Culture & Arts

CHARACTERS: Visitor One, Visitor Two, Visitor Three, Visitor Four, Visitor Five, Visitor Six, Visitor Seven, Visitor Eight, Visitor Nine, Visitor Ten, Visitor Eleven, Visitor Twelve, Visitor Thirteen, and The Marvelous Sugar Baby

Setting: Noon. Saturday, July 5, 2014. The Domino Sugar Factory, Williamsburg, NY

Outside the venue, a very long line winds down and around several blocks. Art aficionados wait patiently in the sun. Inside, the exhibition visitors wander and wonder. THE MARVELOUS SUGAR BABY regally inhabits the space. Docents are scattered throughout the venue.

VISITOR ONE: I think this exhibit is great for Black people.

VISITOR TWO: For Black people? Really? Why?

VISITOR ONE: Because this massive sculpture obviously celebrates Black matriarchy.

VISITOR TWO: Black matriarchy? Is that what you get from this? As in some romanticized free choice world that never existed, as opposed to coping because you have no choice?

VISITOR ONE: What do you mean?

VISITOR TWO: What did you mean?

VISITOR ONE: You don't have to get angry.

VISITOR TWO: You don't have to tell me how I feel. I can't talk to you about this.

VISITOR TWO quickly walks away from VISITOR ONE.
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VISITOR THREE, VISITOR FOUR, and VISITOR FIVE mingle on one the side of THE MARVELOUS SUGAR BABY.

VISITOR THREE: This is a great effort.

VISITOR FOUR: That's an understatement. It's wonderful.

VISITOR FIVE: Did you check out the Mammy scarf?

VISITOR FOUR: I know. We'll never get away from that.

VISITOR FIVE: Yeah, you know they took Aunt Jemima off the pancake box and gave her a perm--

VISITOR FOUR: Or a press n' curl. And earrings.

Laughing, VISITOR THREE, VISITOR FOUR, and VISITOR FIVE move around to another view, in back of THE MARVELOUS SUGAR BABY. VISITOR THREE grimaces.

VISITOR THREE: I mean, Kara Walker is very good, but....

VISITOR FOUR: But what about Kara Walker?

VISITOR THREE: She's no Jeff Koons.

VISITOR FIVE: Thank God for that.
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VISITOR SIX and VISITOR SEVEN linger in front of a melting molasses statue of a young Black child. VISITOR SIX sighs into VISITOR SEVEN's chest.

VISITOR SIX: Do you think this statue is supposed to be an enslaved child?

VISITOR SEVEN: I don't know, but that'd make sense.

VISITOR SIX: It's melting right in front of us.

VISITOR SEVEN: And what do you get from that?

VISITOR SIX: Dying Black children, separated from their mother because of slavery? Some melting, some not. Look how far they're scattered about. None of the statues of children are really next to the mother, the sphinx. You know what I mean.

VISITOR SEVEN: I do. Kara Walker went from those intricate paper cutouts to this huge, towering expression of--

VISITOR SIX: Of all these isms we don't like to think about. I know. I know. So many layers. This is overwhelming.

VISITOR SEVEN: Yeah, it is.

VISITOR SIX: Which form do you like better?

VISITOR SEVEN: I can't say. Both are...monumental.

VISITOR SIX: Her cutouts are so delicate and powerful. You're taken in before you realize what's happening in them. Kara Walker is---

VISITOR SEVEN: Effin' brilliant?

VISITOR SIX: That works.

VISITOR SIX takes VISITOR SEVEN's hand, and they move several yards over to study THE MARVELOUS SUGAR BABY.
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VISITOR EIGHT and VISITOR NINE stand near a docent, listening to her talk about Kara Walker's work.

VISITOR EIGHT: Let's go.

VISITOR NINE: Honey we're almost through. Listen to the docent.

VISITOR EIGHT: I'm hungry.

VISITOR NINE: We'll eat later. Shhhh.

Holding out his hand, VISITOR EIGHT breaks from the small group listening to the docent, and runs over to THE MARVELOUS SUGAR BABY. The docent stops speaking and looks at VISITOR NINE, sharply.

VISITOR EIGHT: Can we eat this?

VISITOR NINE moves quickly to block VISITOR EIGHT's hand from digging into THE MARVELOUS SUGAR BABY.

VISITOR NINE: What are you doing?

VISITOR EIGHT: I'm hungry.

VISITOR NINE retrieves a snack bag from her pocketbook, and roughly places trail mix in VISITOR EIGHT's hand.

VISITOR TEN and VISITOR ELEVEN stand in front of THE MARVELOUS SUGAR BABY, camera phones at the ready.

VISITOR TEN: Go on. I'll take yours first.

VISITOR ELEVEN walks directly in front of THE MARVELOUS SUGAR BABY.

VISITOR TEN (CONT'D): Move over. You're right in-between the breasts.

VISITOR ELEVEN: I don't have a problem with that.

VISITOR TWELVE and VISITOR THIRTEEN begin to exit the venue.

VISITOR TWELVE: I wonder what it would have looked like made from brown sugar.

VISITOR THIRTEEN: And what color brown? Light or dark? It would be a completely different exhibit.

VISITOR TWELVE: Definitely. Isn't brown sugar healthier?

VISITOR THIRTEEN: I know brown sugar isn't bleached. It's pure, unrefined.

VISITOR TWELVE: Really? You think she meant that? I mean Kara Walker used white sugar for The Marvelous Sugar Baby instead of brown because of that?

VISITOR THIRTEEN: You have a future as an art critic.

VISITOR TWELVE: Shut up.

They continue to exit. VISITOR TWELVE glances back at a sidewall.

VISITOR TWELVE (CONT'D): I really liked that hole in the wall looking out on the river. She puts The Middle Passage in your face.

VISITOR THIRTEEN: Not to mention body parts.

VISITOR TWELVE and VISITOR THIRTEEN near the exit ramp.

VISITOR THIRTEEN (CONT'D): We cut it close. I'm glad we got in.

VISITOR TWELVE: Me too. My mind is racing. Oh my God, I feel high--on this exhibition.

VISITOR THIRTEEN: That's what great art can do, right?

They begin to walk up the exit ramp.

VISITOR TWELVE: What is this brown sticky stuff under our feet? This ramp is dirty. Someone should clean it up.

VISITOR THIRTEEN: Yes. Someone should.

As the visitors, the media, and the art world move through, into and out of the space, THE MARVELOUS SUGAR BABY looks on: smiling, melting, crying, laughing, and frowning. She waits.

Chetan Bhagat, a 39-year-old author in India, has been phenomenally successful, with six English books selling 7 million copies and four adapted into successful Bollywood movies. And yet, many in the West don't know who he is.

Indian society discriminates between the good English speakers and the not-so-good ones. English is the new caste system, complete with levels of proficiency translating to various levels to elitism.

However, because I write in simple English, my books have managed to be a bridge between Indians who speak English well and Indians who speak little English. I am fortunate to have a wide reach of readers, including Indians irrespective of age, gender, class or location. All sects can read and enjoy my books. My books democratize the language.

My simple stories are set in contemporary India and reflect society as it is today. And that may be one reason why the West is not so interested in me. I write the actual reality of India, versus the exotic India Westerners would rather read about. My characters are looking for jobs while falling in love. They are career-oriented, ambitious and have modern values. Who wants to read about such Indians -- those who work in multinational banks and shop in malls?

The India that has sold abroad is typically India with lotus ponds and simple villagers. Those who ride elephants and climb up coconut trees and that is all they want to do in life. You won't find them in my books. If there is a villager in my book, chances are he will be visiting a cyber café, checking his phone or trying to get ahead in life. Don't know if the West is ready for or interested in that India.

I write to bring about change in my country, towards the direction of economic progress, a fairer society and more respect for the individual and his or her freedom. These changes are desperately required in my country. I wrap my easy-read stories around these issues and that is how I feel I can contribute towards my nation.

And my books have had an impact on some readers. For instance, I wrote a book, 2 States, about a couple from two different states of India and the parental opposition to their wedding. After reading the book, the father of a girl in the same situation changed his mind. He allowed his daughter to marry her boyfriend, ending a two-year long bitter, acrimonious opposition. The girl's father even set up a stall in the wedding function, offering all guests a copy of the book 2 States.

Perhaps this also partly explains limited awareness about my work in the West. I have never really aspired to that goal. To change India, we have to change the mindsets of Indians.

I've followed Leslie Kritzer's career for many years -- ever since I saw her in the 2001 Funny Girl staging at Paper Mill Playhouse. I've seen her do a lot of things, most of them comedic. In Piece of My Heart, a jukebox musical based on the life of songwriter Bert Berns, she shows her dramatic chops off. Of course, she also displays the powerhouse voice we've come to expect from her.

I'm much less familiar with Teal Wicks. I never saw her as Elphaba. I did see her in Jekyll & Hyde and, right afterwards, I said to Constantine Maroulis: "That girl is the best Emma I've ever seen, and I've seen a good amount." He thought she was pretty great too (though he had never seen any other Emma, so he couldn't second my opinion). In Piece of My Heart she plays a much different role, a young dancer who falls for, and eventually marries, Berns. (Hairspray's Linda Hart plays the same character in her later years.)

I got both leading ladies to participate in my recurring feature where I ask actors random, often silly, questions taken directly from the subject matter or text of the show. Below are the results.

What is your favorite Bert Berns song?

Kritzer: "Twist and Shout." C'mon.
Wicks: "Cry to Me." It was my ringtone for awhile.

Can you do the mashed potato?

Kritzer: No, but I can eat them just fine.
Wicks: Absolutely!

What is your favorite type of candy?

Kritzer: Nestle Crunch and Kit Kats. I have a problem.
Wicks: Red Vines or Red Rope

Who do you cry to most?

Kritzer: My therapist. But I owe her money so not right now.
Wicks: My poor boyfriend gets the brunt of it. Sorry babe.

Have you ever been embarrassed about where you came from?

Kritzer: Never. Jersey strong.
Wicks: Sure, when I was a wise-ass teenager. But now I flaunt it!

Who has the biggest piece of your heart?

Kritzer: Duh, my toy poodle, Ellie. Then, my husband.
Wicks: Animals who do absurdly cute things and teach us how to love unconditionally. They get me every time.

Piece of My Heart is currently running at the Signature Center through August 31. It officially opens on July 21.

Photo credit Jenny Anderson. Top right: Kritzer. Bottom left: Wicks.

The first song you write with someone is like a first kiss. The songs (or the kisses) that follow might be better for other reasons, or you might never want to write another song with that person again. Either way there's no song like the first song. There just isn't.

