Sorry there’s no actual video, just a still picture, but it’s the cover version of the song that counts. The artist is Little Junior Parker. For my friend Mead, who I think would dig this….
…if at some point I snag a production for my play “Bluer Than Midnight,” this song would come up at the first production meeting.
You ever worked in an office where they have those motivational posters up on the wall? You’re, like, stuck in the copy room, making page after page of copies of, say, a huge book where it has to be reduced and held by hand, and every other copy comes out cut off, requiring the book to be repositioned, and you’re making 120-page sets of 20, and the machine regularly jams at 17, and you’re pulling bits and pieces of shredded paper out of the machine and burning your hand on the fuser, and you’re cursing–quietly–while thinking: “For this I went to journalism school?”
And just about when you’re beginning to revise your resignation letter in your head, you look up to check the clock you’re trying to beat, and you see on the wall some goddamn picture of some goddamn crocus forcing its goddamned head through the goddamned snow, and it has a caption in bold serif saying something like “FORTITUDE” or “COURAGE.” Yes? And there’s that awful split-second where, in your mind’s eye, you can see that beautifully framed print flying out of the copy room like a rectangular frisbee and, with a shattering boom, showering the reception area with glass.
Well, someone’s been clever with Photoshop and made motivational posters for the rest of us, featuring a man who got fired from LIFE magazine for kicking a candy dispensing machine to death.
Hunter S. Thompson on The Meaning of Breakfast:
“Breakfast is the only meal of the day that I tend to view with the same kind of traditionalized reverence that most people associate with Lunch and Dinner. I like to eat breakfast alone, and almost never before noon; anybody with a terminally jangled lifestyle needs at least one psychic anchor every twenty-four hours, and mine is breakfast. In Hong Kong, Dallas or at home — and regardless of whether or not I have been to bed — breakfast is a personal ritual that can only be properly observed alone, and in a spirit of genuine excess. The food factor should always be massive: four Bloody Marys, two grapefruits, a pot of coffee, Rangoon crepes, a half-pound of either sausage, bacon, or corned beef hash with diced chiles, a Spanish omelette or eggs Benedict, a quart of milk, a chopped lemon for random seasoning, and something like a slice of Key lime pie, two margaritas, and six lines of the best cocaine for dessert…. Right, and there should also be two or three newspapers, all mail and messages, a telephone, a notebook for planning the next twenty-four hours and at least one source of good music…. All of which should be dealt with outside, in the warmth of a hot sun, and preferably stone naked.”
So the catchword these days is “transparency.” Obama’s going to put the budget online so taxpayers can look it up, to see how their tax dollars are spent (provided they have time to search through all 700 pages or so). The bank “stress tests” will show which banks are healthy and which need to capitalize to survive tough economic. We’re all striving to be as transparent as ghost shrimp.
So….
Here’s my suggestion. Theatres, large and small, should post on their Web sites a breakdown of how your ticket’s spent.
I’m not saying actual amounts. That’s proprietary information, affected by private salary and contract agreements, and so on. I’m just saying percentages. Whether you buy a ticket at Huge LORT Theatre Productions or at Hardscabble Basement Productions, you can see what percentage of your ticket goes to pay for facilities, marketing, insurance, management, and, most importantly, artists–meaning actors, designers, techies, directors, and writers. What percentage does the playwright or actors get of each dollar you lay down? This isn’t to say artistic directors aren’t artists–there’s an element of art (or at least craft) in pulling a season together. But in a time when CEO’s salaries are coming into question, I think it’s fair to separate management’s percentage from the rest of the artistic staff (though artistic directors sure as hell aren’t pulling down salaries comparable to, say, Wall Street brokerages).
What difference does it make? Well, maybe you’ll find out huge LORT theatre grants a handsome percentage to the artists, and, if you think artists should be recognized, that’s just one more reason to go there. Or you might find that a larger percentage of your ticket paid to low-overhead, tiny theatres charging you $12 or $15 actually goes to the people you see performing or pulling the lights up and down. The way it is now, who knows?
Now, this wouldn’t be a perfect measurement as it doesn’t take in scale: the LORT theatre may pay a smaller percentage to artists than the little theatre but it turns out that percentage is substantially more money, and, similarly, the little theatre may be able to pay artists a bigger percentage because their percentage of overhead is so much lower. And that percentage can’t be directly linked with artistic quality…as far as we know. If we actually had that information, we might be able to deduce relationships that are currently…opaque.
In other words, right now, we don’t know. And if we care about artists getting compensated for their work–and unless we’re going to the theatre to impress a hot date or get invited to parties–art is the reason we go to theatres, then I think it’s fair to ask.
Isn’t it?
This morning, I was listening to U2’s “Miss Sarajevo,” and I felt a sudden surge of affection for “Liberation”–a drama I wrote about the Bosnian War. I’m not saying it’s the best play ever written, blah blah, but I think I can say without exaggeration that it’s a defiant, uncompromising bastard that challenges theatres and their audiences, running hard right to the edge of what’s bearable, and it would be a joy to see it up on its dark, evil feet again.
So, what the hell…here’s the info. Please pass it on if you know a theatre company that specializes in, without apologies, kicking ass:
And while I’m at it, kudos to Origninal Works Publishing, Stark Raving Theatre, and Rude Guerrilla Theatre Company for having the balls to take the ride.
I think this story speaks for itself, except to say there’s an object lesson to be learned here: lay off the absinthe when you’re fencing.
