With the general popular success of my first “Flowers” painting, I decided to do some more in a similar style. This one uses a significantly “cooler” palette than the first one. Also, somehow a tiny real ant crawled into one of the paint flowers while it was drying and died of exposure. So there’s an unexpected dose of reality here. You ought to be able to click on the picture to view it full-size. Look for a few more of these before too long.
October, 2009
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Painting: Flowers 2
Friday, October 30th, 2009America’s Next Great Pundit
Thursday, October 22nd, 2009The Washington Post is holding a competition, looking for “America’s Next Great Pundit”. I entered it yesterday and thought I’d share my piece. Fingers crossed.
In America, You Can’t Hit the Quarterback
Two of the National Football League’s most compelling stories are connected. First, many have suggested that football’s repetitively violent collisions may lead to increased rates of dementia or other disabilities. It’s easy to show steady growth in player mass and velocity; it follows mathematically that the force of each impact has also grown. Second, the NFL has regularly expanded protections for one particular group of players: quarterbacks. A simple on-the-field “roughing the passer” penalty has morphed into a complex and unpredictable off-the-field system of monetary fines for impermissibly touching a quarterback.
A causal link snaps tight in considering the timing of these stories. The public is becoming aware of long-term effects of football on the human body. It’s not hard to imagine that the players have at least intuitively known about these possible consequences. It’s also easy to speculate that informed players have already lobbied the NFL for additional safeguards.
Why, though, would the league single out only one type of player for protection from the game’s unforgiving nature? Maybe because the position is undeniably the most glamorous, high-profile, and marketable. Quarterbacks are often paid more than teammates, especially if you consider endorsements and commercial opportunities. They’re often considered to be smarter. They’re often white. The quarterback is an institution; other players are grist for the mill.
The true connection jumps out in viewing these stories against the grander game of capitalism and high finance – a game also widely accepted as being violent and unforgiving. The nickel version of the current meltdown always comes back to a story of major financial players operating at least recklessly and our industry regulators acting at least negligently. Millions of Americans have lost careers, forfeited homes, and slipped a standard of living. Even in the wake of these cataclysmic events, it seems like there has been no significant impact for those quarterbacks of capitalism. They’re somehow insulated from the dangers of playing.
Most of us are not so lucky. We have a view from somewhere deep in the trenches. We’re the linemen of the market, colliding every day, and fail to fully understand or contemplate the trend towards special treatment for our fellow players. For a nation founded on equality, it’s disturbing that we could so easily accept a class of people exempted from the rules.
UAB Theatre: A Streetcar Named Desire
Wednesday, October 14th, 2009
I challenge anyone to find a better line than, “STEEELLLLLLLLLA!”
It was only a few years ago that I saw Tennessee Williams‘ Pulitzer-winning A Streetcar Named Desire for the first time. Before that, I had heard “STELLA!” pretty much everywhere else. I think it was on the Simpsons, Saturday Night Live, Gilmore Girls, and in all kinds of other popular media. It’s one of those iconic lines that you already know, and know to laugh, even before you know exactly where it comes from. Kind of like I remember knowing pretty much all the jokes from The Kentucky Fried Movie – thanks to all my high school friends – before I could finally see it. Or how you all know “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn,” even if you’ve never seen Gone With the Wind.
Then I saw Streetcar for the first time and finally got to have that AHA moment of finally understanding just why the “Stella!” line is essential and meaningful. Experiencing it is different from just hearing about it. Kind of like sex. Then, once you’ve had the real thing, you acquire an understanding of how and when to weave it into your own conversations. You can be funny in new and different ways. I wonder how many people in the audience were experiencing “the kindness of strangers” for the first time.
Maybe I could work this into a grand unified theory and call it something like the Three Phases of “Stella!” It might apply to all kinds of things. Maybe like skiing.
