potn by Jan Carroll

'springflowers, again'

potd by Jan Carroll

'springy sunset'








from The Reading

'ushas'
She closes her eyes
Sees the after image of the
dead iris she holds
Sits on the box of the future
Though feels the livid sun
thrown by the shade of the palm
Digs her feet into the soil
envisions the metastases
earth jarred
in its axis

'fate'
The violet man is sretched out over
five points on the wheel on yin-yang
ions are visible in the negative light
stars cascade in and out of the pull
of the wheel
Two gods run for cover.

Cheney of Command

excepts from my 2004 article on Abu Ghraib


Philadelphia City Paper 20-26, 2004
slant
Military Cave-In
What do the Abu Ghraib photos really mean?

by Lewis Whittington

Sometimes a picture is worth more than even a thousand words because it records history. Such is the case with the Iraqi prisoner-abuse photos. Interrogators know that evidence brought forth through physical and psychological torture is contaminated, so what was this really about?

The media proliferation of these images since they were first aired on 60 Minutes II ignited a raging military and political scandal that has government officials scrambling for the damage-control buttons. Last week, the Pentagon made more pictures and video footage of Iraqi POW and detainee abuse available to Congress and the Senate. Members described the evidence as being more of the same, but even worse. For the moment, though, the Nick Berg slaying has put the release of the new crop on hold since the Pentagon thinks it could incite similar atrocities.

That the horrific secrets will eventually come out doesn't mean that the conspiracy of silence among the military won't be protected. Facts will be manipulated and officially obscured in an attempt to contain the growing political firestorm. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld even beat a quick retreat to Iraq last week for a PR morale mission after being grilled by the Senate Armed Services Committee about the abuses.

The images are not simply proof of soldier misconduct; they are proof of military anarchy at a time when the president is trying to insinuate democratic idealism into Iraq as the model way of life for Arab countries. It is not a stretch to think that despite quick-fix efforts, the global reaction will hinder U.S. efforts to bring democracy to Iraq.

What fueled the reaction beyond what might seem like the isolated cruelty by a few was that they included seemingly routine scenarios of coercion involving handcuffing, sodomy and forced real or simulated sex acts mostly among male detainees. But for all the coverage, there is one aspect of the photos that has not been discussed: Some of the shock of the images is that they contain simulated or forced homosexual sex.

Military brass acting surprised at the use of these methods is a further deception. Forced homosexual sex is a long-standing method of psychological and physical submission. Even in ritualized "hazing' among new recruits, these methods to break soldiers have a long and sullied history in the U.S. military.

...The military is now initiating a ban on any coercive techniques. One wonders that if the incidents were so isolated, what are the brass calling a unilateral halt to?

Flashback LOTD

John Way's credo - Not a word



Costume design sketch by John for a production at the Pasadena Playhouse circa 1946.


A portrait of one of John's friends and lovers.

Lives of the composers

Today is Prokofiev's birthday. I'm listening to Jill Pasternak's Sergei programming on RTI and below an excerpt of my program notes for Playbill earlier this year for PABallet's production of Cinderella.

Was Stalin the real evil Stepsister?
Sergei Prokofiev’s career was a triumph over musical conventions, personal tragedy and epic political upheaval in Russia. Born in the Ukraine, he first studied at Saint Petersburg Conservatory, under Alexander Glazunov, who eventually was displeased with Prokofiev’s musical innovations. He started composing music from age 5 and continued until his death at 61 in 1953.

Prokofiev is known primarily for relatively few marquee works- The Love for 3 Oranges, Peter and the Wolf and, most notably, his ballet score to Romeo and Juliet- but the prolific breadth, as well as authentic interpretations of his music, continues to be discovered. He composed works in all classical musical forms with equal academic and eventual artistic success. It is not an accident that, not counting himself, his contemporary Igor Stravinsky, considered him to be the greatest living Russian composer.

Surviving Stalin and Diagalev

Prokofiev’s early Russian musical training, and mastering of Russian Imperial classicism, groomed him for classical story ballets. Like George Balanchine, another Russian émigré seeking artistic freedom, Prokofiev eventually found artistic refuge at Serge Diagalev’s influential Ballets Russes, launching his reputation.

He retained his persona as ‘enfant terrible’ (dueling Russians in France!)continuing to bust through musical conventions and even regarded being panned by critics a compliment. Even with the political uncertainty and censorship under Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, the composer yearned to return to Russia and did so, at his eventual own peril.

After Prokofiev returned to the Soviet Union in 1935, he was subjected to the control of the official ‘Composers’ Union’ whose purpose was to ban outside artistic influence and to isolate Soviet composers.

During this period, he finished scores to the Sergei Eisenstat films ’Alexander Nevsky’ and ‘Ivan, the Terrible’ and mirroring the filmmaker’s indictment of dictatorships, the music reflects Eisenstat’s duality of nationalism and its veiled j’accuse toward Stalinist control.

