tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-82537117284366348542024-03-16T08:22:13.764-07:00OccupytheArts"Art is the Mother of Resistance" Tom Phillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17811449456953451486noreply@blogger.comBlogger169125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8253711728436634854.post-41975484104300110402024-03-12T20:08:00.000-07:002024-03-16T08:21:38.942-07:00Biennial in a Bag <p> </p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1296" data-original-width="1728" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNMnPQLTwGrMhbfSidE3NE9EjHp1deSJQNaPIDBR0Aovnor8EwZinn-mkYF0rgKtbL7289g6XRLAwHhjxO51LpK26ZkIaAs84c2DwUfBkyF6blNBm5eiE_oTPAvLe4Kd6tapIBZ7RqJqJ61Ku9Vobd4OPbgGnNjMUNSNKZbHqI6NLsGFtUlkiUutX3NBkv/w400-h300/White%20House.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="400" /></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Kiyan Williams "Ruins of Empire"</td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNMnPQLTwGrMhbfSidE3NE9EjHp1deSJQNaPIDBR0Aovnor8EwZinn-mkYF0rgKtbL7289g6XRLAwHhjxO51LpK26ZkIaAs84c2DwUfBkyF6blNBm5eiE_oTPAvLe4Kd6tapIBZ7RqJqJ61Ku9Vobd4OPbgGnNjMUNSNKZbHqI6NLsGFtUlkiUutX3NBkv/s1728/White%20House.jpg"><span style="font-size: large;"></span></a></div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /><span>I</span><span>t was almost as if the Whitney Museum of American Art didn't want us there for the press preview of their 2024 Biennial -- titled "Even Better than the Real Thing." (The title is supposed to refer to Artificial Intelligence and the like). </span></span><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><div><div><span style="font-size: large;">The day before, they cancelled the usual opening "remarks" -- traditionally a posh affair with fresh pastries, fresh-roasted coffee and boasting by curators and museum bigs. Instead they offered lukewarm coffee and an unsupervised stroll through a mostly morose collection of new and not-so-new works. <span><a name='more'></a></span></span><p><span style="font-size: medium;">The outdoor mega-sculpture on the sixth floor was made out of mud by Newark artist Kiyan Williams, part of a series he calls "Ruins of Empire." It shows the White House, listing badly (to the left or right, depending on where you stand) and sinking into the mire, flying an American flag upside down. It's fun to walk on the mud lawn, but it doesn't exactly make you stop and think. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"></span></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgluEGUxQKkSPx5lQxREiGZ-ocLk3SL18NmOo02Xtvnr75HyNv_HJtv1AZ60DimpCBLI7Q34BinYSkM82I62gi_OjZi6egnJj82WSyFWzZ-AsYy5qSXuZq_0MiNOB8RHJLFyiROKujd9AsOHJaGxFZ2pNhNzqeHDOmspWT1x7Z39ya4T4kvkCSYXBYv9vff/s1728/430837185_962571312143674_1415332620364994388_n.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1296" data-original-width="1728" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgluEGUxQKkSPx5lQxREiGZ-ocLk3SL18NmOo02Xtvnr75HyNv_HJtv1AZ60DimpCBLI7Q34BinYSkM82I62gi_OjZi6egnJj82WSyFWzZ-AsYy5qSXuZq_0MiNOB8RHJLFyiROKujd9AsOHJaGxFZ2pNhNzqeHDOmspWT1x7Z39ya4T4kvkCSYXBYv9vff/s320/430837185_962571312143674_1415332620364994388_n.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Singin' in Sweetcake's Storm" (detail) </td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-size: medium;">Stopping to think in the ruins of empire, a creative mind might come up with something to do with them. At least one artist showed how. Suzanne Jackson's brightly colored junk paintings resemble plastic shower curtains, inlaid with pistachio shells, shopping bag netting, graphite, string, etc. The most elegant and elaborate was a rectangular sheet titled "Singin' in Sweetcake's Storm," a reference to the hurricane that divides the people and drowns the land in Zora Neale Hurston's "Their Eyes were Watching God." </span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">The show is heavy on female artists, trans- and gender-fluid themes, and films and videos trying to talk their way through the haze of the past and the maze of the present. I lay down on a king-sized bed -- part of the art -- with several other journos to watch a cautious meditation on the Rape of Nanjing, by Diane Severin Nguyen. It's a story told by a film actress, uncomfortable in her role as a Chinese victim of Japanese war crimes. The question seems to be -- are we comfortable with her discomfort? The answer seems embedded in too many mattresses of meaning. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">One large room was filled with screens showing various angles of a black-and-white filmed conversation. Isaac Julien's "Once Again ... (Statues Never Die)" looked like a polite version of James Baldwin's face-off with William Buckley in 1965. A Black scholar explains to a white connoisseur the impossibility of capturing the creative energy of African-based art in a European-style museum setting. Point well taken, and amply illustrated. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"> As has become its custom, the Whitney's 2024 Biennal bashes America, and trashes the idea of a museum. Such self-abnegation can be bracing when done with nerve. But this was like, decaf. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">Copyright 2024 by Tom Phillips </span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></p><p><br /></p><p><span style="font-size: xx-large;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></p></div></div></div>Tom Phillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17811449456953451486noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8253711728436634854.post-11725412803835661052023-12-16T20:06:00.000-08:002024-01-30T13:28:40.077-08:00Horse Sense: Servants and Servanthood in Jane Austen's "Mansfield Park" <p><i style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: medium;">This is an abridged, adited version of an article originally published in Persuasions Online, Vol 44, No, 1, Winter 2023, titled "What the Coachman Said: Servants and Servanthood in Mansfield Park."</span></i></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: times;">- By Tom Phillips</span><span style="font-family: times; font-style: italic;"> </span></span></p><p></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCsZCe2Cn16xg-68xgjvA4Fy4onhYFUL4Sbl5RgwxeXA0mQFDLhJqxhCN4Vf_G-h_ofa8Zyk7m9GjJXBpeutU265hsjchO2TPv-kBput2dvq_ah2sHBsk0TPdt4QBPZ_X9qs1fSecOPzjN9212prCEthelFY5asFnyEbk9quQAsrUeFuW6ZkbGak2x7llq/s444/oboc_05f_jane-444x444%20(1).jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><img border="0" data-original-height="444" data-original-width="444" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCsZCe2Cn16xg-68xgjvA4Fy4onhYFUL4Sbl5RgwxeXA0mQFDLhJqxhCN4Vf_G-h_ofa8Zyk7m9GjJXBpeutU265hsjchO2TPv-kBput2dvq_ah2sHBsk0TPdt4QBPZ_X9qs1fSecOPzjN9212prCEthelFY5asFnyEbk9quQAsrUeFuW6ZkbGak2x7llq/s320/oboc_05f_jane-444x444%20(1).jpg" width="320" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Jane Austen </span></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: rgb(255, 254, 251); line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 15pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: times;">“‘It is a pleasure to see
a lady with such a heart for riding! . . . I never see one sit a
horse better’” </span></span><span style="font-family: times;">Thus begins a singular speech in the
Jane Austen canon, spoken by a serving-man, invoking fear and trembling, body
and spirit. Addressed to Fanny Price early in </span><i style="font-family: times;">Mansfield Park</i><span style="font-family: times;">,
it foreshadows a tale of upheaval in England, the British empire, and the
world.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: rgb(255, 254, 251); line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 15pt;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span></span></span></span></p><a name='more'></a><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><o:p></o:p></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: rgb(255, 254, 251); line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 15pt;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Society in <i>Mansfield
Park</i> is more than masters and servants. The plot traces the
trajectories of two intermediate characters: Fanny, the humble poor
relation of Sir Thomas Bertram, and her grasping, miserly aunt Norris.
Mrs. Norris engineers Fanny’s coming to Mansfield and installs her as a virtual
household slave—part of Norris’s own little empire. As Fanny waxes, Norris wanes. The plot develops during Sir Thomas Berttram's long absence
from home to deal with “unfavorable circumstances” on his sugar plantation in Antigua, around the time the slave trade was outlawed in the empire. His departure leaves a vacuum soon filled by his
eldest son, Tom, and an idle visiting friend who wants to put on an amateur theatrical.
This scheme is embraced and enabled by Norris, along with Maria and Julia,
the two spoiled daughters of Sir Thomas and Lady Bertram. Norris has
promoted a hasty match for Maria to a rich fool, Mr. Rushworth. Add to
this cast Mary and Henry Crawford—wealthy, worldly siblings who have taken up
residence in the parsonage. Mary is husband-hunting, while her brother prefers just to toy with ladies' hearts. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: rgb(255, 254, 251); line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 15pt;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Fanny and Mary soon become
rivals for Edmund, Sir Thomas’s second son, a clergyman-to-be. After
insisting "Fanny must have a horse," Edmund borrows back the mare
he lent her to introduce Mary to the pleasures of riding. For one day,
the two ladies share the mare equitably. The next day, Mary deliberately
overstays her lesson, leaving Fanny waiting alone for her turn. Watching
anxiously from a distant hilltop, she sees Mary in high spirits, urging the
horse from a walk to a canter, and, riding alongside, then holding her hand,
the hero she secretly loves. Fanny sees the horse as a physical
connection between Edmund and Mary, and the riding lesson as a rehearsal of her worst
fear— their wedding night. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: rgb(255, 254, 251); line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 15pt;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Underscoring Fanny’s
distress and her rival’s <i>elan</i>, Austen caps the episode with a
striking commentary by a servant—the “steady old coachman” who attends
Fanny on her rides. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: rgb(255, 254, 251); line-height: normal;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"></span></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">“It is a pleasure to see a lady with
such a good heart for riding!” said he. “I never see one sit a horse
better. She did not seem to have a thought of fear. Very different
from you, Miss, when you first began, six years ago come next Easter.
Lord bless me! How you did tremble when Sir Thomas first had you put
on.” </span></blockquote><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><o:p></o:p></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: rgb(255, 254, 251); line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 15pt;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Servants are always
present in Austen’s settings but rarely speak—and those who do are generally
house servants, who converse more or less in the genteel style of their
masters. Wilcox is a different breed, having spent his working life in
the stables. His observations are frank, without particular regard for
Fanny’s tender feelings. He invokes God and Easter, the power of the
resurrection in the coming of spring. He uses the present tense to
express his experience of all time: “I never see one sit a horse
better.” He describes experience in bodily terms: Fanny’s fear and
trembling, Mary’s “heart for riding,” the way she can “sit a horse.” Such
language opens a new perspective on <i>Mansfield Park</i>. It
is <i>horse sense</i>, and it absolutely refutes critics who say Austen is
blind to the English class structure, that she sees only “one class” of people.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: rgb(255, 254, 251); line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 15pt;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Somehow, though, the
coachman’s speech falls on deaf ears. Even scholars writing about servants in <i>Mansfield Park</i> ignore it. It slips by, likely, because Austen’s readers—then and now—are
actively <i>not</i> interested in the servant’s point of view.
Instead, they imitate the manners of Austen's aristocrats, who pretend to believe that servants see and hear nothing. </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: rgb(255, 254, 251); line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 15pt;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Still, Fanny hears
Wilcox’s honest assessment of her rival. And more servants enter the
narrative at other critical points. When Fanny rejects Henry Crawford’s
offer of marriage, a shocked Sir Thomas sends his butler, Baddeley, to arrange
a private chat with her. Mrs. Norris objects, insisting Sir Thomas must
be wanting her, not Fanny. Baddeley cuts her dead, in precise
English—“‘No Ma’am, it is Miss Price, I am certain of its being Miss Price,’”
accompanied by a sardonic “half smile.” This is a singular instance in an Austen work </span></span><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">of a servant </span><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">showing disrespect to a family member. Norris, however, is a special case, and Austen makes it clear in what
follows that she is not advocating any change in the social order. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: rgb(255, 254, 251); line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 15pt;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span style="color: black;">Sir Thomas sends Fanny to
visit her family of origin, thinking a reminder of her poverty will persuade
her to accept Henry. Arriving at the Prices’ rented home in Portsmouth,
Fanny and her brother William are met at the door by “a trollopy-looking maid-servant,”
shouting out the naval news. Rebecca the maid speaks first and
loudest in the Price household and performs her duties as she pleases, leaving
the rest to the family. Fanny has no aversion to work, but the inversion
of class order shocks her to the core.</span><span style="color: black; mso-color-alt: windowtext;"><a href="https://jasna.org/publications-2/persuasions-online/volume-44-no-1/phillips/?stage=Stage#Note-1"><sup><span style="color: #88434b; text-decoration: none;">1</span></sup></a></span><span style="color: black;"> Casting off her
timidity, she begins to act and speak on her own behalf—joining a library and
making an apprentice of her younger sister Susan, to teach her the ordered ways
of Mansfield Park. And, while softening a bit on the eager-to-please
Henry Crawford, she continues to resist his marriage offer. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: rgb(255, 254, 251); line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 15pt;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Fanny is vindicated, by
the speech of a servant. A lady’s maid in London—to Mrs. Rushworth,
senior—serves up the denouement, exposing the affair between Henry and Mrs.
Rushworth, junior, the former Maria Bertram. This serving-woman “had
exposure in her power, and, supported by her mistress, was not to be silenced." The story lands in the newspaper, and Fanny reads it in
Portsmouth—her first word of the scandal that will undo all the Crawfords’
designs on Mansfield Park, Edmund, and herself. </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: rgb(255, 254, 251); line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 15pt;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span style="color: black;">Servanthood is not a
sub-theme in <i>Mansfield Park</i>. It is the moral core of Austen’s
family faith and in this, her most religious work, the point of
the story. The work unfolds in concentric, sometimes contradictory
layers, all of which stress the role of servanthood. Mansfield Park
itself is a seat of English culture and Anglican ethics—a country estate where
class distinctions are preserved, but servants are respected, most
conspicuously by Sir Thomas, who trusts the old coachman to ride out with his
niece and refers to the chief carpenter as “my friend Christopher Jackson.” </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: rgb(255, 254, 251); line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 15pt;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">In honoring such friends, Sir Thomas embraces the broad social conservatism put forth by
Edmund Burke in his <i>Reflections on the Revolution in France</i>.
Burke defends the class structure of English society but will not “confine
power, authority, and distinction to blood, and names, and titles.”
Wherever wisdom and virtue are found, he says, “they have the passport of
heaven to human place and honor.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: rgb(255, 254, 251); line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 15pt;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Beyond England, Mansfield
Park is an artifact of the British empire, dependent on overseas possessions
and slave labor for its economic sustenance. British historians in the
twenty-first century have documented the intimate ties between various estates
and their West Indian possessions, even relating the art collections,
furniture, and romantic landscaping of some “great houses” to slavery motifs. Austen slips in a reference to the farmlands of Mansfield
Park as Sir Thomas’s “nearest plantations.” </span></span><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Every reference to Antigua in the book
points to an unstable empire, in a crisis that both enables and parallels the
domestic unraveling of Mansfield Park. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: rgb(255, 254, 251); line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 15pt;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Austen is stingy with facts about Sir Thomas’s mission in
Antigua. But he returns a changed man, with an altered sense of whom to
love and trust. Entering his own house, he seeks “no confidant but the
butler” and follows Baddeley into the drawing room. Reunited with
wife and children, he looks around for his niece, the girl he has housed in an
unheated room near the servants: “Why do not I see my little Fanny?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: rgb(255, 254, 251); line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 15pt;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Fanny’s worth in the
family rises beginning with Sir Thomas’s return and continues with his
discovery of the theater scheme. As Edmund tells his father, '‘Fanny is
the only one who has judged rightly throughout.” Following Marilyn
Butler’s lead, many critics have connected Fanny’s moral compass to the
progressive evangelical wing of the Anglican Church in the early nineteenth
century. Evangelicals led the moral and political
struggle against slavery and, simultaneously, a spiritual
resistance against the “worldliness, triviality, and irresponsibility” of the
Regency aristocracy. Their concept of the “Good Life” was
realized in Fanny—“visibly Christian, humble, contemplative and serviceable.” <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: rgb(255, 254, 251); line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 15pt;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span style="color: black;">The novel’s highest layer
of meaning is also its thinnest—a Christian allegory, in which characters
represent fixed ideas; sin is cast out from Mansfield Park, and virtue and
wisdom restored. Shawn Normandin makes the point that even in Austen’s time,
allegory was an old-fashioned genre, out of place in a modern psychological
novel. He sees the marriage of Edmund and Fanny as an “allegorical
imposition that rewards Anglican rectitude and chides Crawfordian trespass." However, neither “rectitude” nor “trespass” appears in the text
of <i>Mansfield Park</i>; Austen’s moral code is not rule-bound. By
contrast, “principle” occurs twenty-three times, in various forms—typically
referring to character and morals. A more
faithful reading might see Fanny and Edmund living the Christian principle of
servanthood—as in Paul’s letter to the Philippians: “Do nothing from
selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than
yourselves. Look not to your own interests, but to the interests of
others."</span><span style="color: black;"> <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: rgb(255, 254, 251); line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 15pt;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Servants “look to the
interests of others” all their lives. They are the artists, artisans, and
professionals who make the refined life of the “great house” possible—with
skills their masters can only marvel at. Fanny’s first ball is “built upon
the late acquisition of a violin player in the servants’ hall.” Before he has the theater set torn down, Sir Thomas makes sure to praise
Christopher Jackson’s ingenuity in building it. And Austen plays up the afternoon tea-service as if it were a ceremony of church or
state: “The solemn procession, headed by Baddely, of tea-board, urn,
and cake-bearers.” <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: rgb(255, 254, 251); line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 15pt;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Sir Thomas eventually
comes to regret his daughters’ lack of service to others, the stress on
“elegance and accomplishments” in his plan of education: </span></span><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">"He feared that principle, active
principle, had been wanting, that they had never been properly taught to govern
their inclinations and tempers, by that sense of </span><i style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">duty</i><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"> which
can alone suffice."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: rgb(255, 254, 251); line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 15pt;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Servanthood is defined by
duty, and in <i>Mansfield Park</i> Austen presents servants as the
moral backbone of society. The novel exalts dutiful servants of all
ranks—the steadiness of the coachman, the change in Tom from a libertine to a
son “useful to his father,” and the progress of Fanny Price from a
household slave to the conscience of a country estate. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: rgb(255, 254, 251); line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 15pt;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">If there is a political and economic correlative in the empire, it is Sir Thomas’s transformation from a cold
businessman to a patriarch who suffers for his sins. His journey may be
taken as a symbol of the gradual, sluggish awakening of English culture—over
the course of Jane Austen’s whole life—to its first duties, and to all peoples.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: rgb(255, 254, 251); line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 15pt;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">-- Copyright 2023 by Tom Phillips </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: rgb(255, 254, 251); line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 15pt;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: rgb(255, 254, 251); line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 15pt;"><br /></p>Tom Phillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17811449456953451486noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8253711728436634854.post-34076388395472190842023-10-26T18:15:00.011-07:002023-12-28T18:30:35.262-08:00Peace, Brothers <p><span style="font-size: large;"><span> </span><span></span></span></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRQ4-rnJLKMU15sENL16hd6DyG-2CA7cjJ-RvqdF83wS6nIhJfWpH_JB1iQ7nsyB8ITCn60ujFHnO8E_5w2a-JuIazgFmWcnd6eQ1nKsBBPHe75cNWKEU77SJfm17TizR7CppLjr7dPDv2rYRreKitzZ6dc6FCuUuJstGuPATflyrZp_t0YcW6Y4sRGKsC/s1000/258873.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="666" data-original-width="1000" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRQ4-rnJLKMU15sENL16hd6DyG-2CA7cjJ-RvqdF83wS6nIhJfWpH_JB1iQ7nsyB8ITCn60ujFHnO8E_5w2a-JuIazgFmWcnd6eQ1nKsBBPHe75cNWKEU77SJfm17TizR7CppLjr7dPDv2rYRreKitzZ6dc6FCuUuJstGuPATflyrZp_t0YcW6Y4sRGKsC/w400-h266/258873.jpg" width="400" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">Gaza</span></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-size: large;"><span>On the Upper West Side of Manhattan, at the UN and in the Middle East, it has become impolitic to talk of Peace. Nobody wants it -- it would just get in the way of the new Mother of All Battles, the bloodbath underway between Hamas and Israel. Round Two is due to begin after Israel flattens most of Gaza, in preparation for a suicidal mission to "uproot" and "eliminate" Hamas. That's the same Hamas which has been allowed and encouraged to flourish for years by Israeli prime minister Bibi Netanyahu, because it shares his distaste for Peace. </span></span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Both sides are out of their minds. Hamas thinks it can reclaim the entire land of Israel and Palestine. Israel thinks it can occupy that land forever, or steal what remains in such small increments that no one will fight back. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br />Forget it, people. It doesn't work and it never will. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Here's a Peace Plan for Israel and Palestine: </span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span></span></span></p><a name='more'></a> <p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Netanyahu, resign. Your downfall in disgrace is already written into Israeli history. Don't make it worse with a slaughter of innocents. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">United States, stop vetoing cease-fire resolutions. Instead offer US troops to a robust UN peacekeeping mission that will enforce an open-ended truce. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Both sides, release your prisoners. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Big powers -- Russia, Europe, China and the US: Be the grownups. Convene an Arab-Israeli peace conference. Mediate, or impose, a two-state solution. Keep the peace until the two sides have learned to live together. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Impractical, you say? Under present conditions, certainly. But at least it's not insane. These are internatiuonal norms of politics and diplomacy, the things that make for peace. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">There. I said it. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Brothers and sisters, Peace.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">== Copyright 2023 by Tom Phillips </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;">Copyright 2023 bv Tom Phillips </span></p><div><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></p></div>Tom Phillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17811449456953451486noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8253711728436634854.post-14507026890411600692023-09-05T07:12:00.011-07:002023-09-07T19:03:06.284-07:00The Phony War <p><span style="font-size: large;">-- by Tom Phillips </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxuBT277Jv4Z6Jb5WCy4Vzox-TLoAGuN2emmB8-oEwHTwXicZg9WFyGLef6KJGdM_rsr-JZR0gqjuDmZv88zsTTZvxSUX4RgRxm7aOfhnIQEQAT2pbCfliwB8lYoDzbA_WhELowF1y2Utdqeh9CMrN7Afmgvu_rQRYBRJcrIPTsCwhtZoH8a7Mvu61L8KX/s664/Le%20Monde.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="443" data-original-width="664" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxuBT277Jv4Z6Jb5WCy4Vzox-TLoAGuN2emmB8-oEwHTwXicZg9WFyGLef6KJGdM_rsr-JZR0gqjuDmZv88zsTTZvxSUX4RgRxm7aOfhnIQEQAT2pbCfliwB8lYoDzbA_WhELowF1y2Utdqeh9CMrN7Afmgvu_rQRYBRJcrIPTsCwhtZoH8a7Mvu61L8KX/w400-h266/Le%20Monde.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div><p></p><blockquote><span style="font-size: large;">"It's a hard way to fight a war -- village by village, house by house --- with no guarantee of success." </span></blockquote><p><span style="font-size: large;">So reported the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/02/world/europe/ukraine-russia-counteroffensive.html?searchResultPosition=1">New York Times </a>recently in a front-page article about small gains in Ukraine's counteroffensive against Russian-held territory in eastern Ukraine. Meanwhile <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCX0EquiQAE">ABC's reporter</a> showed Ukrainian troops firing at invisible targets, and said Ukrainian commanders "claimed" to have penetrated Russia's first line of defense. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">These are journalists' private ways of signaling to a knowing reader that the story is bullshit. An actual Ukrainain counteroffensive would involve large-scale troop movements against Russia's heavily fortified front lines -- across a minefield that extends hundreds of miles. Depleted Ukrainian forces would be relying on fresh recruits who have never seen combat. It's not gonna happen. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">What's happening now is a phony war --- not for those who are dying, but those who are trying to make it into something it's not. It's become a war of words, the US and Ukraine trying to spin minuscule advances by Ukrainian forces into what a Washington spokesman called "notable progress." Such language, echoed in the mainstream media, serves mainly to prop up two beleagured presidents --- Volodymyr Zelensky and Joe Biden. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span>Z</span>elensky recently replaced his defense minister -- the new guy, Rustem Omerov, a bearded hipster who wears Ukrainian peasant shirts to his photo-ops. Zelensky said nothing about changing military strategy. He said defense minister Omerov would be devising "new formats of interaction with the military and society at large." In other words, PR and propaganda. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Biden meanwhile has dug hmself into a foreign-policy foxhole by promising NATO membership to Ukraine and a fight to the finish with the Russians. Poor Joe has to make it look good until election day 2024. After that, he can slink away from these unwinnable goals -- and hope that too much isn't made of yet another misadventure in "promoting democracy." </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Half a million people have been killed over the last year and a half in Ukraine. Zelensky would be well advised to negotiate for peace with the present lines intact. But he is badly advised, by us. We don't seem to care that our military interventions wind up wrecking the countries we set out to help. Vietnam, Iraq, Somalia, Afghanistan, Libya, the list goes on. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">"How many deaths will it take 'til we know that too many people have died?" </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span>-- Copyright 2023 by Tom Phillips<br /></span><span>Photo: Le Monde</span></span></p><p></p>Tom Phillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17811449456953451486noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8253711728436634854.post-13168189043542320902023-07-27T06:21:00.003-07:002023-07-27T10:57:39.031-07:00Biden's Vietnam<p><span style="font-size: large;"> -- By Tom Phillips</span></p><p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioIoChs1OvAgiMwAops00ua3JAYIZldxuRPDAE6vIjSUu0E--UNzO1CgdnSfNp7g5P2NKboLf_hy33bA9awhR3v4Q7cYbKBtvzuGRA-DVxbfKntuEf2L6I29sDWHQlH1bTBfvovcwAMYnidr6VzSQy2SUcG0ZXzyStd7mVzYrx0Q6WtTChzkV-neWpKK8D/s1600/comp-image-joe-biden-vladimir-putin.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1600" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioIoChs1OvAgiMwAops00ua3JAYIZldxuRPDAE6vIjSUu0E--UNzO1CgdnSfNp7g5P2NKboLf_hy33bA9awhR3v4Q7cYbKBtvzuGRA-DVxbfKntuEf2L6I29sDWHQlH1bTBfvovcwAMYnidr6VzSQy2SUcG0ZXzyStd7mVzYrx0Q6WtTChzkV-neWpKK8D/s320/comp-image-joe-biden-vladimir-putin.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Newsweek Photos <br /><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-size: large;"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Alea
