
The tales they tell, sound just like lyin', <br />
They grow the fruit, but eat the rind.<br />
I laugh, until I start to cryin', <br />
When I think about myself,<br />
And my folks, and the little children.<br />
<br />
My Fathers sit on benches,<br />
Their flesh count every plank, <br />
The slats leave dents of darkness <br />
Deep in their withered flank,<br />
<br />
And they nod, like broken candles, <br />
All waxed and burnt profound <br />
They say 'But, Sugar, it was our submission<br />
That made your world go round.' <br />
<br />
There in those pleated faces <br />
I see the auction block, <br />
The chains and slavery's coffles,<br />
The whip and lash and stock. <br />
<br />
My Fathers speak in voices <br />
That shred my fact and sound,<br />
They say, 'But Sugar, it was our submission <br />
And that made your world go round.' <br />
<br />
They've laughed to shield their crying ,<br />
They shuffled through their dreams <br />
They step 'n' fetched a country <br />
And wrote the blues in screams. <br />
<br />
I understand their meaning,<br />
It could and did derive,<br />
From living on the ledge of death,<br />
They kept my race alive.<br />
<br />
By wearing the mask.<br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Paul Laurence Dunbar and Maya Angelou, <i>We Wear the Mask/When I Think about Myself/Song for the Old Ones</i>, 1892, 19-something, Angelou's poem dating is not coming up on Google, which is its failure. The colloquium on Evil took place in Texas in 1988.</span><br />
<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/amokikraCLY" width="640"></iframe>Luciferushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03713206391521280301noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23267267.post-48804909124046048582017-01-23T05:26:00.000-05:002017-02-19T10:08:42.904-05:00Fourteen Points about You, Me, and Everybody Else<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_HA_TNiwiVi-Peo2_k9LflJ1lCx8f97YAqw6Scwn3nCo7NOd_CAl1bbSz44u-gEf8k_ETgDqvE8m6KSXdLWlWHC9h4IBWzbj7qVbdV-WK7FwWfqZ6K7M3qv5qqRtQ26ZGHq0/s1600/I+don%2527t+look+anything+like+this.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="100" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_HA_TNiwiVi-Peo2_k9LflJ1lCx8f97YAqw6Scwn3nCo7NOd_CAl1bbSz44u-gEf8k_ETgDqvE8m6KSXdLWlWHC9h4IBWzbj7qVbdV-WK7FwWfqZ6K7M3qv5qqRtQ26ZGHq0/s200/I+don%2527t+look+anything+like+this.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I, actually, don't look anything like this.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<br /></div>
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So, I've been meditating on the last few days for the past three months.</div>
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And I have a couple things to say about it:</div>
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1.<br />
If you wanted "CHANGE," Honey, you are about to get some REAL CHANGE, for real. </div>
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I hope it's to your liking.</div>
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<br /></div>
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2.<br />
I never thought the day after an in-inauguration would move me more than the day itself. The day after became a new kind of the-day-itself, and I thank each and every one of you for making that happen.</div>
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3.<br />
The Law is something we subscribe to--and when it is often wrong--we resist it. The United Republican Democratic States of the continent of north America only exists because of resistance, dissent, and revolution. </div>
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<br /></div>
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Never forget that while we agree to disagree, we disagree in order to agree. We build consensus out of dissent. But you have to know shit in order to disagree and then change your mind. </div>
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Know shit. Be educated, nuanced, sophisticated, smart, and compassionate. </div>
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Listen. Know more later than you know right now.</div>
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4.<br />
We are all immigrants to this land..</div>
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<br /></div>
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No human life took hold in the western hemisphere, until immigrants, who crossed the Bering Strait/Sea, long ago, in our prehistory, settled it.</div>
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After that, the settlers were all people from across either of the oceans that nestle us in "the West," some of them, even in the earliest days before the Republic for which the American flag stands, brought here forcibly to labor without pay and to make more people, their children, who would also be forced to labor without pay, and to foster grandchildren, great, great-great, and great-great-great, great-great-great-great grandchildren, to be ensnared until the present day, and after, in American law and the "Justice" system, to be imprisoned, paid lower wages, to be denied the franchise, and to, on the average, die at a younger age, unless they were made to join the lowest ranks of the armed forces as cannon fodder or, often unarmed, shot dead by the police.</div>
