ghost light

Big List: New Year's Edition

2012-01-07T17:08:00.000-08:00

Sunset Cloud Near 280.

Happy New Year. The first week of 2012 was a bit up and down for me to be honest, but the year is young, no?

I know.

It's been awhile.

If there's anything the internet abhors it's silence or absence.

Emptiness and absence are challenging to document. I'm not talking about writer's block. It's not that I have nothing to say or write about.

I've only been silent here.

Absent here.

Off the Cupertino Footbridge

I've been reconsidering my approach to this blog. How I want to proceed. I've made a few rules for myself and it would be easy to violate them. Easy to be obsessive about posting videos and music links. And those are an important part of the DNA of this blog (because so much of what I do is informed by film, music, and random elements that come from unpredictable sources). It seems natural and inevitable that I should share them in some way. I'm exploring other ways to curate this information. Pinterest. Tumblr. Then there's the constant stream on Facebook and Twitter. Each has it's own value.

Sharing source material represents one particular slice of the pie. It feels necessary to figure out how to articulate other elements of how I work and what inspires or interests me. So this is the year for playing around with that.

In the meantime. Let me ease back into blogging by starting off with a Big List.

Period of Adjustment by Tennessee Williams @ SF Playhouse (SF). Through Jan 14.

Nameless Forest by Dean Moss @ YBCA (SF). January 19 through 21.

Get Lucky: The Culture of Chance @ SomArts (SF). Through January 26.

Future Motive Power by Mugwumpin @ The Old Mint (SF). January 26 through 29.

Kamla by Vijay Tendulkar @ Cubberly Theater (Palo Alto). February 5 through 11.

Francesca Woodman @ SF MOMA through February 20.

Titus Andronicus by Will the Thrilla Shakespeare @ Impact Theater (Berkeley). February 23 - March 31.

Far Flung:
Sontag: Reborn by The Builder's Association @ the Public (NYC/Under the Radar Festival). January 4 through 15.

Bob by Siti Company (a solo performance featuring Will Bond) @ New York Live Arts. January 19 through 29. I'd love a chance to see this again.

Gob Squad's Kitchen: You've Never Had It So Good by Gob Squad @ the Public. January 19 through February 5.

We Are Proud to Present a Presentation About the Herero of Namibia, Formerly Known as South-West Africa, From the German Sudwestafrika, Between the Years 1884-1915 by Jackie Sibblies Drury @ Victory Gardens Biograph Theater (Chicago). March 30 through April 29.

Current Music Obsession

2011-12-23T09:54:00.000-08:00

I don't even say late night because it's continual. And yah, I promised no videos but I think rules can be bent especially when it comes to really really intense music obsessions or any sort of intense obsession for that matter. Two reasons I'm obsessing about this music: I love Velvet Underground and it also reminds me of music I heard in a bar in Prague and have been trying to find. It was a combination of surf and Ennio Morricone served up with a psychedelic vibe. I haven't found the exact thing, but there are a few songs in this Dean and Britta set that come close. Apologies for the big files, but I'm loving how it looks on the blog. Somehow makes the music more intense, eh?

Dean and Britta played the song set at TBA11 this year, but I missed them. Would have loved to seen them live with Andy's screen tests.

Werner Herzog: The Ecstasy of Truth

2011-10-13T10:47:00.000-07:00

Think again...

2011-10-07T09:02:00.000-07:00

Against Nostalgia by Mike Daisey.

I Interview Playwrights Part 389: Taylor Mac. (Adam Szymkowicz)

Today, my son plans to construct a larger than scale memorial to Steve on our Minecraft server (there was talk of making it out of blue and black wool). Steve will stand alongside Cookie Monster (there's a portal to the aether in his head) and giant-size replicas of my son and his friends' avatars. Play resumes.

1984 Won't Be 1984 & Here's to the Crazy Ones

2011-10-06T09:45:00.000-07:00

TBA11: Mike Daisey & All the Hours In the Day

2011-10-01T01:17:00.000-07:00

Mike Daisey.

Jesus Christ.

Fucking Mike Daisey. Fuck.

Oh.

Wait.

Before I go further I should make it plain: this is not a review.

This is a highly subjective accounting of my experience watching/listening to ATHITD via Daisey's Live Stream. I was not in the room. I did not smell the bacon. The fire alarm did not assault my ears in quite the same way as it did those who were in Washington High School. I will confess to watching the dark stage and listening to that fucking fire drill for five minutes while I imagined everyone out in the beer garden. Yeah. I'll admit to that. I also used my emotional memory (wah?) to conjure the look, the feel, the sound of Portland on a September afternoon (An experience that comes from being there the week before. So while Portland was sunny in my mind, it was raining on those who were actually standing outside the building.)

It's an imperfect system.

I'm just saying.

You maybe shouldn't trust this.

Mike Daisey did not control my entire environment for 24 hours. I had to make my own fun. But it was a weak defense. Mike came to occupy a large portion of my head space (at times the transference between me and Mike was so total that I did believe - I was convinced - that Mike was shaping my reality, the very landscape through which I passed). Yeah. It was Mike who made the sun shine on "the Stick" and the traffic flow on the 101 into San Francisco. Mike was the driver behind it all.

Mike Daisey.

Jesus Christ.

Fucking Mike Daisey. Fuck. Oh.

There is not enough time to tell you everything you need to know.

Mike set himself up as some kind of anti-beckettian narrator. Surly and maybe a bit unreliable. A wordmule.

I streamed ATHITD through my iphone while I was here. I listened to it driving home from San Francisco, and then on my laptop when I got home.

2am. I brought my laptop to bed with me, but just sat on my bed and watched until he broke for the hour. He's telling a story about Jean-Michele and driving and it confuses me. He's shifting time and it's cunning the way he's playing with time, the way he's toying with it just now. I never catch hold of this story. That's not a criticism of either of us.

2:45am. I put my jammies on, prop my laptop on my knees and wait for him to come back. I have no fucking idea what I'm in for.

3am. Stockholm syndrome sets in. Mike is in charge. He's downright gleeful about making two vegans cook bacon and toying with everyone's expectation that they're going to get some. Oh everything is such giddy fun. Mike talks about investment. How if we're giving him our time he feels a need to reciprocate. Before he launches into the crux of his narrative there's a double down moment - you're either with me or you're not. If you're not with me, then get the fuck out. I turn out the lights and hunker down under the doo-vay. Mike tells the story about his high school relationship that he couldn't break off and about the unwanted pregnancy that resulted. Every revelation peels back another layer and gets deeper under my skin. Mike talks about his recognition of how hard it was for his girlfriend to consider giving up their baby and the realization that he shouldn't have asked this of her, his subsequent depression, the wondering alone in the darkness naked, the need to be submerged. It's not everything I need to know, but it's almost enough.

[I sleep for 3 or 4 hours.]

Sunrise. Voodoo Donuts. Yoga.

Nikola Tesla. Wim Wenders. David Bowie. Whoa. Stop please. It's like Mike has hacked my search history for the past 72 hours. Synchronicity surrounds me, Concord.

Piss Christ. I don't even know what time Piss Christ came up. I think I was in the car on my way back to San Francisco for rehearsal. Piss Christ. I laugh insanely. Piss Christ. Ho ho. Piss Christ is the final invasion of my personal reality or what I think of as my personal, inviolable reality. Mike really is in my head, knows my thoughts and is communicating my feelings and personal, political, artistic views to the world. Piss Christ. It is here that the over-identification and the synchronicity of events become disorienting and surreal. The pressure of this experience begins to effect my behavior in not so subtle ways. My maniacal knowing laughter (not ironic, mind you) is the first sign.

10am. ATHITD starts to resemble Borges' map. Daisey has been unfolding this narrative for so long now that it seems to contain all the lives of everybody listening and watching. Daisey is channeling all of our psyches and blurting out our thoughts. Artfully. The recurring threads, so subtle and masterful. This is the kind of narrative control employed by Hunter S. Thompson. Oh wait. There Daisey goes. He's talking about the necessity of controlling one's environment. Now he's accessing Thompson directly. See? See how that works? Like from my head to Daisey's tongue or something like that.

10:03am-ish. Time and space are compressing. It occurs to me that Mike tapped the beer garden. Mike tapped the beer garden and recorded conversations and then wove them into his narrative. It's getting pathetic isn't it? I try to talk myself out of this notion. No luck. Mike would not do that. He would not --

Wait. Now he's talking about the expectation that a playwright will pull together the threads of his or her narrative. Only a few days before someone had asked me if playwrights were really supposed to do that - pick up all those threads. Yeah. That's the idea. And Mike claims he can't do it or doesn't want to. Did he say that? And is it actually true?

Mike is a weaver. And despite his claim, he's been weaving and picking up narrative threads throughout ATHITD. It's not quite the same literary application somehow. There's a mystery and an inconclusiveness to these threads; the repetitions don't necessarily add or make meaning. They don't knit themselves nicely into a tight or logically coherent narrative. Images recur much as they do in dreams. You're on your own to figure out why or where it's going. Or not.

