We Are All Bradley Manning

Daniel Ellsberg

I was the Bradley Manning of my day. In 1971 I too faced life (115 years) in prison for exposing classified government lies and crimes. President Obama says “the Ellsberg material was classified on a different basis.” True. The Pentagon Papers were not Secret like the Wikileaks revelations, they were all marked Top Secret—Sensitive.

Ultimately all charges in my case were dropped because of criminal governmental misconduct toward me during my proceedings. Exactly the same outcome should occur now, in light of the criminal conditions of Manning’s confinement for the last six months.

From: I Am Bradley Manning

Monday Remedy

Say you had a busy weekend.  Say you had a houseguest (a great one!), plus a more-than-usually satisfying audition you helped a friend with, and an art opening, followed by going to a show at Lincoln Center, and then Sunday you played tennis in Central Park and then gave the final performance of the show you were in, then met friends and went to another show from the same festival your show was a part of, then saw another out of town guest.

Of course, that's just one way to have a busy weekend.  You probably have your own ways of doing it.

Then on Monday you might go back to the office or the shop or the salt mine or wherever you work.  You're feeling ok, but you've been beating back a cold and maybe you didn't really get as much sleep as you'd have liked and you haven't had a chance to rest rest for a while, so you have a perfectly ok day and you get a lot done, but you don't really click into gear. 

But on the way home you might stop by that fancy grocery on the corner which for some reason gives you a really good price on shiitake mushrooms.  So before your girlfriend comes home, you mince up some garlic and onion and put it in a bowl with oil and a Malaysian spice blend (which may or may not have been created by the artist who made the show you went to on Saturday) of turmeric, cumin, cayenne, coriander, cinnamon, and some other herbs and goodies, plus a few dashes of that insanely spicy naga jolokia sauce you got when you were in the Keys, and you marinate the chicken breast you brought out of the freezer this morning in the mix.  Then you decompress from the day for a while, which is nice.  And the gal comes home and you let her do her own decompression while you go back in the kitchen and put on some good music and whip up some wild rice and chop those shiitakes into strips, sear and stir fry the chicken and then put in the mushroom strips, and you finish it off with a shot of liquid aminos and give one last stir, serve on a bed of greens and top with crumbled bleu cheese and dressing.

I'm calling that a remedy to a Mediocre Monday.

Plus we got to watch the premier of a very cool show that Cory worked on!

What Is To Be Done?

There’s nothing to be done but to go on restating the importance of this kind of courage, and to try to make sure that these oppressed individuals — Ai Weiwei, the members of Pussy Riot, Hamza Kashgari — are seen for what they are: men and women standing on the front line of liberty. How to do this? Sign the petitions against their treatment, join the protests. Speak up. Every little bit counts.

From Salman Rushdie's OpEd in today's Times

Hamza Kashgari, uncredited photo

Are you there world? It's me, Friday.

Home in Hoboken after a long week, and a good long night of moviegoing at the Tribeca Film Festival, listening to some Caroline Shaw and sinking into not-unpleasant exhaustion.

Saw a program of documentary shorts - fantastic, love this fest if for no other reason (and there are other reasons) than that I get a chance to see things like this instead of just making a stray comment while watching some awards show that "we ought to go see things like that."

Then hustled over to another theater and watched Adult World, which was fun and funny as hell (and I'm not one to give an automatic nod to the latest member of the Roberts Dynasty).

Tomorrow is an appointment in the morning, followed by I hope another film or two, followed by a performance of East Side Stories.  Sunday is a breakfast/rehearsal date, then more movies, then another show.  And then a week of work, auditions, rehearsal, and performances.  Nobody ever said a weekend had to be restful.

Boston

One of my homes.  Not the one I live in today, but one where I lived for 6+ years, and which still holds a more-than-little piece of my heart.

Where Monday happened.

All my friends are ok, as far as I can tell, none of them were in the vicinity.  Most were at work (while they're proud of Patriots' Day up there, they still don't usually give you the day off unless you managed to score Red Sox tickets), a few were at home.  The physical therapist who helped me in the wake of surgery last year qualified for the Marathon, but opted not to run it this year.

Bostonians in general have been dealing with it amazingly, but not surprisingly.  The news outlets have rightly referred to their heroism, generosity, fearlessness, and humanity.

And I'm not going to dwell on the typical media sensationalizing of tragedy (and I'm certainly not going to dignify crap like this with a response)

What I will spend a little bit of time on are a couple pieces that talk about resilience, toughness, and not giving into the fear that, by definition, feeds terrorism.  Here’s one, from cryptographer and security maven Bruce Schneier in The Atlantic. It’s a good reminder that we get to choose how to react (or overreact) to these horrors, and that giving into our fear is neither necessary nor useful.

We actually have all the power here, and there's one thing we can do to render terrorism ineffective: Refuse to be terrorized.