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<br /></div>
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We are all immigrants to this land. This land, which is your land, this land, which is my land, from California to the New York Island(s), from the redwood forest to the Gulf Stream waters. This land, which, in point of actual fact, was not made for you and me, but which is a land upon which we are all living, so, we certainly had better start figuring out how to get along better, because none of us is going anywhere. Except for the very old, who tend to vote Republican.</div>
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We are all immigrants to this land.</div>
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<br /></div>
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5.<br />
Respect people who came here because they had the temerity to believe in The American Dream. A Dream that still exists in those foolish enough to believe in it. Do not let them down! Respect immigrants. We are only a land only of immigrants.</div>
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<br /></div>
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6.<br />
Jews are actually people.</div>
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Muslims are actually people.</div>
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Women are actually people.</div>
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Women's rights are human rights.</div>
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And black lives actually do matter, too.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Why is this so hard to get through your skull? Black lives mattering is not about all lives not mattering, it's about the fact that, heretofore, it didn't seem to matter to much of anyone not black that lives lived by black people matter, too. Not just <i>your</i> bullshit. This isn't that hard. Stop resisting it. It's called normalization, motherfucker. It's called <i>Brown vs Board of Education</i>, motherfucker. It's called <i>Loving vs Virginia</i>, motherfucker.</div>
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Could we, please, put a stake into that insidious vampire, in my lifetime? Please? It just makes you look like an ignorant asshole. And you're probably not that ignorant or that much of an asshole to completely disregard reason.</div>
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The point isn't that black lives matter more than all other lives when they're black, it is that lives actually matter when they're not white.</div>
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Honestly, this is so American basic. It's something even a racist could understand. In America, all men are created equal, even when they are black, even when they are women. And yet black men are disproportionately killed by the police and women are disproportionately underpaid, even when they are white, and even in Hollywood. The evidence is epidemic; the evidence is moribund.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Black lives matter, too.</div>
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<br /></div>
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I guess there's only one way to find out.</div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
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7.<br />
Corporations are not people. People are people.</div>
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Any questions?</div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
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8.<br />
Money is not free speech. </div>
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If you have more money that does NOT give you more speech.</div>
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And THAT is the American way, okay?</div>
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Any questions?</div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
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9.<br />
I'm sorry you grew up in coal country--or oil country. I'm sorry your fathers and mothers killed themselves to give you life, clothe you, feed you, and do everything they could to make your lives better than theirs. They were good people doing good things in this life. But the fossil fuels are fossils. </div>
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We have to move on from fossil fuels. If your local, state, and national governments haven't done all they can--and I am certain most of them have done very little--to help your communities with jobs, most especially in the renewable energy sector, then blame THEM and vote them out of office. </div>