Hope. A monologist is hopeful because you know that no matter what material is covered, it's not going to end badly (no one is going to die or anything). (I'm paraphrasing.)

I don't think he mentioned redemption. But along with hope, this thing is pushing redemption. The idea that you can make art out of the detritus of your life, that art is often made from the detritous of our lives (maybe not explicitly so). By watching this in action over time, there's an alchemical shift that occurs, an identification that leads or could lead to transformation. Mike seems to be holding out the possibility in this moment.

10:05am. I'm starting to feel self-conscious and embarrassed by how I'm making Daisey's whole performance in this hour entirely about me. We're only 5 - 10 minutes into the hour and my head is building worlds out here on the 101. It's wrong.

10:15 am. Everything has become permeable. I feel at risk emotionally and fearful that I'm going to reveal too much in rehearsal. Really? Oh joy. What a perfect way to enter into the work.

I don't want to be here.

Judgement is suspended.

I sit outside the studio and seriously consider finding a place where I can listen to Daisey for the next 6 - 7 hours.

12:09pm. There are times during these last hours when I close my eyes and strain to hear him speaking, his voice drowned out by the din of voices in the Turkish deli where I'm eating lunch and by the noise in my head. Other times, I can imagine the voices and sounds of every living thing in each particular moment and it almost seems possible that I could capture the enormity of that in words. That I might make some kind of impossible performance myself.

1:15pm. I decide to put down the phone and be in the room. I agree to be in the room. This is where I am. Kunst-Off Arts Studio, One Grove Street, San Francisco. I decide to be with the people I'd chosen to spend the next 3 hours. To collaborate and be present to make this art project.

4:15pm. I plug back in. Drive across the Bay Bridge. I can't hold on to the narrative anymore. It's just this voice. I recall the essence of the moment. Mike's voice sans meaning or matter. Words. Tone. Picking up a loose strand from last night and weaving it in. But the details are lost for me. It just matters that he's there and the audience is on the other side.

4:50pm. Oakland Hills. I'm lost. Disneyland. I switch between ATHITD and my map app. I'm following myself on the map trying to intersect with my destination. There I go winding around and around through the hills. Parking. I have to go back to my car three times because I can't remember if I locked it. Livestream is sporadic on this hill.

5:00pm. I'm talking about Machiaveli's The Prince with my reading group. I can not concentrate. Words are coming out my mouth about the Reformation and torture and consolidation of power in Italian city-states. How do I know any of this?

5:50 - 6:00pm.

There is not enough time to tell you everything you need to know.

Big List: Funny Time of Year Edition

2011-09-23T00:04:00.000-07:00

Patience Worth by Michelle Carter. Symmetry Theatre Company @ Thick House. Through October 2.

Fifth of July by Lanford Wilson @ The Pear Avenue Theatre. September 15 through October 9.

We Don't Belong Here by Katie Faulkner & Michael Trigilio. Dancer's Group OnSite Dance Project. @ Union Square, September 29 through October 2. @Yerba Buena Lane, October 6 through 9.

The Woodmans - by C. Scott Williams, SF Documentary Film Festival. Roxie Cinema, October 15 & 22. Shattuck Cinema, October 16.

Once in A Lifetime by Moss Hart & George S. Kaufman @ACT through October 16.

red, black & green: a blues - Marc Bamuthi Joseph/The Living Word Project @ybca. October 13 - 15 & October 20 - 22.

The Infernal Comedy: Confessions of a Serial Killer by Michael Sturminger - featuring John Malkovich Zellerbach Hall. October 21.

Phaedra adapted by Adam Bock. Shotgun Players @ Ashby Stage. September 21 through October 23.

Merce Cunningham Dance Company @ Memorial Auditorium, Stanford. November 1.

Human Kind: Out of the Blue - Joe Goode Performance Group @ The Joe Good Annex. November 10 through 12.

Danzón by Pina Bausch/Tanztheatre Wuppertal @ Zellerbach Hall. December 2 & 3.

Wish I Could Be in 2 Places at the Same Time or Fantasy Theater Edition:
Guided Consideration of a Lamentable Deed by Frank Basloe. needtheater @ Cafe-Club Fais Do Do. October 6 through 8 & 13 through 15.

Surprise Annie. Rubber Repertory & Annie La Ganga. Through October 29. Various locations in Austin, TX.

I have not recovered

2011-09-20T21:51:00.000-07:00

TBA 11: All the Hours In the Day

2011-09-18T01:22:00.000-07:00

At this point almost 8 hours in to Mike Daisey's All the Hours in the Day 24 hour monologue at the TBA11 Festival. Perfect for the middle of the night.

Watch live streaming video from mikedaisey at livestream.com

5 Things: May Be Related

2011-09-04T10:20:00.000-07:00

Extremely Public Displays of Privacy

Another Thing to Sort of Pin on David Foster Wallace.

Psychotic Jest and Infinite Reactions: How David Foster Wallace Did Not Invent the Internet's Voice.

Wim Wenders on Pina. This film looks so beautiful, I can't wait to see it.

What Does Fiction Know?

HST: Charlie Rose Interview

2011-08-28T00:34:00.000-07:00

I promised myself that after the all the videos I posted this past year I was going to refrain, but I can't help myself on this one (er..oops, several). I found this interview with HST. You know, all things being equal, Charlie always got a good interview out of Hunter and this is no exception, HST seems genuinely engaged and delighted talking with Charlie.

Favorite quotes:

A work that aspires, however humbly, to the condition of art should carry its justification in every line. (quoting Joseph Conrad)

A lot of things look very simple, until you try to do them.

He's destroyed the standard of what's fun in politics for good people. I think once I said that Nixon was great because he brought the best people into politics and Clinton's going to be famous for driving all but the worst ones out.

I have a few more favorites in the 3rd segment, but I'll leave them to be discovered.

Buy the Ticket

2011-08-27T09:03:00.000-07:00

Here I go. Indulge me. Mind you this bears little resemblance to the novel I experienced (it's a trailer after all), but it sure looks like fun. Bruce Robinson directed and wrote the screenplay (I loved Withnail and I).

Beginning #3: Derrick Jensen 2011 Lecture

2011-08-25T07:28:00.000-07:00

Beginning #2

2011-08-01T21:20:00.000-07:00

Tulip, 1985 - Robert Mapplethorpe

a photo showing one man holding another man's genitals (at 1:43)

Rearing Horse with Rider, Gunther von Hagens

A Beginning

2011-06-16T16:57:00.000-07:00

Lisa Lyon by Robert Mapplethorpe

For Strong Women by Marge Piercy

A strong woman is a woman who is straining.
A strong woman is a woman standing
on tiptoe and lifting a barbell
while trying to sing Boris Godunov.
A strong woman is a woman at work
cleaning out the cesspool of the ages,
and while she shovels, she talks about
how she doesn't mind crying, it opens
the ducts of the eyes, and throwing up
develops the stomach muscles, and
she goes on shoveling with tears
in her nose.

A strong woman is a woman in whose head
a voice is repeating, I told you so,
ugly, bad girl, bitch, nag, shrill, witch,
ballbuster, nobody will ever love you back,
why aren't you feminine, why aren't
you soft, why aren't you quiet, why
aren't you dead?

A strong woman is a woman determined
to do something others are determined
not be done. She is pushing up on the bottom
of a lead coffin lid. She is trying to raise
a manhole cover with her head, she is trying
to butt her way through a steel wall.
Her head hurts. People waiting for the hole
to be made say, hurry, you're so strong.

A strong woman is a woman bleeding
inside. A strong woman is a woman making
herself strong every morning while her teeth
loosen and her back throbs. Every baby,
a tooth, midwives used to say, and now
every battle a scar. A strong woman
is a mass of scar tissue that aches
when it rains and wounds that bleed
when you bump them and memories that get up
in the night and pace in boots to and fro.

A strong woman is a woman who craves love
like oxygen or she turns blue choking.
A strong woman is a woman who loves
strongly and weeps strongly and is strongly
terrified and has strong needs. A strong woman is strong
in words, in action, in connection, in feeling;
she is not strong as a stone but as a wolf
suckling her young. Strength is not in her, but she
enacts it as the wind fills a sail.

What comforts her is others loving
her equally for the strength and for the weakness
from which it issues, lightning from a cloud.
Lightning stuns. In rain, the clouds disperse.
Only water of connection remains,
flowing through us. Strong is what we make
each other. Until we are all strong together,
a strong woman is a woman strongly afraid.

Big List: Shameless Plug Edition

2011-06-13T10:11:00.000-07:00

And then, of course, I have this show going on right now...

Care of Trees by E. Hunter Spreen, Shotgun Players @Ashby Stage through June 26.

NB: Check out this video featuring Rich Black, Graphic Artist and Director of Ambience for Shotgun. You can see him painting the building display for Care of Trees.

Big List: Ready for Summer Edition

2011-06-13T10:08:00.000-07:00

Everyone Who Looks Like You, Hand2Mouth @ TJT/Fury Factory. June 17 - 19.

