How I became 100 artists

So this guy is the latest TED speaker to blow my mind. This is an amazing project that crosses so many boundaries:

Between visual art and theatre, between satire and celebration, between the business of art and the creative process. Basically, this guy made up 100 artists, complete with names, histories and philosophies, and created individual artworks made by these imaginary artists for a biennial show for which he is the "curator". This inspires me for three reasons. First, this is the creative entrepreneurial spirit at its best. If it doesn't exist, you invent it - fearlessly, with wit, love and passion. Second, it is an ingenious way not only to make interesting art, but at the same time to examine the process by which art is made. Third, I think a lot of the art is pretty damn good. Watch this:

Shea Hembrey: How I became 100 artists | Video on TED.com

I love actors

We had auditions for Rent today. For those of you who haven't heard yet, I have somehow found myself in the position of directing Rent at the New Rep. I'm not quite sure how this happened. It's a good thing, as it has shown me once again that it is never a good idea to dismiss anyone or anything because you just don't know. This musical, that I had dismissed out of hand as being smug, self-important and uninteresting is proving to offer an exciting world, strong characters, drop-dead gorgeous moments, and an opportunity to tell a story that has suddenly become incredibly relevant to my own life.

And actors. They drive me so crazy sometimes, as those of you have read this blog have seen, but after a day like today I just love them. People putting themselves, their dreams, their ideas of themselves out there with no protection, with guts, wit, good humor, charm and a total willingness to do whatever. It was so much fun watching them all go after it with such verve and what-the-hell commitment.

I am so grateful to all the auditioners, they have once again re-affirmed my belief in the worthiness of this ridiculous profession. I wish I could cast them all.

Brains! Brains!

There was a very interesting show on either WBUR or WGBH this weekend, not sure which (I poked around some trying to figure it out, to know avail) about the brain. Specifically, it was an interview with Oliver Sacks, the great neuroscientist, and another guy, a painter, both of whom suffer from Face Blindness, or Prosopagnosia - the difficulty that a surprisingly large number of people have recognizing faces. It was a fascinating conversation, that dealt with the issue of recognition, and how we get by in a world where we don't recognize the things in front of us.

Anyhow, I was so tired today, after hoisting furniture into and out trucks for two days, that on a whim I Googled "Face Blindness". It lead me to this really neat website filled with really interesting cognitive tests. It's called:

Testmybrain.org and I spent the rest of the evening taking all the tests. Do I have Face Blindness (no), how good am I at visually picking things out of clutter (lousy), how good am I at reading faces (better than average)? It was really interesting and a fantastic time-waster. Check it out.

Master of None

Back soon. Promise. Three weeks of 18 hour days. I haven't worked this hard since we started ASP. But I'm having so much fun. I love playing around in a theater. At this point on this project I am: Creator, Producer, Director, Writer, Publicist, Marketer, Sound Designer, Video Designer, Asst. Lighting Designer, Asst. Set Designer, Props Master, Costume Coordinator, Electrician, Event Manager, and Light Board Op. And I couldn't be happier. It is true. Theater can be fun.

Tina Hey

Sorry I haven't blogged in a while. I am at the wall with Blood Rose Rising: the workshop, and we haven't even started rehearsals yet. Next week is going to be something else, let me tell you.

In the meantime, I wanna talk about Tina Fey. I didn't watch Saturday Night Live in the early 2000s. I am one of those annoying old farts she refers to derisively in her book (yeah, I read her book), who "thinks the show hasn't been good since the seventies". And I totally missed 30 Rock until recently. It wasn't until I saw her do her Sarah Palin on SNL during the election that I even knew who she was. And I was impressed. And I thought she was kinda cute. Not as Sarah Palin, as herself. So when we breezed by Date Night on Netflix a few months back, with all-time fav Steve Carell, I was open. And she was fabulous. So the interest gets piqued a little more. So when I get my awesome little iPad for Christmas, and Kelli and I are looking for something light to watch on it while we are snuggling up in bed, I thought, "hey, Tina Fey, what's this 30 Rock I've heard so little about?" So we watch.