You have no idea what to expect, and you want so much to be good and for your partner to want to write with you again -- just as you would want someone to want to kiss you again, (regardless of whether you'll want to kiss them again). Let's face it. We want to be wanted. We want the choice of opting out. We don't want to be opted out on.

The compatibility of two virgin collaborators is unpredictable. Their speaking voice can get on your nerves, and it's over before it starts, or it's possible you may like their speaking voice very much and feel like you're standing there naked with nothing but a preliminary cup of coffee in hand, hoping that once you get started something will fall out of somewhere. But while still holding that cup, it remains to be seen if it will.

In the back of your mind you know what you write depends on a spark that might or might not ignite, a chemistry.

I met Glen Burtnik 22 years ago when someone at Warner Chappell, Glen's publisher, had a hunch and arranged a co-write. I drove out to NJ from NYC in my little Miata that could on a snowy winter day. Glen was coming off of a number one hit, "Sometimes Love Just Ain't Enough," written with Patty Smyth (of Scandal) and recorded by Patty and Don Henley. I was intimidated by this number one thing. No song of mine had ever charted. I was self-conscious about my anonymity.

Plus, Glen could play everything, figure out any chord progression, variation or configuration upside down and backwards. Literally. He toured as Paul in Beatlemania and as an honorary member of Styx. Of course, his best character was his funny, easygoing self. A savantly talented guy (or girl) like that is a powerful songwriting aphrodisiac for me. The sense of humor is a bonus.

So there we were. Coffee cups in hand. We talked, we laughed, we shared. Songwriting foreplay.

And then, on an acoustic guitar and a Fender Rhodes, as we looked out onto Glen's little toddler (now close to 30) romping in the snow and his wife, Rosie, romping close behind we wrote our first song, a duet called "We Could Be in Love." If that title isn't metaphorical perfection for a first song being like a first kiss, I don't know what is.

We recorded a demo. No AutoTune. No VocALign or hired singers. Just Glen and I crooning away. Steve Greenberg, not yet on S-Curve but A&Ring for Atlantic, had Filipina pop star, Lea Salonga, and Brad Kane record it. It went number one in the Philippines. No U.S. hit. So what? It felt like a home run.

I wonder things. Why do some of your best songs happen the first time you write with someone? Are you on your best game because it's the first impression they will have of you? If you don't perform it's a little embarrassing. Maybe they'll find out you're a fraud? Does the adrenalin from the fear of being found out give you a little surge of reserve talent?

And I miss things. I wrote from such an innocent place back then. I wasn't trying to be as clever as I (admittedly) have been trying to be of late. In this attention-deficit world, it's hard to be simple.

Of course Glen and I never wrote another first song. But we wrote others and whenever we did it was always rewarding, comfortable, satisfying.

Some co-write relationships are like casual sex or hooking up: They last for the few days it takes to write and record a demo. Some last for decades, even if you're not writing any more, even when your lives have gone in crazy different directions, over bumps and curves in roads. Is that because you took the time to know each other before you "kissed?" The first songwriting session can be a good indication of how long that connection will last. Because here we are 22 years later. Smiling for a camera.

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Those who favor a meditative kind of art could do no better than a visit to the current dual exhibition at Lora Schlesinger Gallery at Bergamot Station in Santa Monica. The front gallery offers a selection of recent paintings by Richard Bruland; and tucked away in the small back gallery is a collection of works by Sophia Dixon Dillo. Though they share that meditative quality, these are two artists with very different visions. Bruland's painted surfaces are richly textured, colorful, intense; Dillo's small paper works are spare, delicate, eschewing color in favor of zen-like simplicity. Together, they challenge the mind and delight the observing eye.

Richard Bruland--by way of disclosure, I should note that he is a past, long-time member of an artists' support group of which I was also a member--builds the surfaces of his paintings with multiple layers of thickly and unevenly applied acrylic paint, sanding them down to reveal the resulting complex substructure. Typically, in the past, he has worked with a sometimes hard-to-perceive grid, stressing the horizontal or the vertical, allowing the eye to find the reassurance of stability in the subtle, ever-shifting sea of color. Typically, too, he has worked with a gradual shift from light to darkness, adumbrating the progress of life itself, or of the moments of our lives as our moods change imperceptibly with the constant flux of feelings.

Richard Bruland Yodel, 2014 acrylic on dibond panel 36 x 84"

In his recent work, the grid is attenuated and sometimes disappears completely. Instead, he works with what my eye perceived as lacunae--"holes" is too crude a description of these effects--that draw the attention from moment to moment away from the complexity of the surface and into the depths behind it. Like supernovas in the universal panoply, dark holes, dangerous attractions, they act as tiny whirlpools, at once pulling in and repelling the fascinated eye as it roves the surrounding areas of paint. Of particular interest to me were two paintings where Bruland seems to have allowed free rein to his flirtation with the dark side--one predominantly a deep, midnight blue...

Richard Bruland Banderillas, 2014 acrylic on wood panel 24 x 24"

... the other almost entirely black...

Richard Bruland Queen of Swords, 2014 acrylic on wood panel 30 x 30"

... dark, glowing presences that invite a meditation on that ultimate and tantalizingly unknowable human experience, death itself.

Sophia Dixon Dillo's small works on paper are, by contrast, as quiet as a whisper. The artist uses a knife to create small, sometimes tiny slits in the surface of the paper, lifting it into a subtle relief. With an infinite patience in which she invites us to participate, she repeats these slits in patterned variations, creating enchanting musical effects...

Sophia Dixon Dillo Untitled (2474) detail, 2014 incised paper 7 x 7 "

... that speak to us with the gentleness of a soft rain or the ephemeral passage of a flight of birds...

Sophia Dixon Dillo Untitled (2506) detail, 2014 incised paper 16-3/4 x 16-3/4" - framed

The modesty of her scale and of the marks she makes appeal to my appreciation for smaller, less overtly ambitious works of art. Their obsessiveness speaks of an inwardly-directed vision, the search for an always elusive perfection that is characterized, paradoxically, by its opposite, the imperfection that is built into our human nature.

Sophia Dixon Dillo Untitled (2490) detail, 2014 incised paper 26-1/2 x 26-1/2" - framed

My favorite course in college was one of the obvious and simple ones: Shakespeare. We read maybe 20 of the plays and talked about them. Our professor was an eccentric old Greek, Pete Phialas, who had been dragged out of retirement by a student of his. This student became a dentist and paid the school to keep Phialas teaching what had been the student's own favorite course. Phialas had a thick accent and a childlike, giddy love of Shakespeare. He approached the plays more as dramatist than psychologist or philosopher: what were the subtleties of interaction between these characters? What did these turns of phrase mean?

Here's a taste of his approach, which I remember some 21 years on. Consider part of the famous speech about England, Richard II, act 2, scene 1:

This royal throne of kings, this scepter'd isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall,
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands,
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England

It is a dazzling speech to consider on its own. But Phialas pointed out to us that in it, Shakespeare directed his actor in how to perform it. It is spoken by John of Gaunt on his deathbed.

Each phrase is a breath. His breathing is uneven, and growing shallower - at first he can breathe out "This royal throne of kings" - but later, he has breath only for four syllables: "This blessed plot" - then shallower still, two syllables at a time - "this earth" - "this realm" - then inspired by his love of country, he summons the breath for an extra syllable: "this England."

Behold Phialas unlocking for his students a more complex appreciation of Shakespeare as dramatist: Shakespeare as a writer endlessly sensitive to the peregrinations of the human experience, and capable of distilling them down to the dramatic progression and the telling moment. These scenes have at their core the profundity of life, but at their surface they are dressed up full of color and excitement - they make it easy for us to enjoy them, they invite us in - they make it fun to learn the truth - a gift which, like Bottom's dream, hath no bottom.

At about this same time, I was looking at clouds a lot. The Shakespeare course provided me with a means to express something which had always seemed apparent: that while the lives of men are sometimes dramatic and meaningful, and often tedious and insignificant - so that, for instance, the 37 surviving plays of Shakespeare are a big deal in terms of the history of culture - the life of the sky is continuously Shakespearean. A great drama unfolds in the clouds, full of color and excitement. The clouds have majesty and variety, and they tell a complex and subtle story. This story has a cast of many characters, and divides up into scenes and episodes, but it has neither a beginning nor an ending. As long as there are vapor, light, and heat it will go on. We can read an act of Shakespeare any time we want, simply by looking up.

I don't come across my species of nephophilia - cloud-love - very often. But here we have Carolyn Marks Blackwood, a photographer who is apparently as avid a follower of the Bard of the upper reaches as I am, and a much more active one: she takes the drama of the clouds for one of her key subjects. Her show of photographs The Elements of Place is currently on display at the Albany Institute of History and Art - see details at the bottom. The work that follows is all from the show.

Consider her Evening II:

2014-07-16-graphic1EveningII2013ArchivalPigmentPrint40x40inches.jpg

Evening II, Archival Pigment Print, 40"x40", 2013

Now, this is embarrassing. I don't know the names of clouds. But whatever these clouds are, Blackwood composes them into a staccato landscape, diagonal bands of light stair-stepping from upper right to lower left. The light of the setting sun upon them is a violent red glow, like the light in a forge, and the clouds themselves look molten, as if they were boluses of hardened metal half-sunk in streaming iron. Seeming puffs of steam rise through the scene, and the eye seeks the cool blue shadows of the darker bands, scarcely finding any place to rest. The composition has little up or down to it, because it exists in the three-dimensional world of the clouds, unrestrained by a life spent crawling heavily on the surface of the Earth.

Since the advent of the digital camera, so many people are taking so many pictures that a good cloud photo can easily be chalked up to chance. Therefore we reflect on a body of work when considering cloud photography.

Cloud Series 109, Archival Pigment Print, 14"x14", 2014

Blackwood encounters the sky in an utterly different mood here. The first image is martial and heroic. This one is less formally dynamic, but it is not relaxed - rather, it is poised. A backdrop cloudscape relates a straightforward tale in turquoises and peaches of day edging toward night. Foreground of it are unlit clouds, skulking along, Iago-like, staining the scene with threat. Foreground and background are in dramatic tension, and once again, they are lushly three-dimensional, moving through a space without bias.

Consider a third piece:

Cloud Series 5, Archival Pigment Print, 14"x14", 2010

This is more akin to dissipation, dispersal. The clouds have lost their complex structure. They are spare and coming apart, making their way from form back to diaphanous vapor. The coiled energy of drama has been used up. The last few characters are making their way aimlessly from the stage, their lines exhausted. The scene returns to the beginning, to the blank page of the endless sky.