Tongue of A Bird @ Dragon Theater through June 19.

3 from the Geography Plays by Gertrude Stein, The Imaginists Theater Collective through June 18.

Killing My Lobster @ Z Space/Fury Factory. June 25 only.

Little Shop of Horrors @ Boxcar through June 26. Never seen it before. This might be just The one to see.

June en Victoria by Stuart Bousel @ Stage Werx Theatre. June 9 - July 2.

Twelfth Night by Will "the thrillah" Shakespeare, AtmosTheater @ Theatre in the Woods, Woodside. July 17 through September 4.

Fantasy Field Trips:
Seller Door: a play of consequences by Larry Mitchell. Sustainable Theater Project @ East End Flats, Austin, Tx through June 19.

NW New Works Festival. On the Boards. Through June 19.

Risk/Reward Festival of New Performance. Hosted by Hand2Mouth. June 25 & 26.

5 Things: Where is the Happyness? Edition

2011-06-03T09:56:00.000-07:00

A few items that have passed my way in the past day. There are some common themes running through them that are coming up in my life. Not sure what you might take away, but it's always nice to spread the love, eh?

Skydiving Blindfolded or 5 Things I Learned from Sebastian Nübling - Simon Stephens

The Peaceful Warrior: What's Fabulousness Got to Do With It? - James Still

Hay Fesitval: No Woman Writer Will Ever Be As Good A Me - V.S. Naipual. This one is a particularly special treat.

The Body is a Barometer - Anne Bogart.

Bonus:
Whispering On Paper - George Blecher

Badlands: An Oral History - Nathaniel Penn

What I Can't Read Without Bursting Into Tears

2011-05-11T14:44:00.000-07:00

Even hearing Rick Moody reading it makes me feel like layers are peeling off me and life is coming undone.

117: Happy Birthday Martha

2011-05-11T01:36:00.000-07:00

A Dancer's World here.

Richard Move as Martha Graham

5 Things: Roxy Paine

2011-04-21T14:15:00.000-07:00

Where Theses Go to Die

2011-04-15T09:22:00.000-07:00

You know that scene at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark? When the Ark of the Covenant gets crated and stored? The camera pulls back to reveal this enormous storage facility that goes on for infinity? That's what happened when I handed in my thesis last Monday (April 4). I'm convinced. I'm never going to see it again. Actually. They will call me and at an appointed time, I or a representative of myself must go and pick it up, producing appropriate identification, or what? I do not know.

It took half an hour to find the building, oddly known as Administration. I say that because in all the years I've been at SJSU I've never ventured into this building ever, except to turn in my thesis. So the question is, What exactly are they administering and to whom? I do not know.

There's a lot of new construction going on around campus, which is kind of a flagrant F.U. to the students, considering that budget cuts require a reduction in the student population (10,000 students) across all campuses in the Cal-State system. A professor warned me a few months ago to get my thesis in ASAP.

But this building. The Admin Building. Surely the last building students would consider taking over in protest. It reminded me of an elementary school I'd attended. Because it was that old. Or like some of the older buildings I remember from living on Fort Knox.

The Grad Research office was a tiny, two room office. A cubicle took up most of the front office. I don't have the imagination to even fathom why a cubicle was necessary. Maybe just to have a place to hide. The other office was dimly lit which made it seem larger and more mysterious than it actually was. Really. There were two students ahead of me, so I waited next to the cubicle in the brightest florescent light I can remember. I think it was so bright because the ceiling was so incredibly low. The entire point of the building's architecture seemed to be about compression and claustrophobia.

So I handed over my precious to a woman I presume was the head Grad Research administrator and she gingerly added it to the mounting stack of theses to be distributed to readers and checked for errors. And that was it. The mundane end to my cumulative project.

I came home and laid down on the floor for an hour. I think all that horizontal architecture induced me to want to get low. The kids joined me on the floor because these days it's so novel to see me stretched out that way doing absolutely nothing.

Now I'm in the process of sorting through years of accumulated scholarly articles and notebooks and returning books that I've had checked out for so long it feels like they're mine. It's hard to let them go and at the same time, it's like a weight has been lifted. Or the bars of a tight cage have opened and I've been released from captivity - a large, feral scholar.

Earth Sounds

2011-04-03T12:18:00.000-07:00

FYI: some of these links may be suspect. I've tried to find *scientifically* based sites that record earth sounds, but a quick surf of Youtube will reveal that this task is enormously challenging or at least time-consuming and the listener risks exposure to some really bad ambient/electronic music.

Sounds of the Earth recorded on the Voyager Golden Record.

Sound made by Earth made when "charged particles from the solar wind collide with Earth's magnetic field."

Why Do Birds Suddenly Appear?

2011-04-02T21:36:00.000-07:00

Missing for months, colorful flocks of flycatchers, warblers, orioles and black-headed grosbeaks are once again abundant in the Bay Area. And they've navigated with such precision -- despite lengthy journeys with no maps -- that they return to the same park, the same yard or even the same tree.
Did they hear their way home?
That's the idea behind a new theory by U.S. Geological Survey geophysicist Jon Hagstrum, whose research suggests that birds navigate by using Earth's low-frequency sound waves to identify the "address" of home.
"They are imprinting on the characteristic sound" of where they live, he told a crowd this week at a lecture at USGS headquarters in Menlo Park. "The terrain has characteristic frequencies. I think that is the sound they are listening to."
Birds may even perceive the world as a vast sonic environment, hearing many frequencies bouncing off different landmarks, such as mountains and buildings, generated by the Earth's movement.

You can RTWT here.

The Ballad of Nathan Hale

2011-04-01T20:59:00.000-07:00

The breezes went steadily through the tall pines,
A-saying "oh! hu-ush!" a-saying "oh! hu-ush!"
As stilly stole by a bold legion of horse,
For Hale in the bush, for Hale in the bush.

"Keep still!" said the thrush as she nestled her young,
In a nest by the road; in a nest by the road.
"For the tyrants are near, and with them appear
What bodes us no good, what bodes us no good."

The brave captain heard it, and thought of his home
In a cot by the brook; in a cot by the brook.
With mother and sister and memories dear,
He so gayly forsook; he so gayly forsook.

Cooling shades of the night were coming apace,
The tattoo had beat; the tattoo had beat.
The noble one sprang from his dark lurking-place,
To make his retreat; to make his retreat.

He warily trod on the dry rustling leaves.
As he passed through the wood; as he passed through the wood;
And silently gained his rude launch on the shore,
As she played with the flood; as she played with the flood.

The guards of the camp, on that dark, dreary night,
Had a murderous will; had a murderous will.
They took him and bore him afar from the shore,
To a hut on the hill; to a hut on the hill.

No mother was there, nor a friend who could cheer,
In that little stone cell; in that little stone cell.
But he trusted in love, from his Father above.
In his heart, all was well; in his heart, all was well.

An ominous owl, with his solemn bass voice,
Sat moaning hard by; sat moaning hard by:
"The tyrant's proud minions most gladly rejoice,
For he must soon die; for he must soon die."

The brave fellow told them, no thing he restrained,--
The cruel general! the cruel general!--
His errand from camp, of the ends to be gained,
And said that was all; and said that was all.

They took him and bound him and bore him away,
Down the hill's grassy side; down the hill's grassy side.
'Twas there the base hirelings, in royal array,
His cause did deride; his cause did deride.

Five minutes were given, short moments, no more,
For him to repent; for him to repent.
He prayed for his mother, he asked not another,
To Heaven he went; to Heaven he went.

The faith of a martyr the tragedy showed,
As he trod the last stage; as he trod the last stage.
And Britons will shudder at gallant Hales blood,
As his words do presage, as his words do presage.

"Thou pale king of terrors, thou life's gloomy foe,
Go frighten the slave; go frighten the slave;
Tell tyrants, to you their allegiance they owe.
No fears for the brave; no fears for the brave." - anonymous

The Infinite Return

2011-03-29T10:52:00.000-07:00

Yes. I link to this. A lot. And yes, so do many. And yes, I'm back to it again today as I'm working on my script. And also because The Pale King is making its way to people's mailboxes and I read a thoughtful review of it and also of Fate, Time and Language.

The only thing that's capital-T True is that you get to decide how you're gonna try to see it.
This, I submit, is the freedom of a real education, of learning how to be well-adjusted. You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn't. You get to decide what to worship.

Because here's something else that's weird but true: in the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship--be it JC or Allah, be it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles - is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness.

Hudart Park, Woodside, CA
Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful, it's that they're unconscious. They are default settings.

They're the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that's what you're doing.

And the so-called real world will not discourage you from operating on your default settings, because the so-called real world of men and money and power hums merrily along in a pool of fear and anger and frustration and craving and worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom all to be lords of our tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the center of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talk about much in the great outside world of wanting and achieving.... The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.

Tree Collage - EHS (2010)
That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing.