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The canary in the coal mine isn't that big business found lower-wage workers to do the job you used to, the canary in the coal mine is that no one gives a fuck about funding a proper public education for you or your children, or figuring out a way to help you find a job.</div>
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You're not lazy. PS Black and brown people aren't lazy, either, Cracker. But we pay taxes to the government to make our lives better, not worse. I will happily pay all the tax dollars you let me to get your kids an education, get you healthcare, get you off drugs without incarcerating you, get <i>you</i> a job you like that will make you solvent enough to feed yourself and your kids, pay your rent, buy your home--if you want to--and live life for sunsets, dancing, laughter, friendship, love, music, reading, philosophy, pleasure, family, joy, education, civic duty, goodness, and NOT doing unto others as you have them NOT do unto you. </div>
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We are our sisters' keeper. And our brothers', too.</div>
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<br /></div>
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10.<br />
Rich people do not know more than we do and do not, as a function of their wealth, make your life, my life, their lives, or anyone's life better. Wealth only takes away some of the harm that life deals out to you, personally. Wealth doesn't make you happy or smart.</div>
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If anything, wealth just makes you better at taking advantage of other people.</div>
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And is that who you really want to be?</div>
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<br /></div>
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11.<br />
The canary in the coal mine isn't a canary, it's the whole fucking environment telling you to stop burning fossil fuels. When the planet is dying from the fumes--instead of a tiny bird--I'm pretty sure it's time to pay attention.</div>
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<br /></div>
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12.<br />
Educate yourself--because the Republican-led government doesn't care about your mind or body, male or female, white or black or brown. Speak truth to power. Volunteer; not just for religious groups--the world actually includes things beyond religion--and in this country, we're <i>supposed</i> to have a separation of church and state, which is a good thing. And here's why: it may not be <i>your</i> church. Are you <i>really</i> willing to take that chance? Stop trying to get your government to enforce your religious details and get them to embody the compassion that Allah, Adonai, Jesus, God, and the Buddha have been telling <i>you</i> to embody for the past ten centuries.</div>
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Vote. Run for office, locally. For Christ's sake, believe in something that doesn't only include you.</div>
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<br /></div>
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13.<br />
I lived in the same city as Donald Trump for twenty-two years. If you voted for him, I feel sorry for you. But you probably didn't live in the same city with him for twenty-two years.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Because, if you had....</div>
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<br /></div>
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14.<br />
The perfect is always the enemy of the good. </div>
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Strive to be good. Strive to be happy. I bet no one told you it was very important to strive to be happy. Strive not to be angry. Strive not to be anxious. Strive to be compassionate. Do some yoga. Strive to be happy.</div>
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<br /></div>
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That's it. So, anyway.<br />
Please, have a great day.</div>
Luciferushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03713206391521280301noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23267267.post-52238627332615363622017-01-20T00:06:00.001-05:002017-01-20T09:30:49.677-05:00This is Prophetic<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQrDpy3NTB9v72XY4Ly5jX8-8rTFblZYpvmLxNvBvLYQetq5FQ6IDoOvokVT2nmULcVv3teq5uk_NP4Hszaf2Oy1WNn1cftXKYbsxDQESRP_xPS2EV8w-AJb4Xp4d5uvOHvr0/s1600/Pat+Nixon.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="433" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQrDpy3NTB9v72XY4Ly5jX8-8rTFblZYpvmLxNvBvLYQetq5FQ6IDoOvokVT2nmULcVv3teq5uk_NP4Hszaf2Oy1WNn1cftXKYbsxDQESRP_xPS2EV8w-AJb4Xp4d5uvOHvr0/s640/Pat+Nixon.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">In the bedroom communities let us be taken by surprise.<br />
Yes! Let the band play on and on,</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
This is Prophetic</div>