Let me insert here an apology for these descriptions; they read awkwardly to me. One encounters music and clouds the same way, as stimuli to the narrative imagination. But writing it out direct is like writing out a dream - stilted and unlike the thing itself. If this were a piece of fiction, I could hide Blackwood's clouds behind a magnificent cast of characters. But it isn't, and my speaking of the clouds directly fails - I do not have a language of clouds.

One might correctly argue that Blackwood is a consummate nature photographer. But this only captures part of what she is. She is a consummate photographer of abiotic nature. Living things rarely intrude on her work. Her nature is a nature of water, water in all its phases.

Hudson River Ice 200, Archival Pigment Print, 25"x30", 2013

There is a serene majesty, an icy grandeur, to her outlook. It is indifferent not only to humanity, but to all things that live and die in organic form: to plants, to animals, to fungi and algae and bacteria. Blackwood's Earth is given over to the inscrutable vitality of non-living things.

I am haunted by a thought, that if one could only see the world in its proper proportions, then of course life would recede to a trivial rank in the order of things, and science would assume the place in one's heart that tragedy customarily occupies. The spin of the electron, the wheeling of galaxies: these would take their rightful places at the center of one's attention. The heart and attention themselves would begin to dissolve, borne aloft on a wave of awe, and one would enter into direct unity with a vast cosmos. This cosmos would not be merciless, because mercilessness implies a certain caring about the thing denied mercy. This vast cosmos would be incidentally merciless, inconsistently merciless - it would hurt only because it would not care. The contours of its values would be alien to human conception. The first, and possibly only, thing we could understand about this cosmos before leaving humanity behind would be its tremendous beauty, beauty in every facet from the austere to the spectacular to the voluptuous.

The Bard of the upper reaches tells a tale of Shakespearean excitement, but it is not a human tale.

Ice 101, Archival Pigment Print, 30"x40", 2014

I get a hint of this absolute cosmos from Blackwood's photography. Looking at it, I conceive of her as being like a nineteenth-century explorer, steely, hardy, loving to live but not fearful of dying. I think of her with her face half-hidden behind tremendous lenses, surveying her chosen landscape of unspoiled solitude to distant horizons. It is cliched by now to imagine that a perspective which so thoroughly excludes humanity forms in recoil from some tremendous personal pain. One is tempted to manufacture such a biography for the Blackwood one deduces from her work. But I don't know, first of all, if Blackwood is the explorer I take her for; nor do I know if she harbors some such pain. I don't personally believe the a-human perspective is necessarily born in grief, nor can I verify that this perspective is hers. I think it exists to some extent in all of us, and I suspect she unleashes her measure of it in her nature photography, which is only a part of her creative work. I know one thing about this work, because I asked: that she shoots most of it at or near her home on the Hudson River.

Therefore I learn, or re-learn, two things from her work.

The first is that, whatever the real Blackwood is like, I need somebody to be like my idealized explorer, and her work comes close enough to this lost ideal that I can justify my construction of her. My Blackwood is not the fearful Bard, but she is his authentic follower. I need the figure and the work alike, and this is part of why her photographs mean so much to me.

The other thing I find is closer to home, a more ordinary but very useful truth: that if you are willing to walk out the front door and look at the world right in front of you, and really study it for a while, then splendors will unfold. This is what we get from the domestic Blackwood, the Blackwood who shoots where she lives. Surely she lives someplace nice, but it would be vague and drab before a less passionate eye. Only half its magic is itself, and the rest is her.

--

The Elements of Place: Photographs by Carolyn Marks Blackwood
June 28 - September 7, 2014
Artists Reception July 17, 5-8 p.m.
The Albany Institute of History and Art
125 Washington Avenue, Albany, New York, 12210

Carolyn Marks Blackwood online
All images courtesy of the artist
except Richard II scene, via http://theplaystheblog.wordpress.com/2012/05/22/what-dies-with-john-of-gaunt-nothing-less-than-a-vision-of-the-world/

I was lucky enough to get a seat to the preview showing of Double Edge Theaters 2014 performance of Sharazad, a Tale of Love and Magic. This rambling one of a kind farm stage creates a real life immersion experience, transplanting the audience throughout the performance from one magical viewing point to another, creating a true journey experience hard to replicate anywhere else.

Image Courtesy Double Edge Theatre

What struck out to me most, was that I actually felt like I was part of the story, a feeling I hardly, if ever get, when attending a performance in a traditional venue. Not to mention how nice it was to stretch my legs, and not remain seated for two hours. While a comfy orchestra seat at the ballet can be nice, strolling along with the cast and crew through fields, up through post and beam barns, and along the rivers edge is hard to beat. The fresh country air, and breathtaking sunset as a backdrop re-enforce the real feeling of it all, more than any indoor set ever could. Sorry Broadway!

Image Courtesy Double Edge Theatre

The story is woven by a remarkable group of local and international visual artists to tell a beautiful tale of a woman who attempts to transform her world through courage and imagination. Beautiful moments, such as an underwater scene and quoting of Rumi, "The breezes at dawn have secrets to tell you, Don't go back to sleep! You must ask for what you really want. Don't go back to sleep!." There was no sleeping in the audience, as we enjoyed beautiful women swimming through streams, made to be magical sea creatures, and genies popping up from the trees far above, all while an enchanting woman on a stone pillar in the distance waved her fabrics in the wind. All this brought the audience on a journey through a beautiful display of lighting, projection, aerial performers, countless yards of fabric, puppets, and original musical performance. In fact, there is often so much to see, it leaves one not sure where to look next, but always looking at something beautiful. The actors also did their jobs well, performing this famous story of Arabian Nights.

For those who may have been to the Internationally renowned, and award winning Double Edge Theatre, be assure this years performance is fresh and new. This year marks the theaters 32nd year, and their 20th year in Ashfield. They recently were awarded a cultural award from the State of Massachusetts, and continue to thrive in their mission to celebrate living culture through arts, and nature. They offer yearly artistic immersion programs, combining hands on training and collaborative theater production, with an international group of resident artists. Their shows sell out to over 3000 theater guests each year, and it is highly recommended that you make your plans and reserve your tickets for this summers performance early. Get your tickets, and learn more at www.doubleedgetheatre.org. Enjoy the show, I mean, the spectacle!

In roughly a decade, Fall Out Boy has grown from an unknown band rehearsing in their hometown of Wilmette, Illinois, to one of the most popular rock bands touring today. With drummer Andy Hurley, vocalist/guitarist Patrick Stump, guitarist Joe Trohman and bassist Pete Wentz leading the charge, Fall Out Boy's 2005 major-label debut From Under the Cork Tree went double platinum on the strength of such singles as "Sugar, We're Going Down" and "Dance, Dance."

IRVINE, CA - MAY 31: Musicians Patrick Stump (L) and Peter Wentz of Fall Out Boy perform onstage during the 22nd Annual KROQ Weenie Roast at Verizon Wireless Music Center on May 31, 2014 in Irvine, California. (Photo by Christopher Polk/Getty Images for CBS Radio Inc.)

Fall Out Boy's music has a distinct 1980s and '90s sound. Pete Wentz says this is because that's the kind of music the band grew up on. "I think, for bands like us, we can be a gateway," says Wentz. "We can say like, 'Hey, check out what these other bands we grew up with do.' I think that's an important thing to do as an artist." In particular, Wentz names 2012 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Inductee Metallica and its 1986 album Master of Puppets as the record that is probably his "single biggest influence."

Fall Out Boy's fifth studio album, Save Rock and Roll, was released in 2013 and featured guest appearances by 2 Chainz, Big Sean, Tommy Lee of Motley Crüe, Courtney Love and Elton John, who was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994. From the album came a series of 11 music videos forming a single narrative and based on each of Save Rock and Roll's tracks. The Rock Hall's Right Here, Right Now exhibit includes fake-bloodied shoes, boots, a shirt and a jacket worn by members of the band in those videos, including the white jacket worn by Wentz in part 11 with Elton John.

This blog post is part of a series produced by Huffington Post and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in conjunction with the latter's current "Right Here, Right Now" exhibit. The exhibit, at the Cleveland-based museum, takes a look at the evolution of rock and roll and its impact on the next generation of artists by taking visitors on an intimate journey into the stories of chart-topping acts as told through their personal items and clothing from iconic performances. To learn more, visit here. To meet the other seven, visit here and see below!

Yes. Absolutely. No question. If you can get to City Center anytime through this weekend to see Pump Boys and Dinettes, which is the third and last of Encores! Off-Center summer series, go. It's way too entertaining to pass up.

All you need to know before hurrying out to get tix or purchasing them online is that what you'll be attending is not a musical in terms with which you're most familiar--something that has a libretto and a score. Instead, it's a country song cycle. It's a series of songs, some with brief introductions and some without.

That's what it was in 1981 when Jim Wann, John Foley, Mark Hardwick, John Schimmel, Debra Monk and Cass Morgan wrote it and starred in it off-Broadway and on-. And that's what it is now when Hunter Foster, Randy Redd, Jordan Dean, Katie Thompson, Marnie Parris, Lorenzo Wolff and Austin Moorhead as an additional guitarist are slapping it into lively life.

It all takes place at The Double Cupp, a roadside gas station and diner somewhere on Highway 57, where, as they tell you, you can get food and gas. Or just food or just gas. The food part is run by the Cupp sisters, Rhetta (Thompson) and Prudie (Parris) and the station part by the others.

For the purposes of the show, they're all together on Donyale Werle's cluttered set with a Schaefer Beer sign in neon as only one of the authenticating appointments. They're wearing Clint Ramos's costumes, which look as if they could have been purchased at an Urban Outfitters or restaurant supply store.

As boisterous rural types, they chant songs about just anything that crosses their minds when they're not working on a nearby Winnebago up on blocks or are proudly baking pies. They tribute Highway 57, natch, and catfish ready to be cooked. They warble about a beloved grandma, the menu, the delight in tips, awkward love, boots you put on for drinking sprees and, in maybe the most memorable image of the short evening, a farmer's tan (brown arms and neck, white chest) and its sex appeal.

Everyone in attendance will have his or her favorite ditty. The one that got my toes to tapping (not in boots) is "No Holds Barred," which has something to do with a Florida vacation. Wann and Morgan wrote that one, but it was Wann who did most of the tunesmithing by himself or with one, two or a few of the others. Morgan and Monk wrote the "Menu Song."

(Raise your hand if you remember Monk enunciating the word "barbecue" on the original production's much-aired television commercial.)