jacta est -- </span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">the die is cast. Never has an empire cast its die so
hesitantly, half-heartedly, vaguely or weakly. But when President Biden
agreed to grant NATO membership to Ukraine -- with no timetable or conditions
attached -- he committed the western alliance to a mission impossible: a fight
to the finish against the one country in the world that is built to fight
forever. </span></span><div><span><a name='more'></a></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span><p></p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Russia will outlast any western
offensive partly because of its size, but mostly because it is a permanently
militarized fortress state. Government in Russia is inseparable from
defense. The Kremlin bears no resemblance to the White House or
Buckingham Palace. It stands at Moscow's highest
elevation, surrounded by a 10- to 20-foot-thick brick wall that rises to
62 feet. Inside the walls are treasures of Russian civilization, along
with vintage cannons and piles of cannonballs, symbols of Russian resistance
and resilience. Russian military tactics are ruthless, targeting soldiers and
civilians with little concern for optics or world opinion. </span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Russia has survived attacks from the
West going back to the Dark Ages -- Goths and Huns, Norse and Swedes and
Poles all came against them, and were turned back. In modern times the French and German Empires
--Napoleon, then Hitler -- attacked and were humiliated. NATO is next.</span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">The West sees Russia’s invasion of
Ukraine as aggression, or imperialism, but to Russia it is defense of its own
territory. The word Ukraine in Russian means "borderland." Russia was formed a thousand years ago in the "Kievan Rus," now covered by parts of Ukraine, Belarus and western Russia. Russia's first capital was
Kyiv. One-third of people in Ukraine still speak Russian and identify as
Russian. Parallels are far-fetched -- but let us say
Ukraine is to the Kremlin what the North Atlantic Ocean is to the US and
Canada – a geographic barrier essential to national security. </span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">If Russia is a fortress, NATO is more
like a parade, a show of flags. Originally a 12-nation alliance in Western
Europe, it now comprises 31 nations all over Europe, most of them far from the
North Atlantic, many of them militarily insignificant. Why would the United
States seek a mutual defense pact with Bulgaria, or Lithuania?
Historians </span><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/11/opinion/nato-summit-vilnius-europe.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Thomas Meaney and Grey Anderson</span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> argue
critically that the real reason for NATO’s multiplication since the 1990’s
has been to open markets for US business. Former deputy secretary of state </span><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Stephen A. Biegun</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> seems to confirm
that line in a recent Washington Post column. He and Marc Thiessen argue
NATO membership for Ukraine would ensure peace, create confidence and encourage
investors. “A</span><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> stable, sovereign and prosperous Ukraine will be a
customer and trading partner for America. An unstable Ukraine, under constant
threat from Russia, will be a continual drain on US resources,” they write.</span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Handing out NATO membership to potential
customers and trading partners has now stuck the US and its allies with responsibility for the
legitimate fears of tiny countries like Lithuania. It will hardly assuage
those fears by escalating an unwinnable war in Ukraine. </span><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Right now,
the US is sending cluster bombs to Ukraine that will kill and
maim Ukrainian civilians, including children, for years to come.
Meanwhile it is pressing Ukrainian troops to be more aggressive, to fight
to their deaths. This is a drain on Ukraine's resources – the most precious
of them -- far more than any sacrifice for us. </span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">The US wants Ukraine to sacrifice
thousands more soldiers and civilians on a </span><a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/video/russian-landmines-create-danger-for-ukrainian-soldiers/" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">killing field </span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">strewn
with every conceivable kind of mine, and under relentless artillery
fire. For what? Battlefield reports make it clear that Russia has
clawed back its buffer in Ukraine, and nothing short of nuclear attack will dislodge
it. </span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span>Ukraine is already Biden's
Vietnam. It could be NATO's Waterloo.</span></span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-ligatures: none;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large; line-height: 107%;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-- Copyright 2023 by Tom Phillips </span></p></div>Tom Phillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17811449456953451486noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8253711728436634854.post-69549498092714254572023-07-11T06:15:00.008-07:002023-07-20T14:36:41.571-07:00Say It Ain't So, Joe. <p> </p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhK1OcrUr7XKFRLBCQ88ENWFHGCTQj-2efc2DUM-3FRF5ZLXtcavuxHfrVq-hxNCcJcPyPqiCBtCc8hCnILitFGaj-4qwiBaq0JI61h1PYk4S8ec9r9BVy6tbRiSEAHZmo8GEoece3Dl1D76NFKoCyr8gQhZZ-nRQpgt7FNqO2jgLleYLr4L6PdNYzq1SSW/s768/skynews-cluster-bomb-cluster_5691812.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="432" data-original-width="768" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhK1OcrUr7XKFRLBCQ88ENWFHGCTQj-2efc2DUM-3FRF5ZLXtcavuxHfrVq-hxNCcJcPyPqiCBtCc8hCnILitFGaj-4qwiBaq0JI61h1PYk4S8ec9r9BVy6tbRiSEAHZmo8GEoece3Dl1D76NFKoCyr8gQhZZ-nRQpgt7FNqO2jgLleYLr4L6PdNYzq1SSW/w400-h225/skynews-cluster-bomb-cluster_5691812.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Bomblets. Photo: Sky News </td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><div><span style="font-size: large;">Dear Joe ---- </span><div><span style="font-size: large;"><span>Sorry I haven't replied to your fund-raising letters. It's true, I gave to your campaign in 2020. But I'm afraid I can't do it again, as long as you are "defending your decision to send <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/07/us/politics/ukraine-cluster-munitions-biden.html?searchResultPosition=1">cluster bombs to Ukraine."</a> As you know, these </span>bombs will kill and maim both soldiers and and civilians, including little children -- Ukrainian children. And they will keep killing for years after they explode and scatter "tiny, deadly bomblets" across the countryside. </span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You and I are old enough to remember Vietnam, where we killed and maimed children, and destroyed villages in order to save them. The real enemy wasn't the Vietnamese, it was the Russians and the Chinese. We fought them all over the world -- Korea, Africa, South America, South Asia -- we set brothers against brothers, sisters and against sisters, cousins against cousins. And between us we killed and mained enough children to give us a horror show in Hell that will last a thousand years. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">We have no more business fighting the Russians in Ukraine than we did in Vietnam. Neither place has any strategic value to the United States. If you think killing and maiming little children in Ukraine will help us gain influence and power in the world, you haven't learned a thing. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Say it ain't so, Joe. </span></p><p><span></span></p><a name='more'></a><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span>Take a walk around the White House and look at the portraits of your predecessors. Imagine them speaking: George Washington on the dangers of "entangling alliances." John Quincy Adams on not going abroad seeking "monsters to destroy." General Eisenhower on the dangers of the "military-industrial complex." Right now the military-industrial complex is in love with you. You're pouring billions of dollars into their bins, to pour killer weapons into Ukraine. </span><span>Y</span>ou say these cluster bombs are "just a transition" until the production of artillery shells can be ramped up. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Where's the off-ramp, the "exit strategy?" Do you really want another endless war? </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Look at Lyndon Johnson, at that sad, wrecked face -- Remember "Hey, Hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?" He thought he couldn't be re-elected unless he stuck it out in Vietnam. But an unwinnable war makes an unwinnable election. And the older a war gets, the uglier it looks. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Remember Colin Powell? He never ran for president but he could run a war. The Powell Doctrine said you don't get into a war unless you can win, and win quickly. The last thing you want is a "fair fight." Did you see "All Quiet on the Western Front?" That's Ukraine today. They're running out of ammunition, And body bags. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Finally, look at your friend Barack Obama. I remember him saying in that mild voice, that he preferred "peaceful solutions." Your letter says you might call me up if I send money. Do yourself a favor and call Barack instead. Ask him what a "peaceful solution" would look like, and who might be able to craft it. If it's one of our rivals, so be it. Our credibility as an "honest broker" is shot. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Meanwhile, keep the cluster bombs here. Change your mind, drag your feet. Let the Ukrainians face reality. If they're running out of ammunition, take it as an opportunity--- not to recycle atrocious weapons, but to save the children. And maybe save yourself. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Your Friend and fellow Democrat, </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Tom Phillips </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p></div></div>Tom Phillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17811449456953451486noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8253711728436634854.post-34294147166338543552023-07-03T18:09:00.003-07:002023-07-05T07:23:14.973-07:00Bob Miller's Multitude <span style="font-size: large;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-lnGReORoa0EPww96YjpXq9_1z9_nRqTsa8YEuZIzrSuo45Lez7cyf5vfVLyh04zRVUUUwnFAw8QOno4sdVg8VBc-MMDirGLKOgP2j8C2kRW6LPQnKt-fFRLJecdqMpLqoSkUtdObM8ngMC4dWvIWHKzFEjzy4KpDgPUH1N4zek6anDIfiwtDDO5Cm7nv/s4608/20230615_183148.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3456" data-original-width="4608" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-lnGReORoa0EPww96YjpXq9_1z9_nRqTsa8YEuZIzrSuo45Lez7cyf5vfVLyh04zRVUUUwnFAw8QOno4sdVg8VBc-MMDirGLKOgP2j8C2kRW6LPQnKt-fFRLJecdqMpLqoSkUtdObM8ngMC4dWvIWHKzFEjzy4KpDgPUH1N4zek6anDIfiwtDDO5Cm7nv/s320/20230615_183148.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Bob Miller and Friends at the Chairs </td></tr></tbody></table>There's a hole in the soul of Morningside Heights this summer -- an empty space on the sidewalk where a crowd of people used to gather around Bob Miller. A few weeks ago, as he neared his 93rd birthday, about 150 friends threw him a farewell party at what he called "the chairs," meaning the benches at the western end of 111th Street, a few steps from his apartment building on Riverside Drive. The next day, his two daughters came up from Florida, and moved him down into an assisted living facility near them in the Miami area. He hates it -- "everybody here is old!" he says, and they don't know how to talk to people. "I was spoiled by Morningside Heights," he says. But it was Bob himself who created the social scene in the Heights during the Pandemic era. </span><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">It started to form in the summer of 2020, on the street, late at night. He was not afraid to hang out on a street corner -- usually Broadway and 111th, outside Walgreen's -- all alone, in all weather. Bob describes himself as a "loner who needs people." So he would stand on the corner, just waiting for a chance to strike up a conversation. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">It didn't take long. People would ask him how he was. and he would snap "terrible!" every time, and complain about the agonies and infirmities of old age. After that, he would listen. Bob drew people to himself not because he was entertaining, but because he was willing to be entertained. He didn't laugh unless he thought it was funny, so people made an extra effort to amuse him. This cheered everyone up. Bob could spend a half hour on the corner and not say a word -- watching the conversation around him grow more and more animated. Mostly it was funny stories and tall tales. If it strayed into gossip, Bob kept silent. He never had an unkind word to say about anyone. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">He would get up -- usually after noon -- and go to Samad Deli for his first meal -- freshly scrambled eggs and onions in a tinny aluminum container. "The guy made it for me once and I liked it, so since then I have it </span><span style="font-size: large;">every day," he said. </span><span style="font-size: large;">In good weather he would spend early afternoons in front of Citibank, dancing and grooving -- minimally but rhythmically -- to reggae music on the boombox of Fletcher, whose natty clothing stand is a fixture on the sidewalk. Bob wore a selection of colorful hats from Fletcher. </span><span style="font-size: large;">In winter he would follow the sun across Broadway, first to the center mall, and then to the northeast corner by the drugstore. In hot weather he usually gravitated west, from Broadway to Riverside, to the little plaza of "the chairs," where he and his friends would stay until dark. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">Who is Bob Miller? The following sketch is not a biography, but a collection of things he told me about himself over the last few years. I couldn't interview him in journalistic style -- he doesn't want to be interviewed, he just wants to talk with you. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">Bob was born in Philadelphia in 1930 and grew up in the Jewish neighborhood known as "Strawberry Mansions." He was small and shy -- they called him Stumpy at Central High School. But he found something that saved his life. "Football saved my life!" Bob was a fullback -- small, but a power runner. I can picture him with his head down, both arms around the ball, exploding through the bigger guys on the opposing line. Football gave him a team, and something to throw himself into besides teenage angst. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">Everyone was brilliant at Central High School, says Bob. "I graduated third from the bottom of my class, and I was a genius!" When he was fourteen a distant relative, a mobster known as "Chinky" Rothman, came to town incognito for a family event, and took a liking to Bob. Two weeks later Bob was pressed into service as a pallbearer at a Mafia funeral. His best time of year was summer, which he spent on Long Beach Isand, working as a milkman for his uncle's grocery store. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">He got in and out of college somehow, but then his parents insisted he go to law school. He hated it, and his professor could tell. "You don't want to be a lawyer, do you?" But he put his head down and did it, and hated it. Then sometime in the 1960s, he discovered a new field that saved his life. "Computers saved my life!" Bob Miller could talk the language of computers, and teach it too. He taught computer science at City College and Columbia, and then became an IT wizard at Con Edison. In his late 80s he was still on call at Con Ed as a technological fixer. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">Sometime in the 1960s, Bob went to a party in Harlem, and eventually asked where the bathroom was. The hostess told him he would have to go outside and pee in the parking lot. There was a sign on the bathroom door that said "Blacks Only." That cracked Bob up. He married a West Indian woman from the island of Grenada. They had two daughters, and according to Bob they never had any racial problems with anyone. "This is New York," he would say. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">Bob loved Morningside Heights, New York, the USA and Western civilization. He was a one-man counterculture on the Upper West Side. One time a bunch of us were bemoaning the evils of Western Civilization, and he burst out: "What is wrong with Western Civilization? Western Civilization is the greatest thing that ever happened to the world!" Bob was drafted into the US Navy in the mid-1950s, the height of the Cold War. He still wears a cap embroidered with the insignia of the aircraft carrier USS Coral Sea. They were in the Mediterranean in 1956, during the Suez conflict between Britain, France, Israel and Egypt. "There was a war, but we weren't in it," he says. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">Western civilization built Bob Miller. Today he is stranded with a bunch of superannuated midwesterners in a fancy Florida senior complex. He says it's a "waste of life," but he's going to stay. The food is good, the concerts are good, the physical therapy is helpful, And he can always work on his book, tentatively titled "Building Success through Low Self-Esteem." The trick is to need other people, and let them know you need </span><span style="font-size: large;">them. Making other people feel good about themselves can make you feel better, too. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">Who knew? Thank you, Bob, from all your needy friends. </span></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dxH9pVDrbSjvYCge4m5iXT3_iEF0GOoWLVIkaG_oAs3s_MT9tHS2wMu5nNwIoULIzabFlZ98V-E8TV0ZLvLTQ' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div> Groovin'<br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">-- Photo and Video by Tom Phillips </span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><span>--- Copyright 2023 by Tom Phillips and H. Robert Miller</span><span> </span></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>Tom Phillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17811449456953451486noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8253711728436634854.post-7346498242426111472023-01-20T09:39:00.007-08:002023-03-13T04:19:45.011-07:00Listen to your Mother <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><span style="font-size: medium;">-- By Tom Phillips </span><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKyfUeOHRKew7mDC8njoD7cS3pbIJDXZddo-EY_zXuhhheUkSKVt200lTvZ-VY2EIMOOKF_EbxLlhpO4_ET9eRfgh0M1HuoRZEayMZzQfXn2UmbI7gryzlr3zU6ysSWGXQ23ofLcF7ESGzpqBW0TlT8Dz47_v8k-OdfGibn7JtQ3Baj4f8XMMovqOWcg/s2048/full%20of%20milk.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1394" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKyfUeOHRKew7mDC8njoD7cS3pbIJDXZddo-EY_zXuhhheUkSKVt200lTvZ-VY2EIMOOKF_EbxLlhpO4_ET9eRfgh0M1HuoRZEayMZzQfXn2UmbI7gryzlr3zU6ysSWGXQ23ofLcF7ESGzpqBW0TlT8Dz47_v8k-OdfGibn7JtQ3Baj4f8XMMovqOWcg/s320/full%20of%20milk.jpg" width="218" /></a></div>It's a work in progress, and it has a long way to go, so this is not a review. Just the facts. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">On the evening of January 18, 2023, dancer-choreographer-teacher-mother Annabella Lenzu took two saturated sponges, placed them on her breasts and squeezed until water ran down her slip and onto the floor at the LGBTQ Center in Greenwich Village. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">This demonstration of what it feels like to be full of milk was just one of the indelible images left by her half-hour showing of "Listen to Your Mother," a feminist rant about the problems of being an artist and a mother -- an impossible combination of callings. It's almost too much to bear -- but Lenzu bears it, so we have no way out. <span><a name='more'></a></span></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span><span style="font-size: medium;">She enters crawling under a bag of burdens, babbling incoherently, to a chorus of crying babies on the soundtrack. She quotes theatrical director Jerzy Grotowski on the purpose of theater -- to make the invisible visible --- and then curses him out: "How much child care and housework did Grotowski do??"</span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-size: x-large; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigbUcCdy7WzZSzPtDgtJ0MmNarLb0r9-6ML14mEsx8RjmXCubFADf3seA8VVsJDCrSI3whnmm7b9QahyTCh_DL1lWaxZ-sthGRIumlhrphMYLoZTNjYVt5snOlk5HO1-WVjZzZJa1aJJ12jan94M-_urwwTpXycne0cwLsmRqKlWLn6dkZscIASsSdcg/s2048/Annabella.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1500" data-original-width="2048" height="293" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigbUcCdy7WzZSzPtDgtJ0MmNarLb0r9-6ML14mEsx8RjmXCubFADf3seA8VVsJDCrSI3whnmm7b9QahyTCh_DL1lWaxZ-sthGRIumlhrphMYLoZTNjYVt5snOlk5HO1-WVjZzZJa1aJJ12jan94M-_urwwTpXycne0cwLsmRqKlWLn6dkZscIASsSdcg/w400-h293/Annabella.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">She stands up, puts on her glasses, empties the contents of her handbag on the floor -- her life, objectified -- and talks to us grownups about what makes a good artist, and what makes a good parent. It's the same thing, of course: love, and the instinct to give it away, to communicate. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><span>It's a masculine archetype, she says, that creates the impossible demand to be simultaneously independent and submissive. She feels guilty for taking even an hour of time for herself. </span><span>For once, we husbands and fathers are red in the face, knowing that we take time whenever we need it. Our arts are not subject to the screams of infants. </span></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">The wonder is that women artists are outdoing men today -- and Lenzu is among them. Her project is still in its infancy; she's interviewing immigrant mothers like herself on the contents of their bags and their lives. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">And it's good to know, amid all this woe, that the guy taking pictures, who made the soundtrack and shot the five-minute movie "In Between" featuring Lenzu as a body in constant use -- is her husband and long-time collaborator Todd Carroll. I bet he even takes care of the kids sometimes. But he'll never be dripping with milk. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">-- Copyright 2023 by Tom Phillips <br />Photos by Todd Carroll</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div></div>Tom Phillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17811449456953451486noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8253711728436634854.post-22911564005363328052023-01-11T07:43:00.003-08:002023-06-01T10:50:00.965-07:00Vangeline's Story <p> -- By Tom Phillips </p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioghqiGBe_aeggjmPklLwhWkMWsmf8DiFm1YNKZHnKYR__46exlD2D_ZcoIGVO7vgpg0AkqzDRHf1xN3RjJKX2JnICPHxVSRsgWIKiV4F3ORHJGZr660ZwBO0lbvAI4G7KPWJmnNuXItGfEhwbUsko-1GF01qEVq6Vc77z_riZVbn3SvFNKbJAUYygOQ/s1200/Wave.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="799" data-original-width="1200" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioghqiGBe_aeggjmPklLwhWkMWsmf8DiFm1YNKZHnKYR__46exlD2D_ZcoIGVO7vgpg0AkqzDRHf1xN3RjJKX2JnICPHxVSRsgWIKiV4F3ORHJGZr660ZwBO0lbvAI4G7KPWJmnNuXItGfEhwbUsko-1GF01qEVq6Vc77z_riZVbn3SvFNKbJAUYygOQ/w400-h266/Wave.jpeg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"The Slowest Wave" Photo by Michael Blase </td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;">Butoh began in the ruins of post-war
Japan as the "dance of utter darkness." Today it is
performed and taught all over the world, and increasingly influential in other
techniques and styles. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">No one is more responsible for this than Vangeline, founder and director of the New York Butoh Institute, which marks its 20th anniversary in 2023. After many years on the margins of the dance world, this year she is flooded in fellowships – including a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to study the brain waves of Butoh dancers. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;">Vangeline was born in 1970 in France, and
came to New York in 1992. She told us her life story recently while
sitting and stretching on the floor of her dance studio, near the banks of the Gowanus
Canal in Brooklyn.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><i style="background-color: transparent;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;">TP:
What was your reason for coming to New York at age 22? </span></i><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Vangeline: I came to do an internship at
the UN — a diplomatic visa, all the doors were open, red carpet. Then two
months into it I decided to quit and just become a dancer, to my parents’ great
chagrin! I lost my visa, I lost my status, and I became an underground
performer. So that was my switch, my commitment, my landing into New York
and saying No – this is the life I’m going to lead. And I followed my
path kind of stubbornly ever since. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;"> <span></span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I was born in the country, in Burgundy, in a
very small town with nature all around. My childhood was just being in
nature, reading books, being very studious, going to school and dance class.
