Category Archives: Art

Feb 17

Radiohead and Lust

After a harrowing experience with the Ticketmaster website, where they timed my every action and threatened to cancel my transaction if I didn’t respond within so many minutes, I succeeded in purchasing my Radiohead tickets. I lost the first pair of tickets that came up because I was too slow in deciding whether I wanted to buy tickets with assigned seats or lawn tickets. When I decided to buy the assigned seat tickets that were offered, the site told me I had missed my chance. It all worked out eventually. And this is quickly becoming a favorite song of mine:

This evening, KV, Spence, and I went to see Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus, which is being performed by students of the university’s theatre department. I’ve not read this play, but was warned that it’s rather over-the-top. The play certainly lived up to this warning, but I enjoyed it. I was rather impressed with the lead players too. Not that I know anything about acting, but I was drawn into the characters they were portraying, with one glaring exception: the roles of Demetrius and Chiron. Now, there were many moments throughout the play when I assumed the (dark) humor was intentional. For example, when a messenger rides in on her bicycle to deliver to Titus the heads of two of his sons (wrapped in plastic), as well as his hand he had just cut off in hopes of saving his sons, there is a certain absurdity to her entrance on the bike, to the way she flings the heads on the stage (as if she were delivering newspapers), and the way she addresses Titus. However, I couldn’t tell if the portrayal of Demetrius and Chiron was unintentionally ridiculous, or if I’m too dense to understand a creative interpretation of these two characters.

In the story, Demetrius and Chiron are the sons of Tamora, and they rape Titus’ daughter, Lavinia. They then cut out her tongue and cut off her hands, so she can’t identify who raped her. This presentation of the play had two actresses portraying Demetrius and Chiron, and it didn’t seem as if there was any effort in disguising the actresses as men. They had rather long hair that was loose, and dark lipstick on. They were dressed all in black, with combat boots and capes, but this didn’t convey maleness or androgeny, for that matter. I was baffled when I learned they were portraying male characters. (This was not the case with the actress who played Saturninus; she was dressed in a way, and carried herself in a way that I could believe she was the emperor). So, I was unable to get past the very feminine visual of these actresses portraying Demetrius and Chiron. The way the two acted the part was hard for me to buy too. Okay…so we have two young punk brothers lusting after Titus’ daughter. The key word here is lusting. How does one evoke lust in his/her actions? I spent some time thinking about this after watching the actresses portray lust with lots of lurid tongue gestures, panting, and by licking their rapiers in a provocative manner. One, in particular, would strike very Christina Aguilera/Brittany Spears inspired sex-kitten type facial expressions, with lots of tongue…more in the vein of over-sexed nymph than mutilating rapist. But it had to be intentional, right? I mean, if she were acting like this during rehearsal, and it wasn’t what the director wanted her to do, he would have told her so. And they could easily have wrapped up the actresses’ hair, and made the effort to make them more androgynous, if not masculine, but they chose not to. Perhaps I have a narrow perception of how one should portray licentious, mutilating rapists.

After doing a search on the ever handy YouTube, I found this clip from Titus Andronicus, and can say the two actresses I saw today were likely trying to bring across the kind of dramatic energy these guys have in this scene, but it didn’t quite work in my (uneducated) opinion (again, I think if the actresses were more androgynous in their roles, it would have come together better). But, overall, it was an enjoyable (if violent and bloody) dramatic experience.

Feb 14

Dante and Beatrice: Pondering unrequited love

I believe Dante and Beatrice were the ones who first made me really consider the idea of unrequited/unfulfilled love, or idealized love. If asked, I would probably define myself as a cynic (tho an optimistic one…a bit contradictory, I realize). I don’t consider myself a romantic, though I don’t have anything against romance either (my husband is a romantic and I appreciate this very much) (and I do find myself falling for romantic notions of “The Artist”). I’m not one to seek out love stories on the big screen, but I can enjoy one from time to time (the quirkier, the better). Back to Dante and Beatrice. During a class on Dante, the professor explained that Beatrice was Dante’s great love, though, it is believed, the two spoke only once (when they were children), and Beatrice died at a very young age (25, I think…maybe younger). They both married different people, but Dante considered Beatrice his great love, and his muse, and he immortalized her as the pilgrim’s guide to Heaven in the Divine Comedy. I’m fascinated by the apparent strength of his feelings for Beatrice, in spite of his limited contact with her. She was his muse for his lifetime. I assume it was the idea of her that he was in love with—that his imagination created this muse that inspired him to the heights he reached. And I can’t help but wonder whether the person he married ever came close to receiving the same level of adoration he gave to the idea of Beatrice (who can compete with such an idolized image)? Of course, I’m looking back on Dante’s love for Beatrice with a 21st century perspective, so it helps to remember what life was like in Dante’s time.