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<i>Smiling and waving, Mrs. Nixon and her entourage </i><i>leave the commune and proceed to the next stop on her </i><i>tour: the Summer Palace where she is photographed </i><i>strolling through the Hall of Benevolence and </i><i>Longevity, the Hall of Happiness in Longevity, </i><i>the Hall of Dispelling the Clouds, and the Pavilion </i><i>of the Fragrance of Buddha. She pauses in the gate </i><i>of Longevity and Good Will to sing.</i></div>
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PAT</div>
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This is prophetic! I foresee a time will come when</div>
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luxury dissolves into the atmosphere like a perfume,</div>
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and everywhere the simple virtues root</div>
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and branch and leaf and flower.</div>
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On that bench there we'll relax</div>
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and taste the fruit of all our actions.</div>
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Why regret life which is so much like a dream?</div>
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Let the eternal plan resume.</div>
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In the bedroom communities let us be taken by surprise.</div>
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Yes! Let the band play on and on,</div>
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let the stand-up comedian finish his act,</div>
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let Gypsy Rose kick off her high-heeled party shoes;</div>
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let interested businessmen speculate further,</div>
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let routine dull the edge of mortality.</div>
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Let days grow imperceptibly longer,</div>
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let the sun set in cloud;</div>
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let lonely drivers on the road pull over for a bite to eat,</div>
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let the farmer switch on the light over the porch,</div>
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let passer by look in at the large family</div>
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around the table, let them pass.</div>
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Let the expression on the face</div>
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of the Statue of Liberty change just a little,</div>
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let her see what lies inland:</div>
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across the plain one man is marching...</div>
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the Unknown Soldier has risen from his tomb,</div>
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let him be recognized at home.</div>
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The Prodigal. Give him his share:</div>
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the eagle nailed to the barn door.</div>
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Let him be quick.</div>
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The sirens wail as bride</div>
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and groom kiss through the veil.</div>
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Bless this union with all its might,</div>
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let it remain inviolate.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">John Adams (composer), Alice Goodman (librettist), "This is Prophetic," <i>Nixon in China</i>, 1987.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="480" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/6WRToHaNlcY" width="854"></iframe></div>
Luciferushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03713206391521280301noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23267267.post-13347783937638647082017-01-18T21:39:00.002-05:002017-01-18T21:39:46.311-05:00Angoisse<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRBUI2O9y8XPlaH-u2vFV0_WMPJcTrQOd4BRU7cdK57dMZ2wwcd3jqwHrY6vz5JCx_nyOdVqBHDe7NdBoN5jeSrmOfegahC0cwoDRXpY6b3-nNYZjJ_wTUmPrX-SGN-xDlFUc/s1600/Angoisse.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="305" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRBUI2O9y8XPlaH-u2vFV0_WMPJcTrQOd4BRU7cdK57dMZ2wwcd3jqwHrY6vz5JCx_nyOdVqBHDe7NdBoN5jeSrmOfegahC0cwoDRXpY6b3-nNYZjJ_wTUmPrX-SGN-xDlFUc/s640/Angoisse.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<br /><br />Angoisse<br /><br />Every day, I awake<br />To a litter from dreams<br />Of cans and shelves,<br />Appointments and bills,<br />Politics and non-politicians,<br />Debts monetary and emotional,<br />Scattered across the<br />Floor; too distracted<br />For sleep, too tired to<br />Get out of bed,<br />I wade instead<br />Into a small, private <br />Pool, the temperature <br />Of cooling urine or<br />Vomit, just for me, <br />Cold enough to<br />Make you shudder, but<br />With the warmth of a<br />Mild fever, which makes<br />You feel treacly, nauseous.<br />And that is how I<br />Start my every day.<div>
