No Way Out

Not that I'm looking for one.  Just taking it slow.

Some nights you go out to a show, or another, or another, or maybe you catch J.D. McPherson at Music Hall of Williamsburg after a birthday dinner for a friend.  

Those are usually pretty good nights.

Went to bed after that show feeling great - McPherson & Co. were amazing - but I woke up with a sore throat and no energy and I've been trying to rally back ever since.

So... some nights you just stay in trying to shake a cold, reading, listening to Chocolate Watch Band, watching a documentary about Geraldine Ferraro, and trying to figure out what to order in for dinner.  

And sometimes you might feel like you do need a way out, when things are so unbelievably backward in Wisconsin and Alabama that it gets confusing which state is which.  But you stay with it, you celebrate Women's History Month with Beth Henley and Wendy Wasserstein and Geraldine Ferraro, and you know the only way out is through.

Notes from a Saturday Morning

Some quick thoughts while David Rothenberg finishes up this week's radio offering.

As usual, there has been lots of music/film/theater-going.  The Mike Daisey Yes This Man show at Joe's Pub was a standout, as was Casa Valentina.  Daisey has been at the center of quite a little storm on ye olde internets, stemming from the fact that his original title for this piece co-opted the #yesallwomen hashtag (which itself of course was a response to the misguided, not to say asinine, #notallmen hashtag that sprung up as a defensive backlash to the anger stemming from the Santa Barbara murders)  Some of the fiercest opinions came from people who seem [in my opinion] to have been blinded by the old Apple flap [missing the point and, at this point, boring] and/or driven to distraction by the notion of a white man weighing in on Women's Issues [completely understandable, necessary, and to a great extent the point of the show - and this is where it gets interesting: where does he get off doing this? Can anyone speaking from a place of privilege have something valid to contribute to the discussion? Where are the female, trans, queer, not-white-male monologists and performance artists taking on this topic at Joe's Pub? Or anywhere that gathers the kind of media attention that 1) goes along with the Public Theater or similar venues; or 2) seems to pop up when a famous, or semi-famous, man has something to say. Is he just a self-absorbed performer who needs to be loved?] Yes, I get the irony that I am a white dude making this commentary.  My opinions on this topic are extremely humble.  

And, it seems that some people are developing some strong opinions without actually seeing or hearing the work, which in my view is riveting, multi-faceted, and significantly more nuanced than some of the critical reaction would suggest. If you want to go to the crux of it, audio downloads of this and a whole bunch of Daisey's other work is free for the asking.  

Another worthwhile link is this old interview with the late, great Eli Wallach, departed a few days ago, who was a hero on a bunch of levels, and not just because he took time out of the goodness of his heart to talk to a friend of mine who was doing a Tennessee Williams role in Boston that Wallach had originated in New York about 50 years earlier.

Much happening these days.  Houseguest next weekend.  More to come...

Happy Birthday Will!

Yes, I've been a slacker blogger, but to this, attention must be paid.

And yes, I know that we're not really sure what Shakespeare's birthday was in 1564, and that the April 23 thing is probably just a too-tidy parallel to his April 23 death date in 1616.  (And I'm not even getting into the question of whether Shakespeare was really Shakespeare.)

But come on - a 450th birthday party?  It's worth a mention.

As Essential as Groceries

The title of this post is paraphrased from Dr. Fowler's paraphrasing of Amiri Bakara in the opening moments of this clip (with thanks to Poets and Writers Inc. for drawing attention to that video).



The clip has about 7 minutes of interview footage, and includes great perspective from Baraka on the importance of speaking and hearing poetry, as well as simply reading it off a page.  Early on, it also has this pearl of Truth:

The reason they cut the arts always is because the people that run the world don't want you to be conscious, because otherwise you'd resist. You couldn't possibly be living like we live if you understood what they were doing, you know, you'd fight them.  So the arts is always expendable.  Anything that makes people conscious of what the world is, and what it could be, is always expendable.

Baraka goes on in this interview to discuss how an artist needs to live and work on this earth, in this actual world, the physical universe of people and things, rather than retreating into an imaginary, idealized, self-constructed cave or tower, of ivory or any other color.

This world has plenty that is nearly uncontrovertibly craptastic in it [which, in case it's not obvious by now, is one of the most important reasons why art and poetry out loud are as essential as food].  But one of the things I'd argue is good about these internets is that, in addition to the cat videos and endless rants, you can find a trove of material at a moment's notice about Amiri Baraka, the Black Arts Movement, and delve into a rabbit hole of your own devising.