So I was looking forward to seeing how the UAB Theatre students would handle these difficult characters. Very well, for sure. My favorite of the four main characters was probably Jessica Walston as Stella, though it really might be only if you forced me to pick. Her Stella was maybe a little stronger and less mousy than I’ve seen and she seemed still visibly moved by the play’s emotion at the final curtain.
The other actors more-than-capably handled the other primary roles. I imagine it’s hard to find someone who can handle the straightforward blue-collar masculinity of Stanley, but Atom Bennett pulls it off very well (and with appropriate and killer arm tattoos). Likewise, it must be difficult to find a young actress with any hope whatsoever of playing the charming, complex, and world-weary Blanche, but Lindsay Allen fits and without jarring up her accent throughout the performance. Finally, I think Mitch may rank as one of my favorite supporting characters and Daniel Martin embodies both his teddybear-ness and struggles to be more than just a chump.
I’ve seen the play three times now and I’m always left with questions. My opinion is that it’s meant to be ambiguous, though I keep seeing it directed with some certain slants. I’m planning on reading this script sometime soon to try and see if there are additional clues.
- Does Blanche go crazy? Every version I’ve seen has Blanche starting to show signs of madness after or during her encounter with Mitch, but I don’t feel like the lines really indicate that she’s mad. Instead, I always wonder if we’re just seeing her wear out her welcome in a way which she’s done many times in the past, because of her inability to tell any truth. I think Blanche is affirmatively trying to put her unique spin on things all the way to the end of the play. It’s not madness; it’s practiced charm and deceit. She’s even trying to disarm the doctor and her poetic brain is working on getting the narratives pieced together for the next phase of her life. But I’ve never heard of it played that way on stage. Even if not “mad” – whatever that means – I would acknowledge that she definitely doesn’t fit in the world like everyone else.
- Is Blanche lying to Mitch (and to Stella and all the men who came before) about the circumstances of her former husband’s death? Everything we know about Blanche is that she’s a liar. She tells us so. But then, at a crucial and important moment with a new beaux, she tells a story which is designed to gather his sympathy (and ours) and we’re supposed to think it’s true. I just don’t buy it. I always wonder if at least some chunk of her story is bogus. Again, I’ve never seen it played that way on stage – it seems like it’s played as 100% true, even though we know she’s completely untrustworthy.
- Does Stanley rape Blanche? I think it’s strikingly ambiguous from the words, though I’ve frequently been rebuked for suggesting any alternate theory. One possibility is that he just physically or verbally scares the hell out of her and then Blanche turns around and complains to Stella about it. Another is that he’s intentionally or clumsily physically violent with her. I’ve also always wondered if you could play Blanche as affirmatively seducing Stanley in a last ditch effort to gain the upper hand. I’m just not sure. But it seems awfully irrational, out-of-character, and simplistic for Stanley to rape his wife’s sister while expecting the birth of his first child.
- Is Blanche a virgin? I believe there’s evidence that she might be. She may have married someone that wouldn’t sleep with her. Then we get to watch her normal mode-of-operation with Mitch, and she repeatedly puts him off. She’s uncomfortable with the sweaty and humid New Orleans lust between Stanley and Stella. Even though there’s all kinds of implication that she’s a fallen woman, I’m not so sure. As Stella says early on, “People talk.” I think instead that she’s used to getting whatever she wants out of her targets without having to sleep with them. Men clearly like her. Is this why she’s still not married?
Thanks a million to Melissa Christian and Theatre UAB for letting me visit again. A good performance makes you think about it for the rest of the week – and I have. Continued success to a group that always does a good job.
Washington Post: Leaps and Bounds
Tuesday, October 13th, 2009
I didn’t write this, someone named Sarah Kaufman did, but it’s a very cool dance/football article from the September 20, 2009, issue of the Washington Post. It relates to other stuff I’ve written about dance on this blog, so I thought I’d reprint the first part and link you to go see the rest.
