'another color sunflower
'with heart'
'resting'
8.10.2009
Stage
Leopold and Loeb’s murder trial became a media sensation in real life, even if the details were unprintable at the time. The lovers- murderers angle was turned into a homoerotic game in Hitchcock’s Rope and outright sexual acting out in Swoon.
Philly actors Evan Jonigkeit and Brian Kurtas are tackling the collective psyche of notorious 20s lovers in John Logan’s drama Never the Sinner opening this week at the Adrienne Theater. Kurtas jumped into rehearsals late, taking over for another actor, said he understands why this gruesome story still intrigues.“I think what is fascinating regardless of what kind of relationship this is, heterosexual or homosexual relationship, is that these boys do what they do for love. Leopold was treated as such an outcast; Loeb was the only person who would talk to him.”
Jonigkeit scored critical praise starring in Mauckingbird’s very gay version of The Misanthrope and the British boys’ prep school version of Shakespeare’s R & J. Working with Kurtas on the chemistry of Leopold and Loeb has been a different challenge for the versatile actor.
“The language of Moliere and Shakespeare kind of gets rid of the guess work. This play is different because it’s so naturalistic. The character is expressive, but with a lot less information. It’s a phenomenal part to try to capture. He’s a villain, but more than that he is also a child.” he said.
Jonigkeit said that Brian has been a real trooper letting “me throw him different stuff; he’s making daring choices in this role. My thought on why these characters are so interesting because they really need each other and they are misfits. The extreme measures in which they express those needs is so bizarre…that is fascinating to try to figure out. It’s thrilling really. Peter Reynolds the director keeps telling us in notes ‘Don’t be nice.’”
Short Morning
The last conjuring
lacerated word
aster, kiln
arc-light
in his eye
dreamt of dead
cardinals taking off their heads
twig scraping the window
no, it’s my hand
Shadow mouth
too late for
oatmeal to taste
like the past
Jack leaves
day.
lacerated word
aster, kiln
arc-light
in his eye
dreamt of dead
cardinals taking off their heads
twig scraping the window
no, it’s my hand
Shadow mouth
too late for
oatmeal to taste
like the past
Jack leaves
day.
Gone Fishin'
Impossible to face Monday grammar and 105 heat index. It rained all around Philly last night, setting up a bubble of a steam bath within the city limits. The storms must be performing just outside the city limits, all sound and fury signifying nothing here. Was hoping they would rip through and lance the heat, but barely a spit take all night.
I’ve been out already for an emergency trip to the bank and to partially blind myself with the sun. Inspired by the runners and cyclists undetered by the heat. The motorists are already cursing, slavishly whipping around Rittenhouse Sq. destroying any momentary inner city bucolic peace. Maybe already thinking that they are sitting in traffic combat at 5:25 tonight. They can’t go fishin’ and really can you blame them for wanting to run me down as I wing past them that is stuck in broiling traffic. No brakes! no brakes! please.
I’ve been out already for an emergency trip to the bank and to partially blind myself with the sun. Inspired by the runners and cyclists undetered by the heat. The motorists are already cursing, slavishly whipping around Rittenhouse Sq. destroying any momentary inner city bucolic peace. Maybe already thinking that they are sitting in traffic combat at 5:25 tonight. They can’t go fishin’ and really can you blame them for wanting to run me down as I wing past them that is stuck in broiling traffic. No brakes! no brakes! please.
Lives of the composers
Back from that jaunt around town on my brakeless bike and inner city blues was replaced by Rossini in my mind’s ear as vaulted away from the park. Now back considering Anne Migrette’s discussion via Think Denk whether Charles Ives was a homophobe or a victim of prejudices of his time. Migrette takes it a step further looking for gay markers in Ives’ music. Interesting exercise.
The out composers I’ve been lucky enough to talk to have reinterated, sometimes emphatically, that there is no such thing as ‘gay music.’ Principle among these is Ned Rorem, who admitted that he regretted being included on a recording ‘Gay American Composers’ just for that reason. Timeless music is, after all, bigger than sexuality even though it may have everything to do with who you are sleeping with.
Anyway, even though there is a collective gay mantra about there not being anything as ‘gay music’ in classical realms, can anyone conceive that ‘Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies’ could have been written by anyone else but Tchaikovsky? Or as I’m listening now to ‘Fantasia on a theme by Thomas Tallis’ Henry the Eighth’s court composer and I’m wondering where classical music would be without gay aesthetics, consciously recorded or not.
The out composers I’ve been lucky enough to talk to have reinterated, sometimes emphatically, that there is no such thing as ‘gay music.’ Principle among these is Ned Rorem, who admitted that he regretted being included on a recording ‘Gay American Composers’ just for that reason. Timeless music is, after all, bigger than sexuality even though it may have everything to do with who you are sleeping with.
Anyway, even though there is a collective gay mantra about there not being anything as ‘gay music’ in classical realms, can anyone conceive that ‘Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies’ could have been written by anyone else but Tchaikovsky? Or as I’m listening now to ‘Fantasia on a theme by Thomas Tallis’ Henry the Eighth’s court composer and I’m wondering where classical music would be without gay aesthetics, consciously recorded or not.
8.02.2009
metroscape
Biking back from the Kelly Pool along West River Drive in stifling sun today. the Philly skyline rushing the eye in brilliant color saturation like a Hitchcock film from the 50s. My mind’s ear provided the Bernard Hermann soundtrack.
Gay saute
While at the Dancewriting Institute I was inspired to make quick meals for the fellow fellows who were dropping. My roommate Christopher Blank, a fab young journalist and willing scullery, kept the galley kitchen ready. Bent over the sink, he would mumble asides as I tried to work on an electric stove. He wants me to do a tv version in Memphis called Gay Saute with him cleaning up and mumbling asides while I cook and interview celebs hanging out in the kitchen. I’m meant to distract them with dishes as I grill them. Well..anyway…meanwhile I’ll offer my first gay saute recipe for success-
Use high heat on top of the stove!
Use high heat on top of the stove!
Music
Philadelphia’s famed heat and humidity was the perfect clime as prima diva Angela Brown sang ’Summertime’ from ’Porgy & Bess’ an encore that was accompanied by an on cue breeze. Brown, stunning in a tight turquoise opera gown was center stage at the Mann Center in Fairmount Park. Last month the Fabulous Philadelphians were in Vail, Colorado, next month they are in Saratoga NY, but this week they are in the final week of their summer season in Philly.
Rossen Milanov, musical director of the summer series, conducted Brown in a program of Verdi arias including the overture to La forza del destino, Ritorna vincitor” from Aida and “Tu, che le vanità” from Don Carlo. As thrilling as it was to hear Angela, the orchestra was just as thrilling in its powerful reading of Rachmaninoff’s Symphony no. 2. This is a lengthy piece, with a lot of symphonic undertow and vaulting progressions. Highlights in this performance were the understated decrescendos, the overlapping tremolo runs and the concussive pre-codas. Milanov is a specialist of Russian, Slavic and Eastern European music. This was a brilliantly balanced interpretation of Rachmaninoff.
Rossen Milanov, musical director of the summer series, conducted Brown in a program of Verdi arias including the overture to La forza del destino, Ritorna vincitor” from Aida and “Tu, che le vanità” from Don Carlo. As thrilling as it was to hear Angela, the orchestra was just as thrilling in its powerful reading of Rachmaninoff’s Symphony no. 2. This is a lengthy piece, with a lot of symphonic undertow and vaulting progressions. Highlights in this performance were the understated decrescendos, the overlapping tremolo runs and the concussive pre-codas. Milanov is a specialist of Russian, Slavic and Eastern European music. This was a brilliantly balanced interpretation of Rachmaninoff.
LsOTD
“Nobody is talking about some government takeover of health care, I’m tired of hearing that.” President Obama told a wildly supportive crowd in Durham, NC. The President fired back at critics who just will say anything to obstruct health care reform. “I’ve been as clear as I can be; under the reform I’ve proposed, if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor,…If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan. These folks need to stop scaring everybody.” Obama said.
“Nobody is talking about some government takeover of health care, I’m tired of hearing that.” President Obama told a wildly supportive crowd in Durham, NC. The President fired back at critics who just will say anything to obstruct health care reform. “I’ve been as clear as I can be; under the reform I’ve proposed, if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor,…If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan. These folks need to stop scaring everybody.” Obama said.
Politictictic
Bill Moyers’ Journal this week is a blistering indictment of insurance company lobbyists and the Reps. and Dems who are bending over for them. It’s a case of the snake calling the viper asp.
Wendell Potter former Cigna executive, the fourth largest health insurance company in the US, was the insider pulling no punches.
“The industry doesn’t … want any more competition period. They certainly don’t want it from a government plan that might be operating more efficiently than they are, that they operate. ..”
Wendell Potter former Cigna executive, the fourth largest health insurance company in the US, was the insider pulling no punches.
“The industry doesn’t … want any more competition period. They certainly don’t want it from a government plan that might be operating more efficiently than they are, that they operate. ..”
7.27.2009
Dance
The New York Times is reporting that American Dance pioneer Merce Cunningham has died. Cunningham brought his company back to Philadelphia last year.
March 2008
The return of Merce Cunningham Dance Company in the middle of Dance Celebration’s ’Innovators and Pioneers’ series is perfect placement. It is so remarkable in a work like Biped, premiering in Philadelphia, that Cunningham, at 89, continues to define his own dance universe.
Not to be outdone by hidef film effects, the current trend in dancearts Cunningham instead conjures a dance black hole on the Annenberg stage that we get sucked into.
Although somewhat dwarfed here from its full expansion on the BAM stage, the dance arena is nonetheless stunning. Cunningham’s sketchpad of dimensional skeletal danceforms he pioneered with ’motion capture’ computer imaging float in and out along with worm graphics, scribbles, and drafting bars.
His troupe of 13 bipeds, dressed in metallic acid burn organza danskins appear and vanish. This spatial reality frames Cunningham’s spectral choreographic progression. As avant garde as Cunningham remains a work like "BiPed" does not sidestep stellar modern technique delivered by these dancers.
"Biped’s" choreographic base is a study in tendu and relevé transitional foundations that bloom with dazzling arabesque variations and innovative body lines. There is a uniquely steeled suppleness in the backbends and formitable athletic prowess in Olympic jump sequences from static positions.
Not to be outdone by hi-def film effects, the current trend in dancearts the Cunningham instead conjures a dance black hole on the Annenberg stage that we get sucked into.A dancer vaults and is caught by four men by her limbs, without hand support on her torso. The dancer is lifted, falls low to the ground in a lift sequence that keeps evolving until it moves offstage. Such kinetic elements give any non-representational movement amplitude. Something for those who don’t like abstraction, to grab onto.