For now, I'm leaving you with a couple clips of Baraka reading his work.  One, a relatively recent live performance video with Rob Brown, courtesy of The Sanctuary for Independent Media.



And this other, even more powerful and controversial (if that's possible) earlier poem - audio only, with a still photo - Black Art, with Albert Ayler, Don Cherry, Sonny Murray, Henry Grimes, and Louis Worrell.  Required listening.



Rest in Power.

Ave Atque Vale Phil Everly

I've found that it's fairly typical for people not to recognize the vast importance of the Everly Brothers to the history of 20th Century music.



It's reductive, but it might be useful to think of it this way: without the Everly Brothers, there would be no Beatles.  And without the Beatles... well, you can finish that sentence on your own.



Bye Bye Phil.

Amandla Madiba

Been thinking about Mandela a lot the last few days (I think everyone has been thinking a lot about Mandela the last few days).

Photo 1961, Eli Weinberg

One of those people who has done more important work, more capably, more generously, more courageously, persistently, than it's even really possible for me to fathom.  It's scarcely original to say so these days, but I feel tremendously blessed to have been able to share time on the planet with him.

Thank you Tata.

Won't you come see me, Queen Jane?

Memories of English lefties adapting Maggie's Farm as a response to/indictment of Margaret Thatcher sent me down the Dylan rabbit hole once again. 

More on Baroness Thatcher later, but for now, shifting from one quicksilver song to another, I now pose the following query:

Was Dylan writing about someone in particular in the song Queen Jane Approximately?  I got pulled into the song (again) when listening to "Hwy 61 Revisited" the other day.  There's certainly no need to associate it with any particular person in the flesh & blood universe, but I wonder...

I've never held much truck with the notion that it was about Joan Baez.

The idea that it's about literal Queen Jane Seymour has struck me as even more farfetched, though there's something vaguely interesting about thinking that the "smell of roses" has something to do with the War of the Roses, and that he was being extra special clever referring to "all her children" starting to resent her (when she died of complications from the birth of her only child.)

Naaaaah, that's crazy talk.


I have thought that it might have more than a little to do with Edie Sedgwick.

But I am intrigued by the notion I came across while scouring the internets the other day that it might not be this Factory Girl, but actually the Boy who started the Factory, Andy Warhol himself, who's being addressed in the song.  I picked up the idea from one of the sites out there (cheese factories themselves, for the most part) devoted to picking apart song meanings, with a guy calling himself LuckyTown making the case.  Further steps down the rabbit hole led me to this interview Nora Ephron did with Dylan around the time the song came out - it is vintage Bob being random and chaotic and anything but serious or straightforward, but it does contain the quip "Queen Jane is a man."  And he offers this mini rant on art and accessibility:

Great paintings shouldn't be in museums. Have you ever been in a museum? Museums are cemetaries. Paintings should be on the walls of restaurants, in dime stores, in gas stations, in men's rooms. Great paintings should be where people hang out. The only thing where it's happening is on radio and records, that's where people hang out. You can't see great paintings. You pay half a million and hang one in your house and one guest sees it. That's not art. That's a shame, a crime. Music is the only thing that's in tune with what's happening. It's not in book form, it's not on the stage. All this art they've been talking about is nonexistent. It just remains on the shelf. It doesn't make anyone happier. Just think how many people would really feel great if they could see a Picasso in their daily diner. It's not the bomb that has to go, man, it's the museums.

SO - is it possible that this is an offer/invitation to the artist of plastic (inevitable) repetition who ran the Factory where his kinda sorta girlfriend spent a lot of her time?

When your mother sends back all your invitations
And your father to your sister he explains
That you're tired of yourself and all of your creations
Won't you come see me, Queen Jane?
Won't you come see me, Queen Jane?

Now when all of the flower ladies want back what they have lent you
And the smell of their roses does not remain
And all of your children start to resent you
Won't you come see me, Queen Jane?
Won't you come see me, Queen Jane?

Now when all the clowns that you have commissioned
Have died in battle or in vain
And you're sick of all this repetition
Won't you come see me, Queen Jane?
Won't you come see me, Queen Jane?

