Art, No Art, Art

My latest is now up at http://www.tcj.com/art-no-art-art/

It begins

“Having no talent is not enough,” said Gore Vidal about the underground theatrical troupe The Cockettes, following its New York City debut. Neither, it seemed, were bestiality, cannibalism, child abuse, necrophilia, perverted nuns, and several gross of severed penises. Or so Robin Levy concluded after finishing “Pop Wasteland” (Jon F. Allen and Tim S. Allen, eds. 2015), an anthology of cartoons and poetry, which encompassed all of the above, while leaving him unshaken and unstirred.

Looking for a tax-deductible, arts-supporting charitable donation?

I’ve known Walter Robinson since high school, when he was an aspiring jazz bassist. Life, as we know, takes surprising turns, and he’s now seeking funding for one of his. His pitch is below:

I wrote the music, script, and lyrics to a gospel musical based on the slave revolutionary, Denmark Vesey. Freedom Theater in Philly has committed to launch a fully staged production late spring 2016 to run thru the 2016 summer. Freedom is one of the few and best black theaters in the US. My show will serve as a centerpiece production for Freedom Theater’s 50th anniversary. The show run will also coincide with the DNC convention next summer. The African American Museum in Philadelphia (am working direct with CEO, Patricia Aden) is a partner with Freedom Theater on the launch, as well as Mother Bethel, a Black Historic AME church.

I needed help in one area that involves a very special opportunity, but which leverages all of the above and reaching a wider audience with this work.

Remember the massacre June 17th in the Charleston black AME historic church where a lone white youth gunned down the black pastor and eight others during a bible study? The church was co founded by Denmark Vesey. In fact the theme of my musical is “religious freedom through the eyes of the 19th century slave and Free Negroe.”.

So you understand the high quality of the work, my work also enjoyed a World Off Broadway Premiere in the prestigious NYC music theatre festival where it was chosen out of 400 international submissions. So you can read all the great NYC reviews and get all the information on the actual music here at: lookwhatawonder.com.

With that background here is my current opportunity and concomitant funding need:

We will present an empowering narrated concert performance version of my Denmark Vesey work in Charleston, SC this November 21 and 22 .

It will bring together Vesey’s historic AME church( the new pastor will narrate), with all the black churches in the city, plus the oldest white church, and the oldest reform synagogue in US –all as audience, with discussion following.

WE WILL PROFESSIONALLY VIDEO TAPE EVERYTHING…PERFORMANCE AND POST PERFORMANCE DISCUSSION.

The product will then be edited and disseminated to black churches, schools, and community centers across the country via our education collaborative networks with a study guide created by Facing History and Ourselves, an exemplary Boston curriculum non profit.

I need to raise five thousand dollars and am asking for help. Our non profit host is Called To Rescue, an anti-modern day slavery/ Human trafficking organization, so donations will tax deductible.

Even 50 or 100 will help. Let me know.

===========================

To donate:

Here is the donation information. They are now set up to receive, process, and distribute
for our Nov 21 and 22 performance needs.

Please kindly mail your check to:

Called To Rescue

Atten: Charleston Slavery Performance Manager

9709 NE 83rd Court
Vancouver, WA 98662

They will provide you with a receipt and 501c3 notice after they receive.

Make the check out to :

CALLED TO RESCUE

And write at bottom of check our specific reference notation:

“Charleston Slavery Performance”

I just finished…

,,,”Friday Night Lights” (25th Anniversary Edition), by H.G. Bissinger. I had not cared to read it before, or watch the movie or TV series, but it was in the health club “Free Box,” so… As you probably know, it’s an account of a single season of a high school football team in Odessa, Texas. It was pretty good, if you overlook its failure to truly grapple with the insanity of the situation. Bissinger took swipes at the racism, the cost to education, the obsession of the citizenry, but he never grabbed hold, like a Kafka or Mailer or Hunter Thompson would have. Kid gloves, I thought.