I am in love. I admit it. I am in love. I wanted to enter into a polygamous marriage with Tina Fey and her husband. I don't know him, but I'm sure he's great. First of all, the show is laugh out loud funny - every few lines. I don't remember laughing so hard at a sitcom in, probably ever. And it's wonderfully weird. It manages to pull off the silly weirdness of real people in a way that Arrested Development never quite did for me. Liz Lemon is lovable, horrible, selfish and idealistic all at the same time in a totally improbable and completely believable way. And of course Alec Baldwin is a genius. Who knew? The whole cast is hilarious, and Jane Krakowski as Jenna does such brilliant satire on a subject that you all know has caused me more than my fair share of pain and frustration. We're just starting season 4 now, and I can't get enough!

So I read her book, Bossypants. That woman is 1)hilarious; 2)smart; 3)so honest; 4)just adorable. It's a great read, you should get it.

So yeah, Tina, if you want to move to Utah with me and Kelli and Jeff and all the kids and animals, just say the word. I'm there.

The World

This story really got me. A children's theatre in a refugee camp. If you didn't hear about this, you should read this.

How I got that story

It's finally happening, as many of you know. Blood Rose Rising will be doing a workshop production on April 23, April 30 and May 6 in Harvard Square at Zero Church St. It's a fitting venue, since I spent almost every minute of every working day in that room from 1993 to 2003, while I was at the ART. It's going to be amazing. Come and see it.

I have been working on this show for 22 months now. The idea came to me while I was at the 2009 TCG conference in Baltimore. I'd just been given my walking papers by the ASP, and was trying to decide what crazy thing I would do next. The conference was supposed to be about "Roots, Renaissance and Revolution" but it was really just about the Revolution. It was dominated by the under 40 crowd, both in terms of the subject of discussion and in who was getting the floor. The big takeaway from that conference was that we need to allowing drinking and texting in the theater. That may sound flippant, but it's pretty true. The new theater has to recognize that people want both a more multi-faceted kind of entertainment experience, and a place where they can express themselves as they see fit.

So I started thinking about how to do that. Having a theater that was more like a club was the first piece. That was obvious. Make it a fun place to be. A place you want to go and hang out with your friends, just as much as a place to see "art". Then you want something that will make people want to keep coming back. My first thought on that was to start a one-act club, where you'd do a new one act every weekend. It's kind of a cool idea, but the work would be insane, and I'm not the one to do it, because I hate reading plays; and logistically, organizing, rehearsing, and marketing all those plays would be a killer. Somebody should definitely do it, but not me.

So then it hit me that it could the story that made people want to keep coming back for more. Episodic drama had redefined television over the last 10 years, maybe it was time for the theater to follow suit. I floated the idea to a couple of friends at the conference, and they really liked it.

I was driving home a few days later, listening to Pandora. A song called "Is there a Ghost?" by Band of Horses came on. It's a great freaking song. I'm listening to this song, and I'm suddenly reminded of a story I had written during my last desperate period, when I had been let go from ART and just before I founded ASP. I wrote 3 1/2 screenplays during that period, all of which were pretty bad, but the stories were good. They had similar themes: One was about a man who becomes enamored by a strange mermaid in lake in Canada; one was about a pair of lost young people who decide to live their lies as characters from a 30s screwball comedy and end up killing each other in a film processing lab; and one was the story that has now become Blood Rose Rising. They all deal with the fascination we feel for the unobtainable. Oh, and one was about 4 middle aged guys who decide to start a rock band.

So I hear this song streaming on my iPod, and I remember this story, which was pretty neat, and I think to myself - "that's it. That's the tale we should tell."

And almost two years later, here we are. Here's the song, though we're not using it for the show. We have something much better, by awesome local band Alchemilla. But by way of tribute for a good idea. Here's Band of Horses:

Acting! thank you

Kelli and I were having a conversation about a friend the other day, and we wandered into the topic of what makes people become actors. It's the nature of such conversations to become reductive and oversimplified, but it's interesting and can be illuminating nonetheless. We decided that there are three main motivations that drive people to willingly make themselves a spectacle to other people.

The first is the "Love Me Do" actor. This is somebody who wants an affirmation that they are a valuable person by having people see them and praise them for their courage, brilliance, and sensitivity. The play becomes an opportunity for them to shine. This person is secretly more interested in the curtain call than any other part of the show. Also, the backstage drama is almost as important as the one that happens on stage, much to the chagrin of many a stage manager.

The second is the "Anyone but me" actor. These people are drawn to the stage because it is a place where they can not be themselves. For whatever reason, the self is not a good place to be, and so they try to find a place where they can be somebody else for a while. These actors often don't even really enjoy acting very much, and rarely feel good about their work. But it's better than the alternative. For a few brief hours a night, they can not be. They are often nice and hard working, but you can sense their burden, and often a sense of futility or fear.