Oh when all of your advisers heave their plastic
At your feet to convince you of your pain
Trying to prove that your conclusions should be more drastic
Won't you come see me, Queen Jane?
Won't you come see me, Queen Jane?

Now when all of the bandits that you turn your other cheek to
All lay down their bandanas and complain
And you want somebody you don't have to speak to
Won't you come see me, Queen Jane?
Ah, Won't you come see me, Queen Jane?

Just askin'.

Things Fall Apart

Yes, they do.

Ave Atque Vale Chinua Achebe.



photo AFP

"It is the story that saves our progeny from blundering like blind beggars into the spikes of the cactus fence. The story is our escort; without it, we are blind."

Last from London

Well, for now anyway...

One last photo montage video from London.  It's a little longer than the others, but it's split into two parts, so that may help.  Think of it as an A Side and a B Side.

I had to resort to YouTube for this, but I was able improve the resolution a bit.  Enjoy.

A lot of this is pretty self explanatory - don't think you need me to say much about Big Ben, Westminster, the Houses of Parliament, or Richard the Lionheart.  I do want to mention, especially for the Rodin fans out there, the juxtaposition of the Burghers of Calais in the shadow of Parliament (as opposed to casts I've seen at the Rodin Museums in Paris and Philadelphia, and the Metropolitan Museum in New York, all of which I have since found were cast after this one in London).  The placement in Victoria Tower Gardens is poignant in that these French business leaders and legal authorities are shadowed by one of the most important legislative structures in the Western World; and it calls to mind their story - offered as a sacrifice to save the citizens of Calais from Edward III's siege of their city.  (Remember Edward III's hunting palace from an earlier post, and the last video?)

It's worth mentioning are a couple of light art pieces from the Tate Modern that were as photogenic as they were engaging:

• Lis Rhodes' Light Music was the setting for the shots that come near the end of the first song.  It was part of the Tanks portion of the Tate Modern - which is amazeballs and you should definitely go there.  I think that Light Music has closed up and moved out of the space, but we were lucky to catch it while we were there.  The projectors practically dared you not to walk in and interact with the light.  Luminous and irresistible. 

• The sequence about halfway through featuring two light tables in the room with white walls is made up of shots of an Alfredo Jaar piece called Lament of the Images.  He's looking at the way people can be so saturated with media images (and words) that they can be blinded by the excess: so many images flood ones view that one stops seeing the content of what is actually being shown.  That blindness is revealed in that installation (as I interpret it) by the light that floods the room as the light tables spread apart (the tables become a light source, illuminating the people, objects, and walls themselves, but the light itself ceases to be an object of attention), and conversely by the darkness that pervades when the tables close in together (the beams of light become focal, but the darkness literally prevents one from seeing around it).  Beautiful, simple, this piece had a powerful, magnetic draw, and I also enjoyed the lucky arrival of a school group when I went back into the room to grab these shots.

Also part of the Tanks was Suzanne Lacy's The Crystal Quilt.  My photographs don't remotely do justice to the complex power of that brilliantly feminist activist piece [which had the added interest, to me, of having originated in Minneapolis, a city (and a landscape) dear to my heart, woven into this contemporary art exhibit in London].  The video embedded in that link does a better job, but if you come across an exhibition of The Crystal Quilt anywhere, you really owe it to yourself to check it out.

And I can't sign off without mentioning the shots from the Churchill War Rooms - including the color-coded phones, his cabinet meeting room, and the map room complete with a caricature of Hitler penciled into the middle of the Atlantic.  Fascinating. 

And then undercutting any sort of heightened thoughts or reflections on the living memory of War in London, and how vastly it differs from a sense of war in New York, we have shots of the Sherlock Holmes pub which I took for my Sherlock-fan nephew, Mols getting ready for her kayak final test in her wet suit, and shots of our time in Shoreditch/High Street.  All of which was fantastic!

As for the music: why can't Rudie fail?  Just because.

Fun with Engineering

A few words about some of the photos toward the end of the video in that last post with video (from Dec. 28).  Part of our walking tour (hey, there's a time and a place to roam free, and there's a time to listen to a guy who knows what he's taking about - some of those things are pretty amazing) involved the Thames Tunnel built by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, along with his father Marc Brunel (who actually started the project, came up with the original designs, and whom some claim was the more talented engineer, though history has showered more acclaim on the fils than on the pêre).