It's hard to do, because terrorism is designed precisely to scare people -- far out of proportion to its actual danger. A huge amount of research on fear and the brain teaches us that we exaggerate threats that are rare, spectacular, immediate, random -- in this case involving an innocent child -- senseless, horrific and graphic. Terrorism pushes all of our fear buttons, really hard, and we overreact.

But our brains are fooling us. Even though this will be in the news for weeks, we should recognize this for what it is: a rare event. That's the very definition of news: something that is unusual -- in this case, something that almost never happens

And then this one from Dennis Lehane, author of Mystic River, Shutter Island, and a bunch of other Boston-centric work.  I like that this piece confronts Boston's blemishes (which is too weak a word; maybe I should say Boston’s glaring flaws) directly, but wraps them in the resiliency we all can be proud of.

Trust me, we won’t be giving up any civil liberties to keep ourselves safe because of this. We won’t cancel next year’s marathon. We won’t drive to New Hampshire and stockpile weapons. When the authorities find the weak and terminally maladjusted culprit or culprits, we’ll roll our eyes at whatever backward ideology they embrace and move on with our lives.

There’s been a lot of Boston love going on in the media, including some standouts in the sphere of late night comedy, and even the Yankees got in on it, much to their credit (and – you know this – I do not like to give the Yankees credit for anything, but damn, they deserve it for that.)





Also published in The Atlantic, with the caption: A sign saying "New York Loves Boston" is projected on the facade of the Brooklyn Academy of Music, in New York, late on April 15, 2013, hours after the bombings of the Boston Marathon. The work was done by the Illuminator, a guerrilla projection van that was a project of Occupy Wall Street, and members of the the OWS Light Brigade. (© Lucky Tran, The Illuminator collective)

Do what you do. Make the things you make. Definitely keep up with any activist work you're doing.  And send a little love and healing mojo to the Hub.

Oh, and my show opens tomorrow night.

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'.

Long Week

Which included Cory's birthday, and the birth of this little one.

And now there's a little extra-special Friday-ness in the air.

Off to rehearsal.  Have a good weekend.

Steubenville

OK

It’s not ok

it’s so not ok

it wasn’t ok to do

and it wasn’t ok to take pictures of

and talk about

and text about

and brag about

and joke about

It’s not ok

that you thought it was ok

That you thought it was just

     a thing that people do

That it kind of is a thing that people do

That you thought it was funny

That you thought it would go away

That you thought you would get away with it

That you didn’t really think at all.

It’s not ok this happened.

It’s not ok, ok?

It’s not ok

You’ll be ok

You won’t be ok

It won’t be ok

     for a while

Wheels turn and things are set in motion

And then it’s too late

and it’s not ok.

It’s not ok that –

     OK – THAT –

what happened

didn’t just happen to happen.

It happens not to be ok

that it ever happens.

And it happens ever.

Because if it didn’t happen

if this thing that shouldn’t happen

     didn’t happen

you wouldn’t have taken pictures

and shared them

and told jokes

and expected to be excepted

from accepting the attention

to your unacceptable attentions.

It’s not ok that you expected

her to accept it

took exception to the suggestion

that it might not go away.

It’s not ok.

We shudder as the shutters shut

and tellers tell of promise cut

     off

But I can think of something else to cut off.

And others say it’ll be ok

you’ll be ok.

And you will,

You’ll be ok, you’ll even play

but the playing field won’t be level.

Not for a while.

Not by a long shot

or a wide shot

or a tight shot

a close-up

that you share

     Why would you share that

     Other than that that’s done?

            that’s

            what’s

            done.

And what’s ok about that?

And at the end of the carnival

we look back at the video

and the cotton candy may make us sick

some of the rides turned faster than we thought

didn’t turn out how we thought

turned into something

     not a carnival at all

     something not ok

And I’m sorry you’ve been inconvenienced

by the fact that the wax figurines

     you thought you won

     turned out to be flesh and blood.

On the other hand

You should have known

     You did know

     You knew

It wasn’t ok

It isn’t ok

You’ll be ok

She’ll be ok

Actually

She won’t be ok

She’ll be better.

Do you still go outside?

"Just as water, gas, and electricity are brought into our houses from far off to satisfy our needs in response to a minimal effort, so we shall be supplied with visual or auditory images, which will appear and disappear at a simple movement of the hand, hardly more than a sign."
   -Paul Valery, 1931





Instant access to everything: all the music ever recorded, all the words ever written, all the pictures ever drawn, photos of every sculpture molded, carved, or cast. Footage, accounts, and descriptions of any event you care to witness or recall. The history of people and of nations. A 3-D rendering of any item that could be imagined. Economic information and mathematical formulations. Erotic fantasies, comedic interludes, pithy remarks, athletic exhibition, action and suspense, diversion without end.

And then what?

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."

Winter into Spring

In Madison Square Park

Good Night.