The third type is the "Peter Pan" actor. They just want to play. As a kid, they loved make believe more than anything else, and never really got over the fact that you are expected to stop pretending once you hit puberty. So they are drawn to the stage by the chance to continue the wonderful games of imagination that were so captivating as children. Those that get paid to do it count themselves lucky that someone else is naive enough to give them money for something they would do for nothing.

Obviously, few people are all one of these: most actors have a combination of these factors, and I bet you almost every actor would identify themselves as number three. But in my experience, only a few, and they tend to be the ones people most like to work with, really have that love of play at the center of their work; where the play's the thing, and acting is not more about psychology than art. Some really can't help it - life has dealt them a crappy hand - and some would benefit from thinking about something bigger than themselves for a change.

Yeah, I'm a cranky old cynic. But actors are ridiculous creatures, aren't they? We kind of ask for it... and don't get me started on critics...

Simple

Kelli and I went to see Fragments at ArtsEmerson last night. It's 4 short pieces by Samuel Beckett, directed by Peter Brook (and Marie-Hélène Estienne). Now it's hard to go wrong with Beckett for me. I love how he brings together the profound and the incredibly mundane, the deepest despair with the simplest joy. I think he just zeroes in on the most elemental relationship between human beings and the universe. And he is so damn THEATRICAL. His plays are witty, moving, very funny, absurd and tragic all at the same time. I don't know how he does it. But he sends me.

And I can't imagine anybody better than late-career Peter Brook to direct his work. Brook and his company have made a lifelong mission of finding the most essential, deeply simple work, and it really shows in this small company. Two older gentlemen, and a young woman - who performed with such humanity and deep, profound simplicity. Nothing showy or indulgent anywhere; just being in the space with the words and characters. Three people relating with each other, with themselves, and with the world in the most natural way. It was just the thing for me.

The nerve

So I'm trying to figure out what's happening with my body. For parts of every day the tingling in my arms has decreased to the lowest level in 5 months, and I begin to hope that maybe I'm getting better, getting back to the person I was. But then, pretty much every day, if I sleep too long, or after I've sat in a restaurant chair talking for an hour, or at other random times, suddenly my arms go all wiggy and I can't move my neck without thrills - the unpleasant kind - running up and down my limbs. And there's still that weird tiredness in my legs...

They told me that the spinal cord takes up to a year to heal, which is what I keep telling myself, but I can't help wondering if the damn thing worked at all. I'm itching to get another MRI to see if the frightening hourglass that was my spinal cord is really gone or if I still have that pinch, slowly eating away my mobility and strength. They don't want to give me one - cutting medical costs, etc., but I think I need to be a demanding health consumer. I was supposed to see my doctor this morning, but he bailed on me, and now I have to wait until Friday!

All in all, this recent change in the way I feel about my body is a constant drag on my subconscious. I think back to when I played Lucky, and would perform that nuclear explosion of a monologue and do a dead flat fall right onto my face so I'd bounce six inches in the air (the stage was padded, but still), or Marat Sade where I bought my own harness so I could be suspended by a meathook for an hour before running around screaming and hurling myself into metal tables. Or even two years ago as Coriolanus, getting wheeled around on that cage smashing it with wrenches as hard as I possibly could, sometimes missing a little so my fingers were perpetually swollen and bruised. Of course that's partly how I got myself into this mess... But to think that my whole world view would get changed by a play where I mostly stood around talking and sometimes played the viola, and for two seconds I got pushed over by a guy and fell hard on my butt and that has completely shifted everything, it's just bizarre. And I don't like it, I won't pretend.

As an actor you have to believe that you are invincible, to a degree, so that you can take the risks you need to take. I'm still trying to take the risks, but I'm so aware of the costs now. Maybe that's good...

What's real

So on Friday I went to see my son Spencer as Winthrop in the Ottoson Middle School production of The Music Man: Junior! which is essentially the Music Man with half the songs and half the plot cut out. He did great, no question about it. The kid is a regular chip off the old block and knows in his gut how to sell a song. It was a thrill to see him, and I swelled with fatherly pride to behold it.

But something really interesting actually happened at this little event. The girl playing Marian was a little 6th grader - I mean a LITTLE 6th grader - she must have been 4 foot 2 - and she had a cold. She croaked her way through "Goodnight My Someone". Now somebody had been teaching this little girl about acting, and it wasn't a good thing. Maybe it was someone who thought that acting was an important skill in junior beauty pageants, because she would put her hand on her hip, give the audience a patent leather smirk, then toss off a line, and then prance around like a show cat. It was everything scary about child acting you can imagine.