Now, I'm not much of an engineering geek, though it doesn't take too too much imagination to envision a world where I might have become one instead of devolving into the theater, music, art and politics geek you see today.  [Ok, so maybe it does take some imagination.  But picture if you will: a charismatic math teacher in my high school rather than the language, drama, and history mavens I ended up with; some acclaim at a science fair or two; and a scholarship to M.I.T.  Throw in a cute girl who was into engineering, and I might not have noticed the social liberation of art and turned my creativity in a different direction.  It's possible.]

In any case, not only did we get a beautiful walk through the world of Oliver Twist, and a well-taught lesson on imperialism, and The Heart of Darkness, we also got a lesson on the immensity of the shipping traffic in London in general (and the piracy that went along with it), which demanded the construction of a structure to take people under a river, at a time when such a thing was unheard-of.  Crossing a river was done via bridges and boats  A tunnel?  Under the Thames??

A tunnel under the Thames.  And a story with a lot more twists, turns, and drama than I'd have guessed would accompany a construction project: from the invention of the caisson (ground too soft to dig a hole substantial enough for tunneling? build a huge stone cylinder so heavy it will just sink into the ground for you, and dig up the dirt as you go along. Genius.) and the tunneling shield, to budget overruns and investor discontent, to dangerous, noxious, and truly filthy working conditions and the inevitable labor strife that rightly go with them, to construction delays, to leaks and breaches and flood, and the chief engineer suffering a stroke.

Let's pause there for a moment.  Say that you're Isambard Kingdom Brunel.  It's 1827, and your team has been working on the first tunnel in the history of the world meant to allow people to pass under a river.  And you're way behind schedule, and the fumes down there are so bad that the workers are striking, and the roof has collapsed and a flood almost killed a bunch of the people on your crew.  And then your father, chief of this whole project, has a stroke.

Now, he is a renowned engineer, and you have access to world class, state-of-the-art medical care.  But let's not forget: it's 1827.  Medical miracles are pretty scarce. The public, and your investors, are, shall we say, a little skittish.

Did I mention that you are nineteen years old?

So what do you do?  You have a 300-foot long tube full of water. Your father has been passing control over the project to you over the last several months, so you assess the damage, repair it, pump out the water from the flood, dry it out, and throw a party.

In the tunnel.  

You throw a party in the tunnel and you invite high society to attend.  Which they do, and the party includes the Duke of Wellington, and it's a rousing success.  And by 'rousing,' I mean 'noisy.'  Because, this being a society banquet, you've also invited a brass band to play in this stone cavern under the river.  And between the band and that silverware clanking against china echoing off the walls, it was probably the loudest non-amplified party in the history of ever.  But I also mean rousing in the sense of magnificent, because this stunt worked: the public was won over, money was raised, and construction began again in earnest.

Oh, and here I guess I have an obligation to point out that the portrait of the Banquet above, by George Jones, is the only contemporary image of Marc and Isambard Kingdom Brunel that shows them together.  Which is ironical don't you know, because Marc wasn't at that party.  Remember that stroke he had?  Recovery took a while back then.

And then the next year there was another roof collapse and a major, this time truly serious, incident that took 6 lives and very nearly took the life of Isambard Brunel himself.

You guys! This story goes on.  It actually goes on another 15 years before the tunnel even opens to the public.  If you're interested, you can read much more about it here, here, especially here, and plenty of other places. For now, suffice it to say: after that tragic, fatal, flooding catastrophe, they shut down the project for seven years.  The Brunel team finally raised enough money and support to start up construction again in 1835.  They slogged through for another nearly 8 years of setback after messy, dangerous setback, and finally opened to the public in 1843.  [Along the way, they took care to make sure that the first person to make the entire crossing from Rotherhithe to Wapping under the Thames, in June of 1840, was the son of Isambard, grandson of Marc, 3-year-old Henry Brunel.]

And then things got interesting.

The tunnel was not accessible to horse and carriage, so they limited it to foot traffic, and it officially opened in 1843 (about 15 years behind schedule).  Economically meh, culturally fascinating.  Kiosks opened in the archways, and this place became the place to be - 2 million visitors in its first year, global acclaim as the '8th Wonder of the World,' a bustling, thriving thoroughfare under the Thames.  Shops, food, performers, "Fancy Fairs," scientific demonstrations, a vital marketplace and meeting place.

