If it’s true that you can’t judge a book by its cover, it is equally true that you can’t judge a play by its title. Last night I attended a play at The Next Stage area of GEVA entitled Sylvia. I was expecting a play about Sylvia Plath; instead, Sylvia was the name of a stray dog that had been “found” by a fifty-something man who was entering his male “menopause”.
The play was presented by Out of Pocket Productions, and the proceeds will be donated to Lollypop Farm/The Humane Society of Rochester. The first inkling I had that I was in for a surprise was the cover of the program which pictured a scraggly dog in a dog house, looking pleadingly at the camera, and the bone that was used for the ‘I’ in Sylvia. Inside, I saw unfamiliar names for the characters: Greg, Kate, and “Tom, Phyllis, and Leslie” – three characters played by one actor.
On stage were minimal props - a couch, a coffee table, an end table, a chair, and a desk. On the coffee table were books on art and art history. As the lights rise, a young woman, perhaps in her early twenties, comes into the room, hopping and cavorting. This is Sylvia, a puppy. As we are introduced to Greg, the fifty something man, he is conversing with Sylvia. She hops around, jumps on his lap and says “I love you, you are my god”. Meanwhile he pats her on top of the head “I love you too. But you should sit on the floor.” When Greg takes her to the dog park later in the play, it is revealed by Tom, a fellow dog owner and book reading expert on dog ownership, that she has yet to go into heat for the first time before she can be spayed.
“Female dogs should not be spayed until after their first time in heat. Experts say that they should have the experience of being a “woman” at least once in their life.”
The idea of Sylvia, a young puppy, played by a young woman, Makes it very difficult for the “temporary suspension of disbelief “ that is necessary for this play to succeed. More so when Sylvia has various dresses and costumes, from holey jeans to a Catholic schoolgirl outfit (what she is wearing when she first experiences her “womanhood” with “Bowser”). When Kate, Greg’s wife, enters the action and meets Sylvia for the first time, there is instant antipathy. All three are talking as if they are having a human conversation. As an example, Kate tells to Sylvia she likes dogs, but she just doesn’t want Sylvia and she will have to go. To which Sylvia replies, with a coquettish twist of her hips and a evil seductive smile says in reply, that since she is now Greg’s love, perhaps it is Kate who will have to leave.
The play has two acts, and the first act ends when Kate receives a grant to travel to England, and Greg can go, but Sylvia cannot. Greg says that he will stay with Sylvia, and Kate can go alone. The second act opens with Greg and Kate seeing a relationship counselor named Leslie, who is completely androgynous, in dress, name, and language. This same actor plays Tom, Greg’s male friend at the dog park and Kate’s socialite friend and fellow Vassar graduate Phyllis. Leslie’s advice to Kate, after talking with Greg, is to “Divorce him and take everything he’s got, then shoot Sylvia “…right between the eyes.”
Overall, this play was very hilarious, and very sublime with its dual possibility of a man, entering his “age of disillusionment”, begins an affair with a younger woman and pushes aside his wife of 22 years and the mother of his children. The play was so entertaining that within the first two or three minutes, I was no longer disappointed that this play was not about Sylvia Plath and her husband.
Or maybe it was.
A few other production notes: During the intermission, the stage was changed slightly – the art and art history books were substituted with dog behavior books, there was now a picture of Sylvia on the end table, and there were chew toys on the couch and on the floor. Also, in the notes for costumes, it says “The Cast”, implying that these characters, playing real people, chose their own clothes. The play itself was written by A.R. Gurney, who attended the Yale School of Drama, and has taught in the M.I.T. Humanities Department. The play will again be on stage September 2 – 5, 2010 at the Next Stage.
Sunday, August 29, 2010
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Guttenberg's nightmare
Guttenberg, when he invented the printing press, wanted to take literature, the written word, out of the hands of the few and put them in the hands of the many. The world is still short of 100% literacy, but apparently it will soon even be short of printed books.
“Never ask for whom the bell tolls/The bell tolls for thee”. These are grim words for people who like bookstores. A few years ago, before there was B. Dalton’s and Waldenbooks, and Borders and Barnes and Noble, there was the Ox-cart bookstore, Park Ave. Books, The Village Green, and others. These little fish were swallowed by the aforementioned mid-sized fish; after that, the mid-level fish were swallowed by the giants of the food chain. Finally, there was only one – Barnes and Noble. But B&N has fallen prey to the internet piranhas of Amazon.