My dad is a paleontologist, so we would go for excursions and look for
dinosaur tracks. And my mom is a painter and a writer. I feel like nature
is in my body – I was raised by the forests of Burgundy. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">My dad treated me and my brothers like adults. I
was raised with that logical scientific kind of mindset, to analyze and
understand things. For a long time I thought I was more of an artist, but
now I say No ---it’s so much a part of me, this drive, this curiosity to
explain and make sense of things, to rationalize and put into context. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><i><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">TP:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Tell us about your artistic development
in New York, after you decided to dance. </span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">V: <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was
mostly a jazz dancer at that point – a “jazzerina” --- so I auditioned for
roles underground, off-off Broadway – burlesque shows, club gigs, commercials,
modeling. I was in the underground scene for many years and that was where I
wanted to operate. I’m friends with some of those people to this
day. The strippers, burlesque dancers, circus actors, gogo dancers, we
were a subculture, like a family. Now that we’re older we’re becoming
established. People want to learn from us, and it’s bleeding into other
areas of popular culture.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><i><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">TP: What was your first exposure to Butoh? </span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">V:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was
doing a show called “The Seven Deadly Sins” with this downtown choreographer Ami
Goodheart in 1999.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And she took us to
BAM to see Sankai Juku, the most prominent Butoh group. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That performance was a revelation, almost an
out-of-body experience. I knew it was life-changing.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I was reaching the end of my showgirl days
anyway, feeling limited and sexualized. I knew there was another part of
me that was darker, and not just feminine, maybe masculine, androgynous, or
more spiritual, that I was craving to explore. The transition took a while, but
eventually I found a teacher and started training. And my life has never
been the same. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><i><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">TP: Fast forward to your latest work,
“The Slowest Wave.” I had kind of a wild political interpretation – like a
fascist takeover. One of your dancers (Miki) was covering up, trying to
protect herself from this tidal wave, and then suddenly she got caught up in
it. That was a very dramatic moment. What were you thinking when you
choreographed it? </span></i><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">V: First of all, our teachers tell us that
when Butoh is successful, it is like a mirror – people see themselves, and
what’s in their minds.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So I’m very happy
that you had this experience.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">For me, I don’t really think of it in thematic
terms. I made this piece as part of an experiment with brain waves. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I had one month to make it, and I made it
around Ray Sweeten’s music. I rarely work that way, but I gave him carte
blanche — four different sections with very basic instructions. It was
almost perfect. But as you say it was dramatic – and that is challenging
for Butoh, because it implies that somehow you have to match the music,or go
against it. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><i><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">TP: I felt the first part of the piece was
pure Butoh – slow movement, atmospheric sound. The second half was more
like modern dance. Is your brand of Butoh becoming a
hybrid? </span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">V: I know it may seem that way. But
the Butoh techniques are so embedded in that piece that I don’t see it as more
or less Butoh – rather different styles of Butoh. From the beginning Butoh was
a hybrid. I’m not doing pure Butoh, because it doesn’t exist!</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><i><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">TP: Could you describe the Butoh
techniques?</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">V. In the first section, I use movement
so slow that you can’t detect with the naked eye. That’s my trademark. There’s
also technique based on organizing impulses. Stop and go. Releasing
your impulses and then catching them. Control and lack of control.
Even though it may look like Western dance, if the internal thread is unbroken,
then to me it’s Butoh.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">We strive to be on the border of consciousness
and the unconscious – teetering – and that’s very difficult, because you lose
your balance, you run the risk of getting lost. If you don’t take the risk, you
are too much in control. But if you are too much out of control, you
don’t organize enough for the audience. It’s a very delicate liminal
border, taking a risk to go a little bit deeper into the unconscious. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The piece was created in preparation for a study
that will begin in February, in Houston. It was designed with all these
different sections, thinking about how that consciousness changes. We
plan to record brain waves to see what’s happening. And we hope to do
larger-scale studies – for example, is the brain of a Japanese dancer different
from a Western dancer? This is where my scientific curiosity comes in. We
don’t know anything, so why don’t we try to find out? </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;"></span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicGa9TP16bMOcaS47kke8P6jEGOQf8uRx96iwoUKBHTezopzWBTZdaSWNhN-zytRvd8VqBWnp0IbgaWK7gv0mNgrq10yiM679VC_Ag6v_XIX8pHL3EJvMIGHaVatm4AZ-WKHlHDmx6gyJHV_qvv0jYjwne0pnyuqLBkTkIN89fs5QcbazA7inQIiYSJA/s510/Houston%20.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="510" data-original-width="458" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicGa9TP16bMOcaS47kke8P6jEGOQf8uRx96iwoUKBHTezopzWBTZdaSWNhN-zytRvd8VqBWnp0IbgaWK7gv0mNgrq10yiM679VC_Ag6v_XIX8pHL3EJvMIGHaVatm4AZ-WKHlHDmx6gyJHV_qvv0jYjwne0pnyuqLBkTkIN89fs5QcbazA7inQIiYSJA/s320/Houston%20.jpg" width="287" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">University of Houston </td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;"><br /> </span><i><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">TP: Did you originate this
study? </span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;"> </span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">V: It’s my idea. I’ve been trying to
get it off the ground for ten years. And then in 2022 I got NEA funding,
and magically attracted three neuroscientists, and everything fell into
place. You work for ten years and nothing happens and then one day, snap!
The universe says Yes. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"></p><br /><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Copyright 2023 by Tom Phillips and Vangeline <br /></span><div><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /><br /></span><p></p><br /><p></p></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br />Tom Phillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17811449456953451486noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8253711728436634854.post-91339177888462849162022-12-21T19:20:00.005-08:002022-12-22T18:20:24.398-08:00Imagine Seinfeld <p><span style="font-size: medium;"> -- By Tom Phillips </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 12.0pt; margin: 12pt 0in 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;"></span></p><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjCLfJFdR8bsMKH3TyxDuTul56TIJuGllu0OIub8ji0nsJxi1wU3kRjsvqIMR3TCcgxkUoZvXHSOpWIcG6URU8rJtCL4nGMxQ8D-VfiMKL6qKOJmNMhKVjtV0cf_Y7YAoVPtOgB2Y-HN-ym1bUjI_zr-MXvZH5dQJVICa-XuMwFnD8181QJvnPfsKslQ/s728/NYE.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="485" data-original-width="728" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjCLfJFdR8bsMKH3TyxDuTul56TIJuGllu0OIub8ji0nsJxi1wU3kRjsvqIMR3TCcgxkUoZvXHSOpWIcG6URU8rJtCL4nGMxQ8D-VfiMKL6qKOJmNMhKVjtV0cf_Y7YAoVPtOgB2Y-HN-ym1bUjI_zr-MXvZH5dQJVICa-XuMwFnD8181QJvnPfsKslQ/w400-h266/NYE.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;"><br />Can you imagine New Year’s Eve without
“Imagine?” Once again this December 31st, at
five minutes to midnight, a hush will fall over Times Square and
a solo voice -- this time, indie pop star Chelsea Cutler --- will intone John Lennon’s limpid lyric: </span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; font-style: italic;"> </span><span style="font-size: 14pt; font-style: italic;"> </span><span style="font-size: 14pt; font-style: italic;"> </span><span style="font-size: 14pt; font-style: italic;"> <span> </span></span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><i>Imagine there’s no
Heaven –</i></span><br /></span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt; font-style: italic;"> It's easy if you try.<br /></span></span><i style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;"> No Hell below us,<br /></span></i><i style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;"> Above us only sky… </span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;">This dreamy meditation has been the prelude
since 2005 to the midnight Ball Drop, a kind of invocation of Nothing
before a big Something hits your eye. It works. Thousands of young people
in the square, and millions more watching on TV or online will sing along with
an anthem that negates everything their ancestors lived and died for – religion
and country, progress and possessions – and replaces them with, well,
nothing. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;">And what would that look like? Well,
imagine a show about Nothing... </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLw6jdssR1Xuf1h0x72DbZ5WonMhLnGAclNeNzgeFVCTP6TUmy86sAZKW8OUJ3xM23LS0U8KrF-gS5JU1pgVpUGMPUx3B-JKCtb3CTzPigi2I3XRj9n61kSsCJEdx5LDAgKgOdcT5nW3uIzxIfaaMHXyTQGOJKV7jxjnvGDUzogU3L3htezXdLScYfIA/s660/John%20Yoko.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><br /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLw6jdssR1Xuf1h0x72DbZ5WonMhLnGAclNeNzgeFVCTP6TUmy86sAZKW8OUJ3xM23LS0U8KrF-gS5JU1pgVpUGMPUx3B-JKCtb3CTzPigi2I3XRj9n61kSsCJEdx5LDAgKgOdcT5nW3uIzxIfaaMHXyTQGOJKV7jxjnvGDUzogU3L3htezXdLScYfIA/s660/John%20Yoko.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="371" data-original-width="660" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLw6jdssR1Xuf1h0x72DbZ5WonMhLnGAclNeNzgeFVCTP6TUmy86sAZKW8OUJ3xM23LS0U8KrF-gS5JU1pgVpUGMPUx3B-JKCtb3CTzPigi2I3XRj9n61kSsCJEdx5LDAgKgOdcT5nW3uIzxIfaaMHXyTQGOJKV7jxjnvGDUzogU3L3htezXdLScYfIA/s320/John%20Yoko.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;"><br /><br /></span><div><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;">Heavily influenced by his wife Yoko Ono, Lennon
wrote “Imagine” in 1971, near the bitter end of the Vietnam War and the
couple’s long campaign for peace. Sweetened with a lush string
background, it became his biggest hit single, and an iconic statement after his
murder in 1980. Seemingly a refusal to accept the world that produced his
senseless, violent death, it’s been a theme song for every generation since the
Baby Boom, sung reverently and defiantly at high-school and even Sunday-school
graduations. </span><div><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"> <i>"Imagine no possessions, </i></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><i><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span></i><i> I wonder if you can ...</i></span></span></div><div><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 18.6667px;"> </i></div><div><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;">Lennon described the song as a “sugar-coated” version
of The Communist Manifesto. However a check of the actual Manifesto finds not
so much a “brotherhood of man,” but a recipe for retribution. It's about the overthrow of one class by another. </span></div><div><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;">“Imagine” simply envisions an end to all serious
conflict, a community of friends with no possessions, sharing all the world and
“living for today." The song had its critics in the Seventies, most
of whom pointed to John and Yoko’s luxurious lifestyle and wondered how they’d
do with nothing to their names. In the “Imagine” video, the sign over
the door to the couple’s mansion says “this is not here,” a typical
Ono-esque abnegation. But what kind of society could exist on such
immaterial ground? </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;">Something like it appeared in 1991, and captured
the imagination of America. The characters in "Seinfeld" are a brother- and sisterhood of
friends who own nothing of value, believe in nothing, belong to nothing and no
one, and will stop at nothing in their pursuit of nothing. Jerry’s
apartment is their common ground, and Jerry’s purse is open, with only minor
grumbling on his part, to cover the costs of his and everyone else’s </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;">misadventures. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiW44dl8AqC4S62gH5hZHKthoUvLZhfkAY0t1fL2bMjcjaXElRa3OjZLZIazLS5shCJ-Cblf5Ium0jtetaIKi6trARZZvpVx0unL_w0C5nX-abqgy0ed0eOntLg_Go8GzybRcyHU16Z2QC3_OZeDhuVszDvrDN_-BjNfvNDHneTbdBbYA6Gr4Pe8394w/s1005/the-cast-of-seinfeld-news-photo-1583447150.jpg" style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="502" data-original-width="1005" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiW44dl8AqC4S62gH5hZHKthoUvLZhfkAY0t1fL2bMjcjaXElRa3OjZLZIazLS5shCJ-Cblf5Ium0jtetaIKi6trARZZvpVx0unL_w0C5nX-abqgy0ed0eOntLg_Go8GzybRcyHU16Z2QC3_OZeDhuVszDvrDN_-BjNfvNDHneTbdBbYA6Gr4Pe8394w/w400-h200/the-cast-of-seinfeld-news-photo-1583447150.jpg" width="400" /></a></p><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;"><br />Look up! George, Elaine, Jerry, Cosmo —
the world is singing to you. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></div><div><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;">Don’t get me wrong. I am an original
Beatle fan, an admirer and mourner of a martyred New Yorker in John
Lennon; a long-time Upper West Sider who eats at that very Restaurant on
112</span><sup><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 8.5pt;">th</span></sup><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;">, and goes to bed giggling at “Seinfeld” reruns.</span></div><div><div><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;">I just wonder. Could a “festivus
for the rest of us” really replace Christmas, Chanukah, etc? Could peace be
built on petty squabbling, prosperity on mooching? Could we nourish
ourselves on cereal and Big Salads? If we ignore yesterday and tomorrow, can we still live fully for today? </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;">Or as we contemplate this TV incarnation of
Lennon’s sugar-coated nihilism, are we gazing at a kind of comic
suicide pact, described by Bill Wyman in a 2002 </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;">Salon</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;"> essay: “The show is all about
the joy of charting, in exquisite, unrelenting, almost celebratory detail, the
infinitely variegated human interactions that, closely watched, will ultimately
tell the story of the disintegration of our species.” </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;">In any case — Happy 2023! </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTKPE368pPMZSW2dHu8Lk7cfmhntFpDebi-8tJuNddopqS36E-snJiz1icETsQv3nCd5QF8aDakTNhwaEV70RixdDNmK5oXE4L_Iepvh3A5ouhZ5v5zCw6wu_fh2NhXGlMHk3VswKsSaHgcqwh2wGZNSNTpDWGyQA3M9dIIkOdF5RDxdkyqvPtENpfag/s1400/toms-restaurant-movie.0.0.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="788" data-original-width="1400" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTKPE368pPMZSW2dHu8Lk7cfmhntFpDebi-8tJuNddopqS36E-snJiz1icETsQv3nCd5QF8aDakTNhwaEV70RixdDNmK5oXE4L_Iepvh3A5ouhZ5v5zCw6wu_fh2NhXGlMHk3VswKsSaHgcqwh2wGZNSNTpDWGyQA3M9dIIkOdF5RDxdkyqvPtENpfag/w400-h225/toms-restaurant-movie.0.0.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;">Copyright 2022 by Tom Phillips </span><p></p><p>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><br />
<!--[endif]--></span></p><p> </p></div></div></div>Tom Phillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17811449456953451486noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8253711728436634854.post-29156208235455279252022-09-30T06:02:00.008-07:002022-10-01T08:18:57.807-07:00Isadora Today: Interview with Lori Belilove <p> </p><div class="entry-content" style="background-color: white; clear: both; color: #333333; margin: 5px 25px; position: static;"><div class="entry-body" style="clear: both;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a class="asset-img-link" href="https://danceviewtimes.typepad.com/.a/6a00e39823a901883302a2eed7a72c200d-pi" style="color: #192f73; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Co_BrahmsTanagra_Z063471" class="asset asset-image at-xid-6a00e39823a901883302a2eed7a72c200d img-responsive" src="https://danceviewtimes.typepad.com/.a/6a00e39823a901883302a2eed7a72c200d-500wi" style="border: 0px; display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" title="Co_BrahmsTanagra_Z063471" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Isadora Duncan Dance Company at Untermyer Gardens, 2022<br />Carolyn Yamada, Samantha Mercado, Hayley Rose, Diana Uribe, Emily D'Angelo </td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p style="margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 10px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">-- By Tom Phillips </span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 10px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Isadora Duncan was and is an outlier -- 100 years ago, a rebel against the academic dance establishment, and now, a pure classicist in a free-wheeling, eclectic dance environment. Today, no one embodies Isadora’s life and work more than Lori Belilove, director of the Isadora Duncan Dance Company and Foundation. Working out of a loft-studio in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood, she has spent decades as a dancer, teacher, and choreographer, re-inventing Duncan Dance for the 21st Century. I talked with her over the last year, most recently on the last day of summer, 2022. </span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 10px;"><em><span style="font-size: medium;"></span></em></p><a name='more'></a><em><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></em><p></p><p style="margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 10px;"><em><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">TP So what's new for the Isadora Duncan Dance Company? </span></em></p></div><div class="entry-more" style="clear: both;"><p style="margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 10px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">LB: We just finished a series of outdoor performances – at Untermyer Park and Gardens in Yonkers, Fort Tryon Park in Manhattan, and Alice Austen House in Staten Island. And we've added to our repertoire a tribute to people fighting to defend their homeland in Ukraine. This kind of political theme is very much in the Duncan tradition – she went to Russia in 1920 and made dances that cry out for the downtrodden. </span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="Hayley&Sam_DSC3611" class="asset asset-image at-xid-6a00e39823a901883302a2eed7a73d200d img-responsive" src="https://danceviewtimes.typepad.com/.a/6a00e39823a901883302a2eed7a73d200d-320wi" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px auto 5px;" title="Hayley&Sam_DSC3611" /></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Narcissus" </td></tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"></span></div><p style="margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 10px;"><a class="asset-img-link" href="https://danceviewtimes.typepad.com/.a/6a00e39823a901883302a2eed7a73d200d-pi" style="color: #192f73; float: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"></span></a><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">We have three new members, former apprentices who each add youth, energy and diversity -- Samantha Mercado, Diana Uribe, and our first male dancer, Sam Humphreys. Isadora was a universalist -– she believed dancing was for everyone. And our company reflects that kind of dream. </span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 10px;"><em><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></em></p><p style="margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 10px;"><em><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">TP How did you first encounter the legacy of Isadora Duncan?