The glamor wore off after a few years, and the shops started to close as attendance declined, leaving vacant archways, which became favorite ambush spots for muggers and trysting places for young lovers and, more commonly, prostitutes.  Then, as sometimes happens in locations of former glory fallen into dilapidation, it became a focal point for adventurous partiers - massive underground gatherings of the young and hip; our amazing guide Robert called them "Victorian Raves"  This detail is harder to find in typical histories and resources, but Robert is one of the curators of the Brunel Museum and shared all kinds of items of interest that might otherwise go unrevealed (props to London Walks for suiting the guide to the walk so well!)

Our Amazing Guide Robert

Finally in 1865, around the time the American Civil War was wrapping up, they laid track through the tunnel, and in 1869 they sealed up the caisson and began running trains through the Brunels' Thames Tunnel, which has been functioning as a railway more or less ever since.

And in 2010, they reopened the caisson to guided visits (you need to grab a rail, clamber down, stepping carefully, pivot round, duck down for a 6-foot long walk through a 4-foot high mini-tunnel before descending the staircase to the open area, but it is open).

And, as chance would have it, they also floodlight the tunnel on Sundays in November.  And we just happened to be there in November, and just happened to be staying in Wapping, near the north end of the tunnel.  [Ok, ok; those are a couple of the reasons we chose, against anyone's educated guess, to spend part of an afternoon on a walk devoted to Rotherhithe, Bermondsey, and this feat of engineering, rather than on things we would have found interesting on our own.]  So we went back to the Overground station (they call it an Overground line, although this stretch of it is clearly underground and, rather famously, under the river.  People also drive on the parkway and park in the driveway) and got those couple of shots of this 8th Wonder of the World.

There you have it.  More about a tunnel than I ever thought I would write.  I'll post our final London video soon...

Taking Stock

Getting to that part of the year where one takes stock.  It's been a rough fall-into-winter - the Storm, the shootings, the subway pushings, the other evidence of Humanity's lack of humanity: these affect everyone, irrespective of what might be your personal drama (or family drama, or work drama, or some version of 'all of the above').

Let none of this mute your comfort and joy.  Breathe in the beauty, live deeply, gather ye rosebuds while ye may.  Or anyway, that's one idea.

Back to London.

The first viddy I put together uses a lot of images from the first couple days which are already represented here, so I'm going to skip that one for now.  Here's one that's more food-centric covering the T-Day redux and the German Holiday Market on Southbank, along with shots from Bermondsey and Rotherhithe showing Execution Dock (where pirates would be hanged in gibbets) and the ruins of Edward III's hunting palace, including Holiday imagery that it's not quite too late in the Season to put out there.

Enjoy.

Ave Atque Vale Václav Havel

I haven't yet written a proper eulogy for Václav Havel. Well, I'll never write a proper eulogy for him, but I want to write something from my point of view. He certainly was a personal hero of mine, which puts me in broad company. He was, of course, brilliant across an entire spectrum: writer, philosopher, activist, playwright, politician, theorist, statesman, artist. I guess I must have first heard of him in the late 80s, just before the Velvet Revolution was getting ready to happen. I'm sure the first play of his I ever saw was Audience, a brilliant and powerful one-act based in part on a time in Havel's life when the Communist regime forced him into line work at a brewery, and one of the first Off-Broadway shows I ever saw, back when I was just visiting the City from time to time, before I moved here.

He got a lot of press in the late 80s and early 90s, going from being a dissident who was never far from the threat of arrest, if not actually in prison, to being the President of the country whose leadership he'd helped to topple. Before I became aware of Havel and the Velvet Revolution, what did I know from Czech? I'd knew what Czechoslovakia was, of course, but only in those broad (and often only semi-true) strokes that a Midwesterner was likely to encounter: as a child I had general awareness that it was part of the Communist Bloc and therefore somehow vaguely evil, or at least repressive.

I later learned that it had been the first nation that the Nazis invaded and annexed against its will, but this was not to be confused with fleshed-out knowledge - again, just a vague sense of a place suffering from victimhood: it was a place lumped in with places like Poland that Hitler took over and where he built concentration camps; and then lumped in with Romania, Yugoslavia and, again, Poland as a place under the Soviets' thumb that tended to produce athletes who were successful in Olympic Games.