Asymmetrical group fragments are as cohesive as contrasting duets and unison work. As the motion capture projections fill out into more charcoal sketches, dancers put on sheer garments and flying into epileptic aerials, then they assemble in pairs. Whether suggesting evolution or deevolution, Cunningham is fascinatingly enigmatic.
The companion piece EyeSpace is accompanied by Mikel Rouse’s soundscape and ambient live music incorporating seepage from the collective Ipods, distributed to the audience like 3-d glasses, makes this a per performance happening. Onstage, a pastel construction paper galaxy with confetti funnels hover over the dancers in turquoise unitards.
Cunningham keeps returning to expressive and playful trios, one a quicksilver display of free leg battlement in alternate body positions. The finishing duet is synergistic between the dancers without any body contact and without the need to imply any emotional intimacy.
A concert from a choreographic master who may have to choreograph on computer more, but whose work is as exploratory and as polished as ever. Maestro Cunningham made a surprise appearance taking a bow from his wheelchair at the curtain and pierced his own parallel universe with a starburst.
March 2008
The return of Merce Cunningham Dance Company in the middle of Dance Celebration’s ’Innovators and Pioneers’ series is perfect placement. It is so remarkable in a work like Biped, premiering in Philadelphia, that Cunningham, at 89, continues to define his own dance universe.
Not to be outdone by hidef film effects, the current trend in dancearts Cunningham instead conjures a dance black hole on the Annenberg stage that we get sucked into.
Although somewhat dwarfed here from its full expansion on the BAM stage, the dance arena is nonetheless stunning. Cunningham’s sketchpad of dimensional skeletal danceforms he pioneered with ’motion capture’ computer imaging float in and out along with worm graphics, scribbles, and drafting bars.
His troupe of 13 bipeds, dressed in metallic acid burn organza danskins appear and vanish. This spatial reality frames Cunningham’s spectral choreographic progression. As avant garde as Cunningham remains a work like "BiPed" does not sidestep stellar modern technique delivered by these dancers.
"Biped’s" choreographic base is a study in tendu and relevé transitional foundations that bloom with dazzling arabesque variations and innovative body lines. There is a uniquely steeled suppleness in the backbends and formitable athletic prowess in Olympic jump sequences from static positions.
Not to be outdone by hi-def film effects, the current trend in dancearts the Cunningham instead conjures a dance black hole on the Annenberg stage that we get sucked into.A dancer vaults and is caught by four men by her limbs, without hand support on her torso. The dancer is lifted, falls low to the ground in a lift sequence that keeps evolving until it moves offstage. Such kinetic elements give any non-representational movement amplitude. Something for those who don’t like abstraction, to grab onto.
Asymmetrical group fragments are as cohesive as contrasting duets and unison work. As the motion capture projections fill out into more charcoal sketches, dancers put on sheer garments and flying into epileptic aerials, then they assemble in pairs. Whether suggesting evolution or deevolution, Cunningham is fascinatingly enigmatic.
The companion piece EyeSpace is accompanied by Mikel Rouse’s soundscape and ambient live music incorporating seepage from the collective Ipods, distributed to the audience like 3-d glasses, makes this a per performance happening. Onstage, a pastel construction paper galaxy with confetti funnels hover over the dancers in turquoise unitards.
Cunningham keeps returning to expressive and playful trios, one a quicksilver display of free leg battlement in alternate body positions. The finishing duet is synergistic between the dancers without any body contact and without the need to imply any emotional intimacy.
A concert from a choreographic master who may have to choreograph on computer more, but whose work is as exploratory and as polished as ever. Maestro Cunningham made a surprise appearance taking a bow from his wheelchair at the curtain and pierced his own parallel universe with a starburst.
the time is now
Congressman Patrick Murphy (D-PA, 8th district) is an Iraq war veteran and leading the fight in congress this month to pass legislation repealing the military's discriminatory DADT policies. 13,000 military personnel have been kicked out, and countless others have been affected by DADT, not because of conduct unbecoming but because of sexual identity.
“‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ clearly isn’t working for our military, and it hinders national security and military readiness at a time when America is fighting in two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,” said Congressman Patrick Murphy. “My time in Iraq taught me that our military needs and deserves the best and the brightest who are willing to serve- and that means all Americans, regardless of their orientation."
Murphy said.
“‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ clearly isn’t working for our military, and it hinders national security and military readiness at a time when America is fighting in two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,” said Congressman Patrick Murphy. “My time in Iraq taught me that our military needs and deserves the best and the brightest who are willing to serve- and that means all Americans, regardless of their orientation."
Murphy said.
metroscape
Sunday in the park with everybody yesterday in Rittenhouse Square with the heavy air and blasts of rays coming through the clouds making everybody look seered to the grass. When a scant breeze came through, no one blinked.
7.25.2009
lotd (after Gertrude Stein)
"Equality is equality is equality,” St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman told the crowd at the Camp Camp nightclub on the occassion of recognizing 'domestic partnerships.' Always trust the sainted cities to do the right thing.
dancemetros
Company personality
Ballet X is on fire at the Wilma Theatre with their summer concert series. The concert was bursting with dramatic stage pictures, sumptuous dance and electric chemistry. The opening work, Jorma Elo’s Scenes View 2’s text of stage directions sets up a ‘contact improv’ feel of dancers in movement fragments that get more fevered. Bach's Partita No. 2 for Solo Violin to the rescue and Elo finally uncorks his choreographic stream. Elo’s choreography can look decorated, but these dancers have the muscle to attack choreographic extravagances with suppleness and simmering theatricality.
Matthew Neenan’s 'Broke Apart,' set to a mix of songs begins with a duet between Amy Aldridge and Matthew Prescott whose eyes are locked and bodies moving around a sectional barre formed in a box which they bust through in various ways. That theme of bodies over under sideways down captures Neenan’s sense of movement humor, drama and mystery. The highlight was Cindi Lauper’s vainglorious version of ’Le Vie en Rose’ that underscores one of Neenan’s finest trio passages danced with shimmering clarity by Laura Feig, Amy Aldridge and Jermel Johnson.
Jodie Gates ’Le Baiser Inevitable’ has a Cirque feel with its total eclipse light ring with the men in rust- olored black banded pants and the women in red bikinis with black sheer shrugs. Dancers cluster in a Fossesque circle as Ravel’s Bolero starts and the dancers looking volcanic. They start to sway and as one by one they pulse out of the circle and bommerrang back in. Bodies snake as Ravel’s oboe gets more and more aggressive. Matthew Prescott has an over the top duet with BX-MVP Tara Keating that skirts close to balletic camp. All part of the fun. Even though the back half was heavily danced, with muddy unison work in key moments, the esprit and sexual subtext had trajectory of its own.
Ballet X is on fire at the Wilma Theatre with their summer concert series. The concert was bursting with dramatic stage pictures, sumptuous dance and electric chemistry. The opening work, Jorma Elo’s Scenes View 2’s text of stage directions sets up a ‘contact improv’ feel of dancers in movement fragments that get more fevered. Bach's Partita No. 2 for Solo Violin to the rescue and Elo finally uncorks his choreographic stream. Elo’s choreography can look decorated, but these dancers have the muscle to attack choreographic extravagances with suppleness and simmering theatricality.
Matthew Neenan’s 'Broke Apart,' set to a mix of songs begins with a duet between Amy Aldridge and Matthew Prescott whose eyes are locked and bodies moving around a sectional barre formed in a box which they bust through in various ways. That theme of bodies over under sideways down captures Neenan’s sense of movement humor, drama and mystery. The highlight was Cindi Lauper’s vainglorious version of ’Le Vie en Rose’ that underscores one of Neenan’s finest trio passages danced with shimmering clarity by Laura Feig, Amy Aldridge and Jermel Johnson.
Jodie Gates ’Le Baiser Inevitable’ has a Cirque feel with its total eclipse light ring with the men in rust- olored black banded pants and the women in red bikinis with black sheer shrugs. Dancers cluster in a Fossesque circle as Ravel’s Bolero starts and the dancers looking volcanic. They start to sway and as one by one they pulse out of the circle and bommerrang back in. Bodies snake as Ravel’s oboe gets more and more aggressive. Matthew Prescott has an over the top duet with BX-MVP Tara Keating that skirts close to balletic camp. All part of the fun. Even though the back half was heavily danced, with muddy unison work in key moments, the esprit and sexual subtext had trajectory of its own.
7.22.2009
7.21.2009
bloggerdriller
"This isn't about me." President Obama responding to Jim DeMint of South Carolina saying that a defeat on the President's health care reform bill would be his 'Waterloo.' That's all the Republicans are about on this, how it would bring down the President.
The President answered his critics on this on Friday with where the bill stands, what it will do and how it will be paid for, but those remarks didn't make it in the news cycles.
He pushed back further in a press conference today-- "These opponents of reform would rather score political points than offer relief to Americans who've seen premiums double and costs grow three times faster than wages...They would maintain a system that works for the insurance and the drug companies, while becoming increasingly unaffordable for families and for businesses." Obama told reporters.
Once again Republicans have money for the rich. Not to mention all of their wars, scandals, pay-offs, favors, and political follies, but when it comes to help comes to
helping the middle and lower classes, they call it socialism. They will do anything to keep the insurance, drug companies and corporate medicine flush. There should be no profit in medicine. Once again Republicans prove how small they really are.
Once again the issue is not the issue it's the fight about the issue and the American people loose every time.
The President answered his critics on this on Friday with where the bill stands, what it will do and how it will be paid for, but those remarks didn't make it in the news cycles.
He pushed back further in a press conference today-- "These opponents of reform would rather score political points than offer relief to Americans who've seen premiums double and costs grow three times faster than wages...They would maintain a system that works for the insurance and the drug companies, while becoming increasingly unaffordable for families and for businesses." Obama told reporters.
Once again Republicans have money for the rich. Not to mention all of their wars, scandals, pay-offs, favors, and political follies, but when it comes to help comes to
helping the middle and lower classes, they call it socialism. They will do anything to keep the insurance, drug companies and corporate medicine flush. There should be no profit in medicine. Once again Republicans prove how small they really are.
Once again the issue is not the issue it's the fight about the issue and the American people loose every time.
booksbooksbooks
One might think that former Milwaukee Archbishop Rembert G. Weakland had a flair for the dramatic. In 2002 at the height of the pedophile priest scandal, he was being blackmailed by a former lover, outed in public and forced to step down in disgrace on the eve of his scheduled retirement at age 75. Would sound contrived on a soap opera, but the good bishop is anything but dramaclergy, as is quietly apparent on every page of his memoir “A Pilgrim in a Pilgrim Church." Weakland sets the record straight about his life and the various crisis in the Catholic church hierarchy and lights no incence or pulls any punches.
