November, 2009

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Watchmen

Monday, November 30th, 2009

I recently finished the graphic novel/comic book series Watchmen for the first time.  After seeing and enjoying the movie, I resolved to eventually get my hands on it.  Last week, after lurking back-and-forth for a while in the Emmet O’Neal Library fiction aisles with nothing else catching my eye, I walked over and happened on it in the young adult/required reading section.  Good taste (and subversive), those Mountain Brook schools.

It’s excellent and dark.  Read it.  Especially if you’ve never read a “graphic novel” before, it’s a good place to start.  And now I’ll be looking for more Alan Moore (I’ve read From Hell) and wanting a list of other non-standard works of literature I’ve somehow missed.

The picture on the right is a single panel from Watchmen.  I wanted to share it because I liked it so much.  I’d love to find someone to paint or draw this for me.  My limited talents couldn’t do it justice, I’m sure.  I can’t draw.  Who could do this?

Another note, I admit that law school molded me into a compulsive tabber of good quotes in books.  If I own the book, it goes back on my shelf with all the tabs in.  (And anyone unfortunate enough to borrow it has to flip around all my tabs.)  If it’s a library book, I usually take some time to type all the quotes down before I take it back.  Just for a lark – and to share one of my OCD habits – here’s some of the stuff I tabbed from the book.

  • Beneath me, this awful city, it screams like an abattoir full of retarded children.
  • Real life is messy, inconsistent, and it’s seldom when anything ever really gets resolved.  It’s taken me a long time to realize that.
  • Blake is interesting.  I have never met anyone so deliberately amoral. . . .  As I come to understand Vietnam and what it implies about the human condition, I also realize that few humans will permit themselves such an understanding.  Blake’s different.  He understands perfectly . . . and he doesn’t care.
  • American psychology and its Soviet counterpart are [not] interchangeable.  To understand the Russian attitude to the possibility of a third world war one must first understand their attitude to the second.  In WWII, none of the allied powers fought so bitterly or sustained such losses as did the Russians.  It was Hitler’s lack of success in his assault upon the Soviet heartland that assured his eventual defeat, and though it was paid for mostly by Soviet lives, the entire world reaped the benefits.  In time, the Russian contribution to the war effort has been downplayed and dismissed – most noticeably as our political differences became wider – as we glorified our own contribution while forgetting that of our estranged former allies.  The Russians, however, have not forgotten.  There are still those who remember the horror of a war fought on their soil . . . .
  • Truly, whoever we are, wherever we reside, we exist upon the whim of murderers.
  • [Rorschach] said, “None of you understand.  I’m not locked up in here with you.  You’re locked up in here with me.”
  • Why do we argue?  Life’s so fragile, a successful virus, clinging to a speck of mud, suspended in endless nothing.  Next week, I could be putting her into a garbage sack, placing her outside for collection.
  • Tactically, Rorschach was brilliant.  He was so unpredictable.
  • People swallow lies easily, provided they’re big enough.
  • I’m not a . . . serial villain.  Do you seriously think I’d explain my masterstroke if there remained the slightest chance of you affecting it’s outcome?  I did it thirty-five minutes ago.
  • What does fighting crime mean, exactly?  Does it mean upholding the law when a woman shoplifts to feed her children, or does it mean struggling to uncover the ones who, quite legally, have brought about her poverty?  Yes, I’ve busted drug rings and been accused of being an establishment pawn for doing so . . . that happened a lot in the sixties.  I’ve also uncovered plots by breakaway extremist factions within the Pentagon, for example the plot to release some unpleasantly specific diseases upon the population of Africa . . . .  I guess I’ve just reached a point where I’ve started to wonder whether all the grandstanding and fighting individual evils does much good for the world as a whole.  Those evils are just symptoms of an overall sickness of the human spirit, and I don’t believe you can cure a disease by suppressing its symptoms.