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<div>
<span style="font-size: x-small;">L. Steve Schmersal, <i>Angoisse</i>, January 2017</span></div>
Luciferushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03713206391521280301noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23267267.post-28879867875649013172017-01-17T14:10:00.000-05:002017-01-18T01:09:30.372-05:00I Post Song Lyrics: Black & Blue<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIS2dXFVlqN2YOO5zO7a3GAseZyRQI-hl2rpY4Yowhp4mULOT25yQLXzohAFKVJgj_bLUWRWTxxc5NA30FdjY54ZNaXZzUwmxssPGe59l5tSFYTJwQvnhdcbZlzGmRW3IG-9Q/s1600/Aint%2521.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIS2dXFVlqN2YOO5zO7a3GAseZyRQI-hl2rpY4Yowhp4mULOT25yQLXzohAFKVJgj_bLUWRWTxxc5NA30FdjY54ZNaXZzUwmxssPGe59l5tSFYTJwQvnhdcbZlzGmRW3IG-9Q/s1600/Aint%2521.jpg" /></a></div>
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It seems fitting for the day after MLK, Jr., Day. <br />
I saw it as an uncomprehending child at my father's behest on PBS in South Jersey; <br />
I have tried to begin to comprehend it in my adulthood. Witness the spellbinding original cast, Nell Carter, Charlane Woodard, Armelia MacQueen, Andre Deshields, Ken Paige:<br />
<br />
<br />
Black and Blue<br />
<br />
Cold, empty bed,<br />
Springs hard as lead,<br />
Pains in my head,<br />
Feel like old Ned.<br />
<br />
What did I do<br />
To be so black and blue?<br />
No joys for me,<br />
No company,<br />
<br />
Even the mouse<br />
Ran from my house,<br />
All my life through,<br />
I've been so black and blue.<br />
<br />
I'm so forlorn.<br />
Life's just a thorn.<br />
My heart is torn.<br />
Why was I born?<br />
<br />
What did I do,<br />
<div>
To be so black and blue?<br />
<br />
I'm white inside,<br />
But that don't help my case.<br />
<br />
Don't you know it, brother.<br />
<br />
'Cause I can't hide<br />
What is on my face,<br />
<br />
Oh!<br />
<br />
I'm so forlorn.<br />
Life's just a thorn.<br />
My heart is torn.<br />
Why was I born?<br />
<br />
What did I do,<br />
To be so black and blue?<br />
<br />
Mercy. Mercy, mercy.<br />
Looka here, looka here, looka here.<br />
Well, all right.<br />
Hey, there. Hey.<br />
Here it'is.<br />
<br />
Just feelin' black<br />
And blue.<br />
<br />
I'm white <br />
Inside,<br />
But that <br />
don't <br />
help <br />
my case.<br />
<br />
Don't you know it, sister.<br />
<br />
'Cause I <br />
Can't hide<br />
What is on my face,<br />
<br />
Oh.<br />
<br />
I'm so<br />
forlorn,<br />
<br />
Life's just </div>
<div>
a thorn,<br />
<br />
My heart <br />
is torn,<br />
<br />
Why was <br />
I born?<br />
<br />
What did </div>
<div>
I do,<br />
<br />
To be so <br />
black <br />
<br />
and <br />
blue?<br />
<br /></div>
<div>
<span style="font-size: x-small;">(What Did I Do to be So) Black and Blue, <i>Ain't Misbehavin'</i>, 1978;<i> </i>lyrics by Andy Razaf; music by Thomas "Fats" Waller and Harry Brooks, 1929</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></div>
And now, for the video:<br />
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<br /></div>
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Luciferushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03713206391521280301noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23267267.post-16944123866831924292017-01-16T14:36:00.002-05:002017-01-17T01:39:03.503-05:00Happy Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, Everyone<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGt1mTQ2A6bLzPxVtv0F1fLHkLFHGCsOFwZqQP-M-RLRIKlt72VAFNo-dfzyVbmvkb9TPNFUa8fp4eQUQpbDkeMJvfgz2PJtl0IW5TBqJjCahafT_52s1F36sh_ZvVWHLJupI/s1600/lynching-soil.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGt1mTQ2A6bLzPxVtv0F1fLHkLFHGCsOFwZqQP-M-RLRIKlt72VAFNo-dfzyVbmvkb9TPNFUa8fp4eQUQpbDkeMJvfgz2PJtl0IW5TBqJjCahafT_52s1F36sh_ZvVWHLJupI/s1600/lynching-soil.jpg" /></a></div>
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I see the past three presidential elections--but let's include the midterms, too--as working out interesting and strange oppositions; as exemplifying sometimes murky notions of investment in somewhat murky abstractions. So--if you like, if you want to get really barbaric about it--you could say, if you wanted, that it came down to Change trumping Hope.</div>
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I don't know if I feel that the Obama administration ended up fulfilling its hope for Hope, partly because Obama let me down in his aggressive deportation program, his continuation of the W. Bush surveillance of the American people, his support of TPP, and other programs. However, and it is a BIG HOWEVER, while his administration oversaw the strengthening and stimulating of our economy, while it succeeded in bringing unemployment down, most of his actions--not just the positive ones, like the Affordable Healthcare Act, while not wholly successful, was hardly a failure--were stymied, sabotaged, brought up for repeal, and/or stopped by the Republican-controlled houses of Congress: everything from ambassadorial and cabinet nominations to, well, everything else, including his last Supreme Court nominee.</div>