***
Leaps and Bounds – Gridiron Grace Shares Much With the Ultimate Source of Fancy Footwork: Dance
By Sarah Kaufman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, September 20, 2009
To other sports belongs the poetry. Football has none of baseball’s tranquillity and patience, and unlike boxing or tennis, it’s not a sport of studious, calculating loners. It doesn’t have soccer’s fluidity, or basketball’s popcorn aerials. Football lurches and galumphs; it traffics in confusion, time pressure and pileup after brutal pileup.
And yet, though football may be the closest thing to a gladiatorial spectacle since the fall of Rome, it can also claim kinship with the slippered heroes of the ballet stage.
True, its players are the sports equivalent of Hummers — overbuilt and overbulgy, their pads and helmets inflating them beyond human scale. Their uniforms don’t enhance the male physique, they objectify it: table-top shoulders, bowling-ball head, lumpy thighs like sacks of feed.
But in the players’ finest moments, elegance often exists alongside the brutality. And no wonder: Few sports have more in common with the formality and artistry of a dance performance.
Consider the structure. At center stage, in the spotlight, is the star — the quarterback, stepping away from the linemen (a corps de beefsteak that has its own ensemble work to do). The quarterback’s solo, the few seconds it takes to mime a diversion and find his partner, makes up the first few beats of the team’s choreography, which has been scripted, rehearsed, cast with the best available performers.
As with all live theater, anything can happen, especially with a skilled defense trying to steal the show. In the most artful finish — okay, so maybe it doesn’t eat up time as well as the running game, but we’re talking aesthetics here — our hero connects with a wide receiver, sending a whistling pass to a fleet Mercury who will rocket high with a half-spin and full extension, making the catch and keeping it inbounds by the tips of his exquisitely pointed toes.
That’s how the Pittsburgh Steelers’ Santonio Holmes made the game-winning touchdown in last season’s Super Bowl, his perfectly placed toes grabbing the spotlight with the control and finesse of a ballerina. Ball secure up top, feet like daggers down below, Holmes didn’t need to look to find the hairbreadth between inbounds and out.
Then there’s Arizona Cardinals’ wide receiver Larry Fitzgerald, channeling a ballet prince in one game as he vaulted into the air and pirouetted to snatch the ball. He landed, one-legged, in a deep plie; somehow reorganizing a stumble into forward motion, he whisked in for a touchdown.
Some players can be so creative on the field, they ought to consider a post-retirement life in the theater. Take Baltimore Ravens defensive standout Ed Reed, a free safety whose acting ability is Oscar-worthy. Time and again, his moves tell opposing quarterbacks the same story: La-dee-dah, I’m going over here, so it’s safe to throw the ball over there . . . and over and over, they fall for his fiction and toss him a big, fat interception.
It’s part fakery, part footwork. With a dancer’s versatility, Reed shifts seamlessly from defense to offense — remember how he snagged a pass in the end zone and slipped into the role of a receiver in last year’s game against the Philadelphia Eagles? His 107-yard return was a feat of elusiveness that the haughtiest ballerina would envy; linemen bore down on him like freight trains, but he danced away from hit after hit, slipping past would-be claimants like the ghost-virgin of “Giselle,” pivoting on those flexible ankles, skating by with a stride as long as it was fast. Straight into the NFL record books.
Imagination and the ability to improvise are part of any performer’s arsenal, and it’s no different for wide receivers, whose success in catching a pass depends on rhythm and timing. Sometimes, both have to be altered on the fly to suit the scenario. There’s always the risk of an interloper, some meddling defensive back, getting in the way of the quarterback’s duet with the man he’s, um, longing for: Where is he? Oh, where? We were supposed to meet 25 yards out. . . . Ah, found you at last!
“I feel like I should never be defined by how I should run a route,” says Redskins wide receiver Santana Moss. “How I should run this play or how I should do this pattern. . . . If I know I can put two patterns in one and I can get the same out of it, you gotta do that in a split second. Improvising.”
“He has some special moves,” Redskins wide receivers coach Stan Hixon says. “Some of the routes are Santana’s routes, and I’m trying to teach some of the other guys how to run that route. And each guy can put his own little flavor to the route.”