Posted in Painting, Writing | Comments Off

Washington Post: Breaking Pointe

Wednesday, November 25th, 2009

This is an excerpt from an article in the Sunday, November 22 Washington Post by Sarah Kaufman.  It’s about the Nutcracker ballet.  I’m not sure what I think about it yet, but it’s definitely saying something.  Some of the comments to that article:

  • “Isn’t there something to be said about a holiday family tradition like the Nutcracker? Kind of like the Charlie Brown Christmas special – it isn’t high art, but it’s warm and familiar.”
  • “I have to agree that the Nutcracker is really too ubiquitous, even out here in the provinces. While the children, new children each year really do love it, perhaps we could all be educated to love something just a little more daring.”
  • “What an utterly pretentious, snarky, bore you are.”

***

BREAKING POINTE: In an art form that’s struggling to stay on its feet, ‘The Nutcracker’ is a gift that takes more than it gives

By Sarah Kaufman
Sunday, November 22, 2009

Come the twilight of the year, the deathless “Nutcracker” begins its march across American stages, bearing tidings of comfort and joy.

Oh, goody.

Yet to those of us who despair of its pervading tweeness and wish ballet had something better to do at this time of year than endlessly reminisce like a sweet, whiskery auntie, it bears some bad news, too. “The Nutcracker’s” stranglehold is all but squeezing ballet dry.

That warm and welcoming veneer of domestic bliss in “The Nutcracker” gives the appearance that all is just plummy in the ballet world. But ballet is beset by serious ailments that threaten its future in this country: American dancers are less likely than ever to hold the top rank in American companies. African Americans have dismal prospects of inclusion — of all of the nation’s performing arts, none is more segregated than ballet. And the companies are so cautious in their programming that they have effectively reduced an art form to a rotation of over-roasted chestnuts that no one can justifiably croon about.

The tyranny of “The Nutcracker” is emblematic of how dull and risk-averse American ballet has become.

Let’s start with “The Nutcracker’s” role in all this. No other ballet has been performed by more companies, danced by more dancers or seen by more Americans. This season marks the 65th anniversary of the country’s first full-length production, by the San Francisco Ballet. It wasn’t such a smash hit back then, but certainly over the past half-century “The Nutcracker” has become the category killer in ballet, what “The Night Before Christmas” is to American poetry — the most known, the most quotable. Tchaikovsky’s tunes seem to toot around every corner this time of year, while attending the ballet has become a secular ritual, a tinseled micro-Mecca for thousands of families.

Starting Tuesday, Washington audiences can see the version of the ballet that’s credited with launching the national “Nutcracker” obsession: George Balanchine’s 1954 account, originally created for the New York City Ballet. The Pennsylvania Ballet will perform its Kennedy Center premiere.

Because “The Nutcracker” can turn a profit, it can account for as much as half of a ballet company’s total annual performances. Chances are, the other, non-”Nutcracker” half of a company’s season relies on a couple of standards and too few new works of consequence. And most companies cannot bring in enough funding to exist without relying on “Nutcracker” sales.

This all sounds pretty Scroogish, but I’ll be straight with you: While I have grown tired of “The Nutcracker,” I don’t hate it. I don’t discount that the ballet brings great happiness to many — even, off and on, to a critic. What I do regret is “The Nutcracker’s” ubiquity, the way it stifles any other creative efforts in dance during the holiday season. Most of all, I regret its necessity as an income source.

(the link to the rest of the original article is here)

(another link to an interesting Kaufman article called “Burdened by Balanchine” is here)

Posted in Dance, Miscellaneous | Comments Off

The Spitfire Grill at the Levite Jewish Community Center

Monday, November 23rd, 2009

The act of watching a performance somehow changes when you know the performers.  Even if you know just one of them.  Or maybe even if you’re only kinda familiar with one person’s real life out in the real world.

Assuming you like those people, you almost can’t help but root for their ordinary, out-of-character self as they’re up on that stage.  We want you to do well.  We want you to succeed.  Go, little engine, go.

It must be a phenomenon that all directors understand.  After mixing it up for several weeks with a cast, it would be almost impossible to sit back and give the show a neutral, impartial viewing.  By the time you’re invested, you want to see your actors and musicians use their talents to their fullest.  And stop doing whatever annoying quirks they’ve picked up during the last few days of rehearsals.  Of course, you want an audience to love ‘em as much as you do.