Prokofiev started composition of Cinderella in 1941, postponing its completion for two years to compose his opera ‘War and Peace’ with considerable urgency in the wake of the German invasion of Russia that same year. The ballet finally had its premiere on November 15, 1945 at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow. After the war, many of the composer’s works were officially banned, tagged as anti-Soviet.

Prokofiev was another Russian artist who all but disappeared behind the Iron Curtain. Prokofiev died on the same day as Stalin and his obituary was barely a footnote in the official newspapers.

potd by Jan Carroll

'May apples.wet'

Stage

The Arden production of 'Something Intangible' directed by Terry Nolan on the adaptable Arcadia stage is another fine drama in what is a plush year for new plays in Philly. A roman a clef of Walt Disney breaking away from mighty mickey to produce Fantasia, is essentially just the hook for a roiling drama about the creative process. Ian Merrill Peakes is the pioneering animator and creative bully Tony Wiston who is saved from himself by his brother Dale played with tempered steel by Scott Greer. Playwright Bruce Graham subtext is the magical realism between these two brothers, delivered with so much truth by these two actors.

potd by Jan Carroll

'Lovey Colors'

lotd

CNN's Anderson Cooper setting up David Gergen, chatting about tax day 'Boston tea party' style protests and giving an unexpected, presumably under the radar, peek from the closet.

Anderson: "They've got teabagging."

David: "They got the teabagging. The Republicans still haven't their voice."

Anderson: "It's hard to talk when you're teabagging."

Gergin forgetting himself, let loose with ghastly laughter.

potn by Jan Carroll

'Moss,etc.'

potd

Barack & Bo ready to go go go

stage

Director Brenna Geffers may admit to being a research geek, but she doesn’t quite look the part in her tight red-velvet jacket lacey black skirt ensem, but can certainly prove it.

Last fall, Geffers’ tight, stylish production Georg Bruchner’s Wozzeck at the German Society Library as part of EgPo Productions German expressionism series illuminated the work‘s darker chambers, now she is seeing what lurks in Kander and Ebb‘s Cabaret.

The Prince Music Theatre’s cabaret space has been transformed into period tableau of a Weimar era with a 3 stage club. Geffers not only was fluent in each incarnation of Cabaret as a musical and film, she was familiar with all things Isherwood.

Even though she is directing seeming much lighter fare her attention is on the history of the people and their time on the eve of pre-Nazi Berlin. “We’re taking it very period. This architecture that we built are Victorian style theater that may have been redone as the Kit Kat Club in the 20s.

“We approach with a sense of why these characters are so raw. How do you achieve the debauchery without being camp. These character are fighting to survive. So I think in this production they are even darker.”

l(s)otd or Showdown at the old Perkins place

On CNN, Anderson Cooper was discussing the religious right's antigay agenda. Out Reverend Mel White responded to Tony Perkins of "The Family Research Council."

White, exasperated in the face of Perkins usual fundamentalist dogma-

"Dobson, Robertson, Fawell, they have been misleading the public for so many years...to see through their half truths and hyperbole."

Perkins told him that he, as a Christian, loves him.

"Tony, Don't say that. The things you say about gay people leads to destruction. I've read your literature. I've been monitoring you for ten years. You've got to get off this antigay...stuff."

Unlocking Hamlet

Part of interview with actor Geoff Sobelle about his gritty performance as Hamlet
(photo Jeffrey Stockbridge)
Geoff : It really felt like the whole thing has been a mad dash to the finish. We had four weeks, which is much quicker for me. But, I had been doing research, sort of, about how one performs Hamlet, in my mind a long time, though. I don’t do Shakespeare a lot, and I hadn’t done classical theater in 5 years, since I was in As You Like It at the Lantern. (The director) Charles McMahon approached me a year and a half ago about doing it.

Most of my work is in the experimental or avant garde genre. When Charles and I first got together after talking, talking, talking…we attempted to do the play with no words. I did Hamlet’s experience as a series of physical impulses. We didn’t know what that would be I just thought I need to get in there someway.

Hamlet exists as a whole, really, so it is difficult to jump in with a microscope and look at bits and pieces without feeling the whole arc. So we spent days doing that.

When I work with Pig Iron we always talk about what is ‘the world of the show'; What are the rules in this world? I tried to come to it thinking about the ways the character can reveal himself. It was actually good to let this go in a way. All of these suppositions and what people hang onto about the play, we put all that aside.

potd by Jan Carroll

'Fungusface'

I love that. Fungusface. I've felt like fungusface before, but I've never been called that. My friend Billy Swope called me batface once when I had a darker goatee going and a pinched expression, that was fun. Course at the time I think he provoked me with his toxic mouth so I called him a boiled pig, I think it was. We knew how to have fun in those days.

bloglog

Bit creepy that, but quite a fungal colony in fab muted colors. Wondering maybe if they were moon fungus, under this great rotation of bright moons this week. Last night walking home around 10:30 on Spruce the moonlight was casting cobalt shadows through clouds which parted suddenly. The only thing that was missing was Lon Chaney lurching in the bushes.

potn by Jan Carroll

'Whiskered'

Stage

Geoff Sobelle's electrifying 'Hamlet' at Lantern Theatre is among other things a completely physical performance. He vaults around scaffolding and expertly brandishes foil, tongue and stiletto. His physicality expodes. He is brutally poetic, at one point spitting out the lines as he catapults off the stage. The production design looks like the Blitzkrieg and otherwise frames Geoff's sarcastic and seething vocal performance. Far from ponderous, his Hamlet is hot on the trail to solve his father's murder, and expose familial corruption using all of his roiling tricks dramatic and comedic. The famous soliloquies played mostly in dissonant keys, part of his forward moving narrative.