</span></em></p><p style="margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 10px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">LB: My mother was an amazing, forward-thinking woman, so the minute I turned twelve we were off to Europe for three months in our VW Camper. My older brother had studied piano, and when we arrived in Athens we visited his piano teacher’s former dance teacher, Vassos Kanellos, who had studied with Isadora. He had books and paintings everywhere, and big bushy eyebrows. </span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 10px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">I’m twelve and he’s seventy-something, and he says: “Will you come study with me? I think you’re the next Isadora!” So I go back home and read everything I can about Isadora. It was like I'd found a soul sister. </span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 10px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">I started writing to Mr. Kanellos, and training in dance. I was looking for Isadora’s philosophy in the dance studios, but was very disappointed. </span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 10px;"><em><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">These were ballet classes?</span></em></p><p style="margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 10px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Ballet and modern dance. And the way it was taught bothered me as much as the content. It was that old abusive manner, where students always in the wrong. I really thought Isadora was onto something different. I thought <em>I </em>was onto something different. I lived in Berkeley, California and <em>we</em> were onto something different!</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 10px;"><em><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">This was the Sixties?</span></em></p><p style="margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 10px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Yes. And by 1970 I was in Athens, where I studied with Vasos for two years. Then I came back and enrolled at Mills College in California, where I was able to design a triple major in dance, classics and religion. </span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 10px;"><em><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Meanwhile there’s a group of women who danced with Isadora and claimed her legacy. How did you come in contact with that teaching line?</span></em></p><p style="margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 10px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">My brother was in school at Santa Barbara, where Irma Duncan had moved, so I traveled down there and studied with her. Finally, she said —Lori, you need to go back East where my best students and Duncan performers were settled.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 10px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Hortense Kooluris lived in Short Hills, New Jersey. She picks me up at Newark Airport, puts me in her daughter’s old room, and just embraced me. We danced in her garden and would drive into New York for classes and rehearsals with her and other Duncan teachers and dancers. This group formed the Isadora Duncan Centenary Dance Company in 1976. </span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 10px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Two things stood out -- they had no clue about staging, and no fresh vision. They were all 60-plus, and Duncan was their only dance training. I experimented with other techniques, and one I gravitated to was Doris Humphrey technique. </span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 10px;"><em><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">I can see that influence in your company – weight, momentum and swinging movements. </span></em></p><p style="margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 10px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">At the same time I was always training in some kind of ballet. I didn’t love the ballet aesthetic, but I did love the training.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 10px;"><em><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">What did ballet give you?</span></em></p><p style="margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 10px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">It gave me strength, discipline, a community... and the ability to reach other dancers, using the common language of <em>arabesque </em>and <em>attitude </em>for instance<em>.</em> Isadora tried to revolutionize dance training with basic action words – leg swings, knee bends, running, skipping, jumping. </span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 10px;"><em><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">And some beautiful made-up terms I heard in your class: wild pony, windsail, whirlpool.. . The essence of Duncan technique iI would say is inside the body, not on the surface. Agree?</span></em></p><p style="margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 10px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Absolutely. What you see is this underpinning of breath, actually a kind of breath control, which translates into a look of freedom and spontaneity. You create buoyancy in your chest, a kind of “breath upon a breath” so your arms never press close to your sides. </span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 10px;"><em><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">I talked to a choreographer who said these gestures were refreshing 100 years ago, but today it's the “same old, same old.” How would you respond? </span></em></p><p style="margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 10px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br />Isadora introduced a modern sensibility to dance in the early 1900’s, so I can understand how a dancer today might not see her work as revolutionary. She was offering freedom and joy in moving, which now we take for granted. But what is eternally vital about Duncan dance is that she wanted the person to be present in the movement, she wanted it to emanate from their authentic self ---rejecting the copycat mentality of traditional dance training. <em>That’s</em> the “same old same old.” </span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 10px;"><em><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /><br /></span></em></p><p style="margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 10px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"></span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="420" data-original-width="840" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEgKhWJw9eIuL03u43SQvyT1OfOpFz3-OGxrZp9y4pXkaV6uoxrJiJrLhoMxJN8F_dcCZvMobXPeacS6l6t8Qa4tQrZAh2FMSn0irdwdIur1Yl8q5nPYjwWFEdlrrGD19Thm9cABRB5W7PC-XlbutTFQ5arPVO1Ne9W_o3oJQ2vGlgNgj-TB-AGx-35w/w640-h320/images-features_large-Lori_Belilove_Israel_Harris.webp" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="640" /></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lori Belilove in residence at Baryshnikov Arts Center, 2021</td></tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEgKhWJw9eIuL03u43SQvyT1OfOpFz3-OGxrZp9y4pXkaV6uoxrJiJrLhoMxJN8F_dcCZvMobXPeacS6l6t8Qa4tQrZAh2FMSn0irdwdIur1Yl8q5nPYjwWFEdlrrGD19Thm9cABRB5W7PC-XlbutTFQ5arPVO1Ne9W_o3oJQ2vGlgNgj-TB-AGx-35w/s840/images-features_large-Lori_Belilove_Israel_Harris.webp"><span style="font-size: medium;"></span></a></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><em><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></em></span></div><div class="entry-more" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><em><span style="font-family: times;">TP: What’s next for you? </span></em></span><p></p><p style="margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 10px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><em style="font-family: times;">LB: </em><span style="font-family: times;">I'm busy teaching, dancing and choreographing -- many passions drive me: climate change, the war in Ukraine, women’s rights. But now I'm turning a lot of my roles over to the senior Company dancers. Having founded The Isadora Duncan Dance Foundation & Company, I can't be the chief cook and bottle washer forever. And they say they like it -- it feels more like</span><em style="font-family: times;"> their </em><span style="font-family: times;">company now. </span><span style="font-family: times;"> </span></span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 10px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"></span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="565" height="272" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7B0f90ULGmQ4qgjSe8wlz4Xz0lokC80pwpw5cmu0sbn7dQT_vMNvUqaK8zlELYg60Couewn1ywl_Kjzq7SPCSTXnNMLAOl2YadCpIJFzvKxF3O1xlxI7JYob7hmUc3Ch4RJ-euZmtqixmBBctNY34hbi2czBlYg_yNlIoZ57rVHi2UCYtXykOxhGGHw/s320/Estatic%20circle%20Company_4516_tn.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="320" /></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Ecstatic Circle"</td></tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7B0f90ULGmQ4qgjSe8wlz4Xz0lokC80pwpw5cmu0sbn7dQT_vMNvUqaK8zlELYg60Couewn1ywl_Kjzq7SPCSTXnNMLAOl2YadCpIJFzvKxF3O1xlxI7JYob7hmUc3Ch4RJ-euZmtqixmBBctNY34hbi2czBlYg_yNlIoZ57rVHi2UCYtXykOxhGGHw/s565/Estatic%20circle%20Company_4516_tn.jpeg"><span style="font-size: medium;"></span></a></div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /> </span><p></p><p style="margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 10px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: times;">Copyright 2022 by Tom Phillips and Lori Belilove</span></span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 10px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: times;">Company photo (top) by William Mercado<br /></span><span style="font-family: times;">"Narcissus" by Nicholas Tinsley<br /></span><span style="font-family: times;">Lori Belilove by Israel Harris <br />"Ecstatic Circle" by Len Rachlin </span></span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 10px;"><span style="font-family: times;"> </span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 10px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 10px;"><span style="font-family: times;"> </span></p></div></div>Tom Phillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17811449456953451486noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8253711728436634854.post-57913272347613254212022-06-15T19:13:00.006-07:002022-09-08T09:26:36.143-07:00Sisters Under the Skin: "The Great Gatsby" as Jazz and Racial History<p><span style="font-size: medium;"> -- By Tom Phillips <span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span></span></p><p><i><span style="font-size: medium;">This is an edited version of my essay published in the F. Scott Fitzgerald Review, Vol 19, 2021, pp. 189-202.</span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: medium; line-height: 200%;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: medium; line-height: 200%;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5ktxsYpt68ugvdfjbeGWBlG7MDa0Lfp3OPMWMso6lzqNy1T1RHZewS9Yi-sItvFHO32LYJXfS_2aM2FvoDBVVw2W4v_YsX6JUfN5icTDrCTZMJOXQJMNh-mMtcS9zMnFSlnklDM3r_AX5RWfFEJpU3DVl4i_-rlR6KB_kdnu25LmTZIy-UlEfm4Yzeg/s2775/front_cover.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2775" data-original-width="1875" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5ktxsYpt68ugvdfjbeGWBlG7MDa0Lfp3OPMWMso6lzqNy1T1RHZewS9Yi-sItvFHO32LYJXfS_2aM2FvoDBVVw2W4v_YsX6JUfN5icTDrCTZMJOXQJMNh-mMtcS9zMnFSlnklDM3r_AX5RWfFEJpU3DVl4i_-rlR6KB_kdnu25LmTZIy-UlEfm4Yzeg/s320/front_cover.jpg" width="216" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: medium; line-height: 200%;">Amid the cacophony of Jay Gatsby’s garden party in chapter three of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Great Gatsby</i>, a bass drum booms and the orchestra conductor announces a
request from the host, for “Vladimir Tostoff’s Jazz History of the World.” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> The </span>title is all we learn of the piece.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It disappears, “tossed off” into the evening,
a passing joke. However, in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s intricately
patterned novel, as in jazz, things take on meaning even as they disappear.<span><a name='more'></a></span> <o:p></o:p></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: medium; line-height: 200%;">Syncopation
is the basic strategy of jazz—the displacement of emphasis away from classical
or expected patterns. A jazz piece “swings” not on the first beat of the
measure, the downbeat, but the second, the offbeat. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In baseball, it was Satchel Paige’s
“hesitation pitch,” an indeterminate pause in the windup followed by a whipping
fastball over the plate. In boxing, it was Muhammad Ali’s timed dance break,
the “Ali shuffle,” followed by a sneak right hand. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; text-indent: 0.5in;">Syncopation
as style comes out of the African experience in America—the visceral need to
hide, to keep thoughts and intentions secret, to keep one’s keepers off
balance, to protest without seeming to protest, to escape under cover. Jazz is
an African-American invention. Its forerunners, blues and gospel, were born not
in Africa but in the Deep South, where slaves picked up the forms and
instruments of Western music, and the essentials of Anglo-Saxon and Celtic culture:
the English language, the Christian religion and its music, and the tradition
of ballad-singing. All these they quickly adapted to their own purposes.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; mso-spacerun: yes; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; mso-spacerun: yes; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: medium; line-height: 200%;">Whites
in turn were fascinated by the music of the slaves—their off-beat rhythms, open-ended
improvisatory forms, and sliding scales. A guitar is a fretted instrument, with
fixed notes, but Black musicians modified it, bending the strings to produce
“blue notes,” or using improvised tools like bottlenecks to slide over the
fingerboard. With the percussion instrument of the piano,
they reversed the standard rhythm—stressing the back beat, in “ragged time,”
i.e. ragtime. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: medium; line-height: 200%;">Whites
turned all this to their purposes, both artistic and commercial.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In 1916, Broadway’s leading composer Irving
Berlin declared “syncopation is the soul of every American.” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By the 1920s, it was ingrained in American art,
in literature as well as music. Harlem poet Langston Hughes combined the cadence of the blues with the form
of lyric poetry. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And syncopation was
also adopted as style by white classicists such as F. Scott Fitzgerald and his contemporary,
the classically trained jazz composer Bix Beiderbecke. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: medium; line-height: 200%;">In
the same way a jazz band can take a sentimental pop song and transform it into
something rich and strange, in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Great
Gatsby</i> Fitzgerald takes a sentimental love story and weaves it into an
epochal drama, a fleeting history of what he called “The Jazz Age.” Daisy’s “low,
thrilling” voice holds the reader on the romantic theme, while in the background,
off the beat, Fitzgerald constructs and deconstructs a jazz history of the world,
i.e. the New World: <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>America. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: medium; line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 3;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>_________________________________<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> <span> </span><span> </span><span> </span></o:p></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; text-indent: 0.5in;">The
author syncopates his plot—delivering key information off the beat, away from
the emphasis of a scene or a sentence, slipping it under the reader’s
attention. For example, late in the party scene of chapter two, he uses the shock
of Tom breaking Myrtle’s nose to cover the departure of Nick and Chester McKee .
With blood on the floor and shrieks in the air, it seems unremarkable that a
couple of bystanders would quietly leave the room. Their sexual liaison then
disappears under an ellipsis … unremarked upon until Edward Wasiolek explicated
the passage in 1992. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: medium; line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Jordan Baker is a master of this kind of deceptive rhythm, of disappearing in plain view. “I
like large parties,” she tells Nick at Gatsby’s. “They’re so intimate. At small
parties there isn’t any privacy.” Later she advises him: “it’s a great
advantage not to drink among hard drinking people. You can … time any little
irregularity of your own so that everybody else is so blind they don’t see or
care.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Maggie Froehlich identified Jordan
Baker as a homosexual passer in 2010. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But
Jordan has another secret, even more deeply syncopated in the text.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: medium; line-height: 200%;">She
passed for white until 2018, thanks to a diffuse description of her coloring
that kept readers in the dark. Her skin is described repeatedly as brown, tan,
or golden – but the word most often used for her face is “wan.” It might seem
contradictory to describe skin as both brown and wan, but this is the
complexion of many light-skinned African Americans, known as “high yaller” in
Harlem slang. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These contrasting color
terms, however, are never used in the same passage, but widely separated—syncopated
so the reader does not perceive the contrast. The text must be literally
deconstructed and re-assembled to reveal that under her powder and autumn-leaf (dyed)
blond hair, Jordan is a light-skinned African American, passing for white. Only
then do certain textual riffs emerge, such as the prelude to Nick and Jordan’s
first kiss. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: medium; line-height: 200%;">Riding
in a horse cab as dusk turns to dark, they pass under a bridge in Central Park and
Nick puts his arm around Jordan’s “golden shoulder.” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Jordan tells him he must invite Daisy to tea.
Immediately they pass “a barrier of dark trees, and then the façade of Fifty-ninth
Street, a block of delicate pale light…” A barrier of darkness, a façade of
pale light, evening shade, the color of tea—this is Jordan, this is jazz. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s like the wispy filigree of a drummer’s
brush, in the background of a romantic song—working against the beat,
improvising a polyrhythm, as if the musician were thinking of a different
tune.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: medium; line-height: 200%;">Nearly
a century after the novel’s setting in 1922, Nick and Jordan’s deceptions are easier
to detect, as binary categories of race and sex break down in America. Readers today
are used to the idea of a couple with individual sex lives that cross
traditional boundaries. Racial lines are fading as well, and people’s skin
color is being seen—veridically—as neither black nor white, but everything and
anything in between. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This latter realization
points to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Great Gatsby’s</i>, and
America’s, family secret.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: medium; line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>________________________________<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: medium; line-height: 200%;">A jazz history is by its
nature an African-American history, beginning in the South where Daisy and
Jordan spent their “beautiful white girlhood” together (24). The irony of that
phrase hints at the family secret of the novel, the deep secret of the South:
Daisy and Jordan are not just childhood friends, but sisters under the skin.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: medium; line-height: 200%;">They
first appear on a “warm windy evening” in 1922 that evokes a Southern idyll. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nick goes to visit his cousin Daisy in East Egg,
and beholds two women in white dresses, perched on an enormous couch, like twin
statues on a pedestal— except that like so many objects in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Gatsby,</i> the couch appears to be floating in the air. When it
eventually settles, Daisy stutters to life to say she is “p-paralyzed with
happiness.” Nick is mesmerized by Daisy’s voice—its “singing compulsion,” its
whispered “Listen.” Her stutter is the first of many syncopations—represented
by dashes—in the dialogue that follows.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: medium; line-height: 200%;">Jordan
is a guest at the Buchanan estate, but clearly an intimate of Daisy’s. They act
like sisters, walking in tandem, talking at once with the “bantering
inconsequence” of improvised jazz. Jordan knows about Daisy’s husband Tom’s
affair with “some woman in New York,” and strains to eavesdrop when the mistress
telephones during dinner. Later Daisy sets about making a match for Nick and
Jordan—a joke, but one that immediately interests the two young singles.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: medium; line-height: 200%;">Daisy’s
husband Tom wants to talk about the serious issue of the day—the supposed rise
of the “colored” races, and the evils of immigration from anywhere but Nordic northern
Europe. Daisy apparently thinks this is funny and annoys Tom with a reference
to the “beautiful white girlhood” she and Jordan spent together in Louisville.