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So, my question is this: if you wanted <i>Change</i>, why did you re-elect Republicans to control Congress and your state legislatures and governorships, when they have not only proven to be the source of our federal gridlock and brinkmanship, but said eight years ago that that is exactly what they were going to do?</div>
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Or was the "Change" you meant something traveling under a different name?</div>
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Happy Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, everyone.<br />
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I hope you're allowed to--or have thought to--celebrate it.</div>
Luciferushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03713206391521280301noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23267267.post-8527835959706224522017-01-12T23:28:00.002-05:002017-01-15T10:02:59.899-05:00Trump is an algorithm. <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Trump is an algorithm. He is not a politician, not a really a person, except to perhaps embody the faults, flaws, and dangerous inclinations of what it means to be human.</div>
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He will maximize every loophole to his advantage, because that's the only thing he knows how to do. </div>
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I lived in the same city as that creature for twenty-two years. It's not about you; it's only and always will be only about him. He will blunder into fascism without even knowing the word.</div>
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Pence is a known category. I can fight that category. </div>
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Give me President Pence.</div>
Luciferushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03713206391521280301noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23267267.post-31690937433272529642017-01-10T23:56:00.000-05:002017-01-12T03:46:09.873-05:00"Then you didn't make an apple pie, Viola": Davis and Streep, Scanning<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhww9lYfNIlLmTzZjFyjeEYj-A6AaVcLC1vP04LX0XzExkTLDsfGRW8lYtszJTWcz82hVs8w8AolItmXZgLheC7p_yQ9uZXQt8IpVsxCQg9bKk_3n_4YvWBA_p_zqKjSh5KE8/s1600/DaVIS.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhww9lYfNIlLmTzZjFyjeEYj-A6AaVcLC1vP04LX0XzExkTLDsfGRW8lYtszJTWcz82hVs8w8AolItmXZgLheC7p_yQ9uZXQt8IpVsxCQg9bKk_3n_4YvWBA_p_zqKjSh5KE8/s400/DaVIS.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<i>She is an observer and a thief.</i> </blockquote>
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<i><span style="text-align: justify;">Her artistry reminds us of the impact of what it means to be an artist, which is to make us feel less alone.</span></i></blockquote>
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If you didn't see Meryl Streep's speech at the Golden Globes this year, or Viola Davis' introduction, the whole thing is interesting.</div>
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I actually enjoyed Davis' intro more—not for lack of worth with respect to what Streep had to say, which was very important—but for the respect of artistry: artist to artist, talking.<br />
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Streep nods as Davis talks, but she knows the camera is on her, so... is she acting, or agreeing? Or both? Or neither? I don't worry about these things too much, because I am certain all the answers are correct. Even "neither, " as that non-singular answer.</div>
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As a writer—as a person who writes things down—I am fascinated by the conversation of professional actors about their art, because I am always searching for others' insight into character. </div>
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And the best of actors are circumspect—I'm talking to you Colleen Dewhurst—and even though they are always "lying," they are always telling the truth. They are always, the best of them, telling the truth, but someone else's truth. As Lacan said, in the context of the unconscious, "I always tell the truth, I just can't tell all of it"—one of the things he was saying was that even when we are lying—because we are hiding the truth under the lie—we are always telling the truth. As Streep said to James Lipton, she believes her job is "to make a soul" come into being—I didn't believe her then, but now I think she probably does try to do that. Listen to Davis' speech. The best of actors are circumspect, but when you catch them, they can teach you shit. A lot.</div>
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She stares. That's the first thing you notice about her. She tilts her head back with that sly, suspicious smile and she stares for a long time. And you think, "Do I have something in my teeth, or does she want to kick my ass?" Which is <i>not</i> going to happen. </div>