Lear deBessonet, who nowadays can be counted on to inject excitement into anything she takes on, directs the cast, and they're all brimming with talent and enthusiasm. Whereas the men play instruments, Thompson and Parris use any handy pot or pan or anything else available to percussive effect.

No reason to single out any of them as a scene-stealer. Each has strengths. Thompson and Parris have voices that could get them hefty Nashville contracts. Jordan and Wolff aren't only proficient musicians but know how to get humor into their vigorous strumming. Redd offers honky-tonk piano that's so Jerry Lee Lewis you wish he'd bring out a CD. Then there's his accordion stretching. By now, theater audiences know the breadth of Foster's stage abilities, not a one scanted here.

(FYI: Foster and Cass Morgan recently worked together in The Bridges of Madison County. Redd was a member of the chorus in the one-night Off-Center presentation of Randy Newman's Faust.)

So the standard Encores! question: Will this one transfer to a house on or off Broadway? It deserves to.

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While we're on that subject, here's something else that spectacularly deserves a move. It's The Gig for which Douglas J. Cohen has written music, lyrics and book to help distinguish the New York Music Festival showcasing at PTC Performance Space.

Good as The Gig--adapted from Frank D. Gilroy's movie of the same title--is, it's never had a legitimate New York City production. Odd, since though it's been collecting awards for some 20 years or so. What?! Huh?! Something this outstanding has never been produced in Manhattan?! Guess that's just point at another of the myriad inexplicable show-biz vagaries.

The extremely moving story concerns six men in their forties and fifties who've gotten together on Wednesday nights for years to jam (the actors here only mime their instruments) and who suddenly land a two-week stint at a downscale Catskills resort.

Aside from their weekly jazz-oriented get-togethers, the men aren't necessarily close. Their differences are brought out during the fortnight when they mesh and/or clash with each other and with the Paradise Hotel owner, two waitresses and an African-American bass player added to their number when the usual bassist has to drop out for medical reasons.

What Gilroy and Cohen want to explore is the male mid-life crisis, male bonding and the importance of music to the soul. Building on Gilroy's material, Cohen brings an enormous amount of heart to his show. While most of the songs have the swing and the zing of jazz--Jonathan Smith is the musical director and Michael Gibson the orchestrator--the beautifully crafted tunes also throb with emotion.

The actors are Stephen Berger, Larry Cahn, Doug Eskew, Kate Fahrner, Nick Gaswirth, Michael Minarik, Kevin Pariseau, Dee Roscioli, Steve Routman, Bruce Sabath and Donna Vivino as a temperamental singer with whom the men have to tangle to their dismay. Cohen takes care that each of them gets the chance to shine individually.

Again, you wouldn't want to choose a first among equals, but you would want to thank director Igor Goldin for how he's meshed all elements on Josh Zangen's spare set and in Ryan J. Moller's costumes under Cory Pattak's lights. Theatergoers who follow these things will know that Goldin directed Yank! at the York a few years back and was supposed to take on the same chore when the top-notch musical moved to Broadway.

That never happened, just as The Gig hasn't received the wider exposure it's earned, when--I can't resist pointing this out--so many vastly inferior properties have. There must be a musical comedy god or goddess (Thalia? Terpsichore?) somewhere who can right these egregious wrongs--and pronto.

José Luis "Katira" Ramirez invokes the sacred five directions of the Huichol people in a benediction before the showing in Guadalajara (Credit: José Andrés Solórzano)

Second of two interviews

See also: Interview With the Directors of Huicholes: The Last Peyote Guardians

José Luis "Katira" Ramírez was serving as the governor of his community of San Andrés Cohamiata, Jalisco, when he met Argentine filmmaker Hernán Vilchez. He was not like any governor Vilchez had ever met. A Huichol shaman, or marakame, dressed in his colorful native clothing and distinctive plumed hat, he stood out in the urban environment of Mexico City. He had traveled far from his home in the Western Sierra Madre because his community was in crisis; the rains had not come in time and the corn crop was ruined. He had come to the megalopolis to seek support for his people, who were in dire need with their failed harvest. Another crisis, too, loomed large in his mind: the fate of Wirikuta, the sacred land of his people, destined to be churned into ore by Canadian mining companies. He had no idea how it would be done, but he knew it had to be stopped. The fate of his people -- and indeed, of the entire planet, according to his perspective -- hung in the balance.

Hernán, for his part, was traveling the planet with his film crew, seeking subjects for a German reality show that portrayed the cultures and traditions of native peoples around the world. He asked Katira if he would be willing to participate in a filming of the program. Katira said he would consult with the elders of his community, and together they would decide.

Eventually the community gave their blessing, but they asked for something in return. They wanted Hernan to film the story of their struggle to save Wirikuta.

Katira's family became the protagonists in the documentary, which follows the building of an extraordinary movement. I sat with Katira and with his son Clemente, a student at the University of Guadalajara, at the closure of the very intense Mexican film release tour to get a different perspective on the story behind the film. Producer Paola Stefani joined in at his invitation.

Tracy: Katira, how was it to live with this film crew in your house, in your life, filming every day? Because of what I know of the Wixarika people, it's a very private culture, very discreet, and people value their privacy very much.

Katira: Yes, it was very difficult. There were many people who think many things and said things to us (critical things), but you only think of the defense. I always said in the assembly, you also should do the work, this is what it costs. If there's no support, it's painful, but one does it because really they do it from the heart, because really they love the Mother and the territory, and also we have rights as guardians on this planet.

Tracy: I know that there are various documentarians who go to the sierra and ask for permission to film. Hernán is not the first; so why did you choose him to do this movie?

Katira: He has a heart to especially know us. It wasn't his first time to come to an indigenous community; he had been to communities all over the world with almost the same problems, the same needs. So when we met it was like we had already known each other for many years.

Tracy: What were the most difficult challenges for you in this process?

Katira: The difficult thing was the distances, and because of the distances the cost of everything -- it's very far and that's why, with work and with sacrifice, we did it.

Don't think it was cheap; each trip was 1500 euros, 1,000 euros, from my pocket, from my work, but working together and with a lot of economic sacrifice we were able to do everything we needed to complete this documentary, so one day people will understand.

Thank God my heart is very strong, because I wanted to leave something for the children, for the grandchildren, for the future, because I'm not going to live 500 years, 300 years, who knows what's going to happen; so this was very important for me.

Tracy: I really loved the opening you gave to the film in Guadalajara -- the ceremonial blessing, the invocation of the five directions. I was curious to know if you opened each of the presentations with a benediction like that one, or were they all different?

Katira: Very different. Sometimes we arrived rested; other times the director was really sick and weak from so much travel, with the rains, with headaches, we had to take care of each other that week of the release tour.

Tracy: Katira, I know as a marakame you are also a healer, among other things. Were there times when you served as a healer for the film crew?

Katira: Yes, laying the hands on energetically, healing, that's how we've always cared for each other.

Tracy: I'll bet you had a lot of work, no?

Katira: ¡Sí!

Tracy: And did the treatments work?

Katira: Here's Paola; ask her.

Read the full interview at Intercontinental Cry.
Anyone who is interested in organizing a film screening or supporting the effort may contact the director at hernanton@gmail.com.

A STUDIO VISIT WITH BETTINA HUBBY

Bettina Hubby is an interdisciplinary artist with an impulse towards collaboration and integrating daily life into her art (and vice versa), all with large doses of humor. From cheeky collages of magazine cutouts, to dinner parties with construction workers beneath the twinkle of a disco ball hanging from a bulldozer, her work invites participation and engagement. Hubby has also created a temporary store based in Eagle Rock, selling only rocks and eagle items, and animated the desert with her over-sized "Googly Eyes for Giant Rock." Needless to say, the breadth of her work is impressive and keeps you guessing what she'll be up to next. I visited Hubby's studio in Silver Lake and talked with her about her process and current projects.

VB: My first introduction to your work was your show "Pretty Limber"at Klowden Mann last year, which exhibited some of your collage work and the vinyl cutouts placed on the walls, so mainly your studio based work. I loved the show so much that I wanted to see more and found that you do quite a bit of other things as well -- site specific installation, public engagement activities, ongoing collaborative projects with friends and artists. Could you tell me how you see the difference between your studio practice and your more public or collaborative projects? Do they fulfill different interests for you? Or maybe they function in the same way?

BH: Studio practice is a way to get away from the other, and the other is a way to get away from the other. So, it is a bit of a "hide that canvas and go into another space" kind of thing for my brain. The more collaborative projects obviously have to do with wanting more stimulation from the outside world and more conversation based on certain topics that I bring up in that work. I love seeing what comes up that is absolutely impossible to predict based on what other people do. For instance, throwing out this idea

and then having people respond to it and then collaborating with them and making something that none of you could have expected. And then in the studio, reverting to a quieter place. It's very important, and I have to get better at it, honestly, I have to get A LOT better at it.

What do you mean by that?

Well, the silent practice. Really getting away from that compulsion to involve a lot of people with everything that I do. For instance, right now I am involved in this bigger project, which leaves me almost no time for the quiet practice. And I need to get better at balance.

Do you think it's about allowing yourself the time for yourself?

I think it's about saying "no." and scaling back and editing.

You've talked about using humor as a coping mechanism, and something I picked up on in some of your projects is this making the best of a situation mentality. So are those two things - humor and making the best of something - the method or the goal in your work?

I think it's a bit of both. I don't really like to spend a lot of time, you know, wallowing; and I don't enjoying when other people do, so I'm trying to fill my life more with positive experiences as much as possible in this world that is very chaotic, and there's lots of feedback and white noise, and information. Whatever positive experience we can give to the other is really vital. I have a sense of humor and I enjoy others' senses of humor, and I figure if I can incorporate that as a medium it can be powerful.

What is your favorite part of your process?

It certainly isn't the beginning, because it's too nerve wracking not to know if it's going to work! I think it's around that 78th percentile, when you've got the ball rolling and the train is moving and everything is coming together and you're seeing all the images. That goes for the quiet solo practice as well as the collaborative one, where you see the end in sight and you're pumped and excited, and so are other people as well.

What's the most challenging part?

The beginning, the blank canvas. There's a great book by Thomas Bernhard called Correction and it's about that crumpling up of that piece of paper with all your lists on it, and not knowing whether you're failing, just throwing it away and filling up that garbage can.

So it's about the attempt?

Yeah, it's about the attempt and that self doubt; this process of grappling with an idea whether it's important enough to follow through with, whether anyone else will care. I don't want to work in a vacuum; I do want to affect others in a positive way.

If one were to go check out your Facebook page right now, they would find that it's covered in breasts....images of boobs, stories involving boobs, boob jokes....tell me what's going on with that?