I was interested in whether the team would win the championship, but I wanted to know more how the kids turned out. Bissinger gave the facts, but not in a way that I felt any fates resonate. Maybe he failed to portray the young men in a compelling manner; maybe they just weren’t compelling people. And the larger, unexplored mystery to my thinking was what accounted for the deep emotional attachment Bissinger professed to have with these fellows. Time-spent-in-proximity doesn’t seem enough to account for it. Bissinger didn’t examine the “Why” of this in any depth. Maybe that wasn’t this book, but that would have set things on a higher level for me.

I just finished…

…Jonathan Franzen’s “Purity,” which I’d picked off the “free” shelf at Café Bongo. (Somebody must not’ve like it, since the usual up-for-grabs is more like “The World of Musical Comedy,” (3d ed., 1966), a new quality hardcover being about as rare as a Shakespeare First folio.) Anyway, after two volumes of Knausgaard, it was a treat to be engaged with a central character like Pip, who kept me smiling throughout entire 20-page sittings.

The company of other characters, whom Franzen centered other sections on, I didn’t enjoy as much. There are involvements with the evil of Wiki-source-types and the totalitarianism of the Internet I didn’t spend the time on I assume the author would have preferred. (When I want to be informed about public issues, I prefer mounting a stationary bike beside my pal Budd to listening to novelists with whom I am barely acquainted.) But the heaven-forbid plot hooked me. I was steadily drawn along, pins-and-needled over how Franzen’d work things out.

Now all open the NYRB and see what Diane Johnson wants me to think about the book. And I’m ready for “My Struggle” 3.

Sex, Lies and SHOW

My latest is up at http://broadstreetreview.com/cross-cultural/showtimes-masters-of-sex

It begins:
The third season of “Masters of Sex” has concluded stormily. To avoid spoilers, let me simply say that, after A left B for C, C left A for D; but D had already left C (and E) for F, who had left G for her. The series had entered viewers’ living rooms in September 2013 purporting to have been drawn from Thomas Maier’s 2009 book of the same name. That had been a serviceable account of the lives and work of William Masters, M.D., and Virginia Johnson, whose relationship had climaxed (double-entendre intended) with their earth-shaking (yup, guilty again) “Human Sexual Response,” which, in the words of an exuberant jacket-copy writer at Basic Books, had “changed the way we all thought about, talked about, and engaged in sex.” But the series had deviated so far from the book – and actuality – that the creators – or the network’s lawyers – came to add a disclaimer at the end of each episode that Bill and Virginia’s children, whom have been shown marching off to Vietnam or sleeping with their boyfriend or getting a parent investigated for child abuse were “entirely fictional.” (Which isn’t “entirely” true either, since Masters and Johnson each had a pair.)

I just finished…

…Elmore Leonard’s “Charley Martz and Other Stories.” I was so excited to see a new, though posthumous Leonard, I didn’t see the small print, below the colon. “The Unpublished Stories.”

I love Leonard. I have read all his novels, including “Touch,” which is like having listened to all of Dylan’s albums, including “Slow Train Coming.” I got to Leonard late. “City Primeval” was my first. I didn’t read crime fiction. I would ask people who did, “Who’s as good as Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammitt?” They would tell me Ross MacDonald, Ross Thomas, Robert Parker. They were wrong. Then Harvey, a collector of editions, said Leonard.

But this new one… The earliest are undated. The last is from 1960. It is easy to see why they were unpublished. Not one of them is worth a minute. The only good thing about them is seeing as good as writer as Leonard write stories as bad as these.

Hard work, it turns out, pays off.

I just finished…

…Karl Ove Knausgaard’s “My Struggle” (vol. 2). (Am I the only one who didn’t know “Mein Kampf” means “My Struggle? Am I the only one who, knowing this, has whiffed on the connection?)
Anyway, it took a while. In fact, about two-thirds through, I considered quitting reading books altogether. I’ve been at this a long time, I thought, and enough’s enough. Part of it was, like vol.1, I didn’t see the point of sitting thru a 40-year-old instructing me about life. Plus, I kept forgetting who his friends and relatives were, or even if I’d med them before, and, except for Ibsen and Hamsun, I’d never heard of the famous Norwegians he kept posting as directional markers.
But after a week, I resumed. (Old habits are hard to break.) Toward the end, he started writing vol. 1, and that was cool. We have two more in the house, and I’ll get there; but not for a while. I picked the new Jonathan Franzen out of the free box at Café Bongo, and it’s a treat to find myself smiling for 15 consecutive pages.