But the girl had a cold, and she couldn't sing. At intermission, there was long pause, and then the director, a hyper-intense woman, the kind who are the only ones to be able to stand directing 90 kids in The Music Man: Junior! - which is both a good thing and a bad thing for the kids as far as their mental health is concerned. Anyway, she came out to tell us that the little girl was in tears because she didn't have a voice - and normally she had an AMAZING voice - but really wanted to finish the show - it was her only chance, after all. So she was going to finish the show, but we all had to know that she was sick and give her whatever support she needed.

So the little girl came out for "Till There Was You" in the second act. And she tried to sing, and her voice was Gone. Nothing there. And then, suddenly, an amazing thing happened. Truly beautiful and amazing. This little girl, who could have melted, or tried hell or high water to sing even though she had nothing but a croak, did something really special. She started to speak the song. And she spoke the lyrics, and she did it simply, and clearly, and with feeling, clarity and passion. Suddenly, in the midst of all this other wonderful silly stuff, she was really acting. Real. It was magical. And moving. So so simple.

And she finished, and the audience went wild, and she went right back to prancing up and down the stage like a crazy performing cat trying to win a beauty pageant, and the moment was gone. But it was Real. Funny when it shows up.

Glee

Kelli and I watched the last episode of Glee last night. Or maybe it was the one before that - she's been really busy. I'm really torn about that show. I know from Facebook how much so many of my friends LOVE LOVE LOVE the show. And I myself feel a weird attraction to the characters. But there is a piece of me that can't help feeling that the show is....welll...crap.

The first thing is hard to quantify. It's this feeling that the show can't really decide what it wants to be. This weird uncertainty of tone keeps bugging me. Every week, suddenly all the students and teachers are all obsessed with One Thing. For example, a couple of weeks ago, everybody was interested in "DRINKING" - which hasn't been on the radar in any way whatsoever for two years, and suddenly EVERYBODY is getting drunk, embarrassing themselves, etc. And then they take a nice quick lesson that drinking is something you have to be thoughtful about, and BOOM, next week nobody is drinking anymore. Or being obsessed with Justin Bieber. Or whatever. I guess I wouldn't mind this sudden obsessionism if the show didn't continually insist that it's characters were also real people with real problems that I should take seriously. I can't rationalize these two totally different styles.

And then, are they really losers? They say they are losers, but some of the hottest students in school are in the chorus, and they do these performances again and again that students get really into, with amazing production effects, but still, somehow, they are not cool? At many school in the U.S., show choir is VERY cool, so what is the deal? Hard to manage the consistency here.

The final thing is, well, that the songs, which were pretty marvelous in the first season, are getting repetitive, and well, boring. The medium isn't kind to the theatrical, and you need a really fresh POV to make it work, and they are starting to run out of fresh POV. Though of course, I still get teary at show all the time (though I must admit that a cat food commercial can make me teary).

I will probably be excoriated eviscerated and emasculated for my cynicism. But there it is.

Death by blueberry

Okay, so here's what I dreamt last night:

My brother Charlie and I were part of a choir in England who's director had committed a terrible offense, unnamed and unknown to me in my dream. According to ancient tradition, we were instructed to execute him in the following manner. He was set before the choir, tied up, and we all took turns hurling darts - like the ones you see in bars, or in someone's den - at him as hard as we could. We would dip the tips of these darts in blueberries, some, only some, of which were poison. He stood there like a statue, as he began to resemble a pincushion with dozens of little darts sticking out of him. I was very proud of my ability to hurl the darts with great force and accuracy into his body, but I couldn't help wondering if he was congratulating himself on the brilliance of having insisted on this bizarre and not terrible effective form of ritual slaughter.

Now, my brother and I were in a choir in high school - not English, but with a real elitist British bent. And it did have a choir director who was forced out by angry parents because he was one of those intensely ambitious artists who make great things happen for kids but often at the expense of their mental health. And I have recently been reminded of this choir because somebody on Facebook has been posting dozens of pictures of people and things from this era. But why was I so savagely happy with my ability to hit him with darts? And what the hell is up with the poison blueberries?

Spring is here

Isn't life weird? I have spent the last two months thinking about death, and the inevitable decline of the body, and how pointless things are, and how people are selfish and insular, and everything negative.