I know that this stuff probably doesn't sound fun and breezy or grandly inspirational the way a commencement speech is supposed to sound. What it is, as far as I can see, is the capital-T Truth, with a whole lot of rhetorical niceties stripped away. You are, of course, free to think of it whatever you wish. But please don't just dismiss it as just some finger-wagging Dr Laura sermon. None of this stuff is really about morality or religion or dogma or big fancy questions of life after death.

The capital-T Truth is about life BEFORE death.
It is about the real value of a real education, which has almost nothing to do with knowledge, and everything to do with simple awareness; awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over:

"This is water."

"This is water."

It is unimaginably hard to do this, to stay conscious and alive in the adult world day in and day out. Which means yet another grand cliché turns out to be true: your education really IS the job of a lifetime. And it commences: now.

I wish you way more than luck. - David Foster Wallace.

You can read the rest of the speech here. A list of his essays on Harper's.

Louise Bourgeois, Cell (12 Oval Mirrors)

Actors Acting #2

2011-03-28T14:44:00.000-07:00

Tim Crouch shares some of the pictures and scenarios from Howard Schatz's book In Character: Actors Acting in his lecture. They are truly sublime. I would love to post some of the pictures here, but I can't do them justice. Here's a link to a spread Schatz shot for Vanity Fair to give you a little taste of their gloriosity.

Howl

2011-03-27T02:32:00.000-07:00

Beginnings or Original Impulses Lost

2011-03-27T01:14:00.000-07:00

OH SO SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY OH SO SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY LISTEN SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY OH SO SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY OH SO LISTEN I WISH I COULD I WISH I WISH OH SO SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY OH SO SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY OH SO SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY LISTEN LISTEN SO SORRY SO SORRY SO SORRY SORRY WHISPER WHISPER WHISPER WHISPER WHISPER WHISPER WHISPER WHISPER WHISPER WHISPER WHISPER WHISPER WHISPER WHISPER WHISPER WHISPER WHISPER WHISPER WHISPER WHISPER WHISPER WHISPER WHISPER WHISPER WHISPER WHISPER WHISPER WHISPER WHISPER WHISPER WHISPER WHISPER
WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO WORDS NO

Actors Acting

2011-03-26T21:33:00.000-07:00

Wise, wise words from Tim Crouch.

Tim Crouch writes about his latest show The Author that just ran in LA.

Late Night Music Obsession #1

2011-03-19T00:44:00.000-07:00

Boy Meets Girl Slightly Twisted #12

2011-03-12T10:57:00.000-08:00

Late Night Music Obsession

2011-03-09T00:42:00.000-08:00

Architecture

2011-03-08T23:56:00.000-08:00

Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art (SM0Ca) - Will Bruder

Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art (SM0Ca) - Will Bruder

Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art (SM0Ca) - Will Bruder

Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art (SM0Ca) - Will Bruder

Hercules Public Library - Will Bruder

Hercules Public Library - Will Bruder

Burton Barr Public Library (Phoenix) - Will Bruder

Burton Barr Public Library (Phoenix) - Will Bruder

Burton Barr Public Library (Phoenix) - Will Bruder

(one of my favorite buildings)

Yes...that's what I'm talking about

2011-03-04T12:22:00.000-08:00

via Orlando & Ivy

I saw Pina Bausch's work live exactly once.

I count myself lucky that I was able to see Ten Chi when it came to Berkeley. It has to be one of the top ten theatrical experiences of the past decade for me (seeing Robert Wilson is #1 and I will write it about one day if I can stand it).

Sometimes how you arrive a the theater can make all the difference in your receptivity. In the case of Ten Chi, I got lost in Oakland. Maybe when Ms. Stein referred to the there that was there or not , she was talking about the fog. Driving down the streets, it can look like nothing is ahead of you. No recognizable landmarks or streets. It was foggy so street signs were difficult to read. I kept driving and was grateful to finally find familiar ground, to park the car and walk up to the Zellerbach and find my friend.

We sat up in the mezzanine. In the front. We had to look over a thick wall and maybe some speakers, but still good seats. I liked sitting next to my friend and watching him watch. I liked that he was tall and I could see him out of the corner of my eye and that his arm was soft and solid and kept me anchored while I watched. It was like another world. Another there. I remember the sculptural quality of the dancers. The enormous scale of the whales. The snow that fell for over an hour. It fell for so long that I started to get disoriented and how the theater and the stage started to swirl and breathe through the wall of white.

Yes.

Pina understood duration.

She understood that when something stopped being entertaining that there's something underneath the surface still to be revealed. There can be rigor in the mess. That maybe some of us get satisfaction from experiences that extend beyond enjoyment and delight. That there's something about pressing on the raw nerve - stripping it bare - that reveals something essential about us and about life. That repulsion, aversion, boredom are inescapable. That those feelings are extensions of love, desire, and engagement. They're what lie on the other side of the wall we keep slamming ourselves into. They are necessary.

Inspired by PR

2011-02-21T02:10:00.000-08:00

Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way

2011-02-19T16:20:00.000-08:00

On the Prospect of Planting Arts and Learning in America
The Muse, disgusted at an age and clime
Barren of every glorious theme,
In distant lands now waits a better time
Producing subjects worthy fame;

In happy climes, where from the genial sun
And virgin earth such scenes ensue,
The force of art by nature seems outdone,
And fancied beauties by the true:

In happy climes, the feat of innocence,
Where nature guides, and virtue rules;
Where men shall not impose for truth and sense
The pedantry of courts and schools.

There shall be sung another golden age,
The rise of empire and arts,
The good and great inspiring epic rage,
The wisest heads and noblest hearts.

Not such as Europe breeds in her decay;
Such as she bred when fresh and young,
When heavenly flame did animate her clay,
By future poets shall be sung.

Westward the course of empire takes its way:
The four first acts already past,
A fifth shall close the drama with the day:
Time's noblest offspring is the last.
- Bishop George Berkeley 1726

Founder's Rock, Berkeley CA (named for Bishop Berkeley)

5 Things: Random and Not

2011-02-18T13:27:00.000-08:00

Skull in Hoyo Negro. Explorers discovered a human skull in an underwater cave off the Yucatan Peninsula. Oh. It was next to the bone of a mastodon. Bonus.

Thesis Action. Here. Here. Here.

Joyce Carol Oates' A Widow's Story

The Theater of the Future by Meiyin Wang

Bonus (added 2/19) The List. Oh so beautiful.

De Rerum Natura

2011-02-18T12:55:00.000-08:00

Wayfarer Chapel

I'm preparing for a writing workshop I'm taking next Saturday. We have to bring in notebooks in several sizes and so I was going through mine and found an old one. Ahh. The ubiquitous found blog post.

4/2/03

Knowledge of the world dissolves the solidity of the world, leading to a perception of all that is infinitely minute, light, mobile. - Italo Calvino

If 611 (a play I'd written previously) was about the weight and beauty of the world, I want to write about the incredible fragility of the world, wild nature, romantic and monstrous. I want to create a discrete world - a feminine world. A world that is dissolving, disappearing before our eyes. The idea that the more we know, the more we loosen our attachment to the world, or rather we compromise our ability to actually see and experience it.

Wayfarer Chapel

And then I reference these paragraphs from Calvino's Six Memo's. T his one from Lightness.

The De Rerum Natura of Lucretius is the first great work of poetry in which knowledge of the world tends to dissolve the solidity of the world, leading to a perception of all that is infinitely minute, light, and mobile. Lucretius set out to write the poem of physical matter, but he warns us at the outset that this matter is made up of invisible particles. He is the poet of physical concreteness, viewed in its permanent and immutable substance, but the first thing he tells us is that emptiness is just as concrete as solid bodies. Lucretius’ chief concern is to prevent the weight of matter from crushing us. Even while laying down the rigorous mechanical laws that determine every event, he feels the need to allow atoms to make unpredictable deviations from the straight line, thereby ensuring freedom both to atoms and to human beings. The poetry of the invisible, of infinite unexpected possibilities—even the poetry of nothingness—issues from a poet who had no doubts whatever about the physical reality of the world.

Socotra Island

This atomizing of things extends also to the visible aspects of the world, and it is here that Lucretius is at his best as a poet: the little motes of dust swirling in a shaft of sunlight in a dark room (II.114-124); the minuscule shells, all similar but each one different, that waves gently cast up on the bibula harena, the “imbibing sand” (II.374-376); or the spiderwebs that wrap themselves around us without our noticing them as we walk along (III.381-390).

I have already mentioned Ovid’s Metamorphoses, another encyclopedic poem (written fifty years after Lucretius’), which has its starting point not in physical reality but in the fables of mythology. For Ovid, too, everything can be transformed into something else, and knowledge of the world means dissolving the solidity of the world. And also for him there is an essential parity between everything that exists, as opposed to any sort of hierarchy of powers or values. If the world of Lucretius is composed of immutable atoms, Ovid’s world is made up of the qualities, attributes and forms that define the variety of things, whether plants, animals, or persons. But these are only the outward appearances of a single common substance that—if stirred by profound emotion—may be changed into what most differs from it.