Rainbows in Vermont

Gay activist Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign commenting on today's vote on same=sex marriage-

“This historic vote in the Vermont legislature reminds us of the incredible progress being made toward equality. Less than five years ago, lesbian and gay couples began marrying in Massachusetts. Now, with the Iowa court decision last Friday and today’s vote in Vermont, there will be four states recognizing the right to marry for loving, committed lesbian and gay couples," he said.

potd by Jan Carroll

from 'Days of Mercury'

An infinite dimension
waiting to be filled
with ideas and peace
waiting to be filled
by havoc and adornment
waiting to be filled and
this is the water music
Narcissus doesn't bother to
seek his image here
its real vector
in acts of light.

Dancemetros

After a run-through of Jeanne Ruddy’s new work a otherwise luminous Janet Pilla, bends over like a sprinter and says “hard Mondays.” In this case hard rainy Monday with the troupe in sweaty togs and under the company’s fluorescent house lights in the Bauhaus-y Performance Garage. Jeanne, parting the clouds herself in circa1968 mod Brit cap (Brian Jones collection), black suede boots and floral scarf, gave her dancers notes as she worked out choreographic details.

The choreographer shows many different colors, but none as ominous as her previous program ‘Breathless‘ about spousal abuse and murder. ‘Breathless’ is an artistic testament, showing Ruddy’s breadth with narrative. She went into the studio contemplating what a dark time it was for everybody and she didn’t want to create something depressing. Sh conceived ‘Lark’ a work set to music by techno-Haydn in four fab movements.

metroscape

Out of the cave (after being a bookworm all morning) for Ballet X's Spring program at the Wilma, where Christine Cox's son Warren was working the lobby. Last spring he was dancing onstage, in vitro at 8 months, and today he was Christine's muse for her nursery ballet 'The Striped Hat.'

Riding home on the bike the line of trees along Pine and Lombard are starting to fill in and for one botanical fashion week, branches bloom in whites, pinks and greens. The winds have been aswirl all week, and were so strong the rustle was not to be ignored as I was listing on my bike. The glacial shelf is breaking up, the bats in Vermount are dying and the winds are stronger in Philly. But on this day, everybody was out blowing around seemingly without a care in the world.

Popus interuptus

Who can forget ACT-UP's ultimate mission of safe-sex when they put a humongous condom over Jesse Helms house, now in response to Pope Benedict's false claims that condom use promotes HIV/AIDS.
The International Women's Health Coalition is selling condoms challenging the pontiff's recent declaration that they "increase the problem" of AIDS. The Advocate is reporting that "the rubbers are selling like hot cakes in France."

Jazz life

The jazz locomotive known momentarily as the Blue Note 7 is on its own track touring the US to float that Blue Note, club jazz alchemy. The 7, led by pianist Bill Charlap, is a sleek and wily ensemble with undecorated artistry, but virtuosic punch. Charlap is joined by Ravi Coltrane sax, Lewis Nash drums, Peter Bernstein guitar, Peter Washington bass, Nicholas Payton, trumpet and Steve Wilson, sax & flute. On the road with one-nighters since Jan, the ensemble just ambles on, just starts playing and it all drops in the pocket. A real set of lustrous arrangements and swashbuckling spontaneity for concert hall jazz. "Every night these guys are so on, changing things up and going for different things. A lot of room for this music to open up." Bernstein said modestly from his studio in New York.

lotd

“If there’s just Roosevelt and Churchill sitting in a room with a brandy, that’s an easier negotiation."

“But that’s not the world we live in, and it shouldn’t be the world that we live in.”

Barack Obama's remarks after the international economic G20 summit.

lotd

"This is a budget from another planet."

On Republicans releasing their countra-Obama budget today.
Maybe they are displaying a rare flash of humor on April 1.

potd by Jan Carroll

A peek of green.

April Fools

Conflicker or fucker or something...London Calling The Clash...exuent the Queen....
we can find comfort in though immortal lines from T.S. Eliot that I hopefully can set down from memory-

April is the cruel month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
memory and desire stirring, dull roots with spring rain
Winter kept us warm, covering.

Oh what's this? a note in the margin from Ezra Pound, Eliot's editor on The Waste Land.

"Eliot, are you trying to drive us crazy? Get out in the fresh air."