Weakland didn’t so much as have a crisis of faith as much as he had a crisis of catholic politics. 'Pilgrim' is a soul-searching expose that reveals the inner struggles of a devout Benedictine monk at odds with the Vatican on a number of issues including the ordination of women and schizophrenic church views on homosexuality.
Even though Weakland publicly apologized for the affair, admitting that he sinned by breaking his vows of celibacy, he speaks about his sexual identity as a gift from God, as part of one’s true self. He rejected modern church doctrine that homosexuality made him “objectively disorder(ed)” (1986) and reasserted in 2004 when the emergency synod characterized gay life as “intrinsically evil.” The bishop's response in finally accepting his sexuality -“I felt no diminution in God’s love.”
Bishop takes Queen's Knight. I wonder if Rome knows?
Weakland didn’t so much as have a crisis of faith as much as he had a crisis of catholic politics. 'Pilgrim' is a soul-searching expose that reveals the inner struggles of a devout Benedictine monk at odds with the Vatican on a number of issues including the ordination of women and schizophrenic church views on homosexuality.
Even though Weakland publicly apologized for the affair, admitting that he sinned by breaking his vows of celibacy, he speaks about his sexual identity as a gift from God, as part of one’s true self. He rejected modern church doctrine that homosexuality made him “objectively disorder(ed)” (1986) and reasserted in 2004 when the emergency synod characterized gay life as “intrinsically evil.” The bishop's response in finally accepting his sexuality -“I felt no diminution in God’s love.”
Bishop takes Queen's Knight. I wonder if Rome knows?
7.20.2009
Q fest
Philly Qfest's final night and GLBT doves flocked to the theater to see the premiere of The Big Gay Musical (is there any other kind?)with a Broadway cast and shot in 17 days in NY, this movie has rough edges and a huge heart.
Directors Casper Andreas and Fred M. Caruso and were on hand to answer questions (savvy room fellows, you should have been more prepared with better jokes. The film send-ups of Broadway war-horses adapted to tell the story of the off-Broadway production of 'Adam and Steve: Just the way God made them' the musical and the religious right's antigay agenda. Daniel Robinson and Joey Dudding, are handsome off-Broadway babies (and all around nice guys) on leave from Legally Blond and A Chorus Line.
Beforehand the Qfest awards were given out and some news by Philly film ambassador Thom Cardwell, who announced a new co-op with the French film industry presenting 'la Cinemateque' starting in Sept.
7.19.2009
thinking of Frank
July 1952
July in NY
Boring heat wave settles on
ugly sheets along with
Uglier thoughts of
sleeping with Frank
Even though he says
We can’t make love
But possibly still could fuck
In the winter in Chelsea
Last minute, if
He is slumming
Last week
Sleeping with Torques
(The dancer) &
Frank in this flat
In stupefying steam heat
Now I have to not not
Think about it tomorrow
Now Frank is in love with
Torques torque
Bastards they!
The more I loose my looks
The better the dancing gets
Thinking of dance
Stepping Into that
Atria while imagining
Frank was following me
To that century magnolia tree
Opening the leaves both pink ivory
Whispering past the bent leaves.
Listening to Götterdämmerung
While soaking in the tub
Because backed up drain water
Squeezing my brain
to the Germanic
Concussion of ariatic blood boil.
(Forgot that I flipped over
On my bike before I left
And ripped the brake line out
Instead of my spine)
I ache, ache ache
And all I can think about
Is sleeping with Frank
in a previous life or
Torques in Chelsea
Maybe this winter
Gives me no inspiration
Except to soak in dirty
Bath water
I guess I should write.
July in NYBoring heat wave settles on
ugly sheets along with
Uglier thoughts of
sleeping with Frank
Even though he says
We can’t make love
But possibly still could fuck
In the winter in Chelsea
Last minute, if
He is slumming
Last week
Sleeping with Torques
(The dancer) &
Frank in this flat
In stupefying steam heat
Now I have to not not
Think about it tomorrow
Now Frank is in love with
Torques torque
Bastards they!
The more I loose my looks
The better the dancing gets
Thinking of dance
Stepping Into that
Atria while imagining
Frank was following me
To that century magnolia tree
Opening the leaves both pink ivory
Whispering past the bent leaves.
Listening to Götterdämmerung
While soaking in the tub
Because backed up drain water
Squeezing my brain
to the Germanic
Concussion of ariatic blood boil.
(Forgot that I flipped over
On my bike before I left
And ripped the brake line out
Instead of my spine)
I ache, ache ache
And all I can think about
Is sleeping with Frank
in a previous life or
Torques in Chelsea
Maybe this winter
Gives me no inspiration
Except to soak in dirty
Bath water
I guess I should write.
7.16.2009
Politic..tic..tic
Listening to the Judge Sonia Sotomayer confirmation hearings some images come to mind
-a bullfight with all matadors circling and the bull being drugged and stabbed in the pen
-a minuet in clogs.
-Anita Hill letting swing a few sandbags
but leave it to Sen. Lindsay Graham for the LOTD day referring to Sotomayer's now famous statement about "a wise Latino woman" reaching a better opinion that a white man. Graham set out a muscled argument that if he had made a similar statement "If I Lindsay Graham said I would make a better Senator than X..to represent South Carolina...If I had said anything like that...they would have had my head...others could not get remotely close to that statement and survive."
A great point by Sen. Graham to which I would reply. "Absolutely, now, yes, I agree with you, but do you want to go back say 10-300 years?
-a bullfight with all matadors circling and the bull being drugged and stabbed in the pen
-a minuet in clogs.
-Anita Hill letting swing a few sandbags
but leave it to Sen. Lindsay Graham for the LOTD day referring to Sotomayer's now famous statement about "a wise Latino woman" reaching a better opinion that a white man. Graham set out a muscled argument that if he had made a similar statement "If I Lindsay Graham said I would make a better Senator than X..to represent South Carolina...If I had said anything like that...they would have had my head...others could not get remotely close to that statement and survive."
A great point by Sen. Graham to which I would reply. "Absolutely, now, yes, I agree with you, but do you want to go back say 10-300 years?
7.15.2009
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Which movement are you talking about?
In Durham at the American Dance Festival, the tag line was ‘where ballet & modern meet.‘ A cute pr angle that did little to attract new audiences. For dancers and choreographers, ballet and modern met long ago and creative seeds have been cross-pollinating for decades.
What constitutes modern and what constitutes ballet might be for academics to determine, but is a theoretical moot point in performance. The marriage either works or it doesn’t. In a down economy, dance fusion can be a good way to go for many practical reasons.
At ADF, The Aspen Santa Fe Ballet, showed how investing ballet with elastic repertoire, even with their wobbly reconstruction of an early work by Twyla Tharp. All of ASFB dancers have extensive ballet training, but co-directors Jean-Phillippe Malaty and Tom Mossbrucker have the attitude “We don’t look for dancers with turn-out, but open minds.” Versatility in both camps may end up helping the health of classical ballet particularly, since established audiences are, well, dying off and younger audiences need something fresh.
During a round table discussion with a panel of dance journalists, dance scholar Roger Copeland reminded that in the prevailing artistic climate in 1958, pioneer choreographer Merce Cunningham tried to fill in the divides between disparate dance worlds. For danceartists, Cunningham’s brilliance of purpose busted through conventions from all sides, changing the dynamics forever.
For those slower on the uptake, Copeland reminded that Cunningham was met with suspicion and derision by the dance establishment in general and ADF in particular. But 50 years later his is the dance new wave that is still breaking on unknown shores.
Suzanne Carbonneau, director of our NEA group, talks about the vital ‘ecological balance’ in the dance world. The necessity of all forms coexisting for a sound creative environment. Just as there has to be Sylphs and Apollos triumphing the dance stage there has to be environments for aesthetic labs so Brooklyn choreographer Miguel Guitierrez can stage a dance orgy of an orgy. Sex in this case is beside the point.
Speaking of that eco balance, choreographers from around the world continue to break dance traditions, as well as challenge methodology, theory and classical syllabus. Choreographer Ohad Naharin echoed the same sentiment as the Aspen directors, when he accepted the ADF Lifetime achievement award. He told the dancers in the audience “get rid of the mirror….and look at the sky.”
Naharin is integrating his GaGa training technique, which is just as much as a philosophy for life as it is dance training. You have to wonder at such sweeping statements, if in the dancers trenches of classes, touring, rehearsals and performance, such a laissez-faire attitude can work over time or if it just a nice idea. You wonder if you can wander into one of his rehearsal late with a note from nature.
In Durham at the American Dance Festival, the tag line was ‘where ballet & modern meet.‘ A cute pr angle that did little to attract new audiences. For dancers and choreographers, ballet and modern met long ago and creative seeds have been cross-pollinating for decades.
What constitutes modern and what constitutes ballet might be for academics to determine, but is a theoretical moot point in performance. The marriage either works or it doesn’t. In a down economy, dance fusion can be a good way to go for many practical reasons.
At ADF, The Aspen Santa Fe Ballet, showed how investing ballet with elastic repertoire, even with their wobbly reconstruction of an early work by Twyla Tharp. All of ASFB dancers have extensive ballet training, but co-directors Jean-Phillippe Malaty and Tom Mossbrucker have the attitude “We don’t look for dancers with turn-out, but open minds.” Versatility in both camps may end up helping the health of classical ballet particularly, since established audiences are, well, dying off and younger audiences need something fresh.
During a round table discussion with a panel of dance journalists, dance scholar Roger Copeland reminded that in the prevailing artistic climate in 1958, pioneer choreographer Merce Cunningham tried to fill in the divides between disparate dance worlds. For danceartists, Cunningham’s brilliance of purpose busted through conventions from all sides, changing the dynamics forever.
For those slower on the uptake, Copeland reminded that Cunningham was met with suspicion and derision by the dance establishment in general and ADF in particular. But 50 years later his is the dance new wave that is still breaking on unknown shores.
Suzanne Carbonneau, director of our NEA group, talks about the vital ‘ecological balance’ in the dance world. The necessity of all forms coexisting for a sound creative environment. Just as there has to be Sylphs and Apollos triumphing the dance stage there has to be environments for aesthetic labs so Brooklyn choreographer Miguel Guitierrez can stage a dance orgy of an orgy. Sex in this case is beside the point.
Speaking of that eco balance, choreographers from around the world continue to break dance traditions, as well as challenge methodology, theory and classical syllabus. Choreographer Ohad Naharin echoed the same sentiment as the Aspen directors, when he accepted the ADF Lifetime achievement award. He told the dancers in the audience “get rid of the mirror….and look at the sky.”
Naharin is integrating his GaGa training technique, which is just as much as a philosophy for life as it is dance training. You have to wonder at such sweeping statements, if in the dancers trenches of classes, touring, rehearsals and performance, such a laissez-faire attitude can work over time or if it just a nice idea. You wonder if you can wander into one of his rehearsal late with a note from nature.