Then we have William Butler Yeats and Maud Gonne. I learned about the two of them just last summer when I visited Dublin. At the Dublin writers museum, there is a brief bio on Yeats and it discusses his adoration of Gonne. If I remember correctly, he asked her to marry him several times, and she declined each proposal. What really stuck in my mind after reading the bio was the fact that, later in his life, he asked Gonne’s daughter to marry him. Wow, I thought, that is really…odd. Well, when it’s presented in such an abbreviated biography it sounds odd, but after visiting the National Library where there was an exhibit dedicated to Yeats’ life, I learned that it wasn’t quite as odd as it first seemed. Or, it seemed a little more reasonable to me when I had a better understanding of his relationship with Gonne and her family. The daughter said no to Yeats’ proposal as well. I was taken with the idea that WB Yeats (WB YEATS!) put himself out there to this woman, and was rejected, yet continued to idolize her. According to wikipedia, after asking Gonne’s daughter to marry him (and being rejected), he said to one of his friends “who am I, that I should not make a fool of myself”. I like this sentiment a great deal, particularly when coming from a poet like Yeats. It seems today (and maybe throughout history) there is a certain amount of fear of looking the fool if one’s advances are spurned, so I find Yeats’ willingness to keep trying, even after being rejected, quite charming.

So, here is to true love, to unrequited love, and to idealized love. May they inspire great happiness, great passion, and/or great art.

No Second Troy by William Butler Yeats (written after Gonne married Major John MacBride)

Why should I blame her that she filled my days
With misery, or that she would of late
Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways,
Or hurled the little streets upon the great.
Had they but courage equal to desire?
What could have made her peaceful with a mind
That nobleness made simple as a fire,
With beauty like a tightened bow, a kind
That is not natural in an age like this,
Being high and solitary and most stern?
Why, what could she have done, being what she is?
Was there another Troy for her to burn?

**********************************************
To his Coy Mistress (not a perfect fit with the theme of the post, but still…)
by Andrew Marvell

Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, lady, were no crime.
We would sit down and think which way
To walk, and pass our long love’s day;
Thou by the Indian Ganges’ side
Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the Flood;
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires, and more slow.
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast,
But thirty thousand to the rest;
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart.
For, lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate.

But at my back I always hear
Time’s winged chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found,
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song; then worms shall try
That long preserv’d virginity,
And your quaint honour turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust.
The grave’s a fine and private place,
But none I think do there embrace.

Now therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may;
And now, like am’rous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour,
Than languish in his slow-chapp’d power.
Let us roll all our strength, and all
Our sweetness, up into one ball;
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life.
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.

************************************

A portrait of O’Keefe by her husband, Alfred Stieglitz

Jan 30

the big ol’ apple

I leave for New York obnoxiously early on Thursday (though the obnoxiousness is alleviated a little by my friend JG, who is allowing me and HB to stay with her the night before, so we don’t have to leave our northern Palm Beach County homes at 4:00 am to drive to Ft. Lauderdale (or rather, so our husbands don’t have to leave at 4:00 am to drive us to Ft. Lauderdale)). But even with this alleviation, we’re leaving too early in the morning for my liking.

I’ve been perusing the conference website and am excited about so many of the panels. In addition to readings at the Bowery, checking out Kerouac’s scroll at the New York Public Library (probably the most important item on my list), free Friday night’s at MOMA, a specialty pen store 12 minutes from my hotel (thanks mapquest), eating and drinking (as much as my budget will allow), I hope to attend some of these panels:

An Alternative to Teaching: Preparing MFA Students to Work in Nonprofit Arts Agencies (A Case Study). (Charles Jensen, Aimée Baker, Meghan Brinson, Beth Staples, Matthew Brennan, John Young) With so many burgeoning MFA programs churning out more students than ever before, it is even more critical for these new professionals to consider viable and rewarding alternatives to tenure-track teaching careers. Work in the nonprofit sector, through arts agencies, writing centers, and the like, can offer writers a different kind of refuge from the demands of corporate alternatives, and the skills developed in these roles can be transferred into major leadership opportunities in the arts sector. The Piper Center for Creative Writing has grown its MFA graduate assistantship program into a distinctive training ground for these future arts leaders, whose skills and experience will separate them from their peers upon graduation. Working in areas of literary program development and oversight, research, event planning, and management, our students have become invaluable partners in our success. (I am very interested in this panel considering I have no plans to stay in academia).