(Laughs) Well, that was, I guess, The Ultimate in testing out that theory that humor is good medicine. When I was diagnosed with breast cancer in January, I had to, sort of, decide rapidly what to do. It became a major crossroads as to whether to hide out and to be a little nugget by myself (with my family and friends of course) but not to be public about it, because of the shame and the fear and all those confusing emotions. Then I just kind of wiped that and made a decision to be public because that is a part of my nature and I felt like I'd be cheating myself and my nature if I didn't incorporate it into my world and my art.

So I announced it ON Facebook, which was funny to me, but also startling; using the medium in a different way, with a health issue, but also using humor and just saying: look, I don't want any pity party here, I just want boobs. Send me boobs: pictures, poems, songs, whatever you can come up with to make me laugh. Because really I don't need anything else. It just became this free for all, and it was so energetic and exciting to open up that Facebook every day to find new images... from the most unlikely people that had been in my life for years and they were all sending me images of boobs, and all these multifarious and unexpected ways and it was just THE BEST thing I have ever done.

I'm so proud of my bravery, and also really thankful for people's acceptance and their willingness to participate in this way. And what I hear from others, it was a great way for them to cope and help.

I thought it was special to be asked - even though you didn't ask me personally, per se, but that you would be so forthright with your community and even as far as it extends on Facebook....I think it's great to see what people, if given the opportunity, will do.

I'm actually going to make a full scale reproduction on silk of the Facebook feed. So it includes every post that I got from the day of the announcement to yesterday. I'm still getting things, but I have to cut it off somewhere! (laughs).

It could go on forever!

So that will be up at the show that I'm putting together.

Yes -- tell me about that show, "Thanks for the Mammaries," coming up at ForYourArt here in Los Angeles.

It just seemed a natural progression because I got all these images and I wanted to share them beyond the digital realm. I'm very tactile. I started to look for a space -- I really wanted For Your Art from the beginning, so I sent them a proposal and we found a slot that worked and they said "yes" which was just dreamy. I made the open call, I did not curate this, I just said "yes" to everyone, which may not be the best thing for my health, seeing as how I have 112 artists in the show! But in the end, it's a huge testament to the community and also it will raise some money for breast cancer research, and it's a nice kind of end point to this particular phase of my life.

What else are you working on in the studio?

I'm going to work on a whole series of collages about relaxation. (laughs)

Good timing!

Yeah, it's really funny and apropos.

Do you have any exhibitions coming up where we can see your work?

I am doing a show in November of a series of bronzes that will be slightly sexual in nature, but not obviously. For example, I have a slab of cheese and some Q-tips, a washing up sponge and some Vienna sausages...and I'll do some lithographs with it. That will be at 5th Floor Gallery, so looking forward to that and another year of adventure.

Bettina Hubby is represented by Klowden Mann in Culver City and her work can also be seen on her website. The show which she initiated and worked to organize in partnership with Klowden Mann, "Thanks for the Mammaries," will be on display at ForYourArt in Los Angeles, CA from July 31 - August 17, 2014. Works by over 100 artists will be on display, most of which are for sale. Funds raised at the exhibition will go towards breast cancer research. Opening reception will be Thursday, July 31st from 7-9pm.

Shakespeare's Hamlet has inspired many variations - the latest is Howard Barker's Gertrude: The Cry, part of the Potomac Theatre Project at the off-Broadway Atlantic Theater Company.

Barker has used the backdrop of Hamlet -- the affair between his mother, Queen Gertrude (Pamela J. Gray), and uncle Claudius (Robert Emmet Lunney), to explain the story's deadly consequences. The overarching thrust is Gertrude's carnality; the sexual desire between her and Claudius is so intense, it inevitably transforms lust into murder.

Unlike the traditional image of her tormented son Hamlet (David Barlow), this round he's strangely unemotional about his father's death. The playwright has turned him into a semi-humorous adolescent moralist, or in his mother's words, "a prude." He is repulsed by Gertrude's cry, the ecstatic pleasure shrieks, servant Cascan (Alex Draper) explains, that will drive her to great dangers - no matter the consequences.

Such interpretations fit into the "theatre of catastrophe" theory Barker uses to describe his work, which he believes should give the audience a sense of dislocation, underscoring his larger point: Art isn't digestible.

Here, Barker relies heavily on Gertrude's severe sensuality (which Gray plays expertly) -- and her passion consumes all of act one. However, a disjointed second act goes into overdrive -- murderous plots, ruminations on sex and death and the sensual appetites of Albert, Duke of Mecklenberg (Bill Army) for the Queen. The problem is that Gertrude, despite respectable performances, is long-winded; the changes to the actual tale are a bit half-baked.

Unlike his excellent Scenes From an Execution, aided by the multitalented Jan Maxwell, Gertrude is confusing. Sex may be a powerful, primal stimulant, but it doesn't achieve the salvation -- in whatever form -- that Barker seems to claim for his characters. Nor does the direction, which despite solid cast performances, appears more collegiate than compelling.

Photo: Stan Barouh

Photo courtesy of Čechomor

Several years ago, I interviewed the Czech folk-rock band Čechomor for the magazine Dirty Linen. I kept in touch with them for a while, but in the intervening years, it's been hard to get my hands on their music, so I took advantage of my trip to the Czech Republic in June to pick up what I've missed.

Back in 2006, I described Čechomor thus:

Energetic, gutsy music with the complexity of a chamber orchestra, the syncopation and swing of big-band jazz, and the fire of Celtic rock. The fiddle has raw electricity and springiness, the hard-hitting drums give it a definite rock edge, and the touches of folk and jazz instrumentation (mandolin here, trumpet there) give it depth and variety.

I see no reason to change this opinion now; they've tweaked their sound here and there, but they're still essentially Čechomor, a bright star in the electric folk firmament.

Right: Photo of František Černý by Stephen Winick.

In the years between my meeting with them and 2010, they got busy, recording a three-album project with an unusual theme: legends about the Czech Republic's castles and manors. Each CD covers a region (Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia), and each features storytelling by a master narrator. Čechomor and special guest musicians provided songs and musical selections, mostly arrangements of traditional folksongs with a few of their own compositions thrown in. The resulting albums are fun, but if you don't speak Czech it's a little hard to enjoy the storytelling, so Čechomor did the sensible thing for their international audiences, and released most of the songs, without the storytelling, on a single album. The result is Písnĕ z Hradů á Zamků. As befits its folkloric theme, it comes down more on the folk side of the folk-rock continuum, with rustic Czech bagpipes here and there, and lots of brisk fiddling in Slavic rhythms. It's more subdued than the band's usual studio work, but, for fans of folk and of Slavic music, it may be all the more appealing for that. They still brought their electric guitars and drums, and some of the tracks use them to rock out. In places it borrows from string-quartet music, with fiddle in the lead, a great cellist, and bowed bass. In others, Radek Pobořil puts down his accordion for the trumpet, and guests add other brass. Finally, for people who prefer a modern sound, a couple of bonus tracks do a great job adding beats and loops for radio-friendly mixes, including the video below, whose guest singer is the Silesian-Polish pop star Ewa Farna.

Left: Photo of Karel Holas by Stephen Winick.

Next, Čechomor released Místečko, their most recent studio album. This is the long-awaited follow-up to Co Sa Stalo Nové, which Ken Hunt of fRoots called "revelatory-revolutionary" and "a contemporary folk masterpiece." Hard act to follow, but the boys do a good job with the help of producer/guitarist Gerry Leonard, who acts as an ancillary band member throughout the album. Leonard is best known for his work with David Bowie in rock, Susanne Vega in contemporary folk, and Susan McKeown in Celtic music. He performs and records under the moniker "Spooky Ghost," in honor of his haunting, ambient guitar sounds, which provide a wispy, subtle sonic bed for many of Místečko's tracks. On Místečko, Čechomor push their own envelope, try new things, and come up with a complex and varied album of atmospheric folk rock.

Photo of Michal Pavlik by Stephen Winick.

The word "Místečko" means "niche," and the title track is about a young man reassuring his mother he'll always have a little place in the world. Ironically, Čechomor use the track to move beyond their niche, inviting Slovak musician Ivan Tásler to write the melody, which results in an anthemic rock sound that might make you flick your bic. Tásler also transforms "Andulka," a tough old ballad about serial infanticide, with an angry rock vocal that complements its chilling theme. Other guests include violinist and singer Martin Hrbáč, singers Ewa Farna and Lenka Dusilová, and bassist Tony Levin. Divokej Bill, sort of the Czech Republic's Pogues, appear on one track, and even Suzanne Vega appears, singing a sad folksong translated from the Czech. All these guests mean it's more of an exploration of the studio than a tight band album. Still, there are plenty of songs with the patented Čechomor sound featuring František Černý and Karel Holas on electrifying and intense vocals, fiddle, and guitar, including "Limbora," "Lístek z Vojny," "Chodil Páter," and "Věrní čápi," whose title translates delightfully to "Faithful Storks."

Here's a video of the title track:

Čechomor's next recording was a live Christmas concert held at the Czech National Theater, put out as a CD/DVD set called Čechomor v Národním. I bought the album download, so I can't comment on the video, but the audio is a strong testament to what they can do live. With guest singers Farna and Dusilova, Gerry Leonard on guitar, and a classical string quartet in addition to Čechomor's regular members, they perform a set that includes a few of their greatest hits, but mostly brand-new material they haven't recorded before. Some are Christmas songs, some appear to be non-seasonal folksongs. They're impressively tight, whether singing to a simple accompaniment on Czech bagpipes, or playing en masse with band, quartet, spooky ghost sounds, and singers, as on "Holubička." Throughout the set, they sound polished and professional, and even their old favorite "Až já půjdu povandruju" sparkles with fresh energy. Here's "Holubička," again featuring Ewa Farna.

Čechomor marked their 25th year as a band in 2013, and they celebrated with another live concert and recording project, their most ambitious in a career of ambitious projects: a massive outdoor concert in the stunning medieval town of Český Krumlov, with guests including Leonard, Dusilová, Japanese drummer and flutist Joji Hirota, the Smíchovská komorní filharmonie symphony orchestra, and the Kühnův smíšený sbor, a huge mixed choir. The resulting CD/DVD set is called Čechomor 25 let Český Krumlov Live. For the most part, they play greatest hits, including "Gorale," "Mezi Horami," "Proměny," "Hop Hé," and "Co Sa Stalo Nové." The DVD includes some hits not on the CD, including "Michálek" and my favorite of all, "Hruška." Most of the songs benefit from the lush orchestrations and choral parts, and Hirota's drums and flutes are always a treat. As a fun surprise, Hirota also sings a Japanese traditional song. It's an exceedingly well executed show; the playing and singing is impeccable, and the recording captures the sounds beautifully. But since this concert does present Čechomor's best songs, since the DVD has more of them, and since it's always fun to watch Michal Pavlik play his picturesque Czech bagpipes, I recommend enjoying this one on video. Sadly, there's no video of this concert currently online...instead, here's one of the songs they played, "Proměny," featuring Lenka Dusilová and orchestra:

That brings us up to date on Čechomor's music. Remember, you can listen to their whole catalog on their website, and read the history of the band on mine.