And then, two nights ago, I'm walking my dog, Spiker! and we go by Spy Pond, and the light is shining on it, and the messy snow is melting everywhere, the air is still cold but with that smell of spring in it, and Spike is bounding up the hill in the most ridiculous and adorable manner, and I suddenly think: "this is awesome. this whole life thing. what difference does it make that it's finite. Or is it? who the hell knows. I LOVE THIS."

And then, I go see Hotel Nepenthe. Now, honestly, I almost don't go. ASP still threatens me with waves of misery, but I try to be brave for the artists whom I love. And I get there, and who cares? Nobody "complicated" is there, but people are there who are genuinely glad to see me, and it's just nice. I see the show, which is isn't perfect, but golly, the acting is awesome, the designers and director and author have put it all out there, and they are having such joy making this work, and there is so much to rejoice in here. It's magical. And then I go to see Kelli's Spring Concert at Milton. And the kids choreograph pieces that are AWFUL - but gosh, they are so joyful, who cares? And Kelli makes work that is so subtly brilliant, so delicately magical, I'm enthralled. Everywhere, people are making things. And my dog bounds through the melting snow and smells the amazing smells of spring, and I suddenly think: Winter makes you an extremist. Art pushes you to be an extremist. But it doesn't have to be that way. The effort, the engagement, the commitment, the simple pleasure in making stuff - what more to you need? This is GOOD.

Welcome Spring.

Linkded in

I spent the day trying to figure out this LinkedIn thing. I'm not sure I get it. I have a feeling it could be useful to me as I try to get the Rose project off the ground, but I'm damned if I know how. I connected with about a million people, but now that I'm connected I have no idea what to do. Do I post things? Or what? It's all very "professional" and "business", and other stuff with "airquotes" around it. I guess I'm basically hoping that somehow it will lead me to people who want to invest in my project. One can dream...

When Ego is ego and art is art, part two

Well, here's the thing. Last night I also saw, or was subjected to, the very opposite of Requiem. I'm not going to go into detail about who, what or where, because though it was almost unbearably terrible, it was innocent, and I'm sure well-intentioned; and it was free, so what can you do. It was intended to be some kind of artistic "happening" that brought together musicians, dancers, poets, and performance artists. Sounds kinda cool, right? But oh... First a stunningly un-Native American poet came out and intoned a poem by a Sioux holy man while a taiko drummer waved his drum sticks importantly in the air. Then a musician came out and made random noises on a flute and moaned while two modern dancers tried to get inspired. Then a contact improv duo came out and did some random contact improv while the musician continued to emote. Then something remotely interesting happened. Three guys with homemade speakers on their backs. They were attached to each other by 15' aircraft cable, which they sawed at with cello bows. There were sound pickups attached the cables, so as they sawed it made bizarre electrified groans in various pitches. They could change the pitch by leaning and pulling on each other in different ways. I have no idea what it signified, but it was unique, and thus somewhat interesting, until the contact improv-ers started to contact improv in and around their cables, and it just got weird and kind of awkward. Then the drummer came back out, with a friend drummer and drummed for a really long time while the poor dancers tried to keep it up and find some sort of meaningful movement to go with the endless banging. Then everybody came out and did their things all at once in an immense cacophony while the poet did another poem by the Sioux holy man, and then the drum-guy, who sort of seemed to be in charge, went crazy and then made everybody stop. And at last it was over and we could go sit down and watch Requiem.

As I said it was innocent, and naive, and well-intentioned, and several of the performers were obviously fairly skilled, but it had no shape, no context, and no perceivable point beyond satisfying the artists need to make "art". And it begged several questions. First of all, it made me wonder what gives people the right to inflict their art on others. All we were told was that there was a pre-Requiem performance - we had no way to know what it was until we got there, and once there, we felt coerced by the situation to watch them and somehow show our approval for their desire to perform - the kind of "they're so brave, we have to support them" mentality. They weren't brave, they were self-indulgent. Is there a God-given right to present art, and does it go no farther than that we all have the right to express our idea of art and force the rest of us to watch? Maybe coercion is too strong a word - I suppose I could have just left and waited until it was over, but the social pressure to stand there and watch this trainwreck out of respect for the performers was overwhelming. But why? This performance was about nothing, and gave nothing to anybody but the performers. It's something I see far too often - people "being true" to themselves and their art, which really stands for rampart self-indulgence and public, yes, masturbation.