It is in following the continuity of the passage from one form to another that Ovid displays his incomparable gifts. He tells how a woman realizes that she is changing into a lotus tree: her feet are rooted to the earth, a soft bark creeps up little by little and enfolds her groin; she makes a movement to tear her hair and finds her hands full of leaves. Or he speaks of Arachne’s fingers, expert at winding or unraveling wool, turning the spindle, plying the needle in embroidery, fingers that at a certain point we see lengthening into slender spiders’ legs and beginning to weave a web.

Double Tree of Grana

And then another quote:

One should be light like a bird, and not like a feather. - Paul Valéry.

And then I completely forgot about all this because I was working on a show called This World Is Not My Home. But in all of the workshops I ran for the development of this piece and in devising the work itself, as a director I was focused on lightness, quickness, stillness.

On the Nature of Things by Lucretius.

Yes She Does...

2011-02-13T19:22:00.000-08:00

Public Speaking

2011-02-13T16:53:00.000-08:00

If you get a chance, I recommend this documentary.

And then because I can't get enough of her voice and her wit:

Boy Meets Girl Slightly Twisted #11

2011-02-08T23:13:00.000-08:00

Mumford and Sons

2011-02-04T11:02:00.000-08:00

I'm banging on my thesis. Yeah. Again. The agony goes on for two more months and then it will be over. And agony it is. Hopefully, it's not an agony to read. Guess I need to mind myself, eh?

I am obsessed with Mumford and Sons. The only thing that makes finishing the thesis enjoyable.

Oh. And this. This is pretty groovy. This is fun to write. Fun encompassing a wide range of experience and activity. And banging: joyful, purposeful banging. This makes sense in a way my thesis does not.

Using Tomorrow's Energy Today

2011-01-25T11:29:00.000-08:00

No. Frickin' lie. My parents retired to live in this town.

Sure to Be My Late Night Music Obsession

2011-01-22T17:54:00.000-08:00

Possibly, most likely, spurred on by watching Deadwood for the first time last night. Some things you just have to save for the right time. Deadwood, I'm sayin'.

Black Prairie.

via Mead.

Big List: New Year Edition

2011-01-21T09:38:00.000-08:00

First the NYC fantasy:
My Last Play by Ed Schmidt @ his apartment through May 22 or until the books are gone.

The Woodmans by C. Scott Willis @ Film Forum through February 1. You can watch the trailer here. Interesting articles about the film here, here, and here. (Thank you, Susannah.)

Rationality by Andrea Kleine, February 5 and 6 @ a location in the Borough of Manhattan, City of New York. Tickets are limited and free (but there's a $10 reservation fee that gets refunded).

Wallabout Oyster Theatre's latest, February 18, 19, 20. You'll have to check out Rufus Corporation's Facebook page or maybe there'll be a FB events page for the dealio in awhile. Keep watching.

Here in the Bay Area:
The Last Cargo Cult through February 20 & The Agony & Ecstasy of Steve Jobs January 23 through February 27 by Mike Daisey @ Berkeley Rep.

Of the Earth by Jon Tracy @ Shotgun through January 30.

Gush curated by Joe Goode @ Brava through January 29.

Ouroboros by Tom Jacobson, Renegade Theatre Experiment @ Historic Hoover Theatre.

Audience As Subject: Part 1, Medium @ YBCA through February 6.

Companion Piece conceived by Beth Wilmurt @ Theater Artaud through February 13.

Bone to Pick & Diadem by Eugenie Chan, Cuttingball Theater @ Exit on Taylor through February 13.

Seagull by Chekov @ Marin Theatre Company, January 27 through February 20.

Unchopping A Tree

2011-01-19T15:05:00.000-08:00

Pinky swear that I didn't find this until after I wrote a certain monologue.

W.S. Merwin essay here.

What is Missing? by Maya Lin

Maya Lin @ California Academy of Sciences

Carl Speaks

2011-01-12T11:37:00.001-08:00

New Music Obsession: The King is Dead

2011-01-11T19:37:00.001-08:00

Listen to more here or here.

81 Pages. So so close.

2011-01-09T16:52:00.000-08:00

The traditional categories - painting, sculpture, stagecraft, etc - no longer respond to reality. Personally, I think this is due to the crisis in our psychic space and the boundaries that separate the object and the subject. In the same way that there is a breaking down of the boundaries between objects, there is an intrication [sic] of the roles of the artist and the spectator, erasing the borders between the self and the other. This lack of differentiation can have a dramatic effect on some people: loss of sense of self, hallucinations, etc. But it can also give rise to jubilation, because it creates a sense of osmosis with Being, the Absolute. - Julia Kristeva

Emmanuel Eggermont dancing solo to Benny Goodman at around 1:23) is breathtaking and glorious in his lightness. Previously wrote about Boléro Variations here.

Travis' Getting On With It Play List (good for Daily Imps) #1

2011-01-09T14:32:00.000-08:00

Amen

2011-01-09T12:39:00.000-08:00

Hades: De mortuis nil nisi bonum

2011-01-09T12:36:00.000-08:00

Yeah.

Ulysses. My big book of the New Year. Actually started reading it in December along with several members of my book reading group (affectionately known as the Bitch Goddess reading group - still haven't convinced the local bookstore to feature us on their special, local book group shelves). The thing about reading Ulysses is that it makes me want to read Infinite Jest and Hamlet and The Odyssey. I also have this groovy Ulysses annotation that kind of consumes me with its sort of knit picky detail and description. Its reading this that makes me most miss reading IJ and appreciate DFW's great, good sense and humor to do the annotating "himself."

Over Christmas my uncle told me that the local graveyard is now full (my cousin who died the week before Christmas is one of the last to get in and ho ho ho Merry Christmas.) I read Bloom going on for pages and pages and pages about how terrible it is to be buried or maybe it's a relief or...part of life none of us escape - birth astride the grave and all that (so his secretary wrote). Hades - an unrelenting chapter it is, which is the point I guess. You feel like you'll never emerge.

I daresay the soil would be quite fat with corpse manure, bones, flesh, nails, charnelhouses. Dreadful. Turning green and pink, decomposing. Rot quick in damp earth lean. The lean old ones tougher. Then a kind of a tallowy kind of a cheesy. Then begin to get black, treacle oozing out of them. Then dried up. Deathmoths. Of course the cells or whatever they are go on living. Changing
about. Live for ever practically. Nothing to feed on feed on themselves.

Oh it's not without it's humor.

And then you do emerge and its into the world of Headlines and Advertising. It's so lovely and random.

New Year

2011-01-08T03:48:00.000-08:00

It occurred to me as I was driving around today that I haven't performed on stage for 2 years. The last time was for 10 minutes. And before that I did a reading for an ex-theater company. And before that it was 1996 and the only show I was ever in for the company I founded. This is what having kids will do - distort your sense of time.

I miss being onstage. It's a singular experience - truly.

I miss training with a company. Its been maybe 5 years since I've done any training. Theater-type training (performance-type training).

This brings up some very complicated feelings and realities.

The first thought that came to mind after the realization that I hadn't performed in so long was that maybe it's kind of silly to claim that I'm an actor. That it's kind of embarrassing when my husband refers to me as an actor. That the person who did that doesn't exist now, except in memory. And then the next thought was that I should fucking finally write that play for myself.

Before Christmas, a friend told me that she wishes my thesis were out of my life. That I needed to let it go before 2010 ended. For my sake. In the past week, I've been giving serious thought to quitting, giving up and forgetting about it. With one and a quarter chapters left to write and a rewrite on deck. I'm surprised by how tempting it is. And how little remorse I feel thinking about letting it go. Finishing or not, the outcome of either choice looks very similar to me, positionally. It will make very little difference in my life either way. And I'll have so much more time and room around my desk.

Which is not to say that I haven't learned anything. That the experience hasn't translated into anything useful for me. It's changed the way I experience theater and the way that I think about theater, so that's something. I think going in, I was hoping for something more tangible. Hoping I'd come out on the other side more employable, connected, and better situated career-wise. Ah, yes. That. This also brings up several complex feelings and realities.

It's a good thought experiment; to play with letting it go. To approach it with more distance and perspective. But quitting wouldn't be a good example for my kids. Especially my son, who's given up on school himself. Or maybe it wouldn't matter to them either. Maybe they'd dance through the house happy that they wouldn't have to share their Mommy with anyone or anything else. And what are we having for dinner now?

15 Year Old World

2011-01-07T08:43:00.000-08:00

May not be representative.

Late Night Music Obsession

2011-01-07T02:15:00.000-08:00

The Forbidden

2011-01-05T23:05:00.000-08:00

This sounds like something out of a Marquez novel. (via Tim Etchells)

And Everything is Going Fine

2011-01-05T21:18:00.001-08:00

High on the list of things to see. I loved going to see Spaulding Gray perform his monologues and would go whenever he came to San Francisco. One night, after his performance, I went up on stage and left an FSLN button on his table as a kind of tribute or something. I don't know. I was just very moved by his performance.