Tom takes this as a reference to something Daisy told Nick, but Nick says,
honestly, that he heard nothing. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: medium; line-height: 200%;">Jordan
stays out of the discussion, keeping her voice “murmurous and uninflected” as
she reads to Tom from the <i>Saturday Evening Post, </i>then the nation’s
leading advocate for keeping America white. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the summer of 1922, just about the time of
this fictional visit, the <i>Post </i>was railing editorially against “aliens
and hyphenates” and calling for Congress “to protect our own people” (SEP, 24
Jun 1922).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: medium; line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 3;"> </span>_____________________________________<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: medium; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-prop-change: "Tom Phillips" 20220615T1703;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: medium; line-height: 200%;"><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>Not
until chapter seven does Fitzgerald suggest the true relationship between Daisy
and Jordan, while simultaneously disguising it in the mouth of a babe. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Gatsby and Nick have come to call on a
“broiling” summer day, with Gatsby and Daisy’s affair in full bloom and the
Buchanans’ marriage on the rocks.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
ladies greet them from the same enormous couch as in chapter one, dressed in
white like “silver idols.” <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 31.5pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: medium; line-height: 200%;">White
clothes and powder float through this excruciatingly tense scene, barely covering
up colors and feelings. “Jordan’s fingers, powdered white over their tan,
rested for a moment in mine,” says Nick.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Daisy laughs at Gatsby and a “tiny gust of powder” rises from her
bosom.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She sends Tom out for drinks,
then brazenly kisses Gatsby, murmuring, “You know I love you.” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Jordan scolds her: <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: -9pt; text-indent: 40.5pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: medium; line-height: 200%;">“You
forget there’s a lady present,” said Jordan. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: -9pt; text-indent: 40.5pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: medium; line-height: 200%;">Daisy
looked around doubtfully. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: -9pt; text-indent: 40.5pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: medium; line-height: 200%;">“You
kiss Nick too.” <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: -9pt; text-indent: 40.5pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: medium; line-height: 200%;">“What
a low, vulgar girl!” <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: -9pt; text-indent: 40.5pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: medium; line-height: 200%;">“I
don’t care!” cried Daisy and began to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">clog</i>
on the brick fireplace.” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(Italics mine) <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 31.5pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: medium; line-height: 200%;">While
defying convention and advertising her adultery, Daisy breaks into a
foot-stomping Kentucky folk dance, one practiced by both blacks and whites. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In this brief passage Fitzgerald flashes a
mirror on the “white girlhood ” of these two, a mirror in which their roles are
reversed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Each is drawn to the other’s
image: Jordan to the wealth and white privilege of the Southern gentry, Daisy down
to earth, where slaves and poor whites improvised the art of clogging—foot
music, proto-jazz. When Jordan calls Daisy a “low, vulgar girl” the reversal is
complete.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: medium; line-height: 200%;">In
this scene Fitzgerald connects race and illicit sex with Southern folkways, a
connection crucial to understanding what follows. Daisy’s little daughter Pammy
enters with a “freshly laundered nurse,” likely a black woman in white, harking
back to Daisy’s own upbringing. Daisy fusses over her child, then gushes “did
mommy get powder on your old yellowy hair?” She kisses her “small white neck”
and calls her a “little dream.” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: medium; line-height: 200%;">Pammy
responds with what seems like a non-sequitur: “Aunt Jordan’s got on a white
dress, too.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: medium; line-height: 200%;">Instinctively,
because it comes from a two-year-old, the reader will discount this remark as childish
babbling. However, interpreted literally, Pammy could be responding to her
mother’s babbling, with an honest insight: My aunt Jordan, your half-sister, is
covering up her “yellowy” skin with powder and a white dress.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: medium; line-height: 200%;">Pammy’s
nurse quickly steps up and pulls the child out of the room. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: medium; line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>_________________________<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: medium; line-height: 200%;">Jordan is the family
secret. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The text of <i>Gatsby</i> makes
only fleeting allusions to Daisy’s family of origin, but from the description
of her youth—a white roadster and long line of suitors—she appears to be from the
cream of Louisville society.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As for
Jordan, the clues to her parentage lie in the bizarre series of events
surrounding Daisy’s wedding to Tom. Jordan tells the story in two bursts, both
at the Plaza Hotel, itself a wedding venue. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: medium; line-height: 200%;">Over
tea with Nick, she recalls being Daisy’s bridesmaid—the traditional role of a
younger sister. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And like a bridesmaid in
a typical romance, she solves a crisis and delivers the bride to the altar. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: medium; line-height: 200%;">The
night before the wedding, half an hour before the bridal dinner, she finds
Daisy in her room, “drunk as a monkey,” clutching an unidentified letter and
speaking in her down-home dialect, with a strong “negro” accent. “Tell ‘em all
Daisy’s change’ her mine,” blurts the bride-to-be, fishing Tom’s priceless
string of pearls out of a wastebasket, telling Jordan to “give ‘em back to whoever
they belong to.” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: medium; line-height: 200%;">Jordan
leaps into action: “I rushed out and found her mother’s maid and we locked the
door and got her into a cold bath … We gave her spirits of ammonia and put ice
on her forehead and hooked her back into her dress and half an hour later when
we walked out of the room the pearls were around her neck and the incident was
over. Next day at five o’clock she married Tom Buchanan without so much as a
shiver and started off on a three months’ trip to the South Seas” (93).<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: medium; line-height: 200%;">In
two paragraphs without a comma Fitzgerald spits out a half-hour of high drama. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Knowing
exactly what they must do, Jordan and the maid transform Daisy from a drunken
“monkey” ready to spurn a fortune for a fantasy back into a Kentucky Belle
being prepared for sacrifice at the altar of wealth. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: medium; line-height: 200%;">The
secret is in a curious, off-beat detail:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The woman Jordan rushes out to find is not Daisy’s maid, but Daisy’s
mother’s maid. With no time to talk, these two women work together as one to
save the day. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They can do this only if
they know and trust each other implicitly, and perceive the situation in
exactly the same way. Plausibly, all these requirements are fulfilled because they
are mother and daughter, and have labored all their lives together to preserve
a system that grants them secure status, at the cost of their personal dignity
and freedom. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Daisy’s heart’s desire must
now be sacrificed—just as Jordan’s mother had to sacrifice her integrity to
please the master of the house, just as Jordan had to sacrifice her authentic self
to pass as white. This could be the source of what Nick sees as her “clean,
hard, limited” personality, her scornful, contemptuous look and manner. Like Iago
in Shakespeare’s race-tinged tragedy, “I am not what I am.” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: medium; line-height: 200%;">Jordan
can be understood as a child of the South— daughter of a white master, Daisy’s
father, and a black domestic servant, Daisy’s mother’s maid. This arrangement has
been common since the first slave ship arrived in Virginia in 1619. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>From Thomas Jefferson through Strom Thurmond
and beyond, white masters have exercised their <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">droit de seigneur</i>, with the inevitable result: a racial mix so
ubiquitous that no one could be sure of pure white ancestry—not even Daisy,
whose name evokes a yellow flower dressed in white. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: medium; line-height: 200%;">And
this perhaps is the racial secret of chapter one: Daisy had been teasing Tom
with tales of miscegenation in the South, poking fun at his illusion of a pure Nordic
race. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: medium; line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 3;"> </span>________________________________<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: medium; line-height: 200%;">Jazz and the Jazz Age
blurred the boundaries between black and white. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Just as slaves effaced the eight-tone scales of
western music, mixed-race African Americans like Jordan deliberately slid over the
color line, creating a new identity, a fake ID that opened the doors to white
America. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And the movement went both ways
in the 1920s, as whites explored black culture in the cities of the North, and
came back with changed identities of their own. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: medium; line-height: 200%;">Duke
Ellington, looking back in 1960, traced the birth of jazz to Harlem in the
early 1920s.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The new music began to form
in the 1910s in New Orleans, Chicago, and the West Indies, he recalled. But not
until all these musicians “converged in New York and blended together” did jazz
emerge.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: medium; line-height: 200%;">New
York was the magnet not just for African-Americans, but a huge influx of
immigrants from eastern and southern Europe—a picture that frightened the likes
of Tom Buchanan, and gave impetus to the politics of Nordic supremacy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In 1924, Congress passed a draconian
immigration law cutting off the flow of “inferior” groups. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Gatsby</i> is set in 1922, with the ethnic pot simmering and the Harlem
Renaissance permanently changing the tastes of the American masses.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: medium; line-height: 200%;">Nick
feels it as he rides over the Queensborough Bridge in Gatsby’s yellow car, seeing
the city “in its first wild promise of all the mystery and the beauty in the
world.” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As they cross the bridge two
parties pass them, going faster—first a funeral cortege with mourners who
“looked out at us with the tragic eyes and short upper lips of south-eastern
Europe,” then a limousine driven by a white chauffeur, “in which sat three
modish Negroes, two bucks and a girl.” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nick’s
reaction: “Anything can happen now that we’ve slid over this bridge … anything
at all.” <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: medium; line-height: 200%;">Fitzgerald’s
choice of the verb <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">to slide</i> is not an
accident or an elegant variation. The whole scene evokes a historical-musical
moment in which fixed categories are sliding away, obscuring and erasing the dividing
lines between the beats of a measure, the notes of a scale, the nations and peoples
of the world.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: medium; line-height: 200%;"><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> ------------------------------------</span><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; line-height: 200%;"> "Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter"<br /> John Keats, <i>Ode to a Nightingale</i></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; mso-spacerun: yes; text-indent: 0.5in;">Jazz, like all music, is
composed of more than notes played or sung. Above each note are its overtones—sound
waves that rise in ascending intervals, determining timbre and feeling. The sliding scale of jazz produces not just a pattern but a blur
of overtones. This is the atmosphere of a tune, its aura. In the same way, the
jazz history of <i>The Great Gatsby</i> is
composed of more than words on the page. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; mso-spacerun: yes; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; mso-spacerun: yes; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The
story of Daisy and Tom’s wedding ends with a coda in chapter seven, one floor
above a “burst of jazz” from a wedding reception at the Plaza Hotel. Daisy
recalls a last-minute mystery guest who fainted in the Louisville heat: “A man
named Biloxi. ‘Blocks’ Biloxi, and he made boxes—that’s a fact—and he was from
Biloxi, Tennessee.” In Daisy’s husky,
rhythmic voice this is a jazz riff, with a hesitation— “that’s a fact”—built in. </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; text-indent: 0.5in;">Nick
picks up the theme; he knew a Bill Biloxi from Memphis. “That was his cousin,”
says Jordan, who adds they carried Biloxi to her house, just two doors from the
church, and he stayed three weeks, until “Daddy” told him to get out.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; text-indent: 0.5in;">The day after he left, “Daddy” died—though
Jordan says “there wasn’t any connection.” Biloxi meanwhile left her with a
gift— an aluminum putter she still uses.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The
profusion of B’s, X’s, O’s and I’s in this nest of names provides the riff with
a likely reference. The letters in Biloxi, shuffled like blocks or “boxed” like
numbers in lottery games, quickly turn up “Bix.” And the displacement of Biloxi,
Mississippi to Tennessee simulates— syncopates—the movement of jazz up the
Mississippi River to Memphis, toward Bix Beiderbecke’s hometown of Davenport,
Iowa. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Beiderbecke
made his debut recordings—including “Davenport Blues”—in 1924, while Fitzgerald
was finishing <i>Gatsby. </i>There is no record
of the two meeting, but Fitzgerald was highly unlikely not to have heard of the
latest sensation in the world of jazz. Here, Bix is just a fleeting note, an overtone
of the shape-shifting Biloxi, “bumming his way home,” free as his companion Asa
Bird (syncopated— “as a bird").<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: medium;">If
Jordan is an African American infiltrating the lily-white world of American golf,
Beiderbecke was her real-life mirror image—the first white jazzman to be admired
by African Americans. Probably no one in Jordan’s house during those three
weeks was what they appeared to be, her “Daddy” no more her father than Biloxi
was president of Nick and Tom’s class at Yale. And this could be what killed
“Daddy”—two fellow imposters communing together, turning his home into a
funhouse of American illusion. The gift of the putter (aluminum, false silver)
even suggests the cause of death: a stroke, the last in a series. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: medium;">This
is the improvisatory play of Fitzgerald’s jazz text—meanings hovering over the narrative,
harmonics only hinted at by the words on the page. As surely as his
contemporary Beiderbecke, Fitzgerald used overtones to create multiple layers
of meaning, not a subtext but a supertext, like the
nightclub haze over a jazz band. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> ____________________________<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: medium;">As
twin icons of the Jazz Age, Fitzgerald and Beiderbecke had much in common. Both were born to upper-middle-class parents in the Midwest,
on the banks of the Mississippi River—Fitzgerald in 1896 in St. Paul, Beiderbecke
in 1903, 350 miles south in Iowa. Each
became a celebrated artist in the intoxicated atmosphere of the 1920s. And each
fell victim to what Fitzgerald called “Early Success,” the premature triumph that
gives an artist the chance to be “somebody besides oneself,” with the
inevitable consequences. Each was suspected of “queer” tendencies in an
age when this was considered pathological. Each “cracked up” when the Jazz Age did. Each drank heavily and died young—Beiderbecke
at 28, Fitzgerald at 44. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Beyond
biography, a legend surrounds both lives and connects them with artists of an
earlier age, the Romantic Era. Biographer
Brendan Wolfe writes, “the heart of the Romantic Legend of Bix … is connecting
this idea of the searching quality of his art with the fact of his early death”
(Wolfe, 151). The image is of the artist pining away over something just out of
reach. Still, there is an essential difference between the searching qualities
of the Romantic poets and those of the Jazz Age. In a nightingale or a skylark, Keats and
Shelley gave existence to what lay beyond human ken, a Platonic conception of
beauty as real but inaccessible. For Fitzgerald and Beiderbecke, what beckons
is not even there. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: medium;">It
is jazz, the music of a new era, that spiritually connects these two white
Midwesterners. In the only interview with Bix Beiderbecke ever printed, he defines
jazz as music aiming “to secure the effects of surprise, or in the broadest
sense, humor … Some of it is obvious
enough to make a dog laugh. Some is
subtle, wry-mouthed, or back-handed. It is by turns bitter, agonized and
grotesque. Even in the hands of white composers it involuntarily reflects the
half-forgotten suffering of the negro.” </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; text-indent: 0.5in;">Surprise—the
humor of jazz—is in what isn’t there: the missing downbeat, the fade-out followed
by a jump-back, the sexual underside of a blues lyric. African-American
theologian Howard Thurman interpreted this deceptive style as a strategy to fool
white people, a way of “creative survival” for the powerless. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; text-indent: 0.5in;">Ironically, it was adopted into white culture
and became the style of an era. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; text-indent: 0.5in;">As critic
Mitchell Breitwieser suggests, the Jazz Age was not something to be gained, not
a national spirit but the absence of one—an “orgastic future” that could be pursued
but never attained. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Beiderbecke’s
solos typically burst upward, tearing open his sheath of sound with abrasive,
even guttural peaks. But he never ends with a climax. The cornet lead recedes, often
hangs on a single note (e.g. the end of his solo in “Singin’ the Blues”) and finally
trails off with an ironic, self-deprecating squiggle, or a stray drumbeat, as
in “Way Down Yonder in New Orleans.” </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; text-indent: 0.5in;">In
the same way, Fitzgerald ends </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; text-indent: 0.5in;">The Great
Gatsby</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; text-indent: 0.5in;"> by pulling back from an ecstatic vision. In the final scene, a late-night
reverie on Gatsby’s abandoned beach, Nick re-imagines the beginning of the
American dream, when Dutch sailors supposedly looked on the “fresh green breast
of a new world.” There, the trees “pandered in whispers” and man was “face to
face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity
for wonder” (218). That wonder, though, was “neither understood nor desired,”
and never realized.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; text-indent: 0.5in;">Going backward in
the text of </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; text-indent: 0.5in;">Gatsby,</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; text-indent: 0.5in;"> the “fresh green breast of a new world” turns into a
valley of ashes, and the wondering eyes of the Dutch sailors into the “pale,
enormous eyes” of Dr. T.J. Eckleberg—something commensurate with our capacity
for horror. </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; text-indent: 0.5in;">Trees
don’t pander. It is the human capacity for wonder that dazzles the mind, that
sets it on its tragic course. Fitzgerald presents his jazzed vision of a world
gone wrong, but he pulls back from that as well.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: medium;">He
exempts and exonerates his hero, the ill-fated James Gatz. He fills in the back story of “Mr. Nobody from
Nowhere” (156) —a small-town American boy setting out to improve himself, who
strikes gold in a chance encounter with a tycoon, then wins glory, and briefly
a girl, in the wartime uniform that effaces class origins. He offers evidence
of delusionary thinking, such as Gatsby’s insistence that he can repeat the
past, “fix everything just the way it was before.” He depicts Gatz’s childhood, in the sentimental
memories of a father who—not incidentally—beat the boy. But he demurs at an analysis. Narrator Nick ends chapter five on a
syncopated, empty beat, an overtone fading in the air: “Through all he said,
even through his appalling sentimentality, I was reminded of something—an
elusive rhythm, a fragment of lost words, that I had heard somewhere a long
time ago. For a moment a phrase tried to
take shape in my mouth and my lips parted like a dumb man’s, as though there
was more struggling on them than a wisp of startled air. But they made no sound and what I had almost
remembered was uncommunicable forever.” </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: medium;">______________________________</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: medium;">There
are no second acts in <i>The Great Gatsby,</i>
nothing to look forward to, no possible sequel. The world imagined through
Gatsby’s eyes simply disappears after his death, his “huge incoherent failure
of a house” empty on the shore (217). The characters retreat: Tom and Daisy
“back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept
them together”— Jordan into her subterfuges, covering her breakup with Nick
with a supposed engagement to a nameless fiancé. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Nick
retreats to his Middle West, to its “bored, sprawling, swollen towns” and dinner
parties where each event was “hurried from phase to phase toward its close in a
continually disappointed anticipation or else in sheer nervous dread of the
moment itself.” His future—like Fitzgerald’s, like the Jazz Age—is a disappearing
act. On his thirtieth birthday, he foresees “a decade of loneliness, a thinning
list of single men to know, a thinning brief-case of enthusiasm, thinning hair…</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: medium;">“So we drove on toward death in the cooling twilight.” <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: medium;">In
the end the closest thing to a solid object—a survivor—is Tom. Nick encounters
him on Fifth Avenue and tries to get away, but Tom forces him to listen. Tom’s version of the “holocaust” he
engineered is entirely self-serving. It
was all right to set Wilson after Gatsby, “he had it coming to him.” He
pronounces Gatsby’s vision dead: “He threw dust into your eyes just like he did
in Daisy’s.” Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
Tom extracts a handshake from Nick, a symbolic bow to the ruling class
and its solid, illusory world view. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Thus
ended the Jazz Age, prematurely capitulating well before the end of the
decade. Reflecting on it in “Echoes of
the Jazz Age,” Fitzgerald wrote it was like “a children’s party taken over by
the elders, leaving the children puzzled and rather neglected and rather taken
aback.” <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Little
was left of this age of excess and “miracles” after the market
crash of 1929. But jazz music was not
dependent on the illusions of the Jazz Age, being born not of excess but of suffering.
It thrived in the Depression, and dominated the Swing Era into the 40's. Meanwhile <i>Gatsby</i>
rose from the ashes to be recognized as Fitzgerald’s masterpiece after his
death in 1940. It is a text with all the
elements of great jazz: syncopation, formal elegance, free play, humor and
satire, “ugly beauty,” a haze of overtones, indeterminacy, irresolution. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Jazz
is meant to elude, literature to endure.
In <i>The Great Gatsby</i> Fitzgerald
captured the “elusive rhythm” of jazz in enduring form. Nearly 100 years later,
it is still disappearing before our eyes. </span></span></p><div>
<hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" />
<!--[endif]-->
<div id="edn1">
<p class="MsoEndnoteText" style="margin-left: 2in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><br /></p></div></div>Tom Phillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17811449456953451486noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8253711728436634854.post-42575463133117060472022-06-04T11:23:00.005-07:002022-06-04T17:55:59.694-07:00Breaking Up America: Liberty and Death <p> -- Copyright 2022 by Tom Phillips </p><p><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"></span></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxq-eWZeBFE1eFEHGW2IhboEYF4DTXJvfNDT9c4SsJL6wXRTntHCoje3EXXhyCsKLuyy9Fuwsr6x008ZXriv7_YgkWiwF6gq1f32aYIQlP84nIAClNfntiXpqBwdcy_r5LtMhgiIua78qFca32hV_LgO4y4JejXxq60wCZFSx4t3I069cY3QCFzguJQA/s2048/Liberty%20at%20leisure.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxq-eWZeBFE1eFEHGW2IhboEYF4DTXJvfNDT9c4SsJL6wXRTntHCoje3EXXhyCsKLuyy9Fuwsr6x008ZXriv7_YgkWiwF6gq1f32aYIQlP84nIAClNfntiXpqBwdcy_r5LtMhgiIua78qFca32hV_LgO4y4JejXxq60wCZFSx4t3I069cY3QCFzguJQA/s320/Liberty%20at%20leisure.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Zaq Landsberg, <i>Reclining Liberty</i></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-size: 18px;">Give me liberty or give me death! thundered Patrick Henry at the dawn of the American revolution. </span><div><span style="font-size: 18px;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: 18px;">Today, Liberty and Death are partners in a mass murder-suicide pact. Police with assault weapons blow away mentally ill people with assault weapons, but only after allowing them to slaughter school children, church members, hospital patients and other helpless citizens. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: 18px;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: 18px;">"Enough!" peeped President Biden, embarrassed into speaking after two weeks of daily massacres. </span><span style="font-size: 18px;">But the carnage here is dwarfed by the war in Ukraine, the foreign-policy equivalent of a school shooting. The Biden administration is pouring 40 Billion dollars worth of deadly American weapons into a fraternal conflict on the other side of the world -- on the pretense of defending democratic ideals we no longer practice at home. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: 18px;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">Maybe we have reached our inflection
point at last. A nation that tolerates child sacrifice to protect its arms industry must perish from the earth -- as must a nation
that exports death and ruin and writes off a million civilian casualties as “collateral damage.” </span></div><div><p><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">The USA is a failed state and a danger to humanity. What is to be done? <span></span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">In my 50 years of daily
journalism, one day stands out as particularly instructive. It was December 8, 1991,
when the Soviet Union passed away -- not with a bang and with barely a
whimper. Bypassing the Soviet
state apparatus, Russian President Boris Yeltsin traveled to Minsk in Belarus,
and announced the formation of a successor to the USSR -- the Commonwealth of
Independent States. This made Russia an independent country surrounded by
14 independent countries, with a framework for co-operation they could work out
themselves. Vladimir Putin would later call this the worst tragedy of the
20th Century, but it was just the opposite -- a diplomatic master stroke that saved the
USSR from a violent, Yugoslav-type breakup, with nuclear weapons in the mix.
