LOG IT

I always associate sneering with Elvis, but I think it was generally a part of the Fifties culture. When I think of the Fifties, the first things that come to mind are poodle skirts and doo-wop, a black and white world of housewives and Leave it to Beaver blandness.

Of course, the other side of that coin was Lenny Bruce, Kerouac, Ginsberg, Burroughs, the Olympia press, greasers and beatniks - the cultural resistance. Even though Elvis and Marilyn are pop cliches now, sometimes when I am able to see the vibrant, electric thing they brought to the culture and made them crack through so powerfully.

Watching Marilyn in Niagara the other night, I was surprised to see her sneering (not as much as I thought, I realized, when I went back to photograph the frames, but still, it is there). Of course, she is playing a femme fatale in a pulpy noir, but there was something about it that spoke to me of the rebel Fifties. Sneering in contempt for the conformity of a fear-baiting mainstream that created or supported the blacklist mentality of McCarthy. Popping the conservative bubble — especially with that molten sexuality, pulsating off the screen in those ridiculous hallucinatory mid-century Technicolors. 

That was a movie star.

“Men and women who dedicate their lives to the realization of their gifts tend the office of that communion by which we are joined to one another, to our times, to our generation, and to the race.” - Lewis Hyde, The Gift

I just finished The Gift by Lewis Hyde, a fantastic treatise of gift economies and how they relate to artists working in a materialistic world. It is a tonic and a balm to read these ideas. Creating in a world where everything is gaged according to price can be disheartening. Box office receipts, record sales, Neilsens - these are measures of popularity, not necessarily of worth or quality.

That is a simple truth - and I have no beef with popularity, I love plenty of blockbusters and want what I make to reach the largest audience possible. In the making of things, however, it is best to let the muse or genius tell you what it is and how to make it. Self-censorship can be the worst kind of all; doubting whether something will work and be accepted in the world, whether it is “marketable.” 

Hyde doesn’t offer specific answers, he presents the dilemma and the problem along with chapters focused on Walt Whitman and Ezra Pound and their varied struggles and successes. The afterword, written last year, addresses the particulars of our current era, which he calls “market triumphalism,” an age where everything is pushed to become professionalized and marketed. 

Some things have worth that is incapable of being priced, like quality of life or nature (as a whole, not when it is broken up into “resources”) or spirituality. Art holds power, art binds us, it has purpose and meaning beyond itself when it is wrested from a true place. “Those parts of our being that extend beyond the individual ego cannot survive unless they can be constantly articulated.”

Some of my favorite stuff:

Gifts are “anarchist property,” they are meant to be continually given away, you are not supposed to hold on to them. Since talents are gifts, they are meant to be nurtured and then given away, shared. He is not saying artists should work for free, but also that a gift is not just something to exploit. It’s a fine line, to be sure.

“Pound is right: some knowledge cannot survive abstraction, and to preserve this knowledge we must have art. The liquid light, the nous, the fecundity of nature, the feeling of the soul in ascent — only the imagination can articulate our apprehension of these things, and the imagination speaks to us in images.”

Here is the NPR interview that alerted me to the book.

I’ve been listening to all this African music - Nigeria Special and Nigeria Rocks compilations, Ethiopiques - and suddenly I am hearing it EVERYWHERE. New Sounds on NPR dedicated a whole show to the Ethiopiques series, Franz Ferdinand’s new album is all African inspired, and my sister was staying with me and came home with an incredible compilation called African Scream Contest. It sounds like James Brown and disco on growth hormone through a kaleidoscope. 

I liked it so much I went to the label website, Analog Africa, which is basically a place holder site right now, but they also have a blog and there they have posted a free 40-minute mix. Hot stuff for a hot summer.

No, not the upcoming film, but more Hamlet off-shoots. Two plays: Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead and Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap. Plus the band This Mortal Coil and the TV/Radio play To the Manor Born (punning on Hamlet’s “to the manner born”) and the yoga company Hugger Mugger.

I saw Hamlet at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park on Tuesday night, part of the annual Shakespeare in the Park program, to which I had never yet been. How crazy am I? Free tickets to a premium show in a beautiful outdoor amphitheater in the center of the city. 

Watching the show, I couldn’t help but remark, once again, how Hamlet is one of the most quoted texts in Western civilization, second only to the Bible, I’d venture to guess. Here are a few movies that draw their titles from the lines of the estimable play:

Oh, I couldn’t agree more. I have no patience for the new coterie of reality “stars” and their petty whoring. Call me old-fashioned, but I only want to celebrate people who make things or who can do amazing things, and I’m not talking about drawing sales figures. The Atlantic’s piece on the Britney phenomenon was interesting in that it drew on the financials, which finally made the whole thing make sense. As best as I can remember the money surrounding capturing these images starts to come close to the profits on traditional entertainment product models. Ugh.