One of my favorite stories.

Who'll Play the Kid?

2011-01-05T12:27:00.000-08:00

James Franco plans on making As I Lay Dying and...and...and

is in the process of signing on to write and direct Blood Meridian.

Yeah.

For those of you keeping track, Blood Meridian has been through several directors including Ridley Scott and Todd Haynes. Personally, after seeing Inglourious Basterds, I think Quentin Tarantino is the man for the job, but you know, I'm not a producer. Things would be a lot different if I were. I would be a lot different, if I were.

But - James Franco and Blood Meridian? Okay. That's an ambitious and formidable project to take on, but I have faith in the Franco. Bring it home, James.

You can read more about it here.

Signs in Arkansas

2011-01-03T22:24:00.000-08:00

5,000 blackbirds fell from the sky just before midnight New Year's Eve.

100,000 fish dead

Apollo and Daphne

2011-01-02T22:43:00.001-08:00

Hey

2010-12-31T12:18:00.000-08:00

This may be a repeat. But it bears repeating.

Interview with John Malkovich (2008)

2010-12-31T00:11:00.001-08:00

Really a lovely, thoughtful interview with John Malkovich. It starts out and I got a little nervous - is this going to be one of those fawning interviews that circles around being John Malkovich, but no. It goes somewhere and stays there.

Dont' Be Boring Unless You Mean It

2010-12-21T22:44:00.000-08:00

Best advice I've gotten today (in weeks actually).

Andrei Tarkovsky: Nostalgia

2010-12-20T18:23:00.000-08:00

Pascal's Sphere

2010-12-18T10:12:00.000-08:00

...because if the future and the past are infinite, there will not really be a when; in space, because everything is equidistant from the infinite and the infinitesimal, there will not be a where. No one exists on a certain day, in a certain place; no one knows the size of his face. - Jorge Luis Borges

True Grit

2010-12-16T10:11:00.000-08:00

This looks gorgeous and epic. Can't wait to see it.

Late Late Late Night Music Obsession

2010-12-16T03:56:00.000-08:00

for when it's really dark...this song makes me giggle relentlessly

Late Night Music Obsession: Mr. Peter Gabriel

2010-12-15T23:58:00.000-08:00

I remembered this film today. My oldest son used to be obsessed with this concert.

Note: not the biggest tree of all time.

You can see the rest here.

5 Things: mono no aware edition

2010-12-11T12:07:00.000-08:00

As a kid in the woods I fantasized about what I would do to survive the wake of global nuclear catastrophe and I have been haunted throughout my adulthood by the intertwined threats of climate change, overpopulation, and pollution. I can never remember a time when it hasn’t been an article of faith that humanity’s technologies are capable of destroying life on earth and that this process is well underway. The suspicion that planet earth is completely, irrevocably fucked and there’s nothing we can do about it is a sentiment my generation has become cozy with. It’s the comforting pessimism I reached for to protect my heart from sinking completely as I watched streaming footage of oil streaming into the Gulf of Mexico. The we-put-a-man-on-the-moon confidence in technological solutions gets dusted off once again in order to once again be proved misplaced. We find ourselves perplexed that, whil e our faith in the redemptive potential of our ingenuity remains unshaken, we’re impotent against global market capitalism’s unyielding demand that we make more things cheaper in order to make fewer and fewer people wealthier. We sense that this is killing us and yet privately we know there’s absolutely nothing we can do about it. We’re like an insane psychiatrist attempting to devise for himself a cure. via Stephen Elliot & The Rumpus

Long Abandoned Drive-In Theater, Newton, New Jersey, 2002, Owen Kanzler

László Moholy-Nagy
Lago Maggiore, Ascona, Switzerland
ca. 1930

Henry L. Russell House, Route 6
West Grove Township, Bloomfield vicinity, Davis County, IA

Isolated Building Studies: Revealing Meaning Through Recontextualization

Vlatka Horvat I advise turning the sound off.

The Quiet World

2010-12-11T11:48:00.000-08:00

In an effort to get people to look into each other's eyes more,
and also to appease the mutes,
the government has decided
to allot each person exactly one hundred
and sixty-seven words, per day.

When the phone rings, I put it to my ear
without saying hello. In the restaurant
I point at chicken noodle soup.
I am adjusting well to the new way.

divemasterking2000

Late at night, I call my long distance lover,
proudly say I only used fifty-nine today.
I saved the rest for you.

When she doesn't respond,
I know she's used up all her words,
so I slowly whisper I love you
thirty-two and a third times.
After that, we just sit on the line
and listen to each other breathe.
- Jeffrey McDaniel

Wooster Group: There is Still Time...Brother

2010-12-05T00:02:00.000-08:00

I saw There Is Still Time...Brother in September as part of the TBA festival. This first film gives you an idea of what it is, narratively speaking. What it can't give you is an idea of what it's like when someone in the audience is actually manipulating the frame. The second film kind of gets at that.

There is still time .. brother from UNSW iCinema Centre on Vimeo

EMPAC Opening - There Is Still Time.. Brother (The Wooster Group) - Troy, NY - 08, Oct from Sébastien B. on Vimeo.

I'm usually frustrated by projects that bill themselves as immersive experiences. I go in excited and quickly discover how limited the experience is. The makers underestimate the audience's intelligence and creativity. My default is to expose and focus on the particular way such a project fails to anticipate and cater to my singular experience, which is kind of childish and petulant and a wee bit self-righteous and entitled, admittedly.

That didn't happen with There Is Still Time Brother because the film lays out the rules at the beginning and defines the limits of the experience. Scott Shepherd explains how the technology works, what it allows them to create, and how it's an opportunity to give up control (which he admits is hard) to an outside director. But then he qualifies: the film offers the illusion of choice. Obviously the choices have already been made because "we all know there's nothing outside the frame," nothing relevant to what's happening in the film. That upfront acknowledgment allowed me to accept the film on its own terms as opposed to pushing against (because There is Still Time...Brother is an anti-war film, so where better to start than by disarming the audience) or faulting it for failing to deliver the experience I felt I should have.

One person sits in the chair that controls the window. They're the director or since it is an anti-war film, let's call them "the Decider." They decide what's in the frame, but they don't control what is heard or how the narrative unfolds.

It's a rich experience and it takes more than one viewing to really take it in. After two viewings, I was picking up more, seeing more, or seeing things I hadn't seen at all the first time. But I would still have liked to watch it again. The second time we saw it, there were fewer people. My friend, Susan, sat in the chair and took control. The obvious temptation here is to spin the chair and she did and I would have probably done it for a lot longer, a lot longer, because, well, that's me.

But I made the choice to stay out of the chair, to not take control or direct. Mainly, because that's a more comfortable, familiar thing for me. I wanted to observe the audience and having made that choice, I didn't really think about it - or feel a need to be in the chair. I was not alone in this. No one wanted to sit in the chair this time. When people took the seat, it looked like they only did it because they felt obligated (or maybe I'm just reading that into it). But there was a reluctance and a sort of "okay I'll do this, but I really don't want to" look that people gave when I'd look at them as they walked up. But maybe this was their opportunity? They really did want control, but they wanted to assume it passively, didn't want to appear so nakedly ambitious.

And there was a period of about five minutes or maybe more where the frame rested on this film of Scott Shepherd's eye surgery, until the guy sitting next to me adjusted the chair. I looked at him and whispered "thank you," amazed at how disturbed I'd been and how I hadn't realized it until he moved the frame.

Okay. Once I moved the chair from the stool where I sat. My favorite position was splitting the frame by putting it on the entrance into the 360 - which meant that when people came in, they were part of the film.

There Is Still Time...Brother references On The Beach, which I've never seen. This clip plays on a computer screen and Kate Valk and Scott Shepherd act out the scene towards the end of the film.

What's surprising to me is how affecting the content was, especially the content that wasn't as easily heard - the snippets of conversation or speech that filtered through when I was looking at something else or when an image appeared on the one of the computer screens and it would kind of get taken for granted or lost in the mix of everything else. Eventually what's being said filtered through and would I find myself thinking how relevant it was to the War on Terror and then that thought would distract me long enough to miss what was said next before the entire image disappeared. Those moments were not repeated, while the more inconsequential action was repeated several times. It started to make me doubt what I had heard and then I'd get distracted again by something else or I'd just enjoy watching Scott Shepherd or Kate Valk or that guy with the smooth, quiet voice talking about the French and Indian War.

I've been thinking about the film ever since and it's been especially inspiring as I work on this new play. I'm conscious of layering images and bringing small details into focus. It's very different from how I've written before and feels more like painting or processing film than writing. I've also been consuming an insane amount of images - what I've shared on the blog is only the tip of the iceberg (some might say, thankfully).

Hollis Frampton & Bill Viola

2010-12-03T01:02:00.000-08:00

Shermer, Illinois

2010-11-28T15:35:00.000-08:00

I live to love you. - Duckie

Ferris Opening with John Hughes' commentary.