Listen to This! (Nick Twemlow, Kenneth Goldsmith, Matt O’Donnell, Curtis Fox, Don Share) Take an audio tour of four major audio poetry archives: The Harvard Poetry Room, poetryfoundation.org, From The Fishouse, and UbuWeb. Their curators will play back, mix, and sample from their collections. You’ll learn about how to access historic recordings, best practices for archiving audio, what makes a great poetry podcast, and how to get work added and featured in their archives and podcasts.

Show and Tell: Collaborations of the Verbal and Visual. (Marsha Norman, Christopher Durang, Jules Feiffer, Meg Wolitzer) Stony Brook Southampton’s literary magazine, The Southampton Review, presents four writers who work in a range of media, from film and theater to novels and cartoons. Panelists show and tell as they consider how each medium creates unique opportunities for cross sensory collabroations to collaborate, how their material works differently on page than on stage or on air, and how they get the verbal and visual to play nice.

U.S. Latino Writers Speak Out: A Literary Response to the Immigration Crisis. (Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Denise Chavez, Dagoberto Gilb, Luis Urrea, Ruben Martinez) We are poets, novelists, and journalists who feel compelled to unite in a public forum to read from our work that addresses an issue that is tearing this country apart. Our literature, our books, our novels, our journalism, our poetry, our urge to write has sprung from the fact that we belong to an immigrant community in struggle. With our words, we wish to bridge the chasm between the literature we write, the writing community of which we are a part, and the country that is our home. This panel listed above is the reason I’m attending the conference, though I wouldn’t mind going to this reading (they are at the same time, dammit):

Soft Skull 15th Anniversary Reading. (Douglas Martin, David Griffith, Matthew Sharpe, Lynne Tillman, Jenny Davidson, Cristin Aptowicz) In fifteen years, Soft Skull Press has delighted, excited and enraged the American public–from eight books selected as Voice Literary Supplement Best Books of the Year, to two books identified by Ann Coulter as amongst the five most fraudulent books of the past decade. In so doing, Soft Skull has become one of the most well respected, independent publishers in the world, with books in translation throughout Europe, South America and Japan, Korea, and China. Herewith we offer several of the writers who have made us who we are, and will continue to make us who we hope to be.

Alternatives to Academia. (Melanie Moore, Russell Chamberlain, Kathleen Jesme, Vince Passaro, Michele Kotler, Bruce Morrow) Academia used to be the typical path chosen by creative writing MFAs and PhDs. These days the candidates outnumber the available tenure track positions by as much as 25:1. For degreed writers, what other options are available? Meet six writers who have found meaningful work beyond the ivory towers. These panelists work for corporations, nonprofits, and the government in the fields of consulting, management, social work, and fundraising.

Avant-Garde Latino/a Poetry. (Gabriel Gomez, Roberto Tejada, Valerie Martinez, Monica De La Torre, Maria Melendez, Francisco Aragon) The reality of a U.S. Latino/a Avant-Garde is virtually non-existent in contemporary literary discourse about “Latino/a Art” as well as across the literary spectrum. The objective of this panel, made up of Latino/a poets, critics, and publishers, is to interrogate the very terms “Avant-Garde” and “Latino/a experience” as intersecting locations of poetic practice so as to bring forth work that bears witness to our varying aesthetics as artists and thinkers.

I hope to return with stories and pictures! Whether I’ll find the time to post them is a different question (I made the clever decision of signing up for a class presentation the Wednesday following this trip, which means the weekend I would have dedicated to research and organizing will, instead, be used up in the streets of New York. This makes me a little nervous, so, to compensate, I started researching my presentation topic this past weekend, and will probably continue to turn the presentation topic over in my mind as I make my way from one NY event to the next).