Yo La Town Hall, or, Big Week, part three

Part three would properly be about the Steppenwolf production of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? we saw that Friday.  All I'm going to say about that right now is that it was brilliant, and quite a contrast to any Valentiny sentiment that lingered from the previous evening.

But this post is about the Yo La Tengo concert at Town Hall that Saturday.

They were incredible, of course.  They did kind of a Rust Never Sleeps-type show, with a mostly acoustic Side A set, and a louder electric Side B set [including two versions of Ohm, which continues to reveal its versatility layer by layer - on Fade, on the Fallon show, at their bookstore appearance].  Both were fantastic.  Love the new record, loved the show, love these guys and looking forward to seeing them again at Solid Sound in June.

Sadly, that Jimmy Fallon link no longer takes you to an active video of their performance.  So to make up for that, here are two videos YLT have graciously made available on the internets.

First, Ohm:

And this one, for I'll be Around has to be one of my favorite viddies out there right now.

Oh, the Places We Go!

Much has happened.  You won't hear about most of it.  Unless you ask.

Of course, things happened to you too.  Can't wait to hear about them!

Big Week, part two (the Food Episodes)

More on last week's happenings:

Tuesday was an epic dinner at a fancy restaurant.  The kind of meal I don't get very often.  And by 'very often,' I mean 'ever.'  Friends took us out as a Big Thank You to Cory for a Big Favor, and it was incredible: course after course of the most amazing food.  Even the dishes made from ingredients I don't usually like were great - cranberry 'snow' with beet puree? Bring it.  And the stuff I do like?  My brain and body almost exploded.  Oysters unlike any I've ever had, poached lobster that made me question my place on earth, an egg cream that made me pine for days that never really existed. (An egg cream can do that?  Apparently it can.)

Wednesday night I had off.  Sort of.  I took advantage of the freedom to do prep for the dinner I made for Valentine's the next night.  I knew I wouldn't be able to get home until later than ideal on Thursday, so I needed to cover some ground ahead of time.

Here's the thing about that: we don't usually do much for V-day.  We acknowledge that it exists, we mention it, we wish each other the happiness of the day, but we don't historically make much of it.  And by 'historically,' I mean 'ever.'  Or, more precisely, 'so far.'  But this year was a little different.  For whatever reason, we decided to have an extra-special-nice dinner in.  So I did a bunch of prep on Wednesday and when I did get home on Thursday, I did my magic in the kitchen.  

And for kicks in the wake of our other-worldly meal on Tuesday, I put on my best 'fancy waiter' as I'd bring out the courses.  You know: weight slightly forward, hands gracefully floating the dish to the table, describing it in a hushed throaty half-whisper.

This is a Perfect Valentine Manhattan, adapted from the classic recipe with Hudson Manhattan Rye, Dolin Dry Vermouth, Carpana Antica Sweet Vermouth, peychaud and orange bitters, and Morello cherries.

Watercress soup, with a whiskey cream. (This was actually an exciting discovery, and is a strong contender to be T-Day worthy...)

Haricots verts (ok, they were green beans - hey, I'm in 'fancy waiter' mode.) in a Kürbiskernöl and lemon glaze.

Roasted fingerling potatoes with tarragon and thyme.

Filet mignon with mushrooms, adapted from a recipe by James Beard.

Vermont ice cream, made with milk from happy cows and rich organic chocolate.

Ok, I punted on dessert and went with Ben & Jerry's.  Still, it was a pretty good meal.  A Happy Valentine's Day.

No visual stimulation for you today - I haven't been feeling the 'take pictures of food' thing lately. I'm sure I will revert.

Stay tuned...

Big Week

It was a big week.

A big project at the dayjob took a lot of my time and energy in January (along with one or the other of us being sick for what felt like the whole month).  When that project/event ended, I was able with a short transition period to get back into my normal rhythm.  Last week sort of took that to another level.

Mike Daisey at Joe's Pub on Monday night.  Mike's taken some stupid amounts of heat over the last year or so.  I've written about him here before and probably will again, but I haven't devoted any real space to the NPR/This American Life controversy.  You probably know all about that, and if you don't there is plenty to read and listen to out there about it.  What I'll say on the subject is that Mike did a hell of a job drawing attention to what's going on in tech manufacturing (and tech reporting) and created a brilliant show in the process.  Or vice versa.  And while I'm not going to get behind the whole "it's all true" thing, I do maintain that a playwright is not the same thing as a journalist, even a playwright whose stock in trade is distant travel, immersive research, and real world goings-on with real world stakes.

I've already gone on more about this than I wanted to, but I'll wrap up today's discussion of this subject by asking straight out something Daisey touched on obliquely last Monday: how closely have you looked at the workings of the tech industry, and what have you done to affect labor conditions in China?  [Oh, and take a few minutes to imagine turning off all your 'connected' devices one day a week.  What would that take?  How much prep would you need to do?  Just asking.]

More to come...