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And then she'll ask questions.</div>
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"What did you do last night, Viola?" </div>
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Oh, I cooked an apple pie. </div>
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"Did you use Pippin apples?" </div>
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No, I didn't use Pippin apples. What the hell are Pippin apples? I used Granny Smith apples!</div>
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"Ohh. Did you make your own crust?" </div>
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No, I used store bought crust, that's what I did. </div>
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"Then you didn't make an apple pie, Viola." </div>
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Well, that's because I spent all my time making my collard greens. I make the best collard greens. I use smoked turkey, chicken broth, and my special barbecue sauce. Silence. I shut her down. </div>
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"Well. They don't taste right, unless you use ham hocks. If you don't use ham hocks. it doesn't taste the same. So! How's the family?"</div>
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And as she continues to stare, you realize that she sees you. And that, like a high-powered scanning machine, she is recording you. She is an observer and a thief. She reveals what she has stolen, on that sacred place, which is the screen. She makes the most heroic characters vulnerable, the most known familiar, the most despised relatable. Dame Streep.</blockquote>
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Her artistry reminds us of the impact of what it means to be an artist, which is to make us feel less alone. I can only imagine where you go, Meryl, when you disappear into a character. </blockquote>
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<span style="text-align: justify;">I imagine that you are in them, patiently waiting. Using yourself as a conduit. Encouraging them. Coaxing them. To release all their mess. Confess. Expose. To live. You are a Muse. Your impact encouraged me to stay in the line, </span><span style="text-align: justify;">Dame Streep. I see you. I </span><i style="text-align: justify;">see</i><span style="text-align: justify;"> you.</span></blockquote>
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And you know, all those rainy days we spent on the set of <i>Doubt</i>, every day my husband would call me at night and say, "Did you tell her how much she means to you?" and I would say, Nah, I can't say anything, Julius. I'm just nervous, All I do is stare at her, all the time. And he said "Well you need to say something, you been waiting all your life to work with this woman, say something." I said Julius, I'll do it tomorrow. "OK, well you better do it tomorrow because when I get there, I'm gonna say something." </blockquote>
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Never said anything. But I'mma say it, now. </blockquote>
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You make me proud to be an artist. You make me feel. That what I have in me: My body. My face. My age. Is enough. </blockquote>
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You encapsulate that great, Emile Zola quote that, if you ask me, as an artist, what I came into this world to do, I, as an artist, would say: "I came to live out loud."</blockquote>
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And now for the video.</div>
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Luciferushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03713206391521280301noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23267267.post-86981775470793915012017-01-08T21:45:00.002-05:002017-01-09T21:14:18.116-05:00On Love in the Twenty-First Century<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi157dHLYaXAVkUL0y81rVsx2E_RQbOWTBTLLQ_FoOEBkKe6icZGz8uS37mNaasOV5AQpLwljJ-j_PttYuhJaOpKuRB7GXLJ_ta2O1Bep0AT398Hes-jvP-HSav6APxKW5vXOk/s1600/love-in-the-21st-century-s1e1-20090520103011.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi157dHLYaXAVkUL0y81rVsx2E_RQbOWTBTLLQ_FoOEBkKe6icZGz8uS37mNaasOV5AQpLwljJ-j_PttYuhJaOpKuRB7GXLJ_ta2O1Bep0AT398Hes-jvP-HSav6APxKW5vXOk/s640/love-in-the-21st-century-s1e1-20090520103011.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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In the twenty-first century, Love lacks kindness, compassion, or sympathy. Love is quick to judgment and blame. Love is stupid. Love is busy and impatient. Love will seek the cliche of you before it seeks understanding. Love feels too stingingly the critique of it. Love is too glib and willing to joke about its own mistakes. Love doesn't make mistakes. Love is very tired, right now. Love is self-seeking; Love dishonors others and is easily angered. Love is mean-spirited, though Love doesn't mean to be. Love is weak and blameless. Love records wrongs. Love renounces its protection, trust, and hope, yet says it perseveres. Love is sad about it and wants to help but doesn't know how. Love has another person on the line, right now. Love is long-winded and short of breath. Love is jealous and thrifty. Love is never having to say, "Please," "Excuse me," "Thank you," or "I'm sorry." Love is sick of you. Love is unhappy and too unhappy to deal with more unhappiness.</div>
