moving circles

I went to see Les Ephemeres by Ariane Mnouchkine and Theatre du Soleil at the Armory as part of the Lincoln Center Festival tonight. The only other time I saw this company was at their home, the Cartoucherie, outside Paris, in June 2000. So much has happened since then. That show, Tambours sur la Digue, really changed my life-- and I'm not exaggerating.
As my friend Rob was saying yesterday, you can't judge what other people decide is their 'big stuff.' What they get worked up about, what pain they struggle with. It is all relative. And for me-- Theatre du Soleil and that show in particular was a PRETTY BIG DEAL.
The show tonight was a series of short vignettes, MANY vignettes-- that added up to an epic almost 3 1/2 hours. And that was only Part 1. The company has endeavored to bring a bit of the circus-barn feel to the Upper East Side and the audience was seated on bench seating with small cushions and not-deep backs on pretty steep risers. The audience faced each other and the action was played in a playing space with pewter silk fabric billowing at either end whenever a platform was wheeled on. The space was very long and the depth was further exploited when scenes would continue on in a sense, even as they were disappearing into the distance. A young adulterous mother sitting at a table with a single candle burning on Christmas Eve. A transexual woman and and a little girl watching an old movie right after blowing out the lights on the birthday cake. That sort of thing.
The NY Times did a bang-up job of describing the show and I won't make any attempt to do better. What I will say is what it left me with.
Mnouchkine is so genius at marrying an seemingly impossibly abstract idea/theme/issue to a visual/objective manifestation-- and the way this show was played was genius. This show is about the ephemerality of everything, of youth, of love, of family, of life... and so it of course is about memory. Each of the scenes were played on platforms on wheels-- most of them round, and one to three company members moved like serpentine gondoliers surreptitious manipulating them through the space. The 'plates' were always 'spinning.' Like a memory that swirls through your mind, as one element or person shifts into the foreground and then another, as your point of view invariably changes over time... and then inevitably, it all recedes. Spinning away into darkness.
Also, Mnouchkine is a genius at choosing both the extraordinary and the mundane. The extraordinary in the ordinary.
My boyfriend Alex and I had moments of impatience-- he thinks anything really profound can be said in 90 minutes... or 80 even... but that doesn't account for the transfixing meditation factor. And there was definitely a value-add as the piece played on. Storylines wove through each other and I felt like I was reading the Westing game all over again as I tried to put the puzzle pieces together.
In the final moment as the company took apart the circle where the last scene had taken place, and the theatrical lights turned to flashlights which gave way to tiny lights illuminating only the mass of people across the playing space, in near-darkness, in silhouette, I thought of our own ephemerality. How one day, not too long from now-- all the people in this theater will be gone, the moments of their lives spinning away into the darkness.
And the music swelled. And a few tears welled up. And I didn't want any of it to end.

art I recommend

I am so in love with art, and the brave, hardworking souls who make it.

Two pieces I saw in the last few days have totally floored me.
Now maybe I am coming really late to this party but Up was my first Pixar film. Truth be told, probably one of only a handful of animated movies I've ever seen. I don't know if they are all this good. But this one is. SO BRILLIANT and beautiful and heartbreaking. I cried. Twice. And I smiled a lot. And guffawed a couple of times too.