After moving from gospel to pop-rock, Katheryn Elizabeth Hudson -- better known as Katy Perry -- quickly found a place in the pop-culture spotlight with the release of her 2008 hit single "I Kissed a Girl." Two years later, in 2010, Perry released Teenage Dream, resulting in five Billboard chart-topping hits: "California Gurls," "Teenage Dream," "Fireworks," "E.T." and "Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.)." Last year, her third album Prism produced two more number-one singles: "Roar" and "Dark Horse."

Perry lists Queen as top among her influences. "Queen's track 'Killer Queen' made me discover music and helped me come into my own at the age of 15," says Perry. "The way Freddie Mercury delivered his lyrics just made me feel like a confident woman; I'd say his fingerprint is all over me." Beyond Queen, Perry has also name-checked such powerful female musicians and Hall of Fame Inductees as Carole King, Joni Mitchell and Bonnie Raitt.

Katy Perry is seen in concert at Bridgestone Arena on Friday, June 27, 2014, in Nashville Tenn. (Photo by Wade Payne/Invision/AP)

"Pet Sounds is one of my favorite records, and it influenced pretty much all of my songwriting," says Perry of Hall of Fame Inductees the Beach Boys' landmark album. "All of the melody choices that I make are because of Pet Sounds." That's high marks from a female performer who has her own extended sphere of influence, having sold more than 11 million albums and been nominated for nearly a dozen Grammy Awards.

In 2011, Perry's The California Dreams Tour saw her performing for audiences in Europe, Asia, Oceania, and North and South America, earning upwards of $50 million. Fans at those shows will likely remember the light-up, sparkling "peppermint swirl" outfit she wore while performing "Teenage Dream," "Hummingbird Heartbeat" and "Waking Up in Vegas." That outfit is featured in the Rock Hall's Right Here, Right Now exhibit in Cleveland, Ohio.

Jesus Preaching in the Synagogue in Capernum by Maurycy Gottlieb -- wikimedia.org

Bill O'Reilly disputed the two main points of my recent HuffPost blog on his July 16 The O'Reilly Factor broadcast: My affirmation of Jesus' lifelong dedication to Judaism (meaning he did not start a new religion) and the assertion that Renaissance art representations of Jesus omit his Jewish identity and thus falsify biblical history.

Art historians do not deny the absence of a Semitic Jewish Jesus in Renaissance artworks. However, they attribute the omissions to technical developments in art, such as the introduction of realism, naturalism, the Renaissance style of contemporizing figures in appearance, dress and setting, and the revival of Greek idealism -- but not to a theological justification that the omissions were acceptable because Jesus started or converted to Christianity. Furthermore, the content of art was determined by the buyers -- rich patrons who commissioned strictly Christianized art, as confirmed by Renaissance art expert Michael Baxandall.

Is Bill O'Reilly saying, in his rejection of my critique of Renaissance art, that the denial of Jesus' Jewish heritage in artworks is justified because Jesus was a Christian? If so, that's even more baffling since in O'Reilly's book, Killing Jesus, the disciples and followers address Jesus as "rabbi" right up to the crucifixion.

Jesus in a Landscape by Jan Swart Van Groningen -- Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal

I'm also puzzled by O'Reilly's dismissal of my commentary on the image of Jesus holding a crucifix staff. The depiction of Jesus by Renaissance artist Jan Swart Van Groningen is a blatant anachronism. Christianity did not exist in Jesus' lifetime and the cross was hated and feared in the first century; the cross did not become a Christian symbol until the fourth century -- and even then as a battle symbol, not a devotional object. As I stated in the article, the only cross that Jesus ever held was the one he was nailed to in his brutal crucifixion. Yet the visual statement of the painting that Jesus was a Christian is simply false. Furthermore, the term Christian does not appear in the Gospels, which chronicles Jesus' life and mission. But the word Jew has 82 mentions. And nowhere in the Gospels does Jesus say he has rejected Judaism and is starting a new religion.

The ideal time for Jesus to have announced a new religion -- if he believed he had -- was at his trial for blasphemy against Judaism before the Sanhedrin. The Sanhedrin, the ruling body of Judaism, only had jurisdiction over Jews and Jewish affairs. If the Sanhedrin could indict anyone for blasphemy against Judaism, all Roman Pagans would have been charged. If Jesus had proclaimed, "I'm not a Jew any longer, I'm a Christian," at the very least that would have initiated an interesting legal debate. But the issue of a new religion is never even hinted at in the Gospels. And if Jesus started a new religion, as O'Reilly maintains, why didn't Jesus' disciples know that? After the crucifixion, the disciples led by Peter and Jesus' brother James, continued to identify themselves as Jews and they worshipped at the Temple in Jerusalem. Also, they gave Paul, who many claim was the actual founder of Christianity, a hard time for his defections from Orthodox Judaism.

So many biblical scholars have noted that Jesus was a dedicated practicing Jew throughout his life that it's surprising that Bill O'Reilly would insist otherwise. In my book, Jesus Uncensored: Restoring the Authentic Jew, I wrote about a discussion of Jesus, Judaism, and Christianity by a panel of three eminent biblical scholars at the Center for Jewish History in New York City. Father Donald Senior, president of the Catholic Theological Union of Chicago, Anglican priest Dr. Bruce Chilton, author of Rabbi Jesus, and Rabbi Jacob Neusner, author of numerous books on religion, including several about early Christianity, all agreed that Jesus was born and died a practicing Jew. Former Catholic priest James Carroll, in his book Constantine's Sword, goes a step further in fast forwarding Jesus to the present with this question: "If Jesus were alive today, would he be one of those fervent black-hatted figures dovening [praying] at the Western Wall [the remnant of Herrod's Jerusalem Temple]?"

All that said, fact is that Jesus life, teachings, and death did inspire a new religion. But Jesus did not launch it. Also, if Jesus had explicitly defected from Judaism and had explicitly said he was starting a new religion it's doubtful that he would have had any followers--and then we probably never would have heard of him or Christianity.

Wouldn't it would be better and more useful to celebrate the common ground of Judaism and Christianity rather than manufacturing divisive spins? Perhaps that's what Pope Francis was suggesting in his statement: "Inside every Christian is a Jew."

Bernard Starr, PhD, is a psychologist, journalist and professor emeritus at the City University of New York (Brooklyn College). He is the author of Jesus Uncensored: Restoring the Authentic and organizer of the art exhibit, "Putting Judaism Back in the Picture: Toward Healing the Christian/Jewish Divide." Website:JewishJesusArt.com.

The provenance of the famed illustrator James McMullan's iconic poster for Lincoln Center's Anything Goes is to be found in the exhibit of watercolors from his recently published memoir Leaving China, currently on display at The John Jermain Memorial Library in Sag Harbor. McMullan's father had been the child of missionaries (McMullan's grandparents had founded a orphanage in China). His paternal aunt was devout, but his father enjoyed earthly pleasures, among them playing Broadway musical tunes from shows like Anything Goes on the piano, a pleasure which is rendered in one of the panels of the exhibit. In another watercolor, McMullan envisions his emblematic childhood self looking through a window at a crucifix. The image in the distance is more crystal clear than the foreground of the painting and it pinpoints the brilliance of the intersection between art making and remembrance. The precision and clarity of the tiny crucifix correlates to the esthetic distance conferred on memory by time. In one of the exhibit's inscriptions McMullan describes the effect on his imagination of the art he saw as a child thusly:

"I believe that my first conscious idea of 'art' came from looking at scenes depicted in the Chinese scrolls hanging on our living room walls. I was fascinated that the lines in the paintings were so flat and obviously 'just lines,' but they conjured up three dimensional trees, mountains and people. It gave me a taste of the power of calligraphy in drawing."

So while the historical facts make McMullan's memoir seem like an illustrated watercolor version of J.G. Ballard's Empire of the Sun. Leaving China records the genesis of a sensibility; it's an ars poetica. McMullan's memoir might be subtitled A Portrait of the Watercolorist As a Young Man.

This was originally posted to The Screaming Pope, Francis Levy's blog of rants and reactions to contemporary politics, art and culture

The Maurício de Nassau bridge in Recife is a replica of a bridge in Amsterdam and a reminder of the era when Holland ruled northeastern Brazil in the early 17th century. It is also the inspiration for "The Bridge" concert series featuring Brazilian singer-songwriter Lenine and Holland's Martin Fondse Orchestra. After having toured Europe and the Americas, the show will arrive at Central Park's Summerstage Festival in New York on July 19th.

For Lenine, crossing the bridge is a metaphor for leaving one's proverbial island, connecting with others, and broadening one's horizons, which he explored in the song "The Bridge" on his album O Dia Em Que Faremos Contato (The Day We Make Contact). Lenine's songs span various musical islands and are difficult to categorize. He is at the vanguard of Brazilian rock and pop and is also an heir to the great eclectic tradition of post-bossa nova artists like Gilberto Gil, Djavan and Milton Nascimento, who established their careers in the 1960s and '70s. For Brazilian music fans that aren't fond of the sertanejo, funk carioca and romantic samba that currently dominate the pop charts in that country, Lenine's music is a welcome continuation of the work of the "MPB" generation of songwriters like Gil and Nascimento who like to blend strong melodies with rich harmonies, unexpected fusions and poetic lyrics.

Lenine's polyglot songs seamlessly weave together rock, digital effects and the rhythms, instruments and poetic inflections of his hometown Recife. He shifts between being a lyrical, reflective troubadour and a rocker who vigorously plucks and strums an acoustic guitar, seeking a "dirty sound" full of overtones and syncopation. With the guitar, Lenine has invented a rousing funky beat that defies boundaries. Sometimes, Lenine veers into mangue beat territory with aggressive songs that mix electronic effects with strains of northeastern genres like maracatu and embolada. He may mix samples and filters with gentler folk styles. And he can evoke Peter Gabriel with soulful vocals, driving rhythms and big bass lines reminiscent of Tony Levin's work. While Lenine carries Recife within him, he is a musical gypsy, at home in the Northeast, in Rio de Janeiro, and in foreign lands.