There’s something similar going on when I paint.  I get so focused on the details that it’s virtually impossible to back up and experience it like someone else seeing it for the first time.  What I try to do is to put my “finished” canvas in a new spot somewhere and hope that, when I wake up one morning, I’ll walk out and it’ll catch me completely by surprise.  For this trick to work, it’s got to hit the “experience everything the first time” part of my brain before it gets to the “hey, I painted that” part.  In the middle of the artistic process, I’m always imperfectly flipping back and forth between these two brainparts.  I wonder if actors can do this too – alternating between the fun of singing and the awareness of an audience.

Which is, maybe, why it’s dangerous to become too enamored of any piece of one’s own art.  When I’m too enthusiastic about something, I can’t stay fair about checking for fixable mistakes.  Or for a critical director to get too close to the actors.  When you know the cast, it’s much more difficult to watch a performance with neutral eyes.

Of course, you lose something by maintaining your cool.  If you had a crush on an actress (or one of your own paintings), then you really wouldn’t care about staying neutral, would you?  You’d get to watch her the whole time and beam.  That’s my baby.  And she’s singin’.  Ain’t she great?!?  Isn’t this fun?!?  Having that kind of enthusiasm might be priceless.

After being back in Birmingham for a while, it’s fun when I get to go to shows like the Levite Jewish Community Center’s production of The Spitfire Grill and discover performers that I’ve met in other ways.  Although I probably wasn’t the ideal target audience for this particular musical – I kept wanting zombies to come out of the woods and for the actors to make appropriate use of the prominent axe, knife, and gun – my lasting impression is that each of the six main characters all fully capitalized on at least one chance to truly excel.  I’m not sure I’ve ever seen another play where my choice of “favorite” performers shifted so fluidly and changed so many times.  It’s a compliment to the director – David R. Garrett – and the primary cast – Susan Cook, Stephen A. Fister, Julia Hixson, J. Heath Mixon, Holly Dikeman, and Rachel VanNortwick – that every horse nosed into first at least once during the show.  It’s not as hard to entertain people when your characters are likeable.

If I had a gripe, it would be more generalized than just this production.  Yes, I’m sometimes accused of being a Luddite, but I don’t want the internet in my pocket, I distrust gadgetry, and I’m often deeply suspicious of the “progress” of technology.  Long story short, I’m not sure why there’s any need to include electronic amplification in most theatre.  Just because the BJCC uses it doesn’t mean it’s appropriate for smaller venues.  What happened to actors just singing out and speaking loud?  Technical embellishments too often distract visually and otherwise from a performance.  My suggestion is that, if you’re going to use microphones and add a layer of difficulty, they better work seamlessly.  Otherwise, I don’t understand why actors can’t just play and sing to the back row.

Thanks very much to David R. Garrett, Mindy Cohen, and the Levite Jewish Community Center for orchestrating an entertaining show.

Posted in Birmingham, Theatre | Comments Off

Birmingham Ballet: Nutcracker Practice

Monday, November 16th, 2009

If I’m ever having one of those blue days where I feel less-than-noticed (or downright invisible), a guaranteed cure would be to show up in jeans to observe a Saturday ballet practice.  I know this after my recent visit to the Birmingham Ballet.  Even three feet inside the front door, someone was able to herd me to the right place after noticing my conspicuous chromosome and my almost total lack of grace and coordination.

Then, just you try to feel invisible sitting in front of a giant mirror while the adult-in-charge explains to a room of (mostly but not totally) (potentially hyper-critical) teenage girls to ignore you (and your friend walking around with a video camera) and just go on about their practice.  Yeah, right.  Whatever you do, DO NOT THINK ABOUT THAT PINK ELEPHANT!

Whose feet?

Whose feet?

But I noticed y’all right back.  So there.

My temporarily elevated profile reminded me that ballet is about concentration.  The dancer’s focus on the routine and the audience.  And the audience’s encouraged focus on the dancer.  There’s no way around a dancer becoming hyper-conscious of all that attention.