Electric Bob

Just in time for the end of my Kennedy blatherings, I have something new to tout:
http://www.broadstreetreview.com/books-movies/elijah-walds-dylan-goes-electric
It begins:

On May 3, 1963, a 22-year-old folk singer, down from Greewich Village, drew 45 people to the Ethical Society for his Philadelphia debut. Less than three years later, he sold out the Academy of Music. In “Dylan Goes Electric!” (Dey St. 2015) Elijah Wald explains the in-between.
Wald was six-years-old in Cambridge, Mass., when Bob Dylan exploded into “Maggie’s Farm” at the Newport Folk Festival. I was about to start my second year at Penn Law School by moving into a Powelton Village pad, so our connections to those times differ. I might emphasize things differently, but I don’t think he missed much. He heard the tapes, he viewed the films, he read the correspondence, he interviewed dozens, (not including Dylan). Wald’s reconstruction, from build-up through consequences, is thoughtful and thorough, balanced and gracefully styled. He lays out facts, voices arguments, analyzes schisms – and answers the enduring questions. Was Bob booed? Were those tears on his cheeks or sweat? Did Pete Seeger threaten his set with an axe? And when the folklorist Allen Lomax – metaphorically and actually – wrestled the agent Albert Grossman, who won?

Whodunnit xxx: Conclusion

I asked M if Douglass or Salandria had responded to Bugliosi. He didn’t know. Once he’d concluded “no doubt was possible as to the fact of a conspiracy,” he said, “(I chose) not to waste my time with any author… unable to accept this simple truth.”
The on-line site www.maryferrell.com took on the challenge of rebutting Reclaiming History . It provided a repository of detailed analyses of bullet fragments, audiotapes of police radio transmissions, head and throat wounds, the whereabouts of various individuals within the book depository at the time leading up to the shootings, and a time-line of Oswald’s movements from then until Tippit’s shooting in order to prove Bugliosi wrong.
Some of these entries seemed more convincing than others. Some seemed beyond my comprehension in their technicality. Some seemed silly. The Salandria-connected journalist, Gaeton Fonzi, for instance, traced his disbelief in the Warren Commission to Arlen Specter’s failure to remember exactly where the bullet had struck Kennedy in the back when interviewed in 1966. (Fonzi went on to express his belief that anti-Castro Cubans, linked with the CIA agent who would write the novel in which the anti-CIA left kills Kennedy, and, less directly, with Oswald, were involved in… Well, Fonzi never said.) In fact, none of Mary Ferrell’s contributors moved beyond their particular areas of doubt to build an entire sequence of events to explain what occurred.
Certainly some threads in the Warren Commission narrative are more securely anchored to its fabric than others. Bodies must have aligned in a particular wayt. Oswald must have traveled from the depository at a certain clip in a certain way to encounter Tippit. But the narrative woven around these problematics seems sturdier than one involving two or three or four shooters, most unseen, most leaving no traces, most arrivals and departures unaccounted for.
Certainly, too, I have questions. Where, I wonder, was Oswald going when he left his room with no money and his pistol? I also wonder why Douglass and Salandria insist on eliminating Oswald from the shooting entirely. If he wasn’t firing his rifle, then the conspiracy needed two shooters in the depository, plus at least one on the knoll, raising the risk of someone being apprehended by one-third, not to mention all those Oswald doubles to falsely implicate him.
So it’s confusing. How do you sort it out? My own inclination is to give little weight to any individual eyewitness. Memories are too unreliable. Too many disagreements abound. Some witnessed may be entirely or partially correct , but simply by comparing their accounts you can’t tell which. (I think you can fairly discount the witness who heard shots being fired within the limousine, but beyond that…) The expert testimony is more compelling. Even though you can usually find an expert to testify on either side of any proposition, it is usually easier to decide which of these to believe. (And these beliefs, as they form, tend to lead credence to some eyewitnesses and cast doubt upon others.) And finally there is the objective evidence, like the X-rays and photographs and films. They show what they show, and when you dispute them, you are led into beliefs about forgeries and alterations and