7.12.2009
7.11.2009
Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet
ADF 2009, Durham Performing Art Center
Durham, NC
June 25, 2009
Reviewed by Lewis Whittington
Ohad Naharin received the Samuel H. Scripps Award for lifetime achievement the 2009 American Dance Festival. He took the opportunity during his acceptance speech to tell the dancers in the audience to “get rid of the mirrors. “ That rebel spirit was definitely in play afterward during The Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet performance of ‘Decadance 2007’ a compilation of dance works Naharin created between 1985- 2007.
Dancers stand on the edge of the stage and glared like pissed off runway models (instead of an attempt at veiled contempt). They pump their arms, then freeze, with each dancer taking turns in furious solos only they could own at this speed. The line recedes to spatial black as a deSadean duet unfolds with a women in a corset backing away from a man begging her for something more than the missionary position.
Sensual thoughts were absent during ‘George and Zelman’ a study for five women performing to a recitation of a Charles Bukowski poem. Each plaintive line is repeated with a new word and dance move added to the end. The dancers shift the group formations so we see the bodies at different angles, perhaps avoiding any chance that the dancers could catch us yawning.
More to grab onto in ‘Black Milk’ five men naked to the waist in warrior garb are performing a ritual where they smear their bodies with paint. They fly around in staggered formation, executing explosive layouts and jumps until they reach such a frenzy they have conjured a woman on stilts who stalks onstage in a feathered Carnival drag.
Naharin’s use of repetition in ‘Anaphaza’ grabs you by the throat and keeps squeezing. The troupe is dressed in black suits with white shirts and seated in a wide communal crescent. The Hebrew song ’Ehad Mi Yodea’ is a concussive shock wave that seems to bust open each dancers‘ chest and throw their heads back as if imbued.
The house lights come up for ‘Zachacha‘ set to a disco version of ‘Somewhere over the Rainbow’ with dancers picking audience members to join them onstage. Once assembled it segues into Dean Martin’s ’Sway’ with hilarious results. Dance sleights of hand or not, this is infectious fun.
There are more selections in the mix, but heady or silly, Naharin diced-up retrospective is dizzying but fresh in the hands of Cedar Lake dancers, who perform with drama, humor and even reverence to Naharin’s own stage conventions.
ADF 2009, Durham Performing Art Center
Durham, NC
June 25, 2009
Reviewed by Lewis Whittington
Ohad Naharin received the Samuel H. Scripps Award for lifetime achievement the 2009 American Dance Festival. He took the opportunity during his acceptance speech to tell the dancers in the audience to “get rid of the mirrors. “ That rebel spirit was definitely in play afterward during The Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet performance of ‘Decadance 2007’ a compilation of dance works Naharin created between 1985- 2007.
Dancers stand on the edge of the stage and glared like pissed off runway models (instead of an attempt at veiled contempt). They pump their arms, then freeze, with each dancer taking turns in furious solos only they could own at this speed. The line recedes to spatial black as a deSadean duet unfolds with a women in a corset backing away from a man begging her for something more than the missionary position.
Sensual thoughts were absent during ‘George and Zelman’ a study for five women performing to a recitation of a Charles Bukowski poem. Each plaintive line is repeated with a new word and dance move added to the end. The dancers shift the group formations so we see the bodies at different angles, perhaps avoiding any chance that the dancers could catch us yawning.
More to grab onto in ‘Black Milk’ five men naked to the waist in warrior garb are performing a ritual where they smear their bodies with paint. They fly around in staggered formation, executing explosive layouts and jumps until they reach such a frenzy they have conjured a woman on stilts who stalks onstage in a feathered Carnival drag.
Naharin’s use of repetition in ‘Anaphaza’ grabs you by the throat and keeps squeezing. The troupe is dressed in black suits with white shirts and seated in a wide communal crescent. The Hebrew song ’Ehad Mi Yodea’ is a concussive shock wave that seems to bust open each dancers‘ chest and throw their heads back as if imbued.
The house lights come up for ‘Zachacha‘ set to a disco version of ‘Somewhere over the Rainbow’ with dancers picking audience members to join them onstage. Once assembled it segues into Dean Martin’s ’Sway’ with hilarious results. Dance sleights of hand or not, this is infectious fun.
There are more selections in the mix, but heady or silly, Naharin diced-up retrospective is dizzying but fresh in the hands of Cedar Lake dancers, who perform with drama, humor and even reverence to Naharin’s own stage conventions.
metroscape
Back in Philly and missing the quietude of the magnolia tree that brushed against the windows of our conference room at Duke U. No time to lull, back to work here, but not before stopping at the Amish flower market on Rittenhouse Sq. where I picked up sturdy zinnia bursting with reds, yellows, fushia and deepest purple. Maybe I'll play hooky after all.
7.05.2009
7.03.2009
H Art Chaos was one of the center events at the American Dance Festival in Durham
Oshima's singular vision
The harrowing terrain Sakiko Oshima carves out in ‘Flowers of the Bones’ starts above the stage dancer Shino Kido, dressed in a bone-white gown, harnessed above the stage motionless and then flailing around. The effect is both grotesque and beautiful, one of the visual threads that runs through this dance. Kido touches down on a smoky stage of greenish gray hues as other women drift in. Medical tables are wheeled around by dancers who keep to themselves.
The coldness and fearful images are in contrast with three mermaids on top of the table with their torsos bowing back with lyrical expression, but oscillate with sad resignation. They flick their tail and white confetti flies around them, part of spellbinding lighting design The choreography is very floaty, and in its transitions suggest time frozen, but state of being altered, muddy. Eventually all the dancers are clustered together for a group portrait. Shino ends up under surgical light on one of the slabs, her body pulling upward.
Oshima’s 1995 production of ‘The Rite of Spring’ is the marquee work of this program. Oshima immediately erases the expectations of grandeur that can accompany revisits to Stravinsky’s titanic score. Instead of a ritualized tribal tableau for a throng of dancers, we enter a drab apartment with the furniture upended and Nooko Shirakawa , the sacrifice, flailing around the room in a camisole. I resisted Oshima’s concept might seep in primarily because she took this loaded piece of narrative ballet music and scaled it to score to an interior drama of a woman in psychological crisis.
Shirakawa’s gritty performance seems so choreographically uncontrolled that inadvertent comedy pops up. She obsessively turns a lamp on and off ala Fatal Attraction and when she franticly jumps on the furniture Gilda Radnor springs to mind.
Those bits seem like filler and detract from remarkably visceral moments.
When Shirakawa emerges from the tub and executes an inverted split that keeps blooming, The emotional impact draws you so close to Oshima's bold choreographic response to this music.
6.30.2009
bloglog
'love,Daisy'I almost forgot the last day of June and doubly spacey, like Daisy Buchanan in the Great Gatsby, I also forgot the first day of summer. Which is already so ripe and gorgeous in Durham right now.
blogger slacker
It's this charming Durham heat that just makes me want to nap in a tub of iced tea. Tomorrow pie!
American Dance Festival caps
Dance journeys
Choreographer Mark Dendy provided the stylish site work preceding Shen Wei Dance Arts performance at the Durham Performance Arts Center this weekend. Dendy’s troupe was everywhere- partnering the trees outside, doing Cirque acrobatics on railings, bouncing on the gallery stairs, and dance cruising in the lavs. The urbane fun was in perfect contrast to Shen Wei’s challenging introspective dance journal 'Re.'
The full company work in three parts, is based on the choreographer’s impressions revisiting sites in Cambodia and his native China. Chronicles of people, places and notably the changing sociopolitical landscape.
Part 1 is an ethereal movement mediation for 8 dancers against a video backdrop of clouds and scored to chants. It is lulling with slow cadence. Wei sites bodies moving with oxygen deficiency and a lowered center of gravity of the Tibetan Steppe. At one point a woman body moves like the air is being sucked out of her. As the dancers moved in more formation and picked up the pace, paper shards swirl around them from disturbing the Mandala maze, an effect that creates gorgeously momentary stage pictures. As danced, some of the passages seemed rote, but perhaps that was the desired transcendent goal.
Part 3 of the piece was a direct reference to different perceptions cultural turmoil, it is playful, even with visual references to Wei trying to be a contemporary choreographer under China‘s official gaze. Dancers are locked into odd angle wrestling holds. Unison line is subverted by a dancer who tries to break out of the regimented formations, which eventually spreads more individual expression. Wei’s unique technique is especially evident in the more violent passages that highlight dancers’ torso fluidity and cohesive group pulse.
Part 2 has the troupe in multicolored unitards under an ornate Chinese scroll, and they seems like extensions of the ornamentation as they go into dramatic limb locks. The costumes come off for a transcendent journey into the human heart, body and soul, rendered in beatified images from the Silk Road where Wei spent 40 days traveling from Bejing to Xion.
Choreographer Mark Dendy provided the stylish site work preceding Shen Wei Dance Arts performance at the Durham Performance Arts Center this weekend. Dendy’s troupe was everywhere- partnering the trees outside, doing Cirque acrobatics on railings, bouncing on the gallery stairs, and dance cruising in the lavs. The urbane fun was in perfect contrast to Shen Wei’s challenging introspective dance journal 'Re.'
The full company work in three parts, is based on the choreographer’s impressions revisiting sites in Cambodia and his native China. Chronicles of people, places and notably the changing sociopolitical landscape.
Part 1 is an ethereal movement mediation for 8 dancers against a video backdrop of clouds and scored to chants. It is lulling with slow cadence. Wei sites bodies moving with oxygen deficiency and a lowered center of gravity of the Tibetan Steppe. At one point a woman body moves like the air is being sucked out of her. As the dancers moved in more formation and picked up the pace, paper shards swirl around them from disturbing the Mandala maze, an effect that creates gorgeously momentary stage pictures. As danced, some of the passages seemed rote, but perhaps that was the desired transcendent goal.
Part 3 of the piece was a direct reference to different perceptions cultural turmoil, it is playful, even with visual references to Wei trying to be a contemporary choreographer under China‘s official gaze. Dancers are locked into odd angle wrestling holds. Unison line is subverted by a dancer who tries to break out of the regimented formations, which eventually spreads more individual expression. Wei’s unique technique is especially evident in the more violent passages that highlight dancers’ torso fluidity and cohesive group pulse.
Part 2 has the troupe in multicolored unitards under an ornate Chinese scroll, and they seems like extensions of the ornamentation as they go into dramatic limb locks. The costumes come off for a transcendent journey into the human heart, body and soul, rendered in beatified images from the Silk Road where Wei spent 40 days traveling from Bejing to Xion.