Fake magazine cover from Banterist, and I found it on Gawker.

Here’s the first review of the play, from NYTheatre.com. I get a nice mention for the sets:

Adam Dugas’s minimal set utilizes the space well. Two semi-transparent walls serve as a scrim, revealing the ominous, hazy visual of a hospital bed. They then double beautifully as a panoramic projection screen where larger-than-life video and still images illustrate the Euthanasist’s story. Some of her lines are delivered on pre-recorded video while the lights go down on the actress on stage. This is another effective tool that supports the style of the piece.

Full review here.

And below is the set as shown in the New York Times.

I have heard the sounds of my 2008 summer. The first is Quiet Village, whose new album Silent Movie is a collage of exotica and beats cut-and-pasted into a psychedelic patchwork that would go perfectly with a post-beach sunset drink or a drive up the coast.

For the last few years I have discovered new music primarily through music blogs, which can take time to discover and troll through, but usually pay off. Two years ago I went through a post-punk phase and uncovered a host of blogs like Post-Punk Junk (now Egg City Radio) and Death Wears White Socks. Some highlights from those are Vivien Goldman’s spaced-out dub single “Launderette” and the super-strange ”Deeply” by Wazmo Nariz, which has to be heard to be believed - a sexy bassline and a wacky vibrato is so far out, somewhere between New Wave and retarded. I also recently became deeply enamored with The Associates cover of Bowie’s “Boys Keep Swinging” with Billy Mackenzie’s hot, strong, emotional voice and a bouncing bass line. 

Last year was Latin music, something I strongly resisted for years, but my walls finally came down and I was swept away by boleros, classic New York samba, and especially a phenomenal compilation from Soundway Records called Colombia! which is one of the funkiest, sexiest collections of dance music I have ever heard.

Other than blogs, my other favorite discovery point has been eMusic, which has lately been adding fantastic international compilations. For $9.99 you get 40 downloads, no matter what length of song, so instead of one album I get close to four, but more often highlights from many to sample.

Every once in a while I try African music, but I’ve never quite taken to it like I did with roots Reggae and Jamaican music or Brazlian music. Fela and straight-up Afro-Funk doesn’t really get me going. There is a new series of compilations, also on Soundway, that explores Nigerian musicians from the 1960s and 70s and they are chock full of gems. Nigeria Special is a gorgeous set of soulful, moody, trance-inducing songs with hard funk undercurrent and Nigeria Rock Special is a psychedelic funk-rock collection: imagine an African Doors mixed with classic period James Brown - fuzzy guitars, meandering organs and funky beats.

Then, based on a comment post somewhere along the line, I uncovered the Ethiopiques series, a multi-volume set of compilations featuring Ethiopian musicians. It’s crazy good, and so deep. Some of the stuff sounds very Folkways, historical and sociological but not something I want to listen to. But then there is Getachew Makurya and his wild sax, singer Tlahoun Gessesse’s heartfelt and trilling soul cries, and my favorite of the moment, Mulatu Astatqé and his ethio-jazz which sounds like the soundtrack to an Arabian-flavored film noir.

Just add sand and hot sun and summer has begun!

Download Wazmo Nariz album here. Vivien Goldman here.

Quiet Village, Nigeria Special and the Ethiopiques series are all available on eMusic and iTunes.

From the streets of Williamsburg.

I took on a new title this year when I was asked to design the sets for a new play premiering at P.S. 122 called The Euthanasist. The request came via a friend who recommended me based on the visual elements of my shows, and one of the producers had seen some a liked what she saw. I accepted, a little scared that I wouldn’t know how to pull it off, but that’s when you ask for help!

The director, Alan Miller, is using a lot of projections throughout the one-actor piece, so that had to be incorporated into the design. Other than that, the set is meant to imply a hospital or nursing home environment without being too literal. I originally thought of using televisions for the projections, but the images were meant to be quite large and looming. We use a TV for one cue. I thought of building two big frames with projection screen material or scrim, as we wanted to reveal what was behind as well, using silhouettes. Alan saw the play Little Flower of East Orange at the Public and liked what they used, so I called the set designer and asked him. Fancy plastic, way beyond our budget, but he suggested the cheaper version, frosted plexiglass (P95) and that worked out great, the whole team loved the sample. This is also what is used in The Wooster Group’s Hamlet. The question was then how to turn the 4′ x 8′ pieces into two 8′ walls. I called more designer and artist friends and we agreed that suspending them with cable and securing them together with acrylic glue would be the best bet. Hospital curtains framed off the ends and I found a bunch of grey furnishings in my travels along the city - I didn’t want to use any color, letting the lighting designer and the projections provide that. So the day of load-in I gathered all the materials and we went to work and, voilà!