John Hughes Oscar Tribute.

Essentials

2010-11-24T10:51:00.000-08:00

We tell ourselves stories in order to live. The princess is caged in the consulate. The man with the candy will lead the children into the sea. The naked woman on the ledge outside the window on the sixteenth floor is a victim of accidie, or the naked woman is an exhibitionist, and it would be 'interesting' to know which. We tell ourselves that it makes some difference whether the naked woman is about to commit a mortal sin or is about to register a political protest or is about to be, the Aristophanic view, snatched back to the human condition by the fireman in priest's clothing just visible in the window behind her, the one smiling at the telephoto lens. We look for the sermon in the suicide, for the social or moral lesson in the murder of five. We interpret what we see, select the most workable of the multiple choices. We live entirely... by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images, by the 'ideas' with which we have learned to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria — which is our actual experience. — Joan Didion via Stephen Elliot

4 Volumes

2010-11-23T01:08:00.000-08:00

Collocation No. 14 (NATURE)
by Mickey Smith

Kate Macdowell

2010-11-18T22:58:00.000-08:00

I was searching for images of Daphne yesterday and discovered Kate Macdowell.

Uprooted

Idea

Taking Root

Solastalgia

Soliphilia

Taste

Venus - natural light

Venus

Rootbound

Invasive Flora

Invasive Flora

Daphne

Daphne

Interview with Kate here.

More of her work here.

Is There An Ecological Unconscious? And reader comments to the article here.

Environment Change, Distress & Human Emotions

2010-11-18T22:23:00.000-08:00

Glenn Albrecht speaking about solastalgia and soliphilia.

Inspiration for the Day

2010-11-12T17:36:00.000-08:00

Sex almost always disappoints me in novels. Everything can be said or done now, and that's what I often find: everything, a feeling of generality or dispersal. But in my experience, true sex is so particular, so peculiar to the person who yearns for it. Only he or she, and no one else, would desire so very much that very person under those circumstances. In fiction, I miss that sense of terrific specificity. - Anatole Broyard

I've been obsessing about these birds... And this song.

Check this out. Thanks, JW.

Ralph Stanley, Bill Monroe, Elvis Presley

2010-11-11T01:46:00.000-08:00

My grandfather and uncles and these old boys (who used to fall out when my grandfather came in to town) used to play this in my aunt Ollie's living room while I sipped on a rootbeer float. It's too much isn't it? Her name really was Ollie. Actually, I don't know what it really was, but everyone called her Ollie.

Bill Monroe and Elvis. The museum supervisor of the Ryman Auditoriam interviewed in the video was my housemate once upon a time.

Choose Life: 127 Hours

2010-11-08T23:46:00.001-08:00

What do we need to write? Adrenalin. Action. James Franco.

Late Night Music Obsession

2010-11-08T22:51:00.001-08:00

One of my favorite songs. I grew up hating it actually. Life is so funny, no?

And look at little June Carter. Oh my, ain't she a cutie?

The Storms Are On the Ocean, The Carter Family (Original Bristol Recording August 1927)

Borel - Castellano Throwdown

2010-11-08T21:18:00.000-08:00

Egads! Calvin Borel lights into Javier Castellano for jostling his horse during the Breeders' Cup Marathon last Friday.

Here's the race.

Boy Meets Girl Structure Slightly Twisted #10

2010-11-05T15:24:00.000-07:00

Where will it end? Where? This is a personal favorite. I remember watching this movie over and over when I was like 15 or 16. Okay. I still do.

Horticulture Runs Amok

2010-11-01T17:30:00.000-07:00

Francesca Woodman, Taxidermy

"Thanks, Signor," replied Beatrice, with her rich voice that came forth as it were like a gush of music; and with a mirthful expression half childish and half woman-like. "I accept your gift, and would fain recompense it with this precious purple flower; but if I toss it into the air, it will not reach you. So Signor Guasconti must even content himself with my thanks."

She lifted the bouquet from the ground, and then as if inwardly ashamed at having stepped aside from her maidenly reserve to respond to a stranger's greeting, passed swiftly homeward through the garden. But, few as the moments were, it seemed to Giovanni when she was on the point of vanishing beneath the sculptured portal, that his beautiful bouquet was already beginning to wither in her grasp. It was an idle thought; there could be no possibility of distinguishing a faded flower from a fresh one, at so great a distance.

Francesca Woodman, Untitled, 1980

For many days after this incident, the young man avoided the window that looked into Doctor Rappaccini's garden, as if something ugly and monstrous would have blasted his eye-sight, had he been betrayed into a glance. He felt conscious of having put himself, to a certain extent, within the influence of an unintelligible power, by the communication which he had opened with Beatrice. The wisest course would have been, if his heart were in any real danger, to quit his lodgings and Padua itself, at once; the next wiser, to have accustomed himself, as far as possible, to the familiar and day-light view of Beatrice; thus bringing her rigidly and systematically within the limits of ordinary experience. Least of all, while avoiding her sight, should Giovanni have remained so near this extraordinary being, that the proximity and possibility even of intercourse, should give a kind of substance and reality to the wild vagaries which his imagination ran riot continually in producing. Guasconti had not a deep heart--or at all events, its depths were not sounded now--but he had a quick fancy, and an ardent southern temperament, which rose every instant to a higher fever-pitch. Whether or no Beatrice possessed those terrible attributes--that fatal breath--the affinity with those so beautiful and deadly flowers--which were indicated by what Giovanni had witnessed, she had at least instilled a fierce and subtle poison into his system. It was not love, although her rich beauty was a madness to him; nor horror, even while he fancied her spirit to be imbued with the same baneful essence that seemed to pervade her physical frame; but a wild offspring of both love and horror that had each parent in it, and burned like one and shivered like the other. Giovanni knew not what to dread; still less did he know what to hope; yet hope and dread kept a continual warfare in his breast, alternately vanquishing one another and starting up afresh to renew the contest. Blessed are all simple emotions, be they dark or bright! It is the lurid intermixture of the two that produces the illuminating blaze of the infernal regions.

Sometimes he endeavored to assuage the fever of his spirit by a rapid walk through the streets of Padua, or beyond its gates; his footsteps kept time with the throbbings of his brain, so that the walk was apt to accelerate itself to a race. One day, he found himself arrested; his arm was seized by a portly personage who had turned back on recognizing the young man, and expended much breath in overtaking him.

"Signor Giovanni!--stay, my young friend!" --cried he. "Have you forgotten me? That might well be the case, if I were as much altered as yourself." - Nathaniel Hawthorne, Rappacini's Daughter
Read the whole story here.

Stage Directions

2010-10-30T10:22:00.000-07:00

A few months back I was bemoaning what torture it was having to write character descriptions. I seem to have survived to complain another day. Actually, no complaint. Just wanted to share some stage directions that I think are pretty swell. Aspirationally swell. As in I want to write stage directions/description like this.

Karin (interrupting): Perhaps, Mr. Bergman, you would please sit down over there beside Mrs. Martha. And Torsten, you sit beside Anna. Then we can say grace.

All: For what we are about to receive may the Lord make us truly thankful.

They all hurriedly bow and curtsy, then sit down among much cheerful chatter. Miss Siri and Miss Lisen in black and white, and starched caps, appear with fresh asparagus and mineral water.

Henrik Bergman is now afflicted with further trials. He has never seen asparagus before. He has never before had a four-course dinner. He has never drunk anything but water, beer, or schnapps with his food, and he has never in his life seen a finger bowl with a small red flower swimming around in the water. He has never seen so many knives and forks, and he has never before conversed with a sarcastically good-humored lady with a strong Russian accent. Walls loom high and chasms open.

And then there is a wonderful monologue by the good-humored lady with the strong Russian accent. Then more description.

In addition to asparagus, the menu includes salmon mousse with green sauce, spring chicken (hard to handle), and Anna's masterpiece, a trembling crème caramel.

After coffee in the salon, they make music. Dusk is falling and they light candles around the musicians, who are playing the slow movement of Beethoven's last string quartet. Johan Åkerblom plays the cello; Carl is a good amateur violinist, member of the Academic Orchestra. Ernst plays second violin, with great feeling but less success. A retired member of the Royal Opera House orchestra comes down for coffee from his apartment above, with his viola, a courteous shadow, benevolent and somewhat haughty. He can hardly bear to make music in this company, but the superintendent of traffic has underwritten loans for him and his suffering is prescribed.

Music and dusk. Henrik sinks...all this is dreamlike, outside and beyond his own colorless days. Anna is sitting by the window, looking steadily at the musicians and listening with attention, her profile outlined against the dying light outside. Now she senses she is being watched and controls her first impulse, but then gives in and turns to look at Henrik. He is looking gravely at her, and she smiles slightly formally, slightly ironically, but then becomes grave in response to Henrik's solemnity. I see you, all right. I see.