I don't suppose there's anything new about this, or anything to be done about it. It's a free country, after all, and there's no way that we could have artistic arbiters who could really determine what art should and should not be seen. That would be the worse kind of censorship. But maybe there is a place for considerate self-censorship. Ultimately, I guess it makes me want to urge all artists to keep asking themselves, Why am I doing this? And if the answer is more about how it makes you feel than what you are trying to give to others, think twice.

When I was at ASP, I often argued that I didn't really think the individual artists mattered as much as WHAT we made for our audience. I got into a boatload of trouble for that belief, often. It is distinctly un-warm and un-fuzzy, though I'm not saying that the people don't matter, not at all. Without people willing to do it, often for little tangible reward for all the time and energy, there wouldn't be any art. It's just that they serve the ART, not the other way round. I still believe it. It's what made Requiem so transcendent. I guess it makes me a bit of zealot, but it's what I think.

Oh, and the guys who played the crazy cable/speaker three-man walking instrument thingy: These guys: They were pretty cool so I don't mind blowing their cover.

When Ego is ego and art is art, part one

First off, let me just say that Nicole Pierce's Requiem is absolutely brilliant. One of the most enthralling and thrilling dance pieces I have seen in a long time. Nicole is an old friend who has danced with Kelli on several occasions, and I have always liked her quirky movement style, which often marries balletic elegance with an unexpected sort of robot-Barbie kind of vocabulary that is human, kinda comic, and kinda tragic at the same time. And Requiem takes it all to another level. First, it is set to the ravishing music of Mozart's masterwork of the same name, and just sitting the soul-drenching of beauty of that music is really all you need for a rich artistic experience; but you add to that the four living walls of projected trees that slowly morph from summer to fall to dead of winter, surrounding the space, and you get something memorable; then you add dance that is passionate, intelligent, intricate and deeply human - that seems to find all that is noble in the female passage from life into death, performed by masterful dancers giving every ounce of their talent and commitment - and you get something truly unforgettable. You're sorry you missed it.

But bizarrely, that's not really what I want to talk about. Because I had another experience tonight that was so far in another, fascinatingly awful direction, that I can almost think of nothing else. But in deference to Nicole, and what she deserves, I will stop here and continue tomorrow. Let's savor how exhilarating beautiful live performance can be, and leave it at that for the moment. Brava Nicole Pierce.

Mind's Eye

I was listening to NPR's Science Friday today and this caught my attention. It's all about perception. There's a part of me that's just a science geek that loves this sort of thing. But there's always a piece of me that thinks about perception from the artist's point of view. How do we perceive, and what does the way we perceive have to do with how we make our art? The part of me that's the science geek doesn't really care if there is an answer to the question, and the artist part of me doesn't care if there's an answer either, as long as there is a question.

It's really interesting that for weird formatting reasons, the text above came out like that. I love it, in reference to the whole subject of this post, which is perception. Here is what it says: I was listening to NPR's Science Friday today and this caught my attention. It's all about perception. There's a part of me that's just a science geek that loves this sort of thing. But there's always a piece of me that thinks about perception from the artist's point of view. How do we perceive, and what does the way we perceive have to do with how we make our art? The part of me that's the science geek doesn't really care if there is an answer to the question, and the artist part of me doesn't care if there's an answer either, as long as there is a question. But check out the video. It's interesting that in order to hold onto a manageable perception of our environment, our minds only focus on a tiny portion of that environment, but make us believe that we still experiencing the whole thing.

I couldn't figure out how to embed the video in this blog, so you have to follow the link below. Enjoy.

Priming The Mind's Eye

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French philosopher Henri Bergson has a famous quote: "The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend." Bergson probably meant it metaphorically, but it seems to be literally true according to research by psychologist Martin Rolfs and colleagues. Rolfs studies the role of rapid eye movements in visual perception. shot, produced by flora lichtman, additional imagery prelinger archives, martin rolfs. french man: david zax.

Digital Theatre

My good friend Don Tirabassi showed me this site this afternoon. It's called Digital Theatre, and they sell HD recordings of major British theatrical performances on the internet. My question is, Is this good for the theatre? My second question is, Is there any doubt that this is the future?

Silver Jubilee

I had a post here about something that happened, or rather didn't happen, to me recently, but I have removed it as not being in a spirit I would like to embody. Onward and...well onward, anyway.

