We heard the Sermon on the Mount and I knew it was too complex
It didn't amount to anything more than the broken glass reflects
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.
I might have more to say about this later, but for now suffice to say what I've said before: I love the man and his work. He'll be more than missed.
Have been listening to Lou and Lou-related tunes all day. Put on Berlin first thing this morning, and even though I knew it was coming, when I got to this song I was stopped in my tracks. This performance might not be the cleanest of all time (who wants clean?), but it was recorded in the city they named the record after, and I like it. (Thanks crazyritchie, whoever you are.)
Too young, to be sure. But if it can be said of anyone, Lou Reed LIVED. And if we want to take him at his word when he says "My week beats your year" then he lived to be well over 3,600 years old. Methuselah can suck it.
Goodbye Lou.
More on London later. For now, here are two images for the Dante fans out there (and you know you're out there...)
Beautiful day in New York today: hot, sunny, mimosa-worthy; kind of perfect for what is treated as the unmeteorological-yet-quite-official First Weekend of Summer.
Happy 100th Birthday Akira Kurosawa.
What the hell else do I really have to say? He was one of the great minds/eyes of his time - but you already knew that. So just go out and watch Rashomon, or Yojimbo, or The Seven Samurai, or Ran, or Throne of Blood, or any of his films. And then, maybe don't see any 'regular' studio movies for a little while - they'll seem kind of silly.
There is a LOT going on right now. More even than usual at this festive time of year. The biggest news of all is that there is a very very good chance that my sister and her family will be spending a significantly higher percentage of their time out here starting at some point in '010. Something along the lines of 100% of their time. More on this as it develops...
Meanwhile, this is very late notice, but, consider yourself notified: I will be reading tonight at the Renegade Cabaret. It will be a short but presumably jolly performance of 'Twas the Night Before Christmas tucked in among jazz and Holiday musical faves. The High Line at W. 20th Street, 7 p.m.
Speaking of Holiday faves, I haven't figured out how to embed from this site, but in honor of Chanukah (it's the 7th night, after all, or will be in a few minutes) click here for a great viddy from our friend Leslie Jonath teaching us how to make latkes! It's controversial in a small way, and not completely specific, so you may still want to refer to a recipe, but it's got some great tips. Enjoy!
Cory and I went to see Lou Reed read from his new book of collected lyrics at the Paula Cooper Gallery. It was a good event; interesting to hear what he did with the songs without the element of music, and I really liked the moments when a line would remind him of something and he'd stop the reading to extemporize on the memory/free association. And there was a little discussion with Hal Willner afterward, where they sifted through questions that had been written on little scraps of paper by audience members and dropped in a bowl.
Then afterward a ton of people waited on line for Lou to sign their books and records (he also had some photography books for sale) and get some photos. He refused to look at the camera even when we assured him there'd be no flash (ok, I'll be kind: he declined to look at the camera), but we talked about Poe a little. A very little.
Hey - you don't go to Lou Reed for warm and friendly, now do you?
Technical rehearsal last night. Stressful and time-consuming, as usual. Those of you who have ever worked on some form of comedy are familiar with that point in rehearsal when nothing seems funny anymore, even though you were laughing about it last week. Yeah, welcome to that. Plus, everyone is sick. And grouchy.
Hey, it's tech.
Oh, here's the new york times listing of the show.
And, to celebrate today's raininess, and yesterday's trip to h&m and the american eagle store in a failed attempt to pick up some basic black jeans, here's a hipster haiku:
Surfers in New York
Your spring gear reeks of Cali -
Where's the fucking beach?
A little rushed, as three things are happening at once.
I've become involved in a performance piece (it can't properly be called a 'play) that's happening at luna stage in montclair this weekend. It's called the picasso project and it's a theatrical exploration/presentation of picasso painting, sculpture and writing. A lot of it is very movement/physically oriented, based on picasso's work, and the text is taken from a play pablo wrote called 'desire.' There is a little gertrude stein text as well; here's an excerpt of that:
Shutters shut and
shutters and so shutters shut and shutters and so and so
shutters and so shutters shut
and so shutters shut and shutters and so. And so shutters
shut and so and also.
The picasso text has more verbal variety, but is very very free associative and non-linear. VERY hard to memorize.
It's challenging work, and i'm doing a bunch of day job stuff too, as well as a project with beth and arianne, and, of course, auditioning. SO that's one of the reasons you haven't seen much on this blog lately.
Speaking of which, i've got to go meet with a potential office boss. I just threw up a little in my mouth.
Saw Factory Girl last night - very mixed feelings. Sienna miller is great, and oh so yummy, but much of the rest of the casting was perplexing: they worked hard at uglifying guy pearce (which takes some doing) to be andy warhol; and then hayden 'the bad star wars movies' christensen as dylan? Really? Not that either of them were that bad, but better casting couldn't have been that hard to come up with.
Then again, those were only two of a whole bunch of questionable choices made in the making of this film. A couple of my major complaints would involve big-time spoilers, so i will forbear. But the whole thing went out of its way to make odd demonizing decisions, and felt a bit like an overblown, r-rated, anti-drug picture.
That said, parts of the film were super-effective and the style was damn good.
I think the hype of 'were sienna and hayden really having sex on screen? Like, for real?!' is hilarious! Now that was a good choice by some publicist somewhere...
And apropos the Isis inscription, in the seemingly endless stream of sychronicity/coincidences that make up my life, here's something i ran across yesterday, from The Inferno:
Before me nothing was made
If not eternal, and I will last eternally.
And if you know your Dante, you know what comes next...
Oh yeah, there's a big football game this weekend. What is everybody doing for that?
Went to a reading last night - celebrating galway kinnell's 80th birthday. Bunch of great poets read a bunch of his poetry, and then it wrapped up with kinnell himself reading a few - as frank said, it was one of those nights when if sombody blew up cooper union it would decimate contemporary american poetry. Unfortunately, frank couldn't make it last night, for a super-unfortunate reason: amanda's grandmother died this week. She had been pretty ill for a while, and hadn't been expected to live into the new year, but it was still a shock and a very very sad turn of events.
This may not be the best eulogy, but i think galway would approve:
Daybreak
On the tidal mud, just before sunset,
dozens of starfishes
were creeping. It was
as though the mud were a sky
and enormous, imperfect stars
moved across it as slowly
as the actual stars cross heaven.
All at once they stopped,
and, as if they had simply
increased their receptivity
to gravity, they sank down
into the mud, faded down
into it and lay still, and by the time
pink of sunset broke across them
they were as invisible
as the true stars at daybreak.
And oatmeal is probably too long for putting in a blog, and certainly not an epitaph, but it was one of the highlights of the night.
Tonight is J.P.'s birthday party in astoria - happy happy, bro!
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