Now it is time to leave, and farewells are being exchanged. Henrik bows and says thank you in all directions and for a brief moment finds Anna in front of him. She stands on tiptoe and whispers quickly into his ear, her hair fragrant, a light touch.
- Ingmar Bergman, Best Intentions

Boy Meets Girl Structure Slightly Twisted #9

2010-10-27T08:36:00.000-07:00

National Playwrighting Month (NaPlWriMo)

2010-10-22T02:08:00.000-07:00

It's roughly nine days until NaPlWriMo 2010. You can see the official count down here and you can also join our community and write a play with us if you're so inclined. I hope you will.

This is my first year managing the event. Dorothy Lemoult, who founded NaPlWriMo, generously handed the reins over to me a few months ago and it's my new baby or rather, my adopted baby (I always wanted to adopt). I'm excited about taking on this new project because Dorothy has fostered such a vibrant, supportive community and I've been happy to be part of it for the past 5 years.

I've done pieces of it in the past two years. In 2008, I was the dramaturg, which kept me jumping. Last year, I managed the Twitter feed and contacted people about contributing Rhino Bursts (weekly pep talk-type posts) and we had some great contributors.

Luckily, I have a great supporting team because I'm still learning how to navigate the site and keep up with all the little details. But if you're interested in getting involved, we can always use more help. Just email info@naplwrimo.org and let me know your interest.

Technically, the play I'm working on won't count for this year's event because it doesn't follow the official rules - the first one being that you can't have written any of your play. I think I'll be busy enough just trying to keep up with the back end of the event and finishing my play and that will have to be enough.

And the thesis? I didn't get it done. My advisor shut me down last Tuesday and I was devastated. Mostly because I was pretty sleep-deprived by that point and the writing routine since July has been exceptionally grueling (balancing or I'm not sure there's been any balance to it - juggling writing the play and the thesis and life - it veered over into the area of No Fun and stayed there for many a week.) It's been fruitful, but physically and mentally excruciating. I've taken the past week off to try to catch up on sleep and other life maintenance tasks, but to be honest haven't really accomplished much beyond the sleep thing and NaPlWriMo tasks and playing with my kids (this writing routine has upset their lives the most and they reached their limit over a month ago). My oldest son actually cried when I told him I didn't get the thesis done and couldn't turn it in. He sobbed: "That means this has all been for nothing." Yeah. Or maybe not. There's still a chance I'll be able to finish and turn it in next semester. It looks like it means dealing with some administrative bureaucracy and of course, paying for another semester of school. But. So. Close. So close.

Late Night Music Obsession

2010-10-19T22:51:00.000-07:00

Getting started early. via Bob Lefsetz. I've been subscribing to Bob's email updates for about two months now and I tell you, he is Come-to-Jesus-Wall-to-wall (even when I think he's full of it). We need someone like this in theater.

From the Offices of Liller, Neal, Battle and Lindsey

2010-10-19T10:05:00.000-07:00

The Lifeguard

In a stable of boats I lie still,
From all sleeping children hidden.
The leap of a fish from its shadow
Makes the whole lake instantly tremble.
With my foot on the water, I feel
The moon outside

Take on the utmost of its power.
I rise and go out through the boats.
I set my broad sole upon silver,
On the skin of the sky, on the moonlight,
Stepping outward from earth onto water
In quest of the miracle

The village of children believed
That I could perform as I dived
For one who had sunk from my sight.
I saw his cropped haircut go under.
I leapt, and my steep body flashed
Once, in the sun.

Dark drew all the light from my eyes.
Like a man who explores his death
By the pull of his slow-moving shoulders,
I hung head-down in the cold,
Wide-eyed, contained, and alone
Among the weeds,

And my fingertips turned into stone
From clutching immovable blackness.
Time after time I leapt upward
Exploding in breath, and fell back
From the change in the children's faces
At my defeat.

Beneath them I swam to the boathouse
With only my life in my arms
To wait for the lake to shine back
At the risen moon with such power
That my steps on the light of the ripples
Might be sustained.

Beneath me is nothing but brightness
Like the ghost of a snowfield in summer.
As I move toward the center of the lake,
Which is also the center of the moon,
I am thinking how I may be
The savior of one

Who has already died in my care.
The dark trees fade from around me.
The moon's dust hovers together.
I call softly out, and the child's
Voice answers through blinding water.
Patiently, slowly,

He rises, dilating to break
The surface of stone with his forehead.
He is one I do not remember
Having ever seen in his life.
The ground I stand on is trembling
Upon his smile.

I wash the black mud from my hands.
On a light given off by the grave
I kneel in the quick of the moon
At the heart of a distant forest
And hold in my arms a child
Of water, water, water.
- James Dickey

written while Dickey worked for the above mentioned advertising agency and on their time (instead of the fertilizer copy he was supposed to be working on).

More Wicked

2010-10-12T23:05:00.000-07:00

Wow. Wacky weird sisters, way to bust a rhyme. Honestly, if I could see anything half this creative done with Shakespeare, je ne sais quoi. I look at certain parts of this scene and find myself thinking that if I were acting it, there's a point where I'd feel absolutely ridiculous and at the same time as if I'd jumped off a cliff into nothing. In other words, I'd be pretty happy and engaged.

Boy Meets Girl Structure Slightly Twisted #8

2010-10-09T11:10:00.000-07:00

Something Wicked

2010-10-08T15:44:00.000-07:00

I only was able to see a few scenes from this on Wednesday night. But. Oh. My. Patrick Stewart. Kate Fleetwood. Can't get the little I saw of it out of my head. Amazing how well some Shakespeare translates to film.

Have it on the DVR (all three hours of it). Waiting for when I finish this beast of a thesis - which must happen this weekend. Had to postpone my LA trip. Wah. Have a marathon of writing ahead of me. Cheers and virtual attaboys (er...grrls) much appreciated. It gets lonely at night.

Pardon the cheesy background music and V/O.

More Boy Meets Girl

2010-10-06T03:02:00.000-07:00

here.

Syncronicity surrounds me. Concord or something like that.

Visions! Omens! Hallucinations! Miracles! Ecstasies!

2010-10-05T14:30:00.000-07:00

James Franco, Howl, Allen Ginsberg, Dianne Lane, John Malkovich, Secretariat. Really. Does it get any better?

I have an Allen Ginsberg story. Two actually. One good. One bad.

Good. I found myself standing next to him at a book festival in SF back in the late 80's. We were standing on the curb outside of some conference center and it was the return of Furthur and a prankster trip across the U.S. to donate the bus to the Smithsonian. And there we were next to each other and he glanced at me and smiled.

Or maybe it wasn't him.

Maybe he was the cranky old man I met years later at a bookstore signing. Gosh. I can't remember how many years ago it's been. But I went to his book signing. The very last book signing I went to until last year when I asked Edward Albee to sign my collection of his plays. Because the Ginsberg signing was, oh. So. Compromising. Terrible. Never again.

I bought a book of his poems. And there were very few people who actually turned out for this signing. So he was just sitting at table in the big empty area of one of my favorite book stores (which is no longer). And I went up to get my book signed. And he ignored me. And kept talking to this youngish looking guy, and yeah I get it, I understand. And he kept ignoring me until one of the store clerks pointed me out and then he turned and not once did he look at me or acknowledge me in any way. Signed the book and pushed it towards me. And I said:

You know what? I think I'll pass.

And yes. He looked up then.

And I turned and walked away.

When I think about the authors I've not seen - like David Foster Wallace - because I refused to feel that suck up feeling for an author ever again. Geesh.

But I love Howl and that young, beautiful Ginsberg.

Joan Acocella Lecture

2010-10-04T11:28:00.000-07:00

Stanford Humanities Center hosted several critics in residence a couple of years ago.

Why write about art? And why read art criticism? The Arts Critics in Residence series has brought leading arts critics to Stanford campus to engage with these questions, and to answer them through the example of their own work.

I attended this lecture by Joan Acocella and was excited to find it online yesterday when I was cleaning up my bibliography. Yes, peeps. I'm almost to the point where I no longer have to say this thing's to do. Goodbye old ghost.

Enjoy!

Late Night Music Obsession

2010-10-04T02:15:00.000-07:00

Late night obsessions are all I have time for now.

Late Night Music Obsession

2010-10-02T00:35:00.000-07:00

For you shall go out in joy and be led forth in peace; the mountains and the hills before you shall break forth into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. - Isaiah 55:12

Mailer and McLuhan

2010-09-30T01:44:00.000-07:00

Marc Smirnoff mentioned this discussion between Norman Mailer and Marshall McLuhan in his editor's column for the latest issue of The Oxford American. The column is about the need for criticism and Smirnoff's exasperation with McLuhan.

Anyway, both men are fascinating to listen to - they seem to be talking to each other from completely different places in time. This first segment has some devastating descriptions of our relationship to nature.

And then there's this classic scene.

5 Things: Tree Play

2010-09-29T02:24:00.000-07:00

Plant Sprouts In Man's Lung.
Too Strange To Be True? Tree Sprouts in Man's Lung. (no. not a pea sprout this time, a tree.)
Derrida On Love and Being.