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Make me a channel of your peace,<br />
Where there is hatred let me bring your love,<br />
Where there is injury, your pardon, Lord,<br />
And where there's doubt, true faith in you.<br />
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O Master, grant that I may never seek<br />
So much to be consoled as to console,<br />
To be understood as to understand,<br />
To be loved as to love with all my soul.<br />
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Make me a channel of your peace.<br />
Where there's despair in life, let me bring hope,<br />
Where there is darkness, only light,<br />
And where there's sadness, ever joy.<br />
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O Master, grant that I may never seek<br />
So much to be consoled as to console,<br />
To be understood as to understand,<br />
To be loved as to love with all my soul.<br />
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Make me a channel of your peace.<br />
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,<br />
In giving to all others that we receive,<br />
And in dying that we're born to eternal life.Luciferushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03713206391521280301noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23267267.post-51811605774433802192017-01-02T21:04:00.001-05:002017-01-02T21:04:24.731-05:00Everything Old in New AgainThis is an older post you guys don't seem to be finding: <a href="http://somethingtobedesired.blogspot.com/2014/11/that-great-unexorcised-demon-of.html" target="_blank">That Great Unexorcised Demon of the American Soul</a>. Don't be afraid to click on the labels I append to most posts and not just rely on the Most Read lists on the right. Popularity doesn't necessarily indicate quality.<br />
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That said, thanks for reading me at all.<br />
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Have a great day.Luciferushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03713206391521280301noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23267267.post-25477023371924244532016-12-30T11:05:00.001-05:002018-12-05T00:39:46.796-05:00On Messiah by Georg Friedrich Händel <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1IIAjKbhsf9rBKuHHqSw3LQihecbQwezrVgqpdS3dRmiVyR4edYGbX-i5RZKQNRQXPdHfDRqXkHeTRjxck7D75F0h-yrueEMR_sQIMO_F_P6j8o7zS3jSvs8MMz0uRH37xSE/s1600/messiah.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="517" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1IIAjKbhsf9rBKuHHqSw3LQihecbQwezrVgqpdS3dRmiVyR4edYGbX-i5RZKQNRQXPdHfDRqXkHeTRjxck7D75F0h-yrueEMR_sQIMO_F_P6j8o7zS3jSvs8MMz0uRH37xSE/s640/messiah.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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"And the gentiles shall come to thy light."</div>
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During that last century, my brother's nine-year-old friend tried to art-shame me in front of his friends while they were putting on boots to trudge out into the joy of snow in South Jersey as I played <i>Messiah </i>on vinyl. He said, "He's listening to opera!" I corrected, snippily: "It's an <i>oratorio</i>."</div>
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Every year, at Christmastide and Eastertide, we dust off this score and play the piece: <i>Messiah</i> by Georg Friedrich Händel and Charles Jennens: one of the staggering works of western civilization. </div>
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One cannot comprehend its strange scope and power but only try to humbly accept its knowledge, pleasure, and art. And partly why it is so is because a German composer, living in England, set a King James Version biblical text, curated by Jennens along with items from <i>The Book of Common Prayer</i>, which is almost devoid of narrative and filled with ideology, theology, and eschatological musings. It is also joyous and frightening and stupefyingly beautiful.</div>
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I sometimes wonder what is its opposite number. Is it Orff's <i>Carmina Burana</i> or Weill's <i>Mahagonny Songspiel</i>, both twentieth century works? Will we ever know? We will never know.</div>
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I prefer original score, instruments, and style as much as we can find them, but there are many gorgeous recordings of this piece. And if you ever can, go hear it live.</div>
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Do yourself a favor and reacquaint yourself with <i>Messiah</i>. </div>
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Luciferushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03713206391521280301noreply@blogger.com0