James B. Stewart, in his column from the Wall Street Journal, 8-18-2010, has this to say about the demise of Barnes & Noble:
“The giant bookstore chain, whose superstores once struck fear into the hearts of independent booksellers everywhere, put itself up for sale this month, rendering it the corporate equivalent of the remaindered books it sells at a discount.”
He also writes: “My hunch is that B&N never really embraced the Internet or e-books, tied as it was to the old-fashioned world of physical books and stores.”
Ironically, Stewart compares B&N’s Nook to Amazon’s Kindle, but then adds this little nugget: “Now I'm using Apple's iPad… I like reading on the iPad…”.
For some of us old-fashioned people, there is more to a book than just reading it. There is the physical feel and presence, the tactile romance, of having a book be “…a bird in one’s hand.” Electronics will always be the “…two birds in a bush.” Why? Because e-books require power, electrical power, to work. And they break. They need to be repaired or replaced. Real books only need to be seen. You can’t read them in the dark, but that’s why, in case of power outages, we have candles, society, or sleep to see us through to the next day.
There is a reason why some of the most expensive wines are un-drank, un-tasted, and that grow more valuable as they grow more dusty. Once it is drunk it is gone.
But there is hope. Book burners have never been successful. As long as people can read, there will be books. New books may not be printed, but as long as there are books and people to read them, there will be bookstores. And as long as these pre-conditions are met, there will gathering places for people who like to read, who like to have coffee, who like having conversation.
At least for us old-fashioned people.
“Never ask for whom the bell tolls/The bell tolls for thee”. These are grim words for people who like bookstores. A few years ago, before there was B. Dalton’s and Waldenbooks, and Borders and Barnes and Noble, there was the Ox-cart bookstore, Park Ave. Books, The Village Green, and others. These little fish were swallowed by the aforementioned mid-sized fish; after that, the mid-level fish were swallowed by the giants of the food chain. Finally, there was only one – Barnes and Noble. But B&N has fallen prey to the internet piranhas of Amazon.
James B. Stewart, in his column from the Wall Street Journal, 8-18-2010, has this to say about the demise of Barnes & Noble:
“The giant bookstore chain, whose superstores once struck fear into the hearts of independent booksellers everywhere, put itself up for sale this month, rendering it the corporate equivalent of the remaindered books it sells at a discount.”
He also writes: “My hunch is that B&N never really embraced the Internet or e-books, tied as it was to the old-fashioned world of physical books and stores.”
Ironically, Stewart compares B&N’s Nook to Amazon’s Kindle, but then adds this little nugget: “Now I'm using Apple's iPad… I like reading on the iPad…”.
For some of us old-fashioned people, there is more to a book than just reading it. There is the physical feel and presence, the tactile romance, of having a book be “…a bird in one’s hand.” Electronics will always be the “…two birds in a bush.” Why? Because e-books require power, electrical power, to work. And they break. They need to be repaired or replaced. Real books only need to be seen. You can’t read them in the dark, but that’s why, in case of power outages, we have candles, society, or sleep to see us through to the next day.
There is a reason why some of the most expensive wines are un-drank, un-tasted, and that grow more valuable as they grow more dusty. Once it is drunk it is gone.
But there is hope. Book burners have never been successful. As long as people can read, there will be books. New books may not be printed, but as long as there are books and people to read them, there will be bookstores. And as long as these pre-conditions are met, there will gathering places for people who like to read, who like to have coffee, who like having conversation.
At least for us old-fashioned people.
Saturday, August 14, 2010
Dinner for one, party for one
Here is a quote from the movie Charly:
Charly Gordon: "I was wondering why the people who would never dream of laughing at a blind or a crippled man would laugh at a moron?"
This is the punch line for all the jokes in the movie Dinner For Schmucks. In order to be promoted, the candidate has to bring an idiot to dinner. The stupider the guest, the better. One condition is that these dinner guests never know why they have been invited. They are to believe they have been invited only because of their uniqueness and their various talents. By the end of the movie, these people still are who they are, but at least one “normal” person has suffered the pangs of consciousness and regained his sense of decency. There are many times, and in many places, where I have felt this “schmuckiness”
The problem for Charly in Charly is not that he is no longer a moron, but the fact that now he realizes how and why people always treated him the way they did, and not only that, it is that knowledge which brings with it the feeling of pain, the pain of being laughed at, disregarded, and ignored. In the movie (and the book by Daniel Keyes upon which it was based Flowers for Algernon) this knowledge is gained by seeing how the people in the restaurant laugh at a man who is probably retarded, and he is able to see not from the subjective viewpoint of himself as a “former moron” and who had been treated this way (which would have fostered resentment) but from the viewpoint of an objective observer. Because nobody knows he is not what he looks like on the outside, they feel neither guilt nor remorse at laughing at a mentally-challenged human being. Charly sees someone else suffering the same indignities he had once experienced, but now realizes the true scope of what he had had to endure, just to be “liked”, to be “accepted”. He learned what “…pulling a real Charly Gordon” meant.