The other piece, the Broadway musical Next to Normal gave me a similar sensation. I stood in the rush ticket line this morning, which of course only adds to the experience-- should a person be lucky enough to get in. [Or you can get there at 5am, as many people did, mothers and daughters and young Hugh Jackmans with their folding chairs and snacks and theater trivia games.] I listened to so many repeat offenders, young and old people who love this show and are so empowered by it. People were trading lots of stories, how mental illness or the loss of a child had touched their lives personally. Then, tonight, I sat smack in the center of the front row and watched a bunch of sickly talented superstars sing and move and talk in really gut-wrenching, visually-satisfying, emotionally-potent ways. I am so amazed at the boldness of this show-- dealing with this very real, little-talked about subject matter. And it reminds me of how I felt when I saw Rent, in 1997.
And it also reminds me that theater (insert: 'that I like') doesn't always have to cool, or even try to be cool. It will serve me to remember that when people make something that is true and beautiful and depressing and sincere and (seemingly) hopelessly un-commercial it is VERY cool. It is very cool to feel things deeply. Especially in live performance. Sometimes it's easier to feel things more in movies, that distancing effect, (watching movies on airplanes even more so!)-- but it's not impossible to be completely transported by live theater. It's hard, but worth the try I guess.
In the front row next to me tonight two college-age girls held hands as they shook with tears streaming down their faces. Then after the show, they both said how much better they felt and how much people were talking about 'stuff-- because of the show.'
Talking about 'stuff' ... and also empowered and seriously entertained.

gut in the best sense of the word

Spring. Change. Seedlings into blossoms with a few puddles along the way.
I walked out of my cousin's oasis with lightness in my step, along Lorimer Street, past the Sette Pani bakery that smells like Italian cookie heaven and loved the sweet rain. Tonight, warm and wet I remembered the month this fall when I lived there and did this walk every day. Then I came out of the train and walked through Times Square. Where I have been living for the past month. All bright lights and theater and commerce and tourists. I listened to The Walkmen and Sunset Rubdown and Erica and my own head and tried to make some decisions. Fortunately I came upon this article my cousin wrote. It's pretty great I think. And since I bet you are facing some decisions too-- here it is, for you.

Does God Blink? -- From Malcolm Gladwell to St. Ignatius, the science and spirituality of how we decide
by Kate Clancy
Some call it intuition. Divine insight. Animal instinct. God’s Will. Whatever we label this natural ability to tune in to a deeper inner voice, the question remains: How do we develop discernment in the middle of chaos and indecision?

He may not call it the voice of God, but according to pop-sociologist Malcolm Gladwell, best selling author of The Tipping Point, relying on your first gut reaction is a good way to gamble when it comes to making hard decisions.

In his follow-up book about how we make decisions, Blink, Gladwell looks at a team of firefighters interviewed about their decision-making process during moments of emergency. He concludes that when these professionals make decisions — like evacuating their entire team seconds before a burning ceiling collapses — they don’t logically compare all available options. Instead, they draw on impulse and previous training to assess the situation quickly and act.

What Gladwell is driving at, and what has baffled scholars for ages is: How do we decide? His premise, basically, is that we subconsciously process information more quickly and more efficiently than we might think. This leaves a question of context: If we really are evaluating millions of facts very quickly, how can we move toward a more intentional process? .

[click here to read more]

a birthday and a thought

dear reader,
I just want to thank you for reading this. It has now been a little over two years since I've been at this, and though I'm not the most consistent contributor, I am indeed still at it. I love talking to you. At times I feel like you are a trusted friend and/or a curious stranger-- and both have their places in helping me to 'keep coming back.'
With my birthday last week I had the lovely opportunity to assess pretty much all things in my life and celebrate the good stuff, and, inevitably, be a little too hard on my self about the rest of it. In the past month I got to see two old friends, of 10+ years-- and in both instances I caught myself saying lots of "remember the time..." or "oh, that's where..." and they were both stunned by my memory. A great comedian once used the elephant simile on me. [Fascinatingly enough-- I think elephants REALLY DO have AMAZING memories.]
I just put myself through the great experience of reading Daphne Merkin's 8-page memoir on Depression in this week's New York Times Magazine and one line stood out to me quite a bit. In debating whether to use Electro-Convulsive Therapy (today's update of Electro-Shock Therapy) or not Ms. Merkin highlighted the value of her memories. "I may have hated my life, but I valued my memories — even the unhappy ones, paradoxical as that may seem. I lived for the details, and the writer I once was made vivid use of them."
I love writing this blog. I love writing letters, but I especially love writing when I am not conscious of what the 'tone' of the thing should be. Who it's aimed at. What they may or may not want to hear.
It feels very freeing-- like the greatest old friends-- to be able to say whatever is on my mind without recrimination or much potential for misunderstanding.
Thank you for coming back, whoever you are.

I think Eloise taught me this.

Find a picture. Look at it and then close your eyes. Enter that world. Listen, smell, touch, taste, look around. Let the words come to you like a flash. Open your eyes. Write them down.

Small is relative.

I hope I feel this mischievous on my wedding day.

"Oh grandma, are you sure your legs aren't healed yet?"

This might turn out to be the happiest moment of both of their lives.

"Yea, put your fingers like so-- that makes the whole thing look really authentic."

If you lived here you'd be home now.

or

I really like yellow.

or

"Did she say meet her in the ultimate or the penultimate one on the left?"

the pictures are by the wonderful and amazing Peter Turnley from his take on "Family of Man." The link to the pictures are here. He is a good man and has photographed the estimable Codman Academy.

these modest facts

I wrote this 20 days ago but wasn't connected to the internet so then I forgot about it until today. Since I have been so remiss in posting here I'm scraping together even the ones I had forgotten.

John Updike wrote a poem called “Peggy Lutz, Fred Murth” on December 13th, 2008. He died shortly after Christmas, less than two weeks later. Several poems from his final months were published in a recent issue of the New Yorker and it took me several times with the issue before I got through more than a line or two of each. Poetry for me requires a very specific state of mind. Patience. Generosity. Curiosity. Patience again… And compassion, or a willingness to be open and sensitive. To let down the guard of my workhorse self and let the cogs in the machine in my head move about, float a bit, and maybe—hopefully—re-attach in some new and different, transformed way. I can’t be doing three or four things at once and I can’t be thinking about any other thing—at least not until moved to do so by the words on the page. Surprisingly, rare as it is in my day-to-day life—this mode, the state poetry is in-- is probably my favorite. Because, it is also the state where I can really feel. Really think. And really listen.
[I love Mach-4 (as in flight not razor) mode too, don’t get me wrong—and I love feeling fast, efficient, productive. But there’s a little something special about that dreamy other place—where the rules of punctuation and linearity fall away.

from the poem:
“I’ve written these before, these modest facts,

but their meaning has no bottom in my mind.
The fragments in their jiggled scope collide
To form more sacred windows. I had to move
To beautiful New England—its triple
Deckers, whited churches, unplowed streets—
To learn how dreary and deadly life can be.”

I really love this poem and this part of it. I grew up in a triple-decker on a hill in Dorchester that the plows often overlooked. Snowstorms meant going out into the world knowing that more than likely the trip home at the end would include a group effort push of the car up the hill.
In the past few months I have been filling out a lot of applications (fellowships, grants) and prepping for some interviews where questions like "tell us about yourself as an artist" laser at me with terrifying frequency. It was terrifying until I really organized my 'story' -- of truths of course-- but where the ordering and delivery can really shape a stranger's understanding. I lined up and made sense of my modest facts. And I am finding Updike's observation to hold true-- their meaning has a sort of infinite bottom.

this happened yesterday

On one subway car three men with distinct causes
One man all in white (dress) chanting voodoo and stomping out the bad spirits, and shaking arms like quaking aspens.
One man a young-ish black guy who had a boom box and wanted to throwdown some moves, probably-- virtuosic.
And a white older guy who was maybe part blind.
When the young guy started in at the voodoo guy like “oh please mister, I gots this car find another train to do your voodoo shit on, Go back to Bellevue” this and that—the older guy was like “chill man, we all got our own show going on, our own talent-like”
There was a mother and daughter on the train too who when the voodoo man/woman came stomping near them they would sorta get smaller and the mom would look straight ahead like there was nothing happening but too stiff-like and the daughter was almost laughing and just whispered, “is this for real?”
I think maybe they were tourists, at least the mother most likely.
Everybody was looking around. Almost breaking up laughing or some people looked sad. Raw deal some people got. Its not really funny I guess.