And then when I was old enough to watch Stripes, I got to see Czechoslovakia as the place that Bill Murray, Harold Ramis and company invade accidentally while on a joyride in the Urban Assault Vehicle they borrowed from Uncle Sam, and got to take misguided pride in the exchange (paraphrasing now)

Bill Murray: "It's not like we're going to Moscow. It's Czechoslovakia! It's like driving into Wisconsin!!"

Harold Ramis: "Yeah? I got the shit kicked out of me in Wisconsin once!"

Funny? Sure. But not much of a lesson in history or international relations.

Then college happened, and Czech got more real. Franz Kafka, Milan Kundera, Milos Forman. And Václav Havel and 1989.

Thanks to our trip to Prague in the fall, and especially to the time we spent with Ondrej, we got some more personal insights into Havel and the Velvet Revolution. Saw the café where he met and drank and smoked with other dissidents and writers; of course we went to Wenceslas Square (in Czech, "Václavské Námesti, Václav being the original Czech word for Wenceslas), but it meant a lot more hearing from our tour guide Jakob the story of the body of the 'dead student' that helped to intensify public support for the revolution (and learning that the guy was neither dead nor a student, but actually a member of the secret police who never explained why he did it), and hearing from Ondrej first hand about his going to the protest as a boy with his father, both of them rattling keys - as in the Keys to the Castle, as in "Václav to the Castle," the cry of the people who filled the square and fueled the transition.

Havel had been seriously ill for some time, but it was still a profound loss when he succumbed to cancer at 75. But I don't want to be too morbid in my mourning. I'll post the last couple photo-montages from our Prague trip and leave it at that for now.

Prague 3 from nycmick on Vimeo.
Prague 4 from nycmick on Vimeo.

Three Things

No, I have not yet commented on the loss of Vaclav Havel here. That will come soon, and I'll post another slide show video when I do it.

For today, here are three things:


1. All hail Helen Frankenthaler, explosive Abstract Expressionist Extraordinaire.



2. Ave atque vale Sam Rivers, Loft Jazz Maestro.



3. Yet another way of demonstrating that there are many more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy.

More Prague

Here is another set of Prague pix. Went with some funkier music this time around, partly because, irrespective of the fact that this city is wildly historical, jam-packed with churches and has beauty from every age anywhere you turn, it doesn't take itself terribly seriously and has a long and proud party tradition. (And an extremely powerful connection to rock and pop music. Seriously. Did you see Tom Stoppard's Rock and Roll? Were you aware that Vaclav Havel proposed Frank Zappa to be the official U.S. cultural envoy in the early '90s?)

But mostly I went with the funkitude because our hosts Kristin and Ondrej like the music. Take a look and listen if you have a spare 6 minutes.
Untitled from nycmick on Vimeo.

Heard from Kristin the other day, after the first slide show went up. As it happened, and very apropos my post earlier this month, she had been to a couple of events where the Dalai Lama was speaking that day. (She's a pretty amazing person and does some pretty amazing things on a regular basis. In case that wasn't already clear.) She shared what she found to be the most interesting thing he had to say: "Action is more important than prayer or wishful thinking."

Amen, sister.

The shots in this viddy are from our second day in Prague. The Eiffel Tower looking thing that starts you off is the Petrin tower, built two years after Eiffel did his thing in Paris and it's the same altitude - if you factor in the mountain it's standing on. Many of the opening shots are from the top of that tower, and there are also a bunch from a tour of the Prague Castle, including the Valdstein/Wallenstein Gardens, the Loretta and Capuchin Monestery (home of some truly astounding beer - in a world where excellent beer flows freely), more locations from the Amadeus shoot (look - there's the exterior for Wolfy and Stanzie's apartment!) and our own private wanderings. Enjoy.

Topics for Discussion

Well, the Cherry Orchard has been chopped down.

Could this have been avoided? Or was it the inevitable result of the end of a pseudo-feudal aristocracy and the rise of market capitalism? Why or why not?

Discuss.

*Extra credit for references to Occupy (fill in your city's name here)

So, Then This Happened

AS you might have surmised, the R.E.M. breakup remained on the forefront of my mind for much of the day. When I first got word, I shared the news with the people around me at work, and one guy said "Well, they are pretty... seasoned."

I stifled an outburst and mentioned that the Rolling Stones have a lot more 'seasoning' and they still entertain a crowd once in a while. The co-worker then said something to the effect of "In my opinion, the Rolling Stones should have pulled a Seinfeld years ago." Meaning that they would have been better off quitting at the top of their game (as R.E.M. appears to be trying to do) rather than dragging on.