Charly showed humanity and society in a not-so-favorable light, and that although heroics and nobility are not teachable qualities, they are inherent in the human personality and can be developed through exercise. The story also shows that logic and intellectual attainments can sometimes interfere or even run contrary to these inherent human qualities. Dinner for Schmucks is a movie which, in the guise of entertainment, allows people to laugh at the “schmucks” of the world without ever having to face the consequences of acting like insensitive buffoons.
Incidentally, in Ben Stiller’s movie from a few years ago, Tropical Thunder, there were people outside the theater actively protesting the portrayal of “A Retard” by Stiller. They were protesting because of the helplessness of the learning or intellectually challenged and their inability to defend themselves. In Dinner for Schmucks, Barry is not a “retard” or a “moron” he is an IRS agent who is in deep emotional denial. His pain, loneliness, and anguish are the fuel for the audience’s laughter. Therefore, he deserved what he got and he wasn’t a defenseless person because he “chose” to be so dumb.
In the movie Charly, Charly’s scars bought him to the state of awareness but his scars were only the remainders of a temporary surgical solution. He finally grew smart enough to see that his growth would be only short-lived, and that he would end up even more of a moron (The term was used correctly in the story line because Charly’s I.Q at the start was below 60, and at the peak of his intellectual attainment, was well over 160)) than when he had started. In Dinner for Schmucks, the schmucks stay schmucks, but it is the normal people who can make the change so as to live out their lives happily.
In the book The Four Agreements, Don Ruiz points out that deep wounds heal first on the surface, and the rest of the healing proceeds downward, but the scars protect the wound and prevent the actual healing to take place. The only way to heal these wounds is to dig down, consciously, through the scar tissue to the level of the injury, and then the wound must be healed from that point outward, ending at the surface tissue. The wound remains open until even the skin is healed.
There really is hope for the socially challenged, the aesthetically challenged, the emotionally challenged - the people who are un-liked, ugly, or un-lovable. The first step is to find the prime source of humanity – love, and to give it and to not expect any in return. For me, I look at it this way:
If people see only the scar tissue, they may never love me, they may never look at me or acknowledge me, but I can still love them. I want to love. If I love from my heart outwards, then the deepest part of the surface wound will logically be the first to feel this loving energy that comes from inside me, and the last place will be the skin, which is the first part of me that other people see. Regardless of what they see, that inner love will always be there.
Charly Gordon: "I was wondering why the people who would never dream of laughing at a blind or a crippled man would laugh at a moron?"
This is the punch line for all the jokes in the movie Dinner For Schmucks. In order to be promoted, the candidate has to bring an idiot to dinner. The stupider the guest, the better. One condition is that these dinner guests never know why they have been invited. They are to believe they have been invited only because of their uniqueness and their various talents. By the end of the movie, these people still are who they are, but at least one “normal” person has suffered the pangs of consciousness and regained his sense of decency. There are many times, and in many places, where I have felt this “schmuckiness”
The problem for Charly in Charly is not that he is no longer a moron, but the fact that now he realizes how and why people always treated him the way they did, and not only that, it is that knowledge which brings with it the feeling of pain, the pain of being laughed at, disregarded, and ignored. In the movie (and the book by Daniel Keyes upon which it was based Flowers for Algernon) this knowledge is gained by seeing how the people in the restaurant laugh at a man who is probably retarded, and he is able to see not from the subjective viewpoint of himself as a “former moron” and who had been treated this way (which would have fostered resentment) but from the viewpoint of an objective observer. Because nobody knows he is not what he looks like on the outside, they feel neither guilt nor remorse at laughing at a mentally-challenged human being. Charly sees someone else suffering the same indignities he had once experienced, but now realizes the true scope of what he had had to endure, just to be “liked”, to be “accepted”. He learned what “…pulling a real Charly Gordon” meant.
Charly showed humanity and society in a not-so-favorable light, and that although heroics and nobility are not teachable qualities, they are inherent in the human personality and can be developed through exercise. The story also shows that logic and intellectual attainments can sometimes interfere or even run contrary to these inherent human qualities. Dinner for Schmucks is a movie which, in the guise of entertainment, allows people to laugh at the “schmucks” of the world without ever having to face the consequences of acting like insensitive buffoons.