All the while, his lyrics are full of humanitarian sentiments and a romantic futurism informed by authors like Ray Bradbury. His words reference both contemporary reality in Brazil and images from science fiction. Lenine is a prolific songwriter whose work has been recorded by many leading Brazilian artists, a performer who frequently appears on others' recordings, and an in-demand arranger and producer. His own albums, which he toils on for long periods, appear about every two to four years. He is a musician's musician in Brazil and considers himself a craftsman. He is as popular in France as in Brazil and has appeared at WOMAD and many other festivals in Europe. And he has won five Latin Grammy awards.

Oswaldo Lenine Macedo Pimental was born in 1959 and grew up in Recife, the capital of Pernambuco, which is noted for many musical and cultural traditions. He was named in honor of Vladimir Lenin as his father José Geraldo Pimentel was a devoted communist who idolized the Russian revolutionary leader. José liked to stay at home listening to music rather than attending Catholic mass with his wife, and Lenine hung out with his father on Sundays and listened to Brazilian music, jazz and classical. He also absorbed Recife's own diverse local music and--during his adolescence -- heavy doses of Led Zeppelin and prog rock, Frank Zappa, and the talented musicians connected to Milton Nascimento nicknamed the Clube da Esquina (Corner Club) -- and he was on his way to becoming the singular musician that he is today.

The aforementioned O Dia Que Faremos Contato (1997) was a major step in Lenine's evolution and earned him a Prémio Sharp award in Brazil for best New MPB Artist. He also won the award for Best MPB Song for "A Ponte" (The Bridge), written with Lula Queiroga, which sets his poetry against swirls of electronic noise, contains samples of repentistas Caju and Castanha, and features a stormy chorus ("Nagô, Nagô...") backed by distorted power chords on electric guitar. By contrast, "O Marco Marciano" (The Martian Landmark) is a contemplative tune in which Lenine doubles his falsetto eerily over a ten-string viola (a type of steel-string guitar that is a mainstay of cantoria and música caipira). The lyrics evoke Ray Bradbury's novel The Martian Chronicles, as Lenine sings of a "history of Mars buried by the ephemeral dust from storms" and a "Martian landmark with a person's face, with the ruins of streets and cities" visible from the moons Phobos and Deimos. Throughout the album, Lenine mixes rock and pop with strains of coco, embolada, maracatu, aboio and various audio effects.

Na Pressão (Under Pressure) in 1999, produced by Tom Capone and Lenine, was another strong effort, selected by André Domingues in his book Os 100 Melhores CDs da MPB (The 100 Best MPB CDs). Naná Vasconcelos, a venerable figure in modern jazz who is also from Recife, supplies most of the percussion on the album. On the title track, his talking drum, bombo turco and caxixi back Lenine's ten-string viola, which creates a northeastern mood that turns edgy and dramatic. The reflective "Paciência" (Patience) is one of Lenine's most beautiful songs, and "Relampiando" (Lightning Striking) is a touching piece of social criticism. "Jack Soul Brasileiro" is a rhythmic tour de force, a primer in syncopation that fuses various elements. A few seconds of maracatu rural drumming open the song, and then Lenine strums his trademark funky groove on guitar and adds incredibly rhythmic singing that summons the tongue twisting wordplay of embolada. A version with a fuller arrangement is available on his Acústico MTV album.

Falange Canibal in 2001, continued Lenine's fusion of the acoustic and the electronic, and won the Latin Grammy Award for Best Brazilian Contemporary Pop Album. Falange Canibal had more guest artists than any of his previous albums, including composer-keyboardist Eumir Deodato, members of the O Rappa and Skank bands, Frejat (of Barão Vermelho), singer-songwriter Ani DiFranco, trombonist Steve Turre, and drummer Will Calhoun and guitarist Vernon Reid from Living Colour. Lenine's subsequent albums, such as Lenine InCité, Lenine Acústico MTV, and Labiata have won further awards. Yet such success did not lead Lenine to become a more commercial artist. Rather, in 2011, he released Chão (Ground), a beautiful, mellow, minimal album that has no percussion and incorporates ambient sounds from birdcalls to teakettles to typewriters to footsteps on gravel to heartbeats. Certainly, Lenine is taking Brazilian popular music across his metaphorical "bridge" to new horizons.

Band leader Martin Fondse, who leads the orchestra appearing with Lenine, is a Dutch pianist and composer who has won awards for his orchestral work and film scores. His work mixes jazz and many other musical styles, and he has collaborated with Peter Erskine, Terry Bozzio, George Duke, Vernon Reid and Pat Metheny, among others.

There is an extended profile of Lenine and interview with him in my book The Brazilian Music Book: Brazil's Singers, Songwriters, and Musicians Tell the Story of Bossa Nova, MPB, and Brazilian Jazz and Pop.

"If you live long enough you can write four operas," wrote composer and music commentator Virgil Thomson.

Philip Glass has penned at least 17; the fecund imagination of John Adams has so far brought forth two operas, a numbers musical, and an oratorio. Dominick Argento's 14 operas are a model of elegance and emotional integrity; William Bolcom's 10 are stylistically fearless and suave. In the near past, Gian Carlo Menotti created more than 25 "giovanni scuola" operas, two of which were awarded Pulitzer prizes.

Broadening the definition of lyric theater from opera (and operas which dip into "music theater" conventions -- another article about that sometime) to "shows" that dip periodically into operatic conventions, the living American champion has to be Stephen Sondheim, with his 16 shows (including his work as a lyricist), each one shot through with streaks, and sometimes great veins, of genius. John Kander, deeply sophisticated in his musical and cultural reference points, has created over 20 shows, each of which has a musical personality that springs directly from the characters in them and their musical era.

Andrew Lloyd Webber, the wildly successful creative juggernaut, has written 20 shows. It intrigues me that the young theater composers I run into never cite him as an influence. When I worked as a copyist on Broadway we used to quip that somewhere in the world, at every moment of every day, Cats were singing.

George M. Cohan, "the man who owned Broadway," was an early pioneer in what became the "book musical," and was wildly prolific in every genre. Richard Rogers built on Cohan's legacy, and deepened it, with forty shows to his credit. Even my folks, when they attended a performance of the original production of "South Pacific" on Broadway during their Honeymoon, intuited that the through-composed (the ghost of Giuseppe Verdi's "parola scenica!") scene that blossoms into the seize the moment masterpiece, "Some Enchanted Evening" was a genre buster.

But it was, of course, George Gershwin, whose 18 shows all burst at the aesthetic seams, who fathered the Great Dream: the first truly American Opera. "Porgy and Bess" remains the benchmark, no matter how many European conventions one finds holding it together, no matter how much Ravel-esque noodling connects the set pieces, no matter how fraught our current culture's relationship may be with the libretto, it remains the home run with bases loaded at the bottom of the ninth.

No wonder Virgil hated "Porgy and Bess" so much. It caught lightning in a bottle, and he knew it.

The sketch above will doubtless insult the intelligence of aficionados of both genres of lyric theater who know that it's all much more complex and subtle than that. So many great composers left out. (Some of them friends -- sorry.) I've left out Mark Blitzstein, master of agitprop, painfully sophisticated, tilting at windmills, someone whose career during the Depression every ambitious young opera composer here in the States should examine closely for examples, both positive and negative.

I've left out the Disney mega-musicals that now dominate what was once the Great White Way and is now Main Street USA, crafted with the precision of spacecraft, ruthlessly manipulative, and sometimes ecstatically tuneful, of course. They're incredibly innovative, technically amazing, and, at their heart ... corporate.

Full disclosure: I've worked as a copyist, a proofreader, an editor, an orchestrator, an arranger, and as a ghostwriter, for Disney, Menotti, Bernstein, Webber's "Really Useful," and others. During the early '80s, before versions for small pit forces were commonly available, I did "pirate arrangements" for various productions of legitimate musicals, only to find, when I worked on Broadway during the '90s, that the producers themselves had begun paying for the same thing for their revivals of big orchestra shows. I conducted shows, and played piano in dozens of shows, and operas during the '70s-'90s.

I count myself among the group that includes Menotti and Adams. I have written (and seen through workshop, production, revision, and multiple revival) eight operas, a numbers musical, and am at work on my ninth and tenth.

I have followed inspiration where it (by way of the characters) demanded to go. This has resulted in a catalogue of operas that, listened to superficially, may seem wildly eclectic in musical style, in much the way that American operas in general seem to be all over the map. This misses the forest for the trees. The common ground between them all is a respect for the characters, and a fierce determination to enable them to sing the music that they demand to sing, not what might be determined to be "just pretty enough, and just ugly enough" to fill the time honorably, but not threateningly, between pre-theater drinks, and post theater supper.

My operatic rap sheet is pretty long. In "Vera of Las Vegas," set in the leisure-suited '70s, the characters required a cheek-by-jowl mash-up of '70s pop culture conventions and styles with 19th century operatic tropes. In "Amelia," they required music of greater poetic subtlety -- post-Barber, infused with late 20th century American regret.

For "Shining Brow," which took place at the beginning of the 20th century, I reached towards Barbershop Quartet, the blues, jaunty Protestant hymns, and the aching melodic leaps of Benjamin Britten. In "The Antient Concert," James Joyce and John McCormack faced off in a singing competition: naturally they used Irish folk songs as their beginning point. Jim's private music, however, was flinty, modernist, and clever, like the opera's librettist; John's music was warm, sentimental, and emotionally accessible.

In "Little Nemo in Slumberland," a "magic opera" sung by young people, introducing them to opera, I rang changes on the domestic, yet sophisticated theatrical language of Bernstein and Sondheim. "Bandanna" was set on the Texas-Mexican border, and featured illegal immigrants, Vietnam veterans, and a nearly pagan Catholicism who required a mélange of mariachi, agitprop, music theater, and Puccini-esque lyricism to come to life.

In "A Woman in Morocco," the characters commandeered the late Romantic melodramatic gestures of Korngold, and crossed them, unapologetically, with the over-ripe, unsettling sensuality of late Bessie Smith recordings.

What a journey these characters have taken me on, and how grateful I am to them all for giving me the opportunity to sing with their voices! As the poet Theodore Roethke wrote, "I have learned by going where I have to go." For, it is their stories that inspire my music. I believe that it is the collision of opera producer's (in many cases) European attitude toward what constitutes the composer's voice and the quintessentially American (certainly more provocative) commitment of many American opera composers to let the melting pot of people that make up our culture sing the sort of music they need to sing that makes the current contemporary opera scene so exciting.