The keys to Yeltsin's success were secret negotiations, perfect timing, and an open-ended vision
of a peaceful future. Soviet president
Mikhail Gorbachev had no choice but to agree. The state-run economy of the USSR
had collapsed, and no one could fix
it. What it needed was a new
structure. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">In America 2022 the economy hums
along, but our politics are in a death spiral of demonization and random
violence. No Lincoln is at hand to bind up
our wounds. We too need a new structure. It’s time to break up the United
States, and negotiate a new North America in concert with Mexico and Canada. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxzoYqkXT8EQxD2Ag65MWlxNJBb6S-5OX2mrLSyxC3wIXsfELFhdXgasXmjq43plZA6LsBpB6hDQuMREy2ofK8p6I-1MtfsQ0hcUdXYAWGFtwNJbs9g3vxkUEOfNVbMdsdjtvwjkkm8dEAR9LUxy4tVTUO1boFnCPLO6cUcmmRVHsXWNmtybSedBwwZw/s1200/Cal%20Repubklic.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="630" data-original-width="1200" height="168" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxzoYqkXT8EQxD2Ag65MWlxNJBb6S-5OX2mrLSyxC3wIXsfELFhdXgasXmjq43plZA6LsBpB6hDQuMREy2ofK8p6I-1MtfsQ0hcUdXYAWGFtwNJbs9g3vxkUEOfNVbMdsdjtvwjkkm8dEAR9LUxy4tVTUO1boFnCPLO6cUcmmRVHsXWNmtybSedBwwZw/s320/Cal%20Repubklic.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><br />The process is already underway. California
has been acting as an independent state for years, e.g. passing its own
environmental laws and forcing the marketplace into line. The California Republic (see its flag) also
takes part in a West Coast environmental coalition that includes British
Columbia. <o:p></o:p></span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">Maine’s philosopher-journalist
Colin Woodard has found traction for the idea of multiple American Nations. He
counts eleven regional cultures in our continent -– among them a Puritan domain
he calls “Yankeedom” stretching from Massachusetts to Minnesota; “El Norte,” a Latin
culture in northern Mexico and the Southwest US; the “Deep South,” the “Left
Coast,” and a resurgent “First Nation” of indigenous people in northern Canada.
<o:p></o:p></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">Don’t freak out. Dividing North America into viable political
units – even across existing national borders -- need not disturb our economic
common market, which has existed since the 1990s. It’s called NAFTA. Trade could continue uninterrupted between
regions with different political systems.
Defense would be trickier – but our enemies are far away, and NATO
already oversees the West’s imposing military force. It’s always looking for new
members. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">Breaking up is never easy, and it could spark violence, especially in the aptly named "battleground states." But the US is wracked with violence now. In a new North America with
nations following their own cultural norms, terrorist weapons could be controlled or confiscated in regions that don't want an armed citizenry. Conspiracy theories could lose their appeal in a European-style commonwealth. And our benighted United States could take its place along with the Soviet Union in the trash bin of history. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">I’ll wager that contingency planning is already underway, with an eye on
2024. </span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">As in Minsk, mum's the
word. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">-- Copyright 2022 by Tom Phillips </span></p><p><br /></p></div>Tom Phillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17811449456953451486noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8253711728436634854.post-20845175488479176062022-03-29T18:54:00.028-07:002022-04-05T05:53:24.962-07:00Quiet as it's Kept: White Space at the Whitney <p></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTLfSBznYh164llEMkIwu1IY_v1M0Xn1wdZ6X5tKJ0kW1dMZUIJu2WXWBK5GEk6vI7AnOP-qObAAB-WMk7JTNSE4AUxYIPov0LZ4nudB7vQ72eP3bI6O_oNw5kDWVQyR-sAS5KZd7rJ8DUaZPFmLnFKkbpaiMjIlF2er-ZihnqaXU4nqyr7w2WUb7z9w/s4608/20220329_112104.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3456" data-original-width="4608" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTLfSBznYh164llEMkIwu1IY_v1M0Xn1wdZ6X5tKJ0kW1dMZUIJu2WXWBK5GEk6vI7AnOP-qObAAB-WMk7JTNSE4AUxYIPov0LZ4nudB7vQ72eP3bI6O_oNw5kDWVQyR-sAS5KZd7rJ8DUaZPFmLnFKkbpaiMjIlF2er-ZihnqaXU4nqyr7w2WUb7z9w/s320/20220329_112104.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rebecca Belmore, "ishkode (fire)" </td></tr></tbody></table><br /> -- By Tom Phillips<div><br /></div><div>Two middle-aged white male art critics were coming down in the elevator after previewing the Whitney Museum of American Art's 80th Biennial. With an air of befuddled irritation, one said to the other, "Quiet as it's Kept? What does that mean?" He was referring to the show's cryptic subtitle, which came from African-American co-curator Adrienne Edwards. His friend had no clue. <p>A third, older white male critic was standing nearby, and recalled for them the explanation Ms. Edwards had given in her pre-show remarks. Her mother and her aunties used to say it all the time, she said--- to preface something widely known to be true, but not discussed in public. <span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p>Oh, said the first critic as they stepped out into the basement cloakroom. So what is it we're not discussing? Well, said the older fellow, I think it points to the ugliness of the show. I was looking for something pretty, but I couldn't find anything. </p><p>The first guy replied -- So, the theme of the show was ugliness? How about the film of that woman rowing a boat? I thought that was pretty. </p><p>Yes, said the other. Except she was rowing the boat to Hart's Island -- New York City's burial ground for unclaimed bodies. And the narration was about unclaimed bodies piling up, too many to bury, "too many to hide." </p><p>The conversation ended there, as the first guy snatched his coat from a brown-skinned attendant, and joined a knot of his colleagues for a more private chat. But the show will go on, and it is full of American ugliness: Plastic palm trees, ruined landscapes, disembodied kneecaps, zombie employees of leading American companies, sirens, arrests, explosions, night shots of hospital lobbies, a huge stack of coded medical bills, a sneering white gunman taking aim at an unknown target, an island of unmarked graves, a ghastly moonrise over a broken sea. One artist's work was billed as "an oasis of horror in a desert of boredom." </p><p>The 2022 Biennial is roughly divided into two parts, like night and day. The fifth floor is a dark space devoted to the ways in which people of color and marginalized populations see themselves in America. Rebecca Belmore's shrouded figure surrounded by a circle of spent bullets (at top) seems to act as a centerpiece. </p><p>The sixth floor is a light-filled space that might represent white America as seen by the marginalized. . One large object is a clanking metal ferris wheel, made from prison furniture, revolving super-slowly in the sun. The artist says it's designed to make the passage of time "palpable, visceral, even painful." </p><p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikZc5dtAJQn_2giFL49PNWFzyuTvU2yb0RoKAHVafD6oOxfYDRkLxNcnetd55hbp7x2B1_hBWsxHOKifLe5veoKxHuduFYA-y6NkLYDlIrfCOzg6b-4IaBzJrC-9IH9BofuUF3nwga0qTjOUcCPZxm3TOUcpo_lBPNDYUbpDJ5fHzOhhy0JDmDtjfzpw/s4608/20220329_123151.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3456" data-original-width="4608" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikZc5dtAJQn_2giFL49PNWFzyuTvU2yb0RoKAHVafD6oOxfYDRkLxNcnetd55hbp7x2B1_hBWsxHOKifLe5veoKxHuduFYA-y6NkLYDlIrfCOzg6b-4IaBzJrC-9IH9BofuUF3nwga0qTjOUcCPZxm3TOUcpo_lBPNDYUbpDJ5fHzOhhy0JDmDtjfzpw/s320/20220329_123151.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sable Elyse Smith, "A Clockwork" </td></tr></tbody></table><br />An art museum in America is a quintessential "white space," but in this show most or nearly all of the artists are from marginalized groups. The critics at the preview were overwhelmingly white, but the space for once was not. The polarities were reversed. "White Space" was on display, and white critics were forced to experience it as if from a marginal, unprotected place. The artists and the art were saying: This is what <i>you </i>look like to <i>us. </i><div><br /><div>Quiet as it's kept, it's ugly. </div><div>. </div><div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6MbdotoM71gsxScTxVg-rqNlzVC-4Fx6AMKsm85nau2YlBbuHiI8-8-p8MMQdxTvJB-G3SfUGnkkxJrYK4khe3EWKzjQ3pw5onqS8mm888G2seNcKYpS2fkRLdKz4N03WaSX-g8PWy51bvKHOkuyHAt8cdoYtDTfOjPAOH1kX3eKCcnfrmIsDh1nBDw/s4608/20220329_123535.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3456" data-original-width="4608" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6MbdotoM71gsxScTxVg-rqNlzVC-4Fx6AMKsm85nau2YlBbuHiI8-8-p8MMQdxTvJB-G3SfUGnkkxJrYK4khe3EWKzjQ3pw5onqS8mm888G2seNcKYpS2fkRLdKz4N03WaSX-g8PWy51bvKHOkuyHAt8cdoYtDTfOjPAOH1kX3eKCcnfrmIsDh1nBDw/w400-h300/20220329_123535.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Buck Ellison, "Rain in Rifle Season, Distributions from Split-Interest Trusts" </td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p>Copyright 2022 by Tom Phillips </p><p> <br /></p></div></div></div>Tom Phillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17811449456953451486noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8253711728436634854.post-21460002885673353642022-03-03T08:22:00.001-08:002022-03-03T08:27:26.423-08:00Something out of Nothing<p> <span style="font-size: medium;">-- By Tom Phillips </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"></span></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgjvRIVRZsMouT0cZAM9d6dVN6frHcahU9g52qsnLgh89z8XLXxwKXl5zSuon7RgpXxuWFtW-Iiu-qUyP60RZCiK3RqI4u1M9QRihVgCRLi0dhsjuozSXSPV6QBaHc2TcqUqux3ZOSttaAkaHko5UPGTfarKUtyIuDB9RiZLJELKXnn4oQ4waAtitghFg=s1920" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="818" data-original-width="1920" height="170" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgjvRIVRZsMouT0cZAM9d6dVN6frHcahU9g52qsnLgh89z8XLXxwKXl5zSuon7RgpXxuWFtW-Iiu-qUyP60RZCiK3RqI4u1M9QRihVgCRLi0dhsjuozSXSPV6QBaHc2TcqUqux3ZOSttaAkaHko5UPGTfarKUtyIuDB9RiZLJELKXnn4oQ4waAtitghFg=w400-h170" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; font-size: 13.3333px; text-align: left;">Still from </span><i style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333px; text-align: left;">For a Dance Never Choreographed</i><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; font-size: 13.3333px; text-align: left;">, 2021. Photo: Stefano Croci </span></td></tr></tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span><div><span style="font-size: medium;">For artists and introverts, the Pandemic of 2020-22 was a window of opportunity -- a chance to observe the world in the absence of normal human activity. During lockdown and quarantine periods, as we walked through deserted streets or sat in empty public spaces, we could suddenly see form without function --- the structure of civilization without its uses. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Italian artist-choreographer Luca Veggetti found himself stuck in his hometown of Bologna, Italy, when the pandemic struck in 2020. So he made something out of nothing. <br /></span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background: white;">Veggetti’s film </span><i style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">For a Dance Never Choreographed</i><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white;"> (2021) takes place in an empty plaza </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background: white;">designed by Japanese architect Isamu Noguchi, with a text of notes by Martha Graham for a dance she never made. The movement of the earth around the sun is represented by dark shadows creeping over the plaza, and the only human presence is the sound of voices crying, whispering, gasping and groaning --- expression minus words. The whole impression is made by taking things away, removing the contents of civilization and examining its substrate of earth and bricks, light and shade, desire and discontent. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white;">The 22-minute film is now permanently on view in the digital collection of the Noguchi Museum in New York. To watch, </span><a href="https://www.noguchi.org/isamu-noguchi/digital-features/for-a-dance-never-choreographed/">click here</a><span style="background-color: white;"> and follow the link to the museum. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white;">Now--- <i>shhhh. </i></span></span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; font-size: medium;">-- Copyright 2022 by Tom Phillips </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span></span></p><p><br /></p><p><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p><br /></p></div></div>Tom Phillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17811449456953451486noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8253711728436634854.post-1951052951191463032021-11-18T20:53:00.000-08:002021-11-18T20:53:37.282-08:00Blow it Up: A Plan for Lincoln Center <p> -- By Tom Phillips </p> <div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuuU7TirQuO2Oz4sgqcM9GOTOh-wIQrNGkfcDiioo9-_Y3E8vBtLQ_-vTTAEQwqEj62fcF1XvoxIiDV_FF1gJnvDbdlIXsTHzQ4dAPf3CjePHoj1DA5dKQh5Tt2EjlzJ3iH59i-hI1ek0P/s1208/Construction.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="906" data-original-width="1208" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuuU7TirQuO2Oz4sgqcM9GOTOh-wIQrNGkfcDiioo9-_Y3E8vBtLQ_-vTTAEQwqEj62fcF1XvoxIiDV_FF1gJnvDbdlIXsTHzQ4dAPf3CjePHoj1DA5dKQh5Tt2EjlzJ3iH59i-hI1ek0P/w400-h300/Construction.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr></tbody></table>With the Holidays just around the corner, box offices were open today at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, and the place was buzzing with...construction noise. Philharmonic (now Geffen) Hall is being gutted again, with a scaled-down plan for renovation. Across 66th Street the Juilliard School is also getting some kind of a makeover.<p>I have a better idea for fixing Lincoln Center. With federal infrastructure money flowing in to rebuild New York neighborhoods, try this: </p><p><b>Blow it up. </b><b>Tear it down. </b><b>Bury it. </b></p><p><span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p>The destruction of a working-class neighborhood to make way for Lincoln Center in the early 1960s was the biggest bad idea in the history of New York as cultural capital of the world. Conceived by empire-building Rockefellers and executed by power-broker Robert Moses, Lincoln Center was designed to renew a decaying city, to reverse "white flight" by attracting middle-brow audiences to the city's unparalleled music, dance and theatre. </p><p>Artists, entrepreneurs and educators were initially attracted by the posh facilities, designed to replace their cramped quarters at places like City Center, Carnegie Hall and the old Met. But with the possible exception of the Met, the arts suffered in their new environs. Philharmonic Hall was an acoustic horror show. The New York State Theater allowed New York City Ballet plenty of extra dancing room -- but productions designed for City Center lost some of their charm on an oversized floorspace. The party scene in George Balanchine's "Nutcracker" is supposed to be in a living room, but this set was the size of a high-school gym. Act Two is supposed to be in a box of candy, not a walk-in refrigerator. (The new stage cut both ways -- "Square Dance" lost its down-home feel, but Balanchine had room to create "Vienna Waltzes.") </p><p>Meanwhile New York City Opera -- forced to share a theater with the ballet -- was baffled by the acoustics of a hall built for sight-lines instead of sound. Founded by a Mayor who believed in grand opera for the masses, it turned in despair to microphones and musical theater, then gave up the ghost. </p><p>Taste suffered as companies strained to attract a bourgeois audience. The Philharmonic drifted into classical pops, and even tried to showcase individual orchestra members in an ensemble devoted to collective sound. City Ballet's elegant neo-classic culture crumbled after the death of Balanchine in 1983. Cynically, it then tried to market its dancers as athletes, or fashion models, or soft-core porn. That last image became reality in a 2018 lawsuit over dancers' tawdry sex videos. </p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBgo3rHtBbUfFEbyQhH7QCw3fgjL47lnIpIvwkVlSzwQADQC9Om_jKqcxyf8-AaJP8urAtwe-PuvsSjrE3DOfGIM-hSWlnKu4HCBDEk67nYFstPFa91aIJvp8JYxwDodmhJoQ8FQfanFQD/s1208/No+Benches.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="906" data-original-width="1208" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBgo3rHtBbUfFEbyQhH7QCw3fgjL47lnIpIvwkVlSzwQADQC9Om_jKqcxyf8-AaJP8urAtwe-PuvsSjrE3DOfGIM-hSWlnKu4HCBDEk67nYFstPFa91aIJvp8JYxwDodmhJoQ8FQfanFQD/s320/No+Benches.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>Meanwhile the whole Lincoln Center enterprise had gone upscale. Built by the city and state as a magnet for the middle class, the place was renovated starting in 2006 as a playground for the One Percent. The New York State Theater was rebuilt and re-christened the David H. Koch Theater. </div><div><br /></div><div>The billion-dollar makeover featured an orgastic fountain designed by an LA architect, and a high-end restaurant overlooking the reflecting pool. Public benches around the pool were removed. Ticket prices went through the roof. </div><div><p></p><p>That's when I learned about demonstrating at Lincoln Center. Protest is against the rules (!) in this privately-run public space, secured by surveillance and private guards. The atmosphere of repression is symbolized by the Koch Theater, named for a donor whose faked interest in the arts provides cover for his project of sabotaging democracy. This is why even "edgy" productions here seem toothless, hopelessly co-opted. </p><p>Last year, in the uproar that followed the police killing of George Floyd, Lincoln Center announced a "commitment" to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Since then they have added persons of color to their senior management and board, and interns training to be future leaders. Programming for 2021-2022 includes a smattering of works by or about persons of color, with more commissioned for future years. Ticket prices are being examined with an eye toward "expanding access." And Lincoln Center says it will publicly document the story of its origins. </p><p><span>All</span> that is fine. But the question remains: </p><p><b><i>Can an ugly arts center, built on the ruins of a Black and Hispanic neighborhood, anchored by oversized theaters from an age when opera and symphony were civic staples, supported by premium ticket prices and the largess of billionaires, which disallows free speech and honors the nation's leading advocate of King Coal and white rule --- can such an institution remake itself to thrive in an age of anti-racism, environmentalism, experimental art and revolutionary ideas? </i></b></p><p>Give them a year or two to try. And if not, here's my idea -- actually a modified version of demolition: </p><p>Leave the Met where it is, and eventually turn it into a museum or mausoleum. Make Damrosch Park what it was in past summers -- a place for free or low-cost music and dance. In the interest of education, leave the Library, Juilliard and the School of American Ballet in place. Tear the rest down and build affordable housing. Invite artists to live and work among ordinary New Yorkers. Rename 66th Street Jane Jacobs Way. </p><p>Send the orchestra to Carnegie Hall, and the ballet to Brooklyn. </p><p></p><p>A big job? It's a big town. As Rupert Murdoch likes to say--- bury your mistakes. </p><p>-- Copyright 2021 by Tom Phillips </p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p></div>Tom Phillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17811449456953451486noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8253711728436634854.post-6489137798690868652021-11-01T07:57:00.003-07:002021-11-16T15:45:40.052-08:00Womanspreading: Butoh Redefined <p>Vangeline <br />"Eternity 123" <br />Triskelion Arts, Brooklyn <br />October 30, 2021</p><p> -- By Tom Phillips </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOrVAMAndPot_HyrTQfFdXcoH2ax3BbLaeNv7InWme1GZUEB46MFdHynUyZ-pBsltDrQSwTXJMeLWlfPx2vN9uxvxNrIcBrUOmsIIOQgpwlZNRCGcqUnO0RBxUycMMEDrF6L1Sl_i0Xq7B/s2048/Strength.jpeg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1365" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOrVAMAndPot_HyrTQfFdXcoH2ax3BbLaeNv7InWme1GZUEB46MFdHynUyZ-pBsltDrQSwTXJMeLWlfPx2vN9uxvxNrIcBrUOmsIIOQgpwlZNRCGcqUnO0RBxUycMMEDrF6L1Sl_i0Xq7B/s320/Strength.jpeg" width="213" /></a></div>Butoh queen Vangeline describes her solo "Eternity 123" as a "symbolic journey of women's liberation across time." I tossed the program note aside and watched the show with an open mind, with which the artist proceeded to play. <p></p><p></p><p>The piece begins with nothing but a dress -- a full-length, frilly see-through chiffon -- draped over a slip, revolving in the air. In time the dancer appears behind it as a pair of feet and two sets of fiddling fingers, and proceeds to inhabit the garment. </p><p>This is woman as clothes hanger -- seen but not heard, seen but not seen. Blackout. </p><p>The next scene has the dancer wearing the dress, to the second movement of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony. Facing rear, she does nothing but turn her head into profile, then back, moving imperceptibly over a span of eight minutes. The music, built on a single rhythmic motif, moves majestically through a minor march and a major fantasia, ending like a wave breaking over the rocks of some desolate shore. Vangeline's sound score adds birdsongs in the background. By the middle of the movement I scribbled excitedly in my notebook Art, Nature, and Humanity--- and felt a half-forgotten sensation creeping up from my entrails. Mesmerized by the beauty of that half-turned face, I was falling in love! </p><p>This is woman as ideal, semi-paralyzed on a pedestal. Blackout, reset. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgx_6a5mvdHPVnoZqQrZbzH1IvA85X7vUr4whrZysa_8CGey4anM6Ca45L9wGiVKW8qdzsue_TCogomFbNsNtO3-UW2fhMOTkbhvINMOKSJY53OHtPxEtCTFRW5HcWVJqyR6Dui0f6bcras/s2048/Strip.jpeg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1365" data-original-width="2048" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgx_6a5mvdHPVnoZqQrZbzH1IvA85X7vUr4whrZysa_8CGey4anM6Ca45L9wGiVKW8qdzsue_TCogomFbNsNtO3-UW2fhMOTkbhvINMOKSJY53OHtPxEtCTFRW5HcWVJqyR6Dui0f6bcras/s320/Strip.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><p>To crowd noise and the strains of the Blue Danube Waltz, the next scene has the dancer again facing rear, but with the arms in motion, rising in a super slo-mo <i>port de bras, </i>then twining the fingers behind the neck, then down behind the back -- until voila! off slips the frilly vest, leaving the torso and arms in just a translucent slip. Here's a hint of burlesque, a strip-tease --- woman as object, but a fleshly object, as real as any man. Blackout. </p><p>By this time I was feeling like Virginia Woolf's Orlando, morphing through centuries of changing gender roles -- ready for anything in the 21st. </p><p>Bare-legged now and sprawled on the floor, a blob of wounded flesh, Vangeline appears helpless. Will she die? The answer comes in a metamorphosis. She begins to move in jerks and spasms, face contorted as she works her jaws as if for the first time. Slowly and steadily, her strength and control increase as she extends her limbs, pushes herself up, then balances on her hips in a flying V-shape--- hands and feet in the air, body held in place by nothing but bands of abdominal steel. Finally, she takes a quarter-turn to face the audience, and eases her body into a symmetrical shape -- knees spread, toes touching on the floor, a perfect quadrangle below the waist, spine lifted above -- balanced in meditation, eyes open, living and breathing, meeting the gaze of the audience, equal and opposite. . </p><p>You know "Manspreading?" This is <b>Womanspreading. </b>And it's here to stay. </p><p>Next up for "Eternity 123," a US tour. It's E-Vangelism at its best. </p><p>-- Copyright 2021 by Tom Phillips <br />Photos by Bryan Kwon </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Tom Phillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17811449456953451486noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8253711728436634854.post-42231829751223007582021-10-03T05:03:00.005-07:002021-10-06T03:47:25.312-07:00Miracle on 76th Street: Denishawn Dances Again <p><b>Denishawn<br />Dances by Ruth St. Denis & Ted Shawn <br />The Theatre at St. Jean's, New York <br />October 2, 2021</b></p><p>-- By Tom Phillips </p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyUxdBDZea9n5noLKRtboCyhTvdGdm4ynKUePtWNjq8zJPv9wDzNc5mRLkDZLh3S8k8jIAi6Mvlwmd3icPHgskhivRXeSHA3oXK9eO7L23x2P20xj-a1PvBAhV4mHZiLeom4WXSOCR_vzf/s760/denishawnruth_st_denis_-_ted_shawn_out-of-doors_photo+%25281%2529.