Stonewall lives
June 29,
The 40th anniversary of the Stonewall riots and for the fist time it seems like it is a national observance, with the mainstream mega media press paying attention to this as it relates to where we are today regarding legislation of gay civil rights laws. The mood of the country has moved past the legislation. A majority of people feel that gays should be able to serve openly in the military for instance. So the government is hedging its bets to move forward by lock-stepping into homophobic myths entrenched in the national fabric. Those myths are smashed every day by gays living openly just as they were smashed when the Stonewall girls smashed the windows of hate 40years ago.
The 40th anniversary of the Stonewall riots and for the fist time it seems like it is a national observance, with the mainstream mega media press paying attention to this as it relates to where we are today regarding legislation of gay civil rights laws. The mood of the country has moved past the legislation. A majority of people feel that gays should be able to serve openly in the military for instance. So the government is hedging its bets to move forward by lock-stepping into homophobic myths entrenched in the national fabric. Those myths are smashed every day by gays living openly just as they were smashed when the Stonewall girls smashed the windows of hate 40years ago.
6.27.2009
6.25.2009
6.19.2009
bloglog - undone, so undone -
My iceage
My famous fridge which still takes defrosting, has again reached critical mass to the horror of select family and friends. Last year, the ice beast grew so large that it broke the aluminum door (think 1955) and the undertray. 6 months ago the mass swallowed the temperature dial and ensconced the light bulb resulting in a completely eerie amber light effect, which makes me feel like I'm in a German expressionist film for some reason. I got out the ax and hacked away at the ice utter thinking I would recover the dial. No luck. The iceman does not cometh!
My famous fridge which still takes defrosting, has again reached critical mass to the horror of select family and friends. Last year, the ice beast grew so large that it broke the aluminum door (think 1955) and the undertray. 6 months ago the mass swallowed the temperature dial and ensconced the light bulb resulting in a completely eerie amber light effect, which makes me feel like I'm in a German expressionist film for some reason. I got out the ax and hacked away at the ice utter thinking I would recover the dial. No luck. The iceman does not cometh!
6.17.2009
Politictictic
Reassured somewhat that President Obama stated that his administration will seek to repeal DOMA and getting in there, off-handedly, that he found it "discriminatory."
I to believe that he is trying to step through the political morass to reach the goal, even if it doesn't appear that way at this moment, but the timing will never be right and every day of delay is justice denied.
His explanation of why only partial federal medical benefits for spouses of gay and lesbian government employee was prohibitive because of existing law....wrapped in red tape...around institutionalized homophobia.
“This is only one step,” Mr. Obama said. “Unfortunately, my administration is not authorized by existing federal law to provide same-sex couples with the full range of benefits enjoyed by heterosexual married couples.”
In the words of the other great communicator 'Mr. President tear down this wall.' if for nothing else that the wallpaper is flaking.
I to believe that he is trying to step through the political morass to reach the goal, even if it doesn't appear that way at this moment, but the timing will never be right and every day of delay is justice denied.
His explanation of why only partial federal medical benefits for spouses of gay and lesbian government employee was prohibitive because of existing law....wrapped in red tape...around institutionalized homophobia.
“This is only one step,” Mr. Obama said. “Unfortunately, my administration is not authorized by existing federal law to provide same-sex couples with the full range of benefits enjoyed by heterosexual married couples.”
In the words of the other great communicator 'Mr. President tear down this wall.' if for nothing else that the wallpaper is flaking.
6.16.2009
dancemetros
The battlement doors open and a woman on a chestnut horse enters the Armory of the First Troop Philadelphia City Cavalry. She is the promotory to the serene setting of ‘Battle Hymns’ a dance oratorio by Pultizer Prize winning composer David Lang collaborating with Leah Stein Dance and The Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia. This work is both an artistic achievement and profound meditation on war. Laing adapts lyrics from Stephen Foster making them more intimate and scores stirring words from Lincoln and a Civil War letter from a soldier to his wife.
Leah Stein’s choreography is both undecorated and expressive. Regimented formations break away to the dancers scattered, frenzied and bringing human order to chaos. Symbolized movement of camaraderie and bodies being attacked led to unwritten battlefield scenarios. The movement is cumulative and a completely interlocking component to the sea of music that floats through. At points the dancers move in and out of the choir.
Two climatic passages- one a man stands in front of a military vehicle with shopping bags recalling Tiananmen Square, the dancers load in a vehicle and are spilled in violence friezes and a central passage with the regimentation moving at double speed with violent variations. Lang’s sonic architecture fills the hanger space of the Armory as well as our hearts and minds.
This premiere is part of Peregrine Arts ambitious HIDDEN CITY series of performance events at Philadelphia landmarks both active and fallow.
Leah Stein’s choreography is both undecorated and expressive. Regimented formations break away to the dancers scattered, frenzied and bringing human order to chaos. Symbolized movement of camaraderie and bodies being attacked led to unwritten battlefield scenarios. The movement is cumulative and a completely interlocking component to the sea of music that floats through. At points the dancers move in and out of the choir.
Two climatic passages- one a man stands in front of a military vehicle with shopping bags recalling Tiananmen Square, the dancers load in a vehicle and are spilled in violence friezes and a central passage with the regimentation moving at double speed with violent variations. Lang’s sonic architecture fills the hanger space of the Armory as well as our hearts and minds.
This premiere is part of Peregrine Arts ambitious HIDDEN CITY series of performance events at Philadelphia landmarks both active and fallow.
6.15.2009
DOMA Nation
The Justice Department filed a brief this week seeking the dismissal of a legal challenge to the Defense of Marriage Act in a federal court in California. Would that be the same DOMA that protects Britney Spears' 48 hour Vegas wedding and Texas sects that allow multiple wives?
Democratic party head Howard Dean (D-Ver) speaking about the Obama adminstration upholding the DOMA which has language equating same sex marriage to among other things pedophilia, child rape and incest. Dean said such language is not acceptable and something must be done about it now. He told Rachel Maddow that he believes Obama isn't aware of the language. He also believes that the president is pro gay civil rights and that this presents Obama's credo of 'fierce urgency of now.'
"I think this is a bad situation here...but I have no doubt that the Obama administration will do the right thing." Dean told Rachel.
We'll see. It is no less than shocking that the Obama administration would allow a court document to be filed in its name that contained such vile characterizations of gay people. Unacceptable and revolting.
Democratic party head Howard Dean (D-Ver) speaking about the Obama adminstration upholding the DOMA which has language equating same sex marriage to among other things pedophilia, child rape and incest. Dean said such language is not acceptable and something must be done about it now. He told Rachel Maddow that he believes Obama isn't aware of the language. He also believes that the president is pro gay civil rights and that this presents Obama's credo of 'fierce urgency of now.'
"I think this is a bad situation here...but I have no doubt that the Obama administration will do the right thing." Dean told Rachel.
We'll see. It is no less than shocking that the Obama administration would allow a court document to be filed in its name that contained such vile characterizations of gay people. Unacceptable and revolting.
diaryentry
"The revolution will be televised" even when television is state run, thanks to the desire to be free and new tech media.
6.13.2009
6.12.2009
bloglog
Bit overwrought that, but those men are my time travelers from a poem cycle I started about ten years ago that I've been trying to edit with some sort of linear sense. Later I have them in at a circuit party in a k hole delirium circa 2002. They are less dramatic on drugs.
from Sassafras diary 1858
If I taught you to steep tea
If I couldn’t get
To drink with me.
If I hear some such murmur
While you
Wait to drink it
If your face draws in this
Late day light
If I then let you lay
The shade and tealeaves
Across my body
Soaking the past off me
If then we are
If then.
later then
When my fevers came
You crawled in the mud
From middle-night
Until dawn
Digging up the deepest
Sassafras root
From the dried mud
Hills and I heard
You boiling those root
In our iron pots
And I heard you blowing
The sticks that fired its smoke
You came in to me
Carrying the root like snakes
And steeped them over
My sweated
body until
Those vapors
searing to skin
And when I was
So dried-up inside that
I saw the torturers from my
Life tumbling in front of my eyes
And eating my soul
I came in and out of the fevers
and saw you
Lay over me dripping
Water from your mouth
Between my blistering lips and eyes
And you bled out the poisons
And demons from
My head and
The devils in flight
from my putrified body.
tried to
Break your body
This land,
When you
When you
Were rabid eyed
By seeing nothing but
the miracles of the sky
Didn’ come to you
As you glared down the sun
That scarred your eyes and
scorched you skin
When you finally screamed
I lived.
Those days and night
Hours on hour
When you drunk all
Of the liquor that was supposed to
Keep us warm the whole winter and
Ran Out into the woods naked
Against the snow and I found you
Frozen on the rocks under
That rotted damn with
Your blood froze on your brow
Your eyes grotesque
Like they were seeing death
And miracles at the same time
Your face sunken as a three day corpse
I carried you on my shoulder
Across the river and
Couldn’t feel my feet or hands
Ice was breaking off of my hairs
And all I heard was it my breathing hard
And the crunch of my footfall
We made our way and you
Slid over my arms and I held you
And screamed like a mother damned
Cradling her dead child.
I tied you to the bed
Next to the fire rocks
And I read the Christian Bible all day
And night for days and nights and
All moments were one
Then I chanted
The Buddhist prayers I learnt
On the ships in the Devil seas
Out of Cape Horn
I said these prayers to you
Over and over and the Trantrdics
Of seed soundings of ages
That I heard from Pyra on
The Indian Ocean
Sri ram, shivaya Ram
Ram shivaya ram sri ram
I screamed and
Couldn’t fall silent
Till I yelled into a trance
Till I
I found this book of yours
With other prayers from the Jews
And saying from the Gypsy slaves of Europe and
I prayed over them
Prayed and prayed when you were
Firing through the terror
The torments of your soul
On you face and
Your body stiffened
Pitching like the sea
Your organs seemed to want to burst
Out of your body
And I gave up
And I gave up
And I gave up and I cursed all those gods
And I screamed
And I clawed at something to grab
When you woke
When you woke
When you woke, you growled
“Get me out of these fucking ropes you fucking welp.”
And then you just
Were cleaved to my neck
Licking my skin and then you were with me again
You were.
When green faded
In with the winds and
The rains, swooping through
With a wave of the
The sun and you came asway
Over the hill
Your torso like
Liquid marble
Commanding the fields themselves
This again
Just as I saw you at first
And you came down
To me
As the wind timed
The shade by us and you knelt
At my feet
Took my arm and I saw
The western sky in the steel flecks
In your coal eyes.
The next winter I knew
How you
Were dead inside even when
You said the same things and we did
The same things, but you had no life
Even when I had learned your ways
I knew you were here but I lost you again
I stood in the black autumn creek
Every night where we first loved each other.
Night when you passed
Out on that holy fire
And I shivered
That I would hate you
I must finish my life and
Go back on the sea and I prayed that
If then
Your soul would return.