We're in an era of enormous "churn" right now, with funding and support flying into "second stage" initiatives, alternative venues, as well as main stage, non-commercial venues. For every Peter Gelb who sees the sea rushing out, there are dozens of innovative producers whose conception of what constitutes opera raises the tide. A lot of the new stuff is dross, of course; that's inevitable, and healthy. Many of the young composers handed the keys to the family car think that they've invented the wheels on which it rolls. No matter: it's all good.

"A Quiet Place," Leonard Bernstein's opera, in which he combined "Trouble in Tahiti" with newly-composed material, aptly reflected the vast changes that swept through the American cultural and musical landscape between the '50s and the '80s. Slaughtered by the critics the first couple of times out, it flowed smoothly and didn't seem particularly eclectic when the (sorely-missed) New York City Opera revived it during their final (2010) season. In a review of the opera that uses the word "sublime" at one point to describe Bernstein's score, Anthony Tommasini wrote of it in the Times: "The lingering criticism of "A Quiet Place" is that the piece is an awkward hybrid both musically and dramatically. This reflects the general criticism of Bernstein as a composer: that his head was so full of all kinds of music he could not find his own voice." Tony closes with the observation, "If only Bernstein could have been there to see the reaction to his opera."

I was there. The audience wept, and the ovation was a lengthy one. Bernstein never lived to see the Great Dream come true. But it's obvious now that Bernstein's voice did not elude him. Like Whitman, he understood that America is comprised of many voices. Like Whitman, he, during his brief time on the planet, tried to encompass them all in his creative, aesthetic embrace. The fact that composers like Bolcom, Adams, and others (I include myself) juxtapose styles and idioms with equal and due respect for each is now taken for granted.

We're in for a wild ride the next few years. Some really great operas are going to be produced. The Great Dream is coming true.

Watching movies for ten days at the 31st Jerusalem Film Festival might seem like an escape from the current reality of rockets fired from Gaza into Israel as well as the subsequent military retaliation of the Israeli government. But many of the Festival selections confront ethnic tension and inspire a deeper reflection than headlines can ignite.

At the Closing Night ceremony Thursday, Festival Founder and President Lia Van Leer thanked "those who came in our days of sorrow to help us make a great festival." This indomitable woman, 93 years young, set a tone for the rest of the evening that was both sober and hopeful. It included the awarding of the Festival's Achievement Award to actor Makram Khoury, a Palestinian who has incarnated both Jewish Holocaust survivors and Arabs onscreen.

Although he could not be present for medical reasons, actress Yael Abecassis read his letter aloud: "Cinema is not accepting reality as it is," he wrote. "We are creators of the impossible. ... and it is possible to live a good life here."

The film Dancing Arabs was to have screened at the 6,000-seat outdoor Sultan's Pool, but security considerations led the ebullient Festival director Noa Regev to move the event into the Cinematheque. Director Eran Riklis introduced his film by acknowledging that there has been "too much blood," adding, "the most important thing is to stop hating." He called Dancing Arabs "a modest contribution" to the dialogue.

Adapted by Sayed Kashua from his semi-autobiographical novel, this engrossing tale of identity centers on Eyad (Tawfeek Barhum), a bright, sensitive Arab youth trying to make a life for himself in Jerusalem. The combination of a Jewish director and an Arab writer results in a sensitive coming-of-age drama. A co-production of Israel, Germany and France, it begins in 1982: Eyad's home life is warm, but marred by the fact that his father (Ali Suliman, whose films include Lone Survivor, The Attack and Paradise Now) was arrested in his youth for suspected terrorist activity.

Tawfeek Barhum (left) and Yael Abecassis (right) in Dancing Arabs, Photo Credit: Eitan Riklis

By 1988, Eyad has been accepted at an elite boarding school: the only Arab student, he is misnamed "Ayid" (ironic in that the Yiddish pronunciation means "a Jew"). The humanist anchor of Dancing Arabs is Edna (Yael Abecassis), a Jewish lawyer who befriends Eyad after he volunteers to help with her disabled son Jonathan (Michael Monoshov). She even allows Eyad to use her son's passport to get a job as a waiter.

Perhaps the film's vision is crystallized in a rock concert: a male singer's lyrics are about redeeming Palestine after 20 years of Occupation, but he is then joined onstage by a female performer with a more peaceful reminder: she sings that Ishmael and Abraham were brothers.

Shifting identity is also the theme of Shira Geffen's Self Made, an Israeli black comedy that invokes David Lynch and Luis Bunuel. Michal (Sarah Adler), a famous Jewish conceptual artist, wakes up disoriented. After she calls an IKEA-like furniture company to complain about a missing screw, Nadine (Samira Saraya), an Arab factory worker, loses her job. When Nadine is stopped at a checkpoint, a female soldier (Na'ama Shoham) proves to be a third Israeli woman whose internal and external landscape are not in sync. Like Robert Altman's "3 Women," Geffen uses a disorienting logic of images and poetic overlaps, but in a politically charged context.

Samira Saraya (right) in Self Made, Photo Credit: Ziv Berkovich

Before the screening of Self Made at the Jerusalem Film Festival on Thursday, the director asked the audience to stand for a minute of silence in memory of the children killed in Gaza. While most stood up, a few audience members refused, angered that they weren't being asked to remember the Israeli who was killed delivering food to soldiers.

Lest it seem that the Jerusalem Festival was dominated by tense questions of Israeli identity, discussion of a gem like Michael Verhoeven's Let's Go! is in order. The German director of such classics as The White Rose and The Nasty Girl adapted the autobiographical novel of Laura Waco. It is a moving post-Holocaust drama about a survivor couple who try to create a life in Germany. Verhoeven cross-cuts between the late 1940s, when Hela (Katharina Nesytowa) gives birth to Laura, and 1968, when the grown Laura (Alice Dwyer) returns from California to Germany for her father's funeral.

Naomi Krauss (left) and Alice Dwyer (right) in Let's Go!, Photo Credit: Barbara Bauriedl

As she tries to embrace her bereaved mother (played by Naomi Krauss), Laura is rejected. Holocaust details are respectfully suggested rather than reenacted, often through a child's perspective. And the image of the Jewish protagonist -- the vulnerable victim of anti-Semitism -- is radically different from the provocative Israeli films at the Festival.

Like Dancing Arabs and Self Made, Let's Go! is part of an ongoing dialogue about Jewish identity, whether framed by the Holocaust or contemporary turmoil in the Middle East. By personalizing critical issues, these movies attempt what politics seem unable to achieve, exploring the needs, fears and aspirations that transcend national or ethnic boundaries.

Cindy Sherman's Untitled Film Stills are among the most iconic contemporary artworks.

Characteristically when they're discussed and analyzed, they're considered as a series. (This is also how I have taught and written about them in the past.)

I was wondering recently what might be gleaned from them if they were considered individually. This is the reality of how they're most often exhibited and reproduced now anyways.

As a result, here is an extended look at Untitled Film Still #6, 1977:

Cindy Sherman, Untitled Film Still #6, 1977. Gelatin silver print. 9 7/16 x 6 1/2 inches. Courtesy Metro Pictures, New York.

(This will be the first in a series of posts focusing on one work. Among the inspirations are Afterall's One Work books, Blake Gopnik's Daily Pic series, and Matthew Day Jackson's Bunker259.)

#1
Sherman took this picture by herself using a tripod and a shutter release cable -- which she also did with other film stills. I had never noticed this before but in this work she seems to hold the button of the cable in her left hand.

You can see the cable snaking up the bed on her right side. Because she could have easily hidden the cable, its visibility encourages the idea that Sherman was trying to foreground the film stills' artificiality. Since this is a woman controlling the camera, it also questions the predominant idea that the series is just about men looking at women.

#2
Sherman took this photograph in her apartment on John and South Street in Lower Manhattan. (She took all the interior shots until 1979 there.)

#3
The lighting for this work -- like many others in the series -- was basic. Sherman rarely used a flash. Instead she opted for regular light bulbs screwed into a few clip lights.

#4

The composition of this image is highly ambiguous (like all of the film stills) and prompts a lot of great questions. Among them:

-Why is this woman on a bed? Even though she photographs herself, is she presenting her body to someone else or capturing her own preoccupation?

-Since she holds a mirror, face down on the bed, is there something about her appearance that has worried her or is she about to look at herself?

-The image seems to be at night -- see the lights reflected on her lips and in her eyes. As well, her negligée is open and her bed is unmade. Is she preparing to see someone or thinking about an encounter which has just happened?

#5
This work has been called one of the least sinister film stills, since there doesn't seem to be any cause for concern for the woman.

#6
This was one of the few large images installed (and pinned to the wall) at the first exhibition of the film stills at Artists Space in 1978. Other works were framed and an additional group--probably including #6--were in a small plastic binder/flip book.

#7
Critics often see the film stills as feminist and reflective of Laura Mulvey's writing on the male gaze in cinema. Yet Sherman has said she wasn't thinking about the male gaze. Among other things, she has said at the time she was wrestling with understanding women in general and also caught between the pull to be "natural" and wanting to dress up and explore her interest in the history of women's fashion.

#8
Sherman chose this image from only a few frames; she has said the first six stills came from only one roll of film. This was due in part to her limited finances, but also because she envisioned the stills as cheap images one might buy for 50 cents on the street. Paradoxically, to make them look cheap, Sherman spent long hours in the darkroom. She developed the film in hotter chemicals to make it grainy and took a lot of time burning and dodging the images. This made them tricky for her future printers to produce.

#9
There are no specific departure points for this image -- since none of the film stills (allegedly) directly reference actual films. Yet Sherman often thought of Brigitte Bardot, Jeanne Moreau, Simone Signoret and other 1950s and 1960s European film stars. She also had a friend who worked at Barnes & Noble at the time who would bring her cheap books on Eastern European film, silent films, Alfred Hitchcock, New Realism, horror movies and film fads. Another departure point for Sherman was soft-core pornography. David Salle did paste-up at a soft-core pornography magazine. He'd take images from his work and show it to Robert Longo, Sherman's boyfriend at the time, and Sherman was around when this happened.

#10
Sherman envisioned the first six images of the film stills as stills from the career of one actress. The main identifier is a blonde wig, which changes little in the six images. Why blonde? Sherman has said this "seemed very actressy." Apart from that, Sherman was experimenting, "playing," to see what worked and what didn't. She said, "I tried to make her look older in some, more of an ingenue in others, and older-trying-hard-to-look-younger in others. I didn't think about what each movie was about."

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From the Jerusalem Festival: Can Films Transcend Politics?

10 Things You Might Not Know About Cindy Sherman: Looking at One Untitled Film Still