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="760" data-original-width="546" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyUxdBDZea9n5noLKRtboCyhTvdGdm4ynKUePtWNjq8zJPv9wDzNc5mRLkDZLh3S8k8jIAi6Mvlwmd3icPHgskhivRXeSHA3oXK9eO7L23x2P20xj-a1PvBAhV4mHZiLeom4WXSOCR_vzf/s320/denishawnruth_st_denis_-_ted_shawn_out-of-doors_photo+%25281%2529.jpg" width="230" /></a></div>Ted Shawn and Ruth St. Denis are known as the "mother and father of American Modern Dance," but the works they created and performed have been lost for years. All that remained were dusty photographs and flickering, black-and-white films. It was a case study in the ephemeral nature of dance--- until it all began again. <p></p><p>The idea originated with veteran dance publicist Audrey Ross -- once a dancer -- who recruited an all-star cast of friends, supporters, students and protegees to excavate the attic of the past, and re-create the the dawn of Denishawn. Several years in the making, the project was put on hold by the pandemic. It finally went up last week---from a theater in a church basement, a 21st-Century resurrection. </p><p>It began at the beginning, with a new generation of dancers. Seven nubile nymphs from the Limon2 company performed Shawn's "Floor Plastique," a heretical piece circa 1916 done entirely on the floor. As recreated by choreographer Henning Rubsam, the piece contains the fundamental gestures of a new era -- contraction and release, shifting weight and momentum. Denishawn dancers Martha Graham, Charles Weidman and Doris Humphrey would elaborate these gestures into new styles and schools of movement. In the bodies of the Limon apprentices, 1916 and 2021 came together -- two violent turning points, vortexes of desire and despair. </p><p>Shawn and St. Denis looked far and wide for different ways to move, and found them in exotic places -- India, Java, Japan. Ballet legend Valentina Kozlova re-created St. Denis's "Incense," based on Hindu ritual, with actual incense and authentic feeling. Antonio Fini brought the Hindu god of destruction Shiva off his pedestal and into motion, ending with the deity's signature delicate balance. Bradley Shelver performed Shawn's "Japanese Spear Dance" with the controlled rage of ritual fighting. And Peiju Chien-Pott seduced the entire audience in a slinky silk gown, in St. Denis's version of a court dance from Java. </p><p>A lively post-performance chat centered on an objection to Denishawn's appropriation of other cultures. Dancers defended the work -- this was not hootchy-kootchy Orientalism but anthropological adventure, an attempt to give western dance a global vocabulary. The most subtle talkback came from Puerto Rican Nuevayorker Arthur Aviles, who performed Shawn's "Danse Americaine." The piece makes fun of a small-time dude, who like Frank Zappa's "Dancing Fool," thinks he's really something. Even in a too-shiny green suit, Aviles gave the character dignity -- OK, he's a naive narcissist, but he's really being his "best self." </p><p>The program concluded with a solo waltz, a piece that originated when Ruth St. Denis spontaneously began to dance at a party, and the pianist couldn't stop playing, going seamlessly from Brahms to Lizst, extending the moment. The dancer was former Graham great Christine Dakin, the pianist Jonathan Howard Katz. The performance was inspired, alive, authentic. As Faulkner wrote--- the past isn't dead. It isn't even past. </p><p>-- Copyright 2021 by Tom Phillips . </p>Tom Phillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17811449456953451486noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8253711728436634854.post-52961583046345856582021-06-09T13:33:00.003-07:002021-06-10T04:22:17.278-07:00Edge of the Universe <p><b>Kyle Marshall Choreography<br />"Stellar" <br />Baryshnikov Arts Center, New York<br />June 7-21, 2021 (online) </b></p><p><b>-- </b>By Tom Phillips </p>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a class="asset-img-link" href="https://danceviewtimes.typepad.com/.a/6a00e39823a90188330282e107a726200b-pi" style="display: inline; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="2vCcxtcw" class="asset asset-image at-xid-6a00e39823a90188330282e107a726200b img-responsive" src="https://danceviewtimes.typepad.com/.a/6a00e39823a90188330282e107a726200b-320wi" style="margin: 0px 5px 5px 0px;" title="2vCcxtcw" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td></tr></tbody></table><p>Which comes first, music or dance? In Kyle Marshall's choreography, it's neither. Music and dance are two sides of one art form, improvising against each other: friction, ignition, liftoff, jazz. </p><p>Marshall's new "Stellar" knits together city streets with the loneliness of deep space, and grounds them in the earth of Mother Africa. All in little more than twenty minutes. </p>
<p></p><hr class="at-page-break" /><p></p>
<p>"Stellar" is a video for three dancers---Marshall and two female partners, Bree Breeden and Ariana Speight, and a multi-instrumentalist composer-performer, Kwami Winfield. It begins with long, plaintive single notes from a cornet---the signature solo instrument of early jazz---and bodies shot in close-up, rising and swirling as they seem to grow out of the floor at the Baryshnikov Arts Center. They're wearing loose sweatpants and hoodies that look tie-dyed and painted. With hoods up they look like space suits. </p>
<p>The dancers walk, dip and dive in circular patterns around the bare stage, as if in orbit, held in their paths by invisible forces---gravity, family, tribe. They make music with hands and feet, stomping and clapping a syncopated beat while Winfield scratches out a background, rubbing and shaking bits of metal in his hands. This feels like ritual dance, waking up the earth. The two women then take center stage in turn, and execute a series of spectacular whole-body pirouettes, whipping around with torsos bent, feet flexed, legs flying -- tropical storms in human form. Marshall then launches into a broken break-dance, like a tree whipped in the wind, as the musician toggles from random notes on the keyboard to chaotic background sounds.</p>
<p>The section ends in a total blackout, long enough so you wonder what happened. When it lifts, the dancers are in outer darkness, scuttling along the perimeter of the stage, the edge of the universe. The music changes to buzzes, bleeps and bloops---the mysterious energy of the ether. Then the sound picks up density as the dancers gradually come together, then fall away. Last time I checked, the Big Bang theory had been replaced by the Bang-Bang theory---in which the expansion and contraction of the cosmos is a repetitive cycle. That's what happens in the dance. It ends with a traditional folk-dance figure, a three-hand star, which then explodes into the wings. </p>
<p>Marshall says the piece was inspired by the most ethereal kind of jazz---the cosmic mysticism of Sun Ra, and the legacy of John Coltrane's meditative trips. But it's still jazz, born of the earth and the streets. "Stellar" was created during a year of deadly racial turmoil and pandemic disease, but it makes no direct reference to either. This illustrates one legitimate way that artists, and notably Black artists, have dealt with the world's chronic crises: Transcendence. </p>
<p>"Stellar" can be seen on demand through June 21. To view, <a href="https://bacnyc.org/performances/performance/kyle-marshall">click here.</a> </p>
<ul>
<li>Copyright 2021 by Tom Phillips<br />Photo by Maria Baranova </li></ul><p><b> </b></p>Tom Phillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17811449456953451486noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8253711728436634854.post-31975190974835948692021-05-25T07:42:00.003-07:002021-06-09T13:49:08.882-07:00Pleasure and the Pandemic: Is it Over? <p> -- By Tom Phillips <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1H29Mc2bKn8kFa_Ot_RYMRPbSDgWGpwd78YGt12TVn1w3NGtgI3Qp78_0qS84b3f9rm5Ker6rksW8-7tMQObI4P5_8Oc_v0PNZ98qGS8OsB7GEiSERu8VLCKOZ_3zwzLleqbwDAO-ODGV/s275/3rd+St.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="206" data-original-width="275" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1H29Mc2bKn8kFa_Ot_RYMRPbSDgWGpwd78YGt12TVn1w3NGtgI3Qp78_0qS84b3f9rm5Ker6rksW8-7tMQObI4P5_8Oc_v0PNZ98qGS8OsB7GEiSERu8VLCKOZ_3zwzLleqbwDAO-ODGV/w320-h240/3rd+St.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Downtown Art/Alpha Omega, 19 E. 3rd St. </td></tr></tbody></table><br /></p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">Sixty years after the Sixties, The East Village can
still feel like the most sensuous part of New York.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Like their spiritual forebears, people in
this low-rise, low-rent district live for pleasure – erotic, psychedelic and
aesthetic. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So it felt right that a graffiti-scarred
vacant lot on East 3<sup>rd</sup> Street was the scene for a revival of live experimental
theater in the dying days of the pandemic.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Interdisciplinary artists Jasmine Hearn and Sugar Vendil concluded the 2021
LaMama Moves! Dance Festival with emotionally charged solos, under a blue sky on a sultry Sunday. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;"></span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2urvRLpam2BzcTMOHNmk_DhY4BaW03HZaQauWms1V9T1q71_pGD8FRJHg0xWYrNkcXdjR_HSkqcWEC7xo4b1XhXZqc_DrlTzLFdw7BciiKVI4tdSjova15_vicktOJPTtu9fHpaUL0BpZ/s2048/20210523-DSC08362.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1367" data-original-width="2048" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2urvRLpam2BzcTMOHNmk_DhY4BaW03HZaQauWms1V9T1q71_pGD8FRJHg0xWYrNkcXdjR_HSkqcWEC7xo4b1XhXZqc_DrlTzLFdw7BciiKVI4tdSjova15_vicktOJPTtu9fHpaUL0BpZ/w320-h214/20210523-DSC08362.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jasmine Hearn: Photo by Steven Pisano </td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">The stage covered half the lot, but it didn’t seem big enough for Hearn (pronoun “they”) who danced and sang along with three songs from their new album </span><i style="font-size: 18.6667px;">Pleasure Memories.</i><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"> </span><span style="font-size: 14pt;">A child of south Texas, Hearn whirled, dove, and slid across
the floor, spilling over the edge, slamming up against the wall of the adjacent
building. </span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> They </span><span style="font-size: 14pt;">undressed
and dressed on stage, pulled pants on inside-out, then ducked into what looked
like a slave’s gunny sack.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span><span style="font-size: 14pt;">All this was
mockumented by a buddy called Missy, who scrawled squiggles upside-down on
a poster board held like an apron. Inside-out, upside-down and all over the
place, they smiled recalling pleasures of the past and cried out with desire for
pleasures to come. Their bottom line was survival, and they made it through.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><span style="font-size: medium;">Sugar Vendil, a second-generation Filipinx-American, took
a grimmer view of a year that saw racial and political turmoil erupt into
anti-Asian violence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She performed several
of her <i>Test Sites,</i> brief experiments in process and form—whose title is
also a reminder of post-war US nuclear tests that devastated Pacific islands,
leaving them radioactive to this day. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(Anyone
remember Eniwetok?)</span><br /> <o:p></o:p><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivW3b9wIxFRqGy2m8WydtZb1-qwZecrniKuXv-ieGILY_1tnFFTOYXgVLKKJW6QSdmzgEgESHPiT3wCjwDed5vTFIpc3WD1CYkVD4GbF7KX3Atl1QHiW1On_8rpQyE3dudTre5-4jCAK4y/s2048/20210523-DSC09344.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1366" data-original-width="2048" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivW3b9wIxFRqGy2m8WydtZb1-qwZecrniKuXv-ieGILY_1tnFFTOYXgVLKKJW6QSdmzgEgESHPiT3wCjwDed5vTFIpc3WD1CYkVD4GbF7KX3Atl1QHiW1On_8rpQyE3dudTre5-4jCAK4y/s320/20210523-DSC09344.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;"><br />Like Hearn, Vendil’s ambience was a mix of live song
and processed soundtrack, with various forms of the piano: In one piece, she plunked
the keys of a toy baby grand.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In another
she ran her hands wildly across a miniature keyboard.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">In “This Too Shall Pass,” Vendil used repetitive
movement clashing with inchoate sound to evoke the madness of pandemic life—one
day just like another, amid a storm of conflicting emotions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At the end of this exercise she invited the
audience to join in a primal scream, which felt good – conclusive, hopeful,
fun.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> <br /> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">At the end of her set she was joined by five Asian
women, planted in the audience, who came to the stage bearing wildflower
bouquets and bubble tea in plastic cups.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Vendil helped herself to a bubble tea and was surrounded by sweetness,
community and love. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thus passes the
pandemic, we pray.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">The bulk of the festival took place online. The earlier shows--- wildly varied, a la LaMama --- are available on demand through June 30 at <strong><a href="https://vimeo.com/ondemand/lamamamoves21" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" shape="rect" target="_blank">https://vimeo.com/ondemand/lamamamoves21</a></strong></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">-- Copyright 2021 by Tom Phillips <br />Performance photos by Steven Pisano </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><br /><p></p>Tom Phillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17811449456953451486noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8253711728436634854.post-67770215849430132032021-05-06T04:43:00.003-07:002021-05-06T06:21:08.060-07:00Sick Time: Pits of the Pandemic <p>-- By Tom Phillips </p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4gyp7D86ck1F7jfhZpjXCf9l8WNKRdONkpcw-Ktiz2YsW6Pj-k0x0F3TWuYmk9Mf7DFpvPD6DXRYHteRxCfz71zI55toPxn7nBHghQBMY2kG8U9peyr4gOVlWCiw39qoQrQGZux1ujE-T/s2000/Stefanie_Batten_Bland_Baranova+-8697.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1333" data-original-width="2000" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4gyp7D86ck1F7jfhZpjXCf9l8WNKRdONkpcw-Ktiz2YsW6Pj-k0x0F3TWuYmk9Mf7DFpvPD6DXRYHteRxCfz71zI55toPxn7nBHghQBMY2kG8U9peyr4gOVlWCiw39qoQrQGZux1ujE-T/s320/Stefanie_Batten_Bland_Baranova+-8697.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Kolonial: </i>Stefanie Batten Bland </td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">America is starting
to emerge from 14 months of viral living, but like all traumas, this pandemic
year will live on in mind and body. Reams of research and acres of art will
record how we lived and died with the coronavirus, and how it changed us.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ahead of the game, the Baryshnikov Arts
Center of New York is offering the first fruits of an ugly season --- a
piece created and performed during the pandemic, under medically-prescribed COVID
health and safety protocols.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">Choreographer
Stefanie Batten Bland assembled half a dozen dancers in BAC’s Jerome Robbins
Theater, in an installation by Conrad Quesen.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They begin the drama in separate plastic bubbles, close enough to see each other but barred from touching.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In a recorded introduction, Bland says <i>Kolonial
</i>is about isolation, being on display, voyeurism, the desire to
touch; finding ways to be with others, and then finding why we can’t be. The 20-minute
video performance captures the recurring misery of pandemic life, its constant
approach and avoidance of human contact, its multiple barriers of plastic.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;"><span></span></span></p><a name='more'></a><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">The dancers
are clothed in rags, their bodies streaked with dirt. They scuffle in their bubbles
until their locked-up energy turns into vibrations, spasms, paroxysms, seizures.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The booming, growling sound score by Grant
Cutler evokes the gnashing of teeth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">Halfway
through the video, the color scheme changes from a ghastly blue and white to a
warm yellow and brown – the colors of flesh. And the participants rip through
the walls for what looks like to our freaked-out eyes like an orgy – they
actually touch, and climb on each other to make a people pile.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They end up in something like a smoldering fire
zone, standing around unmasked and too close for comfort, but not looking at
each other, disengaged, waiting. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">Kolonial</span></i><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;"> was recorded in December 2020, during
the loneliest of holiday seasons. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The program
says the installation was based on colonial exposition parks of the 19<sup>th</sup>
and 20<sup>th</sup> centuries, but that reference is not clearly
developed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It looked to me more like a
pandemic anxiety attack inside an environmental disaster area. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The piece stands as an artifact of a sick era
in our present century, a trial by ordeal with a verdict yet to come. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">The first of
three Digital Spring productions from BAC, <i>Kolonial </i>is being streamed free
on demand through May 17 at </span><a href="http://www.bacnyc.org/"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">www.bacnyc.org</span></a><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p>Copyright 2021 by Tom Phillips<br />Photo by Maria Baranova </o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p><br /></o:p></span></p><br /><p></p>Tom Phillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17811449456953451486noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8253711728436634854.post-79727050896327968022021-04-24T22:44:00.009-07:002021-04-25T12:39:43.867-07:00Rites of Spring <p>-- By Tom Phillips </p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"></span></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuNeXvLiLsYZqFIKUXccrMYMSMNJEzgZ4dFhxjnIBlHRKRGQj7fCsyL2G_fsvgCoaWKS7li25EVm0-2JDAyt0tN4YL_ox-AnDTP70oUA4b9ExfohzafywTijofRIFLm8AQhU5MzqECOCOY/" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1440" data-original-width="1920" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuNeXvLiLsYZqFIKUXccrMYMSMNJEzgZ4dFhxjnIBlHRKRGQj7fCsyL2G_fsvgCoaWKS7li25EVm0-2JDAyt0tN4YL_ox-AnDTP70oUA4b9ExfohzafywTijofRIFLm8AQhU5MzqECOCOY/" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jody Sperling/Time Lapse Dance </td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">One problem in dealing with the world’s
environmental crisis is that it’s composed of so many interrelated problems, most
of them difficult to picture.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Science
does a lousy job of dramatizing climate change – so by the time people are forced to recognize it, their homes may be gone and their lives in danger.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And so it falls to the arts to show what
business-as-usual is doing to us.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And
Earth Day is an annual opportunity to seize the outdoor stage.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> <span><a name='more'></a></span></span></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/COD9KQZHFF8/">Enter Jody Sperling </a>and her Time Lapse dancers with what has become a
rite of spring – a company clothed, covered, festooned, floating and in danger
of choking in plastic bags, leaping and whirling in the streets of Manhattan’s Upper
West Side. Never mind that plastic shopping bags were
outlawed in New York this year.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They are
still everywhere, and the most egregious form of plastic – the afterlife
of oil, the cheap luxury which has already stained the earth and threatens to inundate it. </span></p><p></p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Down-to-earth as a Morris team and eerie as Extraterrestrials, a trio of <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/COE0gohH5Ga/">bag-women</a> danced uphill from Riverside
Drive to Broadway during a Saturday street fair on 103rd. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">They were trailed by a gang of delighted
children – which alarmed some grownups, concerned that the kids didn't understand plastic is poison. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">But that is exactly the point – that people
don’t get it, that we dump this poison daily into earth, sky, and sea – and it even