Incidentally, in Ben Stiller’s movie from a few years ago, Tropical Thunder, there were people outside the theater actively protesting the portrayal of “A Retard” by Stiller. They were protesting because of the helplessness of the learning or intellectually challenged and their inability to defend themselves. In Dinner for Schmucks, Barry is not a “retard” or a “moron” he is an IRS agent who is in deep emotional denial. His pain, loneliness, and anguish are the fuel for the audience’s laughter. Therefore, he deserved what he got and he wasn’t a defenseless person because he “chose” to be so dumb.
In the movie Charly, Charly’s scars bought him to the state of awareness but his scars were only the remainders of a temporary surgical solution. He finally grew smart enough to see that his growth would be only short-lived, and that he would end up even more of a moron (The term was used correctly in the story line because Charly’s I.Q at the start was below 60, and at the peak of his intellectual attainment, was well over 160)) than when he had started. In Dinner for Schmucks, the schmucks stay schmucks, but it is the normal people who can make the change so as to live out their lives happily.
In the book The Four Agreements, Don Ruiz points out that deep wounds heal first on the surface, and the rest of the healing proceeds downward, but the scars protect the wound and prevent the actual healing to take place. The only way to heal these wounds is to dig down, consciously, through the scar tissue to the level of the injury, and then the wound must be healed from that point outward, ending at the surface tissue. The wound remains open until even the skin is healed.
There really is hope for the socially challenged, the aesthetically challenged, the emotionally challenged - the people who are un-liked, ugly, or un-lovable. The first step is to find the prime source of humanity – love, and to give it and to not expect any in return. For me, I look at it this way:
If people see only the scar tissue, they may never love me, they may never look at me or acknowledge me, but I can still love them. I want to love. If I love from my heart outwards, then the deepest part of the surface wound will logically be the first to feel this loving energy that comes from inside me, and the last place will be the skin, which is the first part of me that other people see. Regardless of what they see, that inner love will always be there.
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Self-portrait
In keeping with my self-imposed deadlines of adding a post every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday before Midnight, I am hurriedly typing what will be a short piece. Gannet Newspapers – The Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, have a website called ArtDrop.org.. They have been gathering self-portraits of area artists for the last two months, and today, I was able to see the installation of these self-portraits hung upon the wrought-iron fence that surrounds the Memorial Art Gallery on University Ave. There were many different styles and attitudes expressed by those who submitted work. I have two pieces on display, and there are several others who have multiple submissions. Because these were all submitted digitally, they were all able to be printed on the same weather-proof board material.
ArtDrop.org is sponsoring other events, including an interactive poetry walk and a “Stories About Rochester” interactive walk.
ArtDrop.org is sponsoring other events, including an interactive poetry walk and a “Stories About Rochester” interactive walk.
Monday, August 9, 2010
A place, a time, another goodbye.
Who's the fool with the cross-eyed stare
The turned up nose and moronic glare?
Who's that simpleton standing over there?
(jack jack the idiot dunce)....
Yeah he's so uncoordinated
Oh so disorientated
And when we have a high school hop
You ought to see that idiot bop
These words from the Kink’s song “Jack The Idiot Dunce” from the Schoolboys in Disgrace album would have (and did) describe not just me but my experience when I was a freshman in high school. When it came to functions like parties and dancing, long after high school ended, I never got past my self-consciousness; at least until about 10 years or so ago. What I learned, from going to nightclubs and small venue concerts, that nobody really paid any attention to me. Maybe it wasn’t that I had grown up, it was that they had.
Anyways, Saturday night one of my favorite nightclubs closed, and the last band that played there was 7th Heaven. Maybe now it’s time to grow up. Live music and dancing are more for younger souls perhaps. Luckily, or unfortunately, depending on which side of the coin the toss leaves exposed, I am not ready to be so old so soon. I have many years to make up for. I know that I have a few friends who have seen me dance, especially at one of my friend’s birthday party. That was caught on video and I gave out copies of it. For those lucky enough to see it, they can assuredly vouch for the fact that I dance like a gorilla, out of control on roller skates.
What I have learned in the many years since I outgrew some of my insecurities is that fun is in the doing, not in the watching. I used to watch others have fun, and wished I could do the same. Now I’m doing what is fun for me, and I notice that others are watching me.