I saw flames
On the water
Heard the vile echoes
Seep, seepseepseep through your flesh
That was red and wet with
Firelight
Standing over that flame
Like a god cast out
Through miracles visited on this night
So we cast out to sea
As if we were
If then.
Sassafras diary 1858
If I taught you to steep tea
If I couldn’t get
To drink with me.
If I hear some such murmur
While you
Wait to drink it
If your face draws in this
Late day light
If I then let you lay
The shade and tealeaves
Across my body
Soaking the past off me
If then we are
If then.
later then
When my fevers came
You crawled in the mud
From middle-night
Until dawn
Digging up the deepest
Sassafras root
From the dried mud
Hills and I heard
You boiling those root
In our iron pots
And I heard you blowing
The sticks that fired its smoke
You came in to me
Carrying the root like snakes
And steeped them over
My sweated
body until
Those vapors
searing to skin
And when I was
So dried-up inside that
I saw the torturers from my
Life tumbling in front of my eyes
And eating my soul
I came in and out of the fevers
and saw you
Lay over me dripping
Water from your mouth
Between my blistering lips and eyes
And you bled out the poisons
And demons from
My head and
The devils in flight
from my putrified body.
tried to
Break your body
This land,
When you
When you
Were rabid eyed
By seeing nothing but
the miracles of the sky
Didn’ come to you
As you glared down the sun
That scarred your eyes and
scorched you skin
When you finally screamed
I lived.
Those days and night
Hours on hour
When you drunk all
Of the liquor that was supposed to
Keep us warm the whole winter and
Ran Out into the woods naked
Against the snow and I found you
Frozen on the rocks under
That rotted damn with
Your blood froze on your brow
Your eyes grotesque
Like they were seeing death
And miracles at the same time
Your face sunken as a three day corpse
I carried you on my shoulder
Across the river and
Couldn’t feel my feet or hands
Ice was breaking off of my hairs
And all I heard was it my breathing hard
And the crunch of my footfall
We made our way and you
Slid over my arms and I held you
And screamed like a mother damned
Cradling her dead child.
I tied you to the bed
Next to the fire rocks
And I read the Christian Bible all day
And night for days and nights and
All moments were one
Then I chanted
The Buddhist prayers I learnt
On the ships in the Devil seas
Out of Cape Horn
I said these prayers to you
Over and over and the Trantrdics
Of seed soundings of ages
That I heard from Pyra on
The Indian Ocean
Sri ram, shivaya Ram
Ram shivaya ram sri ram
I screamed and
Couldn’t fall silent
Till I yelled into a trance
Till I
I found this book of yours
With other prayers from the Jews
And saying from the Gypsy slaves of Europe and
I prayed over them
Prayed and prayed when you were
Firing through the terror
The torments of your soul
On you face and
Your body stiffened
Pitching like the sea
Your organs seemed to want to burst
Out of your body
And I gave up
And I gave up
And I gave up and I cursed all those gods
And I screamed
And I clawed at something to grab
When you woke
When you woke
When you woke, you growled
“Get me out of these fucking ropes you fucking welp.”
And then you just
Were cleaved to my neck
Licking my skin and then you were with me again
You were.
When green faded
In with the winds and
The rains, swooping through
With a wave of the
The sun and you came asway
Over the hill
Your torso like
Liquid marble
Commanding the fields themselves
This again
Just as I saw you at first
And you came down
To me
As the wind timed
The shade by us and you knelt
At my feet
Took my arm and I saw
The western sky in the steel flecks
In your coal eyes.
The next winter I knew
How you
Were dead inside even when
You said the same things and we did
The same things, but you had no life
Even when I had learned your ways
I knew you were here but I lost you again
I stood in the black autumn creek
Every night where we first loved each other.
Night when you passed
Out on that holy fire
And I shivered
That I would hate you
I must finish my life and
Go back on the sea and I prayed that
If then
Your soul would return.
I saw flames
On the water
Heard the vile echoes
Seep, seepseepseep through your flesh
That was red and wet with
Firelight
Standing over that flame
Like a god cast out
Through miracles visited on this night
So we cast out to sea
As if we were
If then.
Sassafras diary 1858
6.11.2009
bloglog-
waiting for the city rain and checking out the truly inspiring Staten Island P.S. 22 chorus videos on YouTube. The teaching talents of Gregg Breinberg is obviously transformational and impossible not to watch these kids without a lump in your throat. The new Mr. B directs the music program with incredible heart using songs like Journey's 'Don't Stop Believing' and Coldplay with no sheet music. (there is also synergy being fueled by his piano/guitar playing that the kids obviously respond to). PS 22 chorus will be onstage with Stevie Nicks tonight at Madison Square Garden singing her classic 'Landslide' which she said brought her to tears when she saw it. Hard to make a rock star cry.
dancemetros
Pennsylvania Ballet hasn’t performed La Sylphide in 20 years, but nothing has mossed over. The Scottish castle is toasty with that antlered chandelier as imposing as the Academy’s famous crystal hanger. Those lads and lassies are brightly kilted for the odd highland fling. Frances Veyette gets some fine character movement in as Madge the witch and part time yenta. Here he is cooking up reptiles over the cauldron in the moor, he gets his minions lethally drunk and dancing amok. He vanishes the riff-raff and the cauldron with a crooked finger. If only one had him at the bars.
6.09.2009
6.08.2009
tonytonytony
The 3 Billys win best actor Tony. Their message to dancing boys- PREPARE!
LOTN-Neil Patrick Harris drafting through the show to nail the ending number with his GREAT show voice to realtime lyrics provided by Marc Shaiman (who else)to melodies from 'Tonight' and 'Luck be a Lady' to wit-
This show could not be any gayer
If Liza was named mayor
and Elton John took flight.
stage
Caught up with the Tony Awards and Liza was indeed shaky, but she was probably dodging sets & industry bullets. She looked dazed making her way in the opening number in a Vegasy spangly black ensem and belted out 'And the World Goes Round' a song that is indeed hers at full warble. It really was a great lead in to the cast of 'Hair' who used the opportunity to get their message to the world of peace, love and singlehandedly could bring back shag. All of the performing shows and presented joined them for 'Let the Sunshine In' and suddenly it was a happening. As slick as the Tonys now are that movement energy and chorus is something that can't be rehearsed.
6.07.2009
Global pride
The BBC is reporting on China's first ever gay pride event. Although it is not in the public square, it is not being banned by the government. The two women who head up the team organising Shanghai Pride are both Americans who live have lived in the city for a few years.
Class for Class
And the performance to beat over the weekend was the luminous atleticism of Roger Federer winning his first French Open and only the 6th man to win all grand slams.
LOTD
Dave & Charles blogging the Tonys realtime for the NYTs
D.I. Doing her best impression of Liza Minnelli: Liza Minnelli. “This is exquisite,” she says. No way there’s a dry eye in that house.
D.I. Doing her best impression of Liza Minnelli: Liza Minnelli. “This is exquisite,” she says. No way there’s a dry eye in that house.
6.03.2009
Stage
'I've got to get to New YOork'Those fabulous society cave-ins Edith Bovier Beale and Little Edie Beale have decamped in high style (turned low rent) East Hampton environs in an inventive multi-tech set at the Roberts Theatre. The Philadelphia Theatre Company opens the creaky shutters of the musical version of Grey Gardens.
I finally figured out why the documentary film and now this musical has such a gay following- its camp appeal, Kennedys and Bouviers natch, but also because it is Whatever Happened to Mommie Dearest.
Call to Arms
Johnny Symons' new documentary ‘Ask Not’ is a potent j’accuse against the military's ban on gay Americans serving openly. The film couldn‘t be more timely, just as gay America waits for President Obama to dismantle DADT as he had promised to do. It will be broadcast in most PBS markets on the Independent Lens series June 9.
Gay audiences know Symons from 2002 festival circuit hit ‘Daddy & Papa' his own gay adoption parent story. ‘Ask Not’ is less emotional in its dissection of the flashpoints of gays serving in the US military.
Interviews with retired officers to active duty boots on the ground in Iraq, the film not only illuminates the hateful absurdities of the military policy, it presents the real lives of the gay soldiers.
“The army doesn’t want me because I’m gay, and my gay friends don’t want me because I’m a soldier.” An African American San Franciscan stoically observes as he prepares to deploy to Iraq. His reality encapsulates what gay American soldiers have to suck up.
Symons’ ground video from Iraq that speaks volumes about the real conditions soldiers face on the line. Summed up movingly by a gay soldier who said. “You can turn off your emotions, you definitely can turn off your sexual feelings.”
And that is just the starting point. Since DADT, more than 12,000 military have been oppressed, harassed, brutalized, slandered and eventually kicked out under DADT. “These aren’t abstract numbers, these are real people.” another soldiers says standing in protest on the Capital Mall.
But, Symons’ tries not to preach to the choir, this is a call to arms. He follows volunteer inductees from ‘Right to Serve’ that stages sit-ins at recruitment centers, challenges GLBT Americans to return to GLBT activism.
The opposition presents the same tired arguments- unit cohesion, morale and men being stalked in the showers- reasons that are more out of touch with reality than ever before. Yet the same arguments are being put forth and may succeed in keeping DADT in place.
Symons follows several soldiers and recruits trying to cope with DADT, victims of discrimination and the cesspool of homophobic politics. Summed up by a soldier this way “A policy that protects …homophobes.”
Gay audiences know Symons from 2002 festival circuit hit ‘Daddy & Papa' his own gay adoption parent story. ‘Ask Not’ is less emotional in its dissection of the flashpoints of gays serving in the US military.
Interviews with retired officers to active duty boots on the ground in Iraq, the film not only illuminates the hateful absurdities of the military policy, it presents the real lives of the gay soldiers.
“The army doesn’t want me because I’m gay, and my gay friends don’t want me because I’m a soldier.” An African American San Franciscan stoically observes as he prepares to deploy to Iraq. His reality encapsulates what gay American soldiers have to suck up.
Symons’ ground video from Iraq that speaks volumes about the real conditions soldiers face on the line. Summed up movingly by a gay soldier who said. “You can turn off your emotions, you definitely can turn off your sexual feelings.”
And that is just the starting point. Since DADT, more than 12,000 military have been oppressed, harassed, brutalized, slandered and eventually kicked out under DADT. “These aren’t abstract numbers, these are real people.” another soldiers says standing in protest on the Capital Mall.
But, Symons’ tries not to preach to the choir, this is a call to arms. He follows volunteer inductees from ‘Right to Serve’ that stages sit-ins at recruitment centers, challenges GLBT Americans to return to GLBT activism.
The opposition presents the same tired arguments- unit cohesion, morale and men being stalked in the showers- reasons that are more out of touch with reality than ever before. Yet the same arguments are being put forth and may succeed in keeping DADT in place.