looks pretty if you don’t look too closely. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"></span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2_fz6JGr06R51ziWRbQarS-zUPX3ZQij1EmfCbron9nJpmYoCLESIU-uN2VbojbD-T2d4-jpQkGK-_9ocCHGbF8b79FfERutKDAFkTBiFE2q0UWcpHrznv_sJt3O_vq3ZDdZLTiZO9Wf3/s1800/Coffee.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1800" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2_fz6JGr06R51ziWRbQarS-zUPX3ZQij1EmfCbron9nJpmYoCLESIU-uN2VbojbD-T2d4-jpQkGK-_9ocCHGbF8b79FfERutKDAFkTBiFE2q0UWcpHrznv_sJt3O_vq3ZDdZLTiZO9Wf3/s320/Coffee.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Wake up and Smell the Coffee" </td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"><br />The charm of plastic is often well hidden. Customers think their take-out coffee cups are paper, but most are lined and capped with plastic, and tens of billions are thrown out each year. New York's Butoh queen Vangeline sent her company out dumpster-diving four years ago. and they brought back enough used cups to cover the stage at the Triskelion Arts Center in Brooklyn. For this pandemic year, they streamed their 2017 production of "Wake up and Smell the Coffee," and it was still fresh enough to give you the jitters. The climax was a caffeine-fueled picnic brawl involving the whole company, followed by the death of one dancer and a ceremonial cleanup. The company ended with black garbage bags stuffed with dirty cups balanced on their heads. Want a refill on that? </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Back at the street fair, another all-female troupe improvised a healing ceremony for the waning days of the pandemic. Jill Sigman and her dancers began in a tight circle, then broke up into individual bubbles. They came back together slowly and hesitantly, exploring each other's auras before they finally dared to touch. "Healing/trying" captured these times, both the pain of isolation and the effort it takes to emerge. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">-- Copyright 2021 by Tom Phillips<br /></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Vangeline Theater photo by Michael Blase </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p></p>Tom Phillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17811449456953451486noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8253711728436634854.post-71966681727368208632021-04-23T20:58:00.002-07:002022-10-03T06:16:10.474-07:00Unfamiliar Quotations <p> -- By Tom Phillips </p><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNb-gaPKEVyc86g8blck3cAgIQ6B5qJ6fvu6eK1PGamY9fEnJ296EJ8d8ct9h4D17XpqTOf_2iLeHzuSk2jTVNMRH94PN4ga9U9M88reAniMdC-FDCv5ZECChjtpirdQrPpu1Rn5Ib6gCV/s972/Zen-Master-Hakuin-Ekaku.png" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="972" data-original-width="600" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNb-gaPKEVyc86g8blck3cAgIQ6B5qJ6fvu6eK1PGamY9fEnJ296EJ8d8ct9h4D17XpqTOf_2iLeHzuSk2jTVNMRH94PN4ga9U9M88reAniMdC-FDCv5ZECChjtpirdQrPpu1Rn5Ib6gCV/s320/Zen-Master-Hakuin-Ekaku.png" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hakuin Ekaku</td></tr></tbody></table>Like most people I have my familiar quotations – the 23<sup>rd</sup> Psalm, the Lord’s Prayer -- but I rarely use them. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I rely mainly on a small collection of private quotes, proven effective for getting through the day. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>None of them shows up in a google search – these are stray quotations, scraps of poems or conversations, possibly misquoted or misattributed, but tried and true. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p> So here they are:</o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><b><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">1. “Most mistakes that people make aren’t that important.”</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><o:p style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> </o:p></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">This was the last line of a poem, a lost poem from a defunct magazine of the 1960s, written by a teacher of mine.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The poem was about a bric-a-brac shop full of useless items.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> It ended something like, "We should be grateful for </span>these things, because they teach us / Most mistakes that people make aren’t that important.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The author was Sheldon <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Sheldon-P.-Zitner/e/B001H9XSE8">Zitner</a>, professor of English at <st1:place><st1:placename>Grinnell</st1:placename> <st1:placetype>College</st1:placetype></st1:place>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A <st1:place>Brooklyn</st1:place> native sojourning on the prairie, he later drifted north to the <st1:place><st1:placetype>University </st1:placetype>of <st1:placename>Toronto</st1:placename></st1:place> where he became known and loved as a "Canadian poet," though he was about as Canadian as an onion bagel. When I knew him he was an intense young American poet and playwright, and a brilliant teacher of literature.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For Prof. Zitner every class was a performance – a meticulously prepared improv with students serving as props, foils, dunces, and occasionally co-teachers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">One day he seemed to be holding forth as usual when he suddenly slammed his fist on the desk and apologized --- “I just can’t teach today.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> Somehow </span>he felt he was having an off-day, and was furious with himself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He couldn’t abide anything less than brilliance. The poem may have been an act of kindness to himself –- forgiveness for being less than great. When I'm angry with myself in that way, I mumble the last line, savoring its calm rhythm, its modest internal rhyme, its soothing sentiment. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore; text-indent: -0.25in;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><b><span style="mso-list: Ignore; text-indent: -0.25in;">2.<span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><span style="text-indent: -0.25in;">“Now is not the time to be in a great hurry.”</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes; text-indent: -0.25in;"> </span><o:p style="text-indent: -0.25in;"> </o:p></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">This is from another beloved teacher, Zen Master <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soen_Nakagawa">Soen Nakagawa</a> from <st1:country-region>Japan</st1:country-region>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the 1970s he would fly in periodically to lead intensive retreats for the Zen Studies Society, bringing wisdom and spontaneity to the often solemn and plodding practice of American Zen students.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I loved the personal interviews he would give during retreats at our Zendo in the Catskills.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His <em>dokusan</em> chamber was on the second floor; we would line up at the foot of the stairs, and go up one by one as he rang his little bell. At one<i> sesshin</i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I had so much to say that I would tear up the stairs as if the place was on fire, making a terrible racket. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On the last day, I tore upstairs again.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But this time he sent me back, and made me walk up calmly and quietly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Now is not the time to be in a great hurry.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore; text-indent: -0.25in;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><b><span style="mso-list: Ignore; text-indent: -0.25in;">3.<span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><span style="text-indent: -0.25in;">“He knows the heart for the famished cat it is.”</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes; text-indent: -0.25in;"> </span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">Here is another fragment of a lost poem, also from a little magazine in the 1960s.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All I remember is that one line and my image of a cat foraging in alleyways, desperate for food.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I remember this while walking the streets late at night, with my chronic recurring deficit of unmet needs, “desiring this man’s art, and that man’s scope, with what I most enjoy contented least..”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I can’t remember who “He” is in the poem, except that he knows the heart for the famished cat it is.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That lets me know I’m not the only one, in fact we are legion.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Everybody’s got a hungry heart,” says the pop song, but I prefer my feline image: inarticulate, driven, not just needy but desperately so, famished.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><b>4. "Steer in the direction of the skid." </b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">This is from Driver Education in high school---what to do if your car goes out of control on ice or snow. It was re-purposed by American Zen master Alan Watts as a way to deal with temptation. When you feel drawn to one of the seven deadly sins, don't try to yank yourself back to the right path. You'll just continue to skid, or spin out of control. Instead, set out to fulfill your desires -- and you will immediately see the consequences you'd been trying to ignore. Only then can you make a reasoned decision---to sin or not to sin. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><b>5. "There is nothing in the world so beautiful as a healthy, wise old man." </b><br />This is a Chinese proverb, from a culture that respects old age. I've seen old men whose wizened features glowed with vitality and joy. Sometimes I feel that way. W.B. Yeats makes a carving of two ancient Chinese men come alive in his poem <i>Lapis Lazuli: "</i>..One asks for mournful melodies;/ Accomplished fingers begin to play./ Their eyes mid many wrinkles, their eyes,/ Their ancient, glittering eyes, are gay." </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: adobe-garamond-pro; font-size: 20px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><b>6. </b><b>"The highest that man can aspire to is wonder." </b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><b> </b>This one I remember as being from Goethe, although I can't find it in a long list of his famous lines. Wonder is appreciating without wholly understanding -- because some things are beyond understanding. It reminds me of Whitman's poet who walks out of a lecture by a learned astronomer and gazes "in silent wonder at the stars." It's a simple truth, one I remember when I am baffled or overwhelmed by life, yet delighted to be alive. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><b><br /></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><b><br /></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><b>5. "What do poets do between poems? We prepare for our death." </b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">This came from Gilbert Sorrentino, another Brooklyn poet from the 60s and 70s. In my picture of it he's asked that question at a cocktail party, and gives this answer. The radical simplicity of it -- he doesn't even mention eating, drinking, or sleeping -- feels uncompromised.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">The founder of Soen’s teaching line, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hakuin_Ekaku">Hakuin</a> Ekaku, had an even briefer, breathtaking summary. I saw it in an exhibit if Hakuin's calligraphy at Japan Society, a one-word koan, the character for “death.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh88zXNRBr6fnnmFKFGMlv8oJfv8BkCrOpU6WeUcd8g74DK6qcDMy2Vku9Psajp3sk94bvUI6rPli9LIfv8rnhkhYyZUK3OYbyHR67k942RRyL_-EamW6bWkejBeoG1WQqNqfKjJMNtczHB/s349/1989.7.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="349" data-original-width="255" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh88zXNRBr6fnnmFKFGMlv8oJfv8BkCrOpU6WeUcd8g74DK6qcDMy2Vku9Psajp3sk94bvUI6rPli9LIfv8rnhkhYyZUK3OYbyHR67k942RRyL_-EamW6bWkejBeoG1WQqNqfKjJMNtczHB/w234-h320/1989.7.jpg" width="234" /></a></div><br />That's all he wrote. </span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">-- Copyright 2021 by Tom Phillips</div>Tom Phillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17811449456953451486noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8253711728436634854.post-78657509767775720102021-04-13T13:34:00.006-07:002021-04-14T04:43:03.130-07:00The Strangest Dream<p> -- By Tom Phillips </p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgKJSVm_awYKJHqFRFtipllHt3MM8cFQryEtSQGz3FjODtZIODr8K13pfwJLbxLY_XYgXq-iW1Z3QQ7wTKf1v_gC6Xzg3RaVeU92ksL-CcjBK8Z8qYskCt-3vL2ztfYR29ykJFU5YswGXn/s1000/guernica-full-painting.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="451" data-original-width="1000" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgKJSVm_awYKJHqFRFtipllHt3MM8cFQryEtSQGz3FjODtZIODr8K13pfwJLbxLY_XYgXq-iW1Z3QQ7wTKf1v_gC6Xzg3RaVeU92ksL-CcjBK8Z8qYskCt-3vL2ztfYR29ykJFU5YswGXn/w400-h180/guernica-full-painting.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"> Picasso: Guernica</td></tr></tbody></table><p>Vaccinated at last, on the eve of Easter I flew masked across America, not looking out the window, not talking to my neighbor, and arrived in Seattle to meet our new granddaughter, already nine months old. My sleeping meds disappeared enroute, probably somewhere "in security." I went to bed, prepared for the worst. And I dreamed: </p><p>Forty years, forty years. The phrase kept echoing in my head, an anvil chorus, an indictment, a sentence imposed by a merciless court. There was music, a vicious descending line that came down like a hammer, repeat, repeat. And I saw men taking sledgehammers to a nursery, to the place where their children play, bringing down their hammerheads to pulverize everything, to turn it into trash, shards, the ruins of a civilization. </p><p>I awoke in horror. Trained to see people in dreams as fragments of myself, I thought -- can this be? My meds were repressing a wrecker of all I supposedly love? </p><p>But no, most of me was a bystander, one who watched for forty years as men took sledgehammers to a civilization -- destroying the world that had been a-building, the world meant for their children and grandchildren. </p><p>I had dreamed the Reagan Revolution. </p><span><a name='more'></a></span><p>The stockman, the bursar, began with a blast ---"No one's entitled to anything!" </p><p>Money cried --- God Bless the Child!</p><p>A burning Bush stormed the desert -- read my lips, read my lips! With a giant sucking sound, it was consumed by a clown. H. Ross Pierrot said -- I told you so. </p><p>In came Billary, a two-faced monster. Not asking, not telling, ending "welfare as we know it," defending, defining, defiling marriage as we knew it, signing a bill for bankers to do it. The Bill came due. </p><p>An archfiend had been laden with a plan to attack America. It worked better than he dreamed. </p><p>Another Bush took arms against a sea of troubles, an Axis of Evil with heads in three directions. Mission unaccomplished, another Bush consumed. Exit Axis, rising seas. </p><p>Enter Mr. Noh Drama, with "greatness thrust upon him." He purred, he demurred. Single mothers took third jobs, fathers sere hounded to Honduras. The archfiend was assassinated and thrown into the sea. </p><p>At last came the Beast, slouching through Bethlehem, down the Capitol steps. Four years later, "the carnage ends here." </p><p>In comes an old man, been Biden his time. Joe and Jill run up the Hill to fetch a pail of oughta. </p><p>"So happy just to be alive, underneath this sky of blue/ On this new morning, with you." </p><p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1k0Y_SOOQZ5ro7iPlfmJH4BmKhG7T726S7fAHBjXjY69-uRsdJecBNvQBA94kmhAyEVRM_2J5FVj7Z1Shwey-6szhEOlUKLk3z2FgAKVW_KV3wCgNhBicljP__BRiHCghtF8JbCQzqljT/s526/Stella+and+me.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="526" data-original-width="526" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1k0Y_SOOQZ5ro7iPlfmJH4BmKhG7T726S7fAHBjXjY69-uRsdJecBNvQBA94kmhAyEVRM_2J5FVj7Z1Shwey-6szhEOlUKLk3z2FgAKVW_KV3wCgNhBicljP__BRiHCghtF8JbCQzqljT/w200-h200/Stella+and+me.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Stella Justice Burke & me </td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><p>- Copyright 2021 by Tom Phillips <br /><br /></p><p><br /></p><br /><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Tom Phillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17811449456953451486noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8253711728436634854.post-33444790395117592962021-04-01T03:58:00.004-07:002021-04-01T16:29:11.044-07:00The Passion of George Floyd<p class="jn jo go au b jp jq jr js jt ju jv jw jx jy jz ka kb kc kd ke kf kg kh ki kj dj hk" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="c5df" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #292929; font-family: sohne, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 32px; margin: 2em 0px -0.46em; word-break: break-word;"><span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: -0.003em;"></span></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAwjb8yw3ccEFCUslsDpaI5UUlpxio0dPehPsfuVNZ3FgXHjAFQPTgc354c_e09FuDHOVGBdwOul0U3aO0fSs-GMVtljMMBO2eRQCIn68_cG1YqjeyR6NMs8AdUHnug4ulGqHXy6GP2NOS/s840/Floyd.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="840" data-original-width="700" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAwjb8yw3ccEFCUslsDpaI5UUlpxio0dPehPsfuVNZ3FgXHjAFQPTgc354c_e09FuDHOVGBdwOul0U3aO0fSs-GMVtljMMBO2eRQCIn68_cG1YqjeyR6NMs8AdUHnug4ulGqHXy6GP2NOS/w334-h400/Floyd.jpg" width="334" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">George Floyd </td></tr></tbody></table><p class="jn jo go au b jp jq jr js jt ju jv jw jx jy jz ka kb kc kd ke kf kg kh ki kj dj hk" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="e1eb" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #292929; font-family: sohne, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 32px; margin: 2em 0px -0.46em; word-break: break-word;"></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 24pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 24.0pt; margin: 24pt 0in 0in;"><span style="color: #292929; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; letter-spacing: -0.05pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Have you ever wondered
why the events of this week are known as the Passion of Jesus Christ? </span><span style="color: #292929; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt; letter-spacing: -0.05pt;"> I always thought
the word referred to the strong emotions Jesus felt during the last days of his
life. But according to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word originates in
Christian Theology, and its primary meaning is “the suffering of pain.. the
fact of being acted upon.”</span></p>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">
<hr align="center" size="2" width="100%" />
</span></div>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 24pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 24.0pt; margin: 24pt 0in 0in;"><span style="color: #292929; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; letter-spacing: -0.05pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Most of us think of our
lives as what we do. But what is done to us is probably a greater
factor — all the ways we are acted upon at work or school, by the government
and the media, medicine and the law, other people, the police.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 24pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 24.0pt; margin: 24pt 0in 0in;"><span style="color: #292929; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; letter-spacing: -0.05pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Those of us with
comfortable lives occasionally have a chance to act for ourselves — to do what
we want, or tell others to do what we want. But for poor and marginalized
people — the homeless, dispossessed, people with disabilities, those in prison
— - what is done to them is nearly all of life.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 24pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 24.0pt; margin: 24pt 0in 0in;"><span style="color: #292929; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; letter-spacing: -0.05pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The great
African-American theologian Howard Thurman saw Jesus in these people — the
masses who live “with their backs against the wall.” He called them the
Disinherited.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 24pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 24.0pt; margin: 24pt 0in 0in;"><span style="color: #292929; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; letter-spacing: -0.05pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Jesus was a poor,
disinherited Jew — lacking status or even citizenship in the Roman Empire. His
people, Israel, were surrounded and oppressed by a dominant, controlling state.
Their only freedom was how they would respond.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 24pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 24.0pt; margin: 24pt 0in 0in;"><span style="color: #292929; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; letter-spacing: -0.05pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Some — like the Temple
authorities — chose the way of accommodation. They accepted Roman supremacy,
and tried to live with it. Others — the Zealots — wanted to fight to restore
Israel’s glory.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 24pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 24.0pt; margin: 24pt 0in 0in;"><span style="color: #292929; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; letter-spacing: -0.05pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Jesus rejected both
ways. Instead he preached a radical change in the inner attitude of people. He
told his disciples to follow him, and not be afraid… of persecution, torture,
even death. “Blessed are you when people revile and persecute you … for your
reward is great in heaven.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 24pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 24.0pt; margin: 24pt 0in 0in;"><span style="color: #292929; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; letter-spacing: -0.05pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In 1949, Thurman wrote
that Jesus knew: “anyone who permits another to determine the quality of his
inner life gives into the hands of the other the keys to his destiny… It is a
man’s reaction to things that determines the ability of others to exercise
power over him ..”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 24pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 24.0pt; margin: 24pt 0in 0in;"><span style="color: #292929; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; letter-spacing: -0.05pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Jesus’ arrest in the
Garden of Gethsemane is the turning point from action to passion. After years
of speaking truth to power, he is handed over to his enemies. Things are no
longer done by him, but to him. He is tried and convicted, flogged, mocked,
crowned with thorns, spat on, stripped and nailed to cross to die. This is his
passion, and in his passion he fulfills his vocation — he drinks his cup.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 24pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 24.0pt; margin: 24pt 0in 0in;"><span style="color: #292929; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; letter-spacing: -0.05pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Fast forward to our own
time — to the murder of George Floyd, and the legions of disinherited people
whose lives have been squandered in prison, or snuffed out by official violence.
The Passion of Jesus Christ represents our power over the rulers of this world
— our freedom to react and respond, as individuals and communities. Today we
see the face of George Floyd painted larger than life on city walls that define
the lives of the disinherited. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 24pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 24.0pt; margin: 24pt 0in 0in;"><span style="color: #292929; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; letter-spacing: -0.05pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">That face — like the
image of Christ — has become an icon. It has the power to change the
quality of our inner lives -- to transform humiliation and death into
liberation and new life.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 24pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 24.0pt; margin: 24pt 0in 0in;"><span style="color: #292929; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; letter-spacing: -0.05pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Copyright 2021 by Tom
Phillips <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><br /><p></p>Tom Phillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17811449456953451486noreply@blogger.com2