Moss can be a temperamental star, as he proved when he got into a slugfest last week with Giants cornerback Corey Webster. But his more refined attributes as a receiver make him stand out. The 30-year-old Moss, according to his coaches, is in a class by himself, and it comes down to physical as well as mental agility. A smallish player, he’s not among the new trend of power hitters in receiver positions — 6-footers like Terrell Owens and Chad Ochocinco, who are muscular and massive enough to break tackles without having to slip away from defenders like darting fish. Playmakers, sure, but they do it without grace. Moss, at 5-10 and scarcely 200 pounds, is something of a throwback among receivers. He relies on fast footwork, agility, coordination — and mostly, he’s got the intuitive body awareness that the best dancers have.
“I look at it as being graceful on the grass,” says Moss. “It’s an art form — the moves I make after I make my catch. It’s almost like a ballet.” He knows what he’s talking about. Moss studied dance for four years while at the University of Miami, taking classes especially for athletes. (No tights, he’s careful to point out. He danced in sweats.) What he learned in the studio comes in especially handy, he says, when he’s coming back to earth after leaping for the ball. “Guys land so hard, but I know how to control my weight.
“You got to be fluid, in a way. Know how to get small in the space, know how not to crash out of bounds. How to let my body fall.”
(more at this link to the original piece at the Washington Post)
Sanspointe Dance Company: Dances Fall
Friday, October 9th, 2009
This makes two times I’ve seen the Sanspointe Dance Company and meant to write a more traditional piece, yet been inspired to bounce off in a different direction. Which makes me wonder if they’re doing something over there that may be the creative equivalent of a whack on the side of the head.
Maybe watching modern dance can be healing or otherwise good for you. Or making a point to see something that you’re not accustomed to seeing. Coming in contact with other people’s creativity and using it to propel or rebound yourself in new directions. Or maybe, it’s something particular about the Sanspointe shows that sends me to unexpected, new places.
Y’all, I enjoyed just about all of the performance – especially the intense catfighting, the zombie farmgirls, your begloved and armored Stepford socialites, and your use of live music from Abram and Sarah.
Language Fails
O Dancers,
How your life must feel different
From mine.
Daily opportunities to stretch
The muscles and boundaries
Of the body,
While I’m mostly planted
In the language,
Almost motionless,
Just tapping my feet or
Puttering through my thesaurus.
Is there any parallel in movement
To the way someone just
Tinkers with words?
You must think so differently
From me.
Do you see snippets
Of motion and movement
Everywhere,
Like I listen
Everywhere
For compelling words and phrases?
Creativity, for me,
Seems connected to my tongue and
I talk it out or
Communicate it out with someone,
Listening to myself speak
To mine any gems
From the waterfall and mostly
Blah-blah whatevers
Of whatever I’ve said.
Does a dancer’s creativity sprout
From attentiveness
To her own moves?
Do you sometimes stand up from a chair,
Or trip over one,
And think to yourself,
“Oh, that might be really . . .”
What would you even say?
“poignant”? “graceful”? “beautiful”?
Something imperfect like “good”?
Language fails.
Can you barely resist
Your internal need to move when,
For some reason,
You’re forced to stay still,
Like a drummer
Who can’t help himself
From fiddling around
Once he’s handed some sticks,
Or like I habitually strum
When I pick up my guitar?
I imagine dancers as
Rarely truly at rest or
At least, they stay
Cattishly aware
Of hands, feet, and positioning
In the same way
You’ll rarely catch me using words
Anywhere whatsoever
That weren’t scrutinized and edited
Two, three, or more times.
Could I capture
Even an inkling
Of what it’s like to
Exist in your world
If I keep trying
To write about how you
jUM—P!,
sliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiide,
and spi\I/i\I/i\I/in?
Thanks to Shellie Chambers and Sanspointe for having me out and being genuinely and uniquely inspiring and fun.