Symons follows several soldiers and recruits trying to cope with DADT, victims of discrimination and the cesspool of homophobic politics. Summed up by a soldier this way “A policy that protects …homophobes.”
LOTD
Overheard at Sweat Gym when that international news story Susan Boyle was on tellie about how she was rushed to the hospital for 'nervous exhaustion'
"She went from zero to Diva in three shows."
maybe those moonbeams shooting out of her head were too much to bear.
"She went from zero to Diva in three shows."
maybe those moonbeams shooting out of her head were too much to bear.
5.30.2009
5.29.2009
bloglog
Love this latest entry from Jan. Mysterious cosmic order, and a floaty quality (my favorite thing) especially on a morning when my mind is pathetically forensic.
later)
no luck with even remote focus, so spent the morning hatchetting away at my freezer iceover. I have the remaining fridge in Philly that takes defrosting. Course I love wielding the ax, and I was accompanied by Tchaikovsky on the radio, so I was imagining digging a potato out in Petrograd.
later)
no luck with even remote focus, so spent the morning hatchetting away at my freezer iceover. I have the remaining fridge in Philly that takes defrosting. Course I love wielding the ax, and I was accompanied by Tchaikovsky on the radio, so I was imagining digging a potato out in Petrograd.
5.27.2009
bloggerdriller
The decision by the California Supreme Court to uphold Prop 8 and the uphold the validity of the 18,000 gay couples who were married before its passage, isn't as schitzoid as it seems on the surface.
Chief Justice Ronald M. George wrote the opinion of the for a 6-to-1 majority, states that same-sex couples still had a right to civil unions, to “choose one’s life partner and enter with that person into a committed, officially recognized and protected family relationship that enjoys all of the constitutionally based incidents of marriage.”
George reinterates that that Proposition 8 did not “entirely repeal or abrogate” the right to such a protected relationship. It “carves out a narrow and limited exception to these state constitutional rights, reserving the official designation of the term ‘marriage’ for the union of opposite-sex couples as a matter of state constitutional law.”
That parameter points to what is essentially wrong about an 'civil-union' appropriation for gay couples. Separate is never equal. It's possible that from the longterm goal of marriage equality rights, this technical loss will be turned into a decisive constitutional victory.
Chief Justice Ronald M. George wrote the opinion of the for a 6-to-1 majority, states that same-sex couples still had a right to civil unions, to “choose one’s life partner and enter with that person into a committed, officially recognized and protected family relationship that enjoys all of the constitutionally based incidents of marriage.”
George reinterates that that Proposition 8 did not “entirely repeal or abrogate” the right to such a protected relationship. It “carves out a narrow and limited exception to these state constitutional rights, reserving the official designation of the term ‘marriage’ for the union of opposite-sex couples as a matter of state constitutional law.”
That parameter points to what is essentially wrong about an 'civil-union' appropriation for gay couples. Separate is never equal. It's possible that from the longterm goal of marriage equality rights, this technical loss will be turned into a decisive constitutional victory.
LOTD
"Just like the old days gay America is on its way to see the Supremes." overheard at the modest anti-prop 8 rally at City Hall last night.
5.26.2009
booksbooksbooks
I happened to be reading this passage from gay historian Martin Duberman's new memoir 'Waiting to Land' when I heard that the Cal. Supremes upheld Prop 8 today. Martin's entry revisits July 1, 1986, the day the US the Supreme Court decided Bowers v. Hardwick which gave states the right to police pivate relations between consenting gay adults. It was also a time when the Justice Department ruled that employers could fire people with AIDS.
"The best (and possibly only) comfort available at the moment is the 'long view'-battles are inevitably lost along the route to progressive change. Still, it's a rough moment."
Keep the faith, babe.
"The best (and possibly only) comfort available at the moment is the 'long view'-battles are inevitably lost along the route to progressive change. Still, it's a rough moment."
Keep the faith, babe.
A jitterbug wrapped in a lindy around a jive
Dive
Stomps
Scissor
over
my neck
flip fall
Arrest
Grind
Hold my eyes in your
Stare
Break out cyclone drug
drag
a gassed boil
Rolled down to a sweat drop
Bounce on the piston
To swing out
Basie’s One o’clock jump
On the downbeat
A riptide
floor slide
Between my legs
And back
The cramp recovers in the
Vaults
Flying Charleston
black bottoms
Rump rounds
pagopago
meringue
Tango dips
Tightass foxtrots and
There was one floras
Our heads rested
On each others necks
Our bodies jack-hammered
Over the dance hall
We signed the floor
Louie & Myra ‘43
A jitterbug
Wrappedinalindyaaaa
round a jive.
Stomps
Scissor
over
my neck
flip fall
Arrest
Grind
Hold my eyes in your
Stare
Break out cyclone drug
drag
a gassed boil
Rolled down to a sweat drop
Bounce on the piston
To swing out
Basie’s One o’clock jump
On the downbeat
A riptide
floor slide
Between my legs
And back
The cramp recovers in the
Vaults
Flying Charleston
black bottoms
Rump rounds
pagopago
meringue
Tango dips
Tightass foxtrots and
There was one floras
Our heads rested
On each others necks
Our bodies jack-hammered
Over the dance hall
We signed the floor
Louie & Myra ‘43
A jitterbug
Wrappedinalindyaaaa
round a jive.
5.24.2009
Politictictic
The Advocate is reporting that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is "pleased to announce that the Department of State will be extending a number of benefits and allowances to domestic partners of members of the Foreign Service assigned abroad." Clinton says in her statement that it is "the right thing to do."
Stage
Philadelphia’s Walnut Street Theater is 200 this year and has seen its share of slimey producers, but no hype needed for their current production of Mel Brooks’ The Producers. It is a bubbling over gay soufflé.
Mel Brooks dishes out the burlesque and schmaltz, but this show has a glittering camp of its own. Max and Leo’s bromance is sweet, but we are blinded by Adolf’s lame jumpsuit in ’Springtime for Hitler’.
Ben Lipitz, veteran of the Walnut stage, stars as portly gigolo producer Max Bialystock and Ben Dibble is the little blue-blanket clutching accountant Leo Bloom. The supporting cast includes Jeffrey Coon as Franz the neo-Nazi playwright and Amy Bodnar as ripe Swedish bombshell Ulla.
Jeremy Webb and Robert McClure (star of the last year's national touring co of ’Avenue Q’) play the gayer than gay couple Roger DeBris and Carmen Ghia.
In an interview during previews, Dibble said that the show is licensed with all of the Broadway minted Brooks-Susan Stroman comedy bits, but the Walnut team wanted to go in other directions. He credits Marc Robin, the show’s director - choreographer for keeping this Producers fresh.
"Marc came in with everything blocked, including the choreography, in a week, which is amazing for a show this size. After that, we got to play a lot. He wanted to make this a pretty bawdy production and pushing the line. We were shocked some of what we were rehearsing stayed in."
Ben is a triple threat in this show and vocal prowess can handle what most Leos can't. He is also co-starring with another fine singer Jeffrey Coon, who plays Franz. The pair just finished a successful revival of ‘A Year of Frog and Toad’ at the Arden. He said “Doing ‘Frog’ before this was great because it is the most exhausting show I’ve ever done…and this was easy by comparison because I was already in good physical condition jumping around the stage as Toad.”
The actor and his wife Amy have three children under four years old (who they dub The Diblettes). “My daughter Lila would have come every day if we’d let her. My son Jonah, who is two, made it a few times, until he got bored and started screaming for daddy. At home, we all sing the songs together now.” Dibble said.
Dibble loves ending up in more than one homogag during such numbers as ’Keep it Gay. "Mel is both an equal opportunity offender, but gets to it from a position of love. Carmen and Roger are so funny that you know that he loves those characters. He doesn’t mock them with distain. And it’s not at all homophobic."
McClure is completely unhinged as Carmen. How do Max and Leo withstand Carmen’s infamous hiss? "Every time it’s a struggle for us not to break." Dibble describes.
LOTD
David Letterman deadpanning about Dick Cheney's speech this week.
"Cheney was interupted five time by applause and 50 times by people yelling stop I'll tell you everything."
"Cheney was interupted five time by applause and 50 times by people yelling stop I'll tell you everything."
more than just passing through
Rodger McFarlane committed suicide this week as an alternative to further debilitation from heart and back ailments. He had broken his back in 2002. His brother made public a suicide note in which Rodger explained his reasons for ending his life.
Rodger was a fearless AIDS and gay civil rights advocate who started the first AIDS crisis hotline in 1981 when the disease was called GRID (Gay related immune deficiency). McFarlane subsequently was director of Gay Men's Health Crisis, Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS and Bailey House, which provides housing for homeless people with AIDS.
Larry Kramer, founder of GMHC, told the NYTs this week, "Mr. McFarlane walked in one day and asked to do volunteer work. He started a hot line on his home phone, which grew into the G.M.H.C. hot line, which became the lifeblood of information for the organization, G.M.H.C. is essentially what he started: crisis counseling, legal aid, volunteers, the buddy system, social workers.”
5.23.2009
potd by Jan Carroll
'The unwished'
The Silent Era
Dead reeds
rustle at last
bent in
exact lines
arc and snap back
collidiing weatherbands
untractable and unnamed
conserve the integrity
of the winds
herald untimed
movement in the trees
unstudied, loveless
There may be an oasis
or a trap or drapery
for bug continents
scared bioscapes
writhing and sacrificial
the gold and mud
of the reeds is still
a dream
It flashes with other
early memory
That boy is marked out
on an endless field
Its silence rips down
with sordid and violent
images unconscious then, not now
a primal document
then, as now, a lewd
imprisonment
just now, the
quieted delusion
For always,
peace is disturbed.
5.21.2009
5.20.2009
5.18.2009
dancemetros
Jorma Elo's Le Sacre du Printemps on The Boston Ballet. Elo choreographed Scenes View 2 for Philly's Ballet X two years ago. The work's neo-ballet architecture was fitted to BX's aesthetic. Matt Neenan, co-director of BX, is a BostBal alum.
wordswordswords
DOWD, Maureen. Brilliant New York Times commentator and namecaller (Rummy, The Boy King,etc.). Egghead journalist who eventually squandered her journalistic talent on political shtick. Was reduced to lying about blogger plagiarism. See- Talking Points Memo's Josh Marshall.
Dowd purloined a graph about Bush White House memos, but when exposed, claimed that she had heard the sentence from a friend. The passage is verbatim save for one phrase.
Josh clarified. "All Dowd did was change "we were" to "the Bush crowd was". Now, I'm all for cutting & pasting. As a blogger I do it all the time, but I always give credit."
Keep the journalistic faith babe.