Ok. Perhaps. I grant the possibility.

But that didn't really mitigate my mental breakdown when, a while later, another guy from the office came by and asked how I was doing. I said, "Well, R.E.M. broke up, so I'm a little shaken about that."

His response: "R.E.M.?! Man, that is past time! They were the 90s! I was all about them back then though. (singing) Jeremy's spoken..."

I have some regret that I was not able to restrain myself from grabbing my head in my hands and saying "Urggmmphhh! THAT'S PEARL JAM!!!" I was able to restrain myself from literally shouting that exclamation, but just barely.

When I told Cory this tale, she asked "Did that vein in your forehead bulge out?"

Yes. Yes, I believe it did.

I have, very clearly, lived too long.

That said, for today's listening list, I am through Chronic Town, Murmur, Reckoning, Fables of the Reconstruction, and am now almost at the end of Lifes Rich Pageant. It's going to be like this for a while.

It's the End of the World

Well, not really.

But evidently, it's the end of R.E.M.



photographer unknown

And I don't know how to feel.

More Songs about History

And while we're on the subject of videos, did you chance to catch this gem last night? Or on the interwebs. Very much worth a look and listen.

Gotta love the Roots. It's the law.

Oh, and you'll want to go see the Tribe Called Quest documentary, Beats, Rhymes and Life. I mean, unless you're opposed to music. And fun.

Season of Tennessee

Maybe you realize that Saturday was Tennessee Williams' 100 Birthday. Maybe you don't. The fact that it's an open question is something of a problem, in my view. This is one of those things that should be cause for a year-long celebration of National Pride, festivals on the White House lawn, parades in Memphis and New Orleans and New York, marathon readings and TV specials and Oscar-worthy biopics devoted to the life of this man, the Great American Dramatic Poet.

What we do have is a few more productions of Tennessee's shows. So that's, well, something.

Scott Brown wrote an article for New York Magazine a few weeks ago discussing Williams and the neglect his centenary is suffering. He does a pretty good job of opening up some of the issues that may have stood in the way of the celebration Tenn deserves, most especially this maddening sense that he stopped being good somewhere around 1961 and that the last 20 years of his life were just wasted, which pushes me around the bend a little bit. What do you people want? Even if it were true (which it is not) that everything after Night of the Iguana sucks, what would you have preferred? That Tenn had died in a James Dean-esque car crash so we could cast him in the Too Fast to Live, Too Young to Die role? That perversion aside, I think that 'bad' Tennessee Williams is a little like the 'bad' Shakespeare plays and the 'bad' Dylan records - you may have to dig a little deeper and open up a little more, but I still don't want to live in a world without Titus Andronicus, or Saved. And in terms of history, the night is pretty young for Signore Williams. Just as people have come around on The Tempest (and, it's worth mentioning, have turned away from the Henry VI plays to a certain extent) I wouldn't be surprised if people learn how to see and hear Small Craft Warnings over time .

By the way, I didn't catch Vieux Carré (quelle domage! For reals. I'm borderline despondent to have missed that, but the tix were elusive.) but I did see the Michael Wilson-directed The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore at the Roundabout, and I may see it again. And so should you. 'Twas most worthy.

I have to include this last one, from the 1959 film of Suddenly Last Summer, for Elizabeth Taylor. We'll miss you, Liz.

Even yet still more birthdays

"What?" you say, "Haven't we had enough of these incessant birthday celebrations you keep babbling about? Is nothing going on in the world besides celebrations of the day somebody happened to be born? Because, you know what? I think a few other things are going on!"

Yes, you may say that, and you'd have a point. But let's look at the data from another vantage: today is not simply the birthday of Ira Glass of This American Life. It's not just the birthday of actresses Miranda Richardson and Jessica Biel and the 100th birthday of Jean Harlow. It's not only the birthday of inventor Alexander Graham Bell and athletes Herschel Walker and Jackie Joyner-Kersee. Nay - it is also the birthday (and not just any birthday, but his 13th birthday: that luckiest of numbers and his entree to the world of teenagedness) of my very own nephew Sam, who's way out in Phoenix and I won't be able to see him, but it's worth celebrating anyway, wouldn't you say?