At practice, the mirrors let (or make) you scrutinize every move.  Mentors are always observing and correcting.  It’s constantly reinforced that Big Brother or Santa Claus might always be hovering right there to check on your hand and foot position.  Or, at least, to remind you that you’ve got a collision course date with a real, live audience.  Which might be made up of forgiving people like Mom and Dad.  Or less-forgiving people like your little brother.

One of the most insightful things I’ve recently heard about dance came from a world outside of dance.  A political commentator was discussing how some politicians and government officials often talk without saying anything.  Or they clumsily fudge their way through press conferences and interviews without being particularly talented or rehearsed.  Then the commentator offhandedly suggested that politics works a lot differently from something like dance, where it would be obvious (and probably shocking) to an audience if a performer was blatantly unrehearsed or unprepared.  It’s virtually impossible to fudge your way through a ballet performance.  It can be the most independent, isolating, and exposing of experiences, out on the stage with just you and your body.  So you’d better be prepared.

Such preparation takes significant training and I was both entertained and puzzled in listening to the highly-specialized language of ballet.  There’s an episode of the TV show Friends where Joey lies about how much dance experience he has at an audition.  The director or casting person or choreographer or whatever (again, my use of dance language is limited at best) explains a quick combination to Joey to teach the other dancers.  He fails miserably because he doesn’t understand the language.

I don’t comprehend it either, but it’s pretty amazing to watch a ballet teacher quickly talk out the steps of an exercise – which I can’t even begin to quote here – and look around the room to find everyone nodding, and then start the music.  The combinations are several steps long, but I’d be stopping to raise my hand even at the first step to ask, “Um, what was that beginning again?”  Sometimes it even seems like there’s an ESP thing going on – because those couldn’t have been the teacher’s fully expressed thoughts.

It reminds me a little of whenever I learned about the names for football pass patterns as a kid.  I didn’t discover the joy of football until later in high school, but I remember going through some elementary drills in PhysEd class early on and being completely lost.  Stand in line while the coach yells out to run a “Fly Pattern” or a “Post Route” or a “Button Hook”.  And then getting to the front and having no idea what to do for a “10-Yard In Route”.  While they all assumed we knew that stuff, I was hopelessly confused.

There’s also a good parallel in law.  Just about the entire first year of law school – right or wrong – is spent just learning how lawyers talk.  The professors pretty much say, “Go read this stuff that’s way over your head until you start to understand it.”  Revelation through full immersion – much like John the Baptist.  Eventually, you start to understand whether a judge is talking nonsense when he asks you whether Rule 403 applies for jurisdictional matters in a case which might proceed under section 1367.  Well, maybe you will.

Which maybe explains why I think dancers are smart.  There’s so much to learn.  And quite a bit which isn’t just “move this way” – even if that in itself was a simple thing.  It’s eyes up, contact with the audience, giving good and appropriate facial expressions, and relation to the other dancers.  Every time I’m allowed to watch up close, I understand a little more.

Thanks very much to Cindy Free and the Birmingham Ballet for inviting me and giving me an unusual behind-the-scenes look.

Posted in Birmingham, Dance | Comments Off

Armistice Day

Wednesday, November 11th, 2009

From the 1973 Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut:

“I will come to a time in my backwards trip when November eleventh, accidentally my birthday, was a sacred day called Armistice Day.  When I was a boy . . . all the people of all the nations which had fought in the First World War were silent during the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of Armistice Day, which was the eleventh day of the eleventh month.

“It was during that minute in nineteen hundred and eighteen, that millions upon millions of human beings stopped butchering one another.  I have talked to old men who were on battlefields during that minute.  They have told me in one way or another that the sudden silence was the Voice of God. So we still have among us some men who can remember when God spoke clearly to mankind.

“Armistice Day has become Veterans’ Day.  Armistice Day was sacred. Veterans’ day is not.

“So I will throw Veterans’ Day over my shoulder.  Armistice Day I will keep.  I don’t want to throw away any sacred things.”

Posted in Miscellaneous, Writing | Comments Off

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