——–
Vincent van Gogh’s fame may owe as much to a legendary act of self-harm, as it does to his self-portraits. But, 119 years after his death, the tortured post-Impressionist’s bloody ear is at the centre of a new controversy, after two historians suggested that the painter did not hack off his own lobe but was attacked by his friend, the French artist Paul Gauguin.
According to official versions, the disturbed Dutch painter cut off his ear with a razor after a row with Gauguin in 1888. Bleeding heavily, Van Gogh then walked to a brothel and presented the severed ear to an astonished prostitute called Rachel before going home to sleep in a blood-drenched bed.
But two German art historians, who have spent 10 years reviewing the police investigations, witness accounts and the artists’ letters, argue that Gauguin, a fencing ace, most likely sliced off the ear with his sword during a fight, and the two artists agreed to hush up the truth.
In Van Gogh’s Ear: Paul Gauguin and the Pact of Silence, published in Germany, Hamburg-based academics Hans Kaufmann and Rita Wildegans argue that the official version of events, based largely on Gauguin’s accounts, contain inconsistencies and that both artists hinted that the truth was more complex.
Van Gogh and Gauguin’s troubled friendship was legendary. In 1888, Van Gogh persuaded him to come to Arles in the south of France to live with him in the Yellow House he had set up as a “studio of the south”. They spent the autumn painting together before things soured. Just before Christmas, they fell out. Van Gogh, seized by an attack of a metabolic disease became aggressive and was apparently crushed when Gauguin said he was leaving for good.
Kaufmann told the Guardian: “Near the brothel, about 300 metres from the Yellow House, there was a final encounter between them: Vincent might have attacked him, Gauguin wanted to defend himself and to get rid of this ‘madman’. He drew his weapon, made some movement in the direction of Vincent and by that cut off his left ear.” Kaufmann said it was not clear if it was an accident or an aimed hit.
While curators at the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam stand by the theory of self-mutilation, Kaufmann argues that Van Gogh dropped hints in letters to his brother, Theo, once commenting : “Luckily Gauguin … is not yet armed with machine guns and other dangerous war weapons.”
Postscript: Years ago, I was visited the Museum of Modern Art in New York for the first time. If you love art, losing your MOMA virginity is an act of sensory overload; every time you turn a corner, another iconic painting or sculture greets you in the flesh, so to speak. Up ahead, I could see Van Gogh’s “Starry Night,” and I was patiently waiting for two older ladies to move on; so I could see one of my all-time favorite paintings up close, when I overhead a conversation that went something like this:
Woman #1: You know, that was the view from his hospital window.
Woman #2: From the asylum?
Woman #1: Yes. Isn’t that amazing?
(Pause.)
Woman #2: It’s too bad he didn’t have a better view so those trees wouldn’t be in the way.
I haven’t had a chance to pick up the new Bob Dylan album; so I don’t yet know what sort of horrors Bob has in store for us. I understand, however, that there’s some stuff about being sick set to Mexican music. You can derive from that what you will.
In the meantime, I thought I’d channel Bob a bit, see what I could pick up. I put on a denim jacket, slung my guitar around my neck, and walked around strumming E minor and talking through my nose long enough that I received the following transmission. Warning: objects in the mirror are closer than they appear.
QUARTER TO HELL
Down in the bunker
It’s cold and it’s clean
You know what you need and you say what you mean
You’re thanking the gods for an artesian well
‘Cause up on the surface it’s a quarter to hell
Mistakes were made
By someone or other
Maybe the president or maybe his brother
But the oceans are swimming with a poisonous gel
And the topside winds blow a quarter to hell
Every day is like winter
With the snow ten feet deep
You can’t stay awake and you can’t fall asleep
Like to open a window and breathe fresh a spell
But the air is like kerosene dripping in hell
There’s pictures of yesterday
Fading out in their frames
All your friends and your places have forgotten their names
And the maps are all useless when you’re locked in a cell
Drawn up by architects on retainer to hell
Memory’s a parlour trick
That changes each day
You think that you got it when it just slips away
Was it dream or it real? There’s no way to tell
When you’re watching the clock at a quarter to hell
It’s too late to repent
It’s too late to regret
You can’t get it back
And you can’t get it yet
You can’t count the minutes
That’s gone or to come
All you have now is here
And that’s better than some
I guess you keep going
What else can you do?
The rough patch’ll pass in a century or two
Till then keep listening for a clear, piercing bell
That signals the time is a quarter past hell
…to start a Monday?
Sorry, but this is must-watch, even though you can feel yourself becoming stupider as you listen to this tool. Chu’s laugh is priceless; like he’s thinking: “Oh yeah, Obama warned me I’d have to deal with these mouth-breathers….”
You can’t shake ’em. Sometimes, it seems like everything belongs to the past. Recedes into sepia. And you begin to count how many people who shaped you have disappeared. How do you go forward? What should you do with the time ahead? Should you move on or cling and cherish? Can you do both? Living in the present with a head full of shadows, as though cast by drifting smoke.
I think of my parents’ generation who lived through that godawful war, so much…unbelievable…loss, yet they carried on. That sadness though, it clung to the plastic and pastel and finned cars and sweet music. Like the black line thrown by a flashbulb, just a fraction behind, and somewhere in the eyes of old photographs lies a hidden darkness.
It takes a lifetime to recognize it. And then–ha! surprise!–it’s too late to say: I understand. I get it.
And you wouldn’t anyway. You’d just know. Because that’s the way they got through it. You’d just sit quietly, joke, talk about the weather.
There’ll be blue birds over
The white cliffs of Dover
Tomorrow, just you wait and see
Steve Patterson's Splatterverse 