Maureen, Un-ibidded or unattributed, it comes to the same thing. see- adj. Dowdy,Dowdier,Dowdiest
Dowd purloined a graph about Bush White House memos, but when exposed, claimed that she had heard the sentence from a friend. The passage is verbatim save for one phrase.
Josh clarified. "All Dowd did was change "we were" to "the Bush crowd was". Now, I'm all for cutting & pasting. As a blogger I do it all the time, but I always give credit."
Keep the journalistic faith babe.
Maureen, Un-ibidded or unattributed, it comes to the same thing. see- adj. Dowdy,Dowdier,Dowdiest
5.17.2009
media politic
Gay news sideshows
At the Equality Forum rally in front of Independence Hall last weekend gay civil rights pioneer Frank Kameney stood on the platform looking out over hundreds of people out in the rain to stand for GLBT rights. Kameney stood on the exact spot that he stood 45 years earlier one of about a dozen, looking like young Republicans in dull suits, marching for ‘homosexual rights.’
Great story right. But not quite worthy of any attention from mainstream media.
The ‘gay angle’ story continued to be the Miss America contest where Carrie Prejean, now deposed Miss California got to espouse her beliefs there should be no same-sex marriage, but assures she supports ‘opposite’ marriage because that’s how she was raised. The story had legs.
As much fun as it was to read that Miss Malabu was assuming the crown as Miss California and she has been ‘thoroughly vetted’ so no nude photos are about to tumble out, it just adds insult to injury.
It trumped stories about Maine was the 5th state to pass a same-sex marriage bill, the story didn’t get as much play because Prejean was exposed for posing for nude photos when she was 17, so she was stripped of her crown.
And then of course there was Joe, The Plummer having gay friends but not wanting them to be around his kids. The fake plummer’s opinions, of course, are so much more newsworthy than say gay parents who are trying to adopt or the millions of gay relatives who provide their love, support and resources to their immediate and extended families.
Also missing from the mainstream broadcasts was the firing of U.S. Army first lieutenant Dan Choi, Iraq war veteran, Arab linguist and the front man of Knights Out, a group of out West Point graduates, committed to fighting his dismissal from his reserve unit for coming out.
Choi’s mere announcement resulted in being fired for ‘dereliction’ by the Army for harming ‘the good order and discipline’ of the New York Army National Guard. The reality check is that nothing could be further from the truth.
“That’s a big insult to my unit.“ Lieutenant Choi told MSNBC gay anchor Rachel Maddox, “So many people came up to me and said…hey sir, we know and we don’t care. What we care about is that you can contribute to the team.“
The real disruption happens to be this destructive policy that actually props up institutionized discrimination and homophobia where it doesn’t exist.
Choi‘s could resign with an honorable discharge, but he plans to fight the dismissal “ tooth and nail.” His words- “Don’t lie, don’t hide, don’t discriminate and don’t weaken the military.”
President Obama has indicated that he will move carefully to repeal DADT, but cases like Choi’s point to ‘a fierce urgency of now.’ It is time for him as Commander in Chief to publicly come out and lead this fight, without equivocation or apology.
The most glaring disappointment is the nullification of the gross hypocrisies that exist in the military under DADT. Most people probably missed the penetrating Washington Post article last week calling on President Obama to start being the ‘fierce advocate’ for gay civil rights that he had promised.
Sunday, on ABC’s ‘This Week’ General James Jones spoke about dismantling DADT, telling George Stephanopoulos “it’s a complicated issue.” Stephanopoulos asked Jones if it will be overturned and the general said flatly “I don’t know.”
This exchange wasn’t worthy of the more pressing issue on all news outlets of the fate of Carrie Prejean. Tuesday, the teasers and lede story in all national markets was whether, nude photos or not, by the power of Donald Trump, will retain her title. She is allowed to stay in. Thank god she wasn’t fired like Lt. Choi, who would be so glad to fight for her freedom to reign, if he were allowed to serve as a clothed gay soldier.
At the Equality Forum rally in front of Independence Hall last weekend gay civil rights pioneer Frank Kameney stood on the platform looking out over hundreds of people out in the rain to stand for GLBT rights. Kameney stood on the exact spot that he stood 45 years earlier one of about a dozen, looking like young Republicans in dull suits, marching for ‘homosexual rights.’
Great story right. But not quite worthy of any attention from mainstream media.
The ‘gay angle’ story continued to be the Miss America contest where Carrie Prejean, now deposed Miss California got to espouse her beliefs there should be no same-sex marriage, but assures she supports ‘opposite’ marriage because that’s how she was raised. The story had legs.
As much fun as it was to read that Miss Malabu was assuming the crown as Miss California and she has been ‘thoroughly vetted’ so no nude photos are about to tumble out, it just adds insult to injury.
It trumped stories about Maine was the 5th state to pass a same-sex marriage bill, the story didn’t get as much play because Prejean was exposed for posing for nude photos when she was 17, so she was stripped of her crown.
And then of course there was Joe, The Plummer having gay friends but not wanting them to be around his kids. The fake plummer’s opinions, of course, are so much more newsworthy than say gay parents who are trying to adopt or the millions of gay relatives who provide their love, support and resources to their immediate and extended families.
Also missing from the mainstream broadcasts was the firing of U.S. Army first lieutenant Dan Choi, Iraq war veteran, Arab linguist and the front man of Knights Out, a group of out West Point graduates, committed to fighting his dismissal from his reserve unit for coming out.
Choi’s mere announcement resulted in being fired for ‘dereliction’ by the Army for harming ‘the good order and discipline’ of the New York Army National Guard. The reality check is that nothing could be further from the truth.
“That’s a big insult to my unit.“ Lieutenant Choi told MSNBC gay anchor Rachel Maddox, “So many people came up to me and said…hey sir, we know and we don’t care. What we care about is that you can contribute to the team.“
The real disruption happens to be this destructive policy that actually props up institutionized discrimination and homophobia where it doesn’t exist.
Choi‘s could resign with an honorable discharge, but he plans to fight the dismissal “ tooth and nail.” His words- “Don’t lie, don’t hide, don’t discriminate and don’t weaken the military.”
President Obama has indicated that he will move carefully to repeal DADT, but cases like Choi’s point to ‘a fierce urgency of now.’ It is time for him as Commander in Chief to publicly come out and lead this fight, without equivocation or apology.
The most glaring disappointment is the nullification of the gross hypocrisies that exist in the military under DADT. Most people probably missed the penetrating Washington Post article last week calling on President Obama to start being the ‘fierce advocate’ for gay civil rights that he had promised.
Sunday, on ABC’s ‘This Week’ General James Jones spoke about dismantling DADT, telling George Stephanopoulos “it’s a complicated issue.” Stephanopoulos asked Jones if it will be overturned and the general said flatly “I don’t know.”
This exchange wasn’t worthy of the more pressing issue on all news outlets of the fate of Carrie Prejean. Tuesday, the teasers and lede story in all national markets was whether, nude photos or not, by the power of Donald Trump, will retain her title. She is allowed to stay in. Thank god she wasn’t fired like Lt. Choi, who would be so glad to fight for her freedom to reign, if he were allowed to serve as a clothed gay soldier.
dancemetros
For anyone who would think that master choreographer Spain's master choreographer Nacho Duato's 2nd company La Compañía Nacional de Danza 2 is in the shadow of his principal company, they would be mistaken. The troupe of 14, all under 25, could be considered apprendices just in name only. As co-artistic director, Tony Fabre said during their performances this week “People don’t really see this as a junior company, because of the level of dance.” A current month long tour is winding down in Philly. They showed no tour fatigue with this stellar all-Duato program- dancing in the moment. A smaller crowd at yesterday's matinee performance at the Annenberg, filled up the hall with livid applause for the sheer power and beauty of La CNdD2.
‘Duende‘ set to music by Debussy, ’Without Words’ scored to a Schubert song cycle and the mesmerizing ’Gnawa’ first premiered on the Annenberg stage by Hubbard Dance Street Chicago in 2006.
‘Gnawa’s’ Moroccan polyrhythm and African songs provide the sound field for Duato’s motifs rooted in regional rituals. Duato's communals deeply rooted in eternal pan Medeterrian dance. The central pas de deux spins into transcendent intimacy past any sexual scenario.
Fabre says that Duato “is incredibly busy with the first company, but he rehearses with us as much as he can. This work has so much of that energy. The young dancers are from all over the world and are really tuned in to this work.”
5.13.2009
Cough (1947)
cough (1947)
What I was doing up
up doing what
I do not now know.
Sean was coughing, I
seem to remember
oh yes, hacking away actually.
He'd been attacked by a boozy
friend owing to his
rabid laughing and coughing
Anyway he re-cracked a rib
(he also complained about vibrations
in the kidney region).
I moved to the couch.
It was still raining
residuals
from the downpour last night
outside the theater, more
dramatic than the Brecht inside
Here, now, it is just dreary (Bertold
wins after all)
I could hear it
Splash down on all of the city surfaces
For about 20 minutes I listened to
water falling
without being drowned out by autos.
A rare and remarkable occurance.
drowned out coughing would be too disquieting
5:45, dawn.
Dawn in the city is an event
because it rarely occurs
It is most only rumored to occur
In any case, no one discusses it
within the city limits
outside of French cinema.
Well, oh yes, if I am up
For dawn I must do the sun salutation
Dawn making the body more powerful,
said the Omaymsyrayswatyahnumuha.
I hear,
Sean's cracked rib reverbarate.
Om, that rain is so poetic
Hari, even the grayness in this
cracked apartment is luminous
Shiva, put your foot down on purity
Krishna, morning erections are transcendant
In concert with these coughs.
What I was doing up
up doing what
I do not now know.
Sean was coughing, I
seem to remember
oh yes, hacking away actually.
He'd been attacked by a boozy
friend owing to his
rabid laughing and coughing
Anyway he re-cracked a rib
(he also complained about vibrations
in the kidney region).
I moved to the couch.
It was still raining
residuals
from the downpour last night
outside the theater, more
dramatic than the Brecht inside
Here, now, it is just dreary (Bertold
wins after all)
I could hear it
Splash down on all of the city surfaces
For about 20 minutes I listened to
water falling
without being drowned out by autos.
A rare and remarkable occurance.
drowned out coughing would be too disquieting
5:45, dawn.
Dawn in the city is an event
because it rarely occurs
It is most only rumored to occur
In any case, no one discusses it
within the city limits
outside of French cinema.
Well, oh yes, if I am up
For dawn I must do the sun salutation
Dawn making the body more powerful,
said the Omaymsyrayswatyahnumuha.
I hear,
Sean's cracked rib reverbarate.
Om, that rain is so poetic
Hari, even the grayness in this
cracked apartment is luminous
Shiva, put your foot down on purity
Krishna, morning erections are transcendant
In concert with these coughs.
5.12.2009
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