Although I think mostly because their afraid I’ll step on their feet, I kind of like to think it is for a far-out reason like this:
Yeah so you've got the knack to do the idiot jack
From your head to the tips of your toes
Now the whole world's doing it and everybody knows
(jack jack the idiot dunce)
He's a real cool cat and a real gone groove
(jack jack the idiot dunce)
And the girls go crazy when he starts to move
(jack jack the idiot dunce)
Now jack's a success he's got nothing to prove
(jack jack the idiot dunce)
Written by Ray Davies, performed by the Kinks
Anyways, goodbye to Slammers, thanks for being a place I can remember having fun.
The turned up nose and moronic glare?
Who's that simpleton standing over there?
(jack jack the idiot dunce)....
Yeah he's so uncoordinated
Oh so disorientated
And when we have a high school hop
You ought to see that idiot bop
These words from the Kink’s song “Jack The Idiot Dunce” from the Schoolboys in Disgrace album would have (and did) describe not just me but my experience when I was a freshman in high school. When it came to functions like parties and dancing, long after high school ended, I never got past my self-consciousness; at least until about 10 years or so ago. What I learned, from going to nightclubs and small venue concerts, that nobody really paid any attention to me. Maybe it wasn’t that I had grown up, it was that they had.
Anyways, Saturday night one of my favorite nightclubs closed, and the last band that played there was 7th Heaven. Maybe now it’s time to grow up. Live music and dancing are more for younger souls perhaps. Luckily, or unfortunately, depending on which side of the coin the toss leaves exposed, I am not ready to be so old so soon. I have many years to make up for. I know that I have a few friends who have seen me dance, especially at one of my friend’s birthday party. That was caught on video and I gave out copies of it. For those lucky enough to see it, they can assuredly vouch for the fact that I dance like a gorilla, out of control on roller skates.
What I have learned in the many years since I outgrew some of my insecurities is that fun is in the doing, not in the watching. I used to watch others have fun, and wished I could do the same. Now I’m doing what is fun for me, and I notice that others are watching me.
Although I think mostly because their afraid I’ll step on their feet, I kind of like to think it is for a far-out reason like this:
Yeah so you've got the knack to do the idiot jack
From your head to the tips of your toes
Now the whole world's doing it and everybody knows
(jack jack the idiot dunce)
He's a real cool cat and a real gone groove
(jack jack the idiot dunce)
And the girls go crazy when he starts to move
(jack jack the idiot dunce)
Now jack's a success he's got nothing to prove
(jack jack the idiot dunce)
Written by Ray Davies, performed by the Kinks
Anyways, goodbye to Slammers, thanks for being a place I can remember having fun.
Sunday, August 1, 2010
Music is sculpture
This poem was inspired by a quote from Frank Zappa:
Music, in performance, is a type of sculpture. The air in the performance is sculpted into something.
Frank Zappa
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/f/frank_zappa.html
This is a poem within a poem, actually. The four lines on the left side, read as one poem , is this:
Music is sculpture
Heard as melody.
Like sculptured wind,
Skin responds to touch.
The poem in total reads with all the lines contained in a zig-zag fashion
Music is sculpture.
Music is sculpture
Each definite note
Surrounded
By indefinite space,
Like stone cut with chisel.
The string of random repetition of beat and pause
Becomes a melodic rhythm of sound and silence
Heard as melody.
When it passes through the ear
Music is a tactile experience.
Formed by the course and the smooth,
The full and the empty,
The eardrum
beats along with the sensation of air formed
Like sculpted wind,
The sensation of sound to the ear
Is not unlike the sensation of texture to skin -
Whether soft or harsh
the ear responds
to music
the way
Skin responds to touch.
Music, in performance, is a type of sculpture. The air in the performance is sculpted into something.
Frank Zappa
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/f/frank_zappa.html
This is a poem within a poem, actually. The four lines on the left side, read as one poem , is this:
Music is sculpture
Heard as melody.
Like sculptured wind,
Skin responds to touch.
The poem in total reads with all the lines contained in a zig-zag fashion
Music is sculpture.
Music is sculpture
Each definite note
Surrounded
By indefinite space,
Like stone cut with chisel.
The string of random repetition of beat and pause
Becomes a melodic rhythm of sound and silence
Heard as melody.
When it passes through the ear
Music is a tactile experience.
Formed by the course and the smooth,
The full and the empty,
The eardrum
beats along with the sensation of air formed
Like sculpted wind,
The sensation of sound to the ear
Is not unlike the sensation of texture to skin -
Whether soft or harsh
the ear responds
to music
the way
Skin responds to touch.
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