Bill T. again for me

I've become something of a cynic in my old age. I've been kicked around by the arts enough to be pretty suspicious of artists waxing rhapsodic about their divine gifts to mankind and how much they suffer and how important their work is. I have seen a lot of plain selfishness disguised as artistic intensity (I've a got whole post ready for that as soon as I can figure out how to get a bit of video onto this thing). But Bill T. Jones strikes a chord with me. For those who remember, my blog is named after something he said in an interview with Anne Bogart at the TCG conference a couple of years back. He's arrogant, self-absorbed and sometimes provocative for the sake of being provocative, but there's something rarefied about his artistic commitment that actually gets me believing again.

He was on "On Point" this morning, and this one caller's recollection and his response got me teary and nodding with a sense of real artistic purpose. Listen up:

You can here the whole Podcast here.

Thanks Bill, and Tom, and Marisa.

Separated at birth

I knew I'd seen him somewhere before...

Jungle of Cities

I was reading an article from the New Yorker yesterday - it's the January 10th edition, if you're keeping score - an only moderately interesting article about this woman promoting Freudian psychoanalysis in China. I can't pretend that I was following the article very closely, but suddenly something arrested my attention. It said, "afterward, he invited me to his home in Beijing, near Tiantonyuan, a cluster of pale, pointy high-rises which is famous for being the largest housing compound in China (it has four hundred thousand residents)." FOUR HUNDRED THOUSAND. In a housing project. Can you imagine? A single development almost the size of Boston?

The world is a big, crazy place.

Underworld

So I dreamt last night that I had died and gone to hell. It wasn't too bad though. Hell seemed to be a large old school, like a high school or college building, where I sat in a class taught by a wise old woman. I don't know what the class was about, but it might have been philosophy - because this woman's lecture was more of sermon on personal truth and excellence.

It turned out, too that it was possible to escape from hell. Down the hall from the classroom was a huge room, the end of which just stopped in darkness at an impossible precipice. A black pit yawned before me, and another student told me that if I jumped into the darkness I could escape. He jumped and vanished. I deliberated for a time, worried that jumping off the cliff could just as easily lead to my annihilation, but eventually I gathered my courage and leapt into the void.

When I was a child I used to have a recurring falling nightmare. I would be holding my mother's hand and looking up at an ominous brick building. Suddenly I would be standing at the top of the building looking down at her. Then I would fall off the building. The fall was sickening and terrifying, but just before I would hit the ground I would find myself back at the top of the building, my mother still out of reach below. Then I would fall and be up again, fall and be up, over and over again until I awoke in a cold sweat.

In this dream, however, the fall was not unpleasant. It was a controlled fall, through darkness, without any sensation but gradual descent.

I landed to discover, much to my surprise, that the exit from hell was a small luncheonette. It was busy with customers, most of them young college students, much like my fellow schoolmates in hell. I walked through the restaurant out onto the sunny street. That was it. Then I woke up.

This dream reminded of why I sometimes wish I could be a novelist. I have this idea for novel, called "Odysseus in America". In it, Odysseus, the master tactician and innovator, contrives to escape from Hades and finds himself in California, from whence he makes his way across the U.S. on a second odyssey, avoiding the old gods who want to return him to the underworld, to try to get across the sea to Ithaca to find his beloved Penelope. I think it could be great story, but I'm just not a novelist. I have ideas, but the thought of putting them down on several hundred pages just makes me tired.

The Left Hand of Darkness

So, over the past several years, I've been experiencing a curious phenomenon. It seems to have some kind of karmic significance, though what it might be I can't say. Over the past few years, I have purchased a number of very nice, high quality, warm, flexible gloves. And after a few months, invariably, I lose one. Now this is not so unusual. But it is curious, that there is a unique pattern to my glove loss. See if you can figure it out:

Yes, you guess it: I only every lose the right glove. What could it mean? Is it that, as a left, liberal minded person, I must lose the right, conservative covering? Or do I lost the right, leaving the wrong, and so am not able to choose the "right" path?

Well, last night, going out with Bridget and Chris to see the Whistler in the Dark production of "The Europeans" and celebrate Bridget's birthday, sure enough I lost one of the lovely and expensive gloves Kelli had got me for Christmas. And which glove was it? Yes, it was the right glove - or the correct glove, depending on how you view this.

But wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles, I found the glove, outside on my front walkway, where it had dropped out of my pocket as I ran to the car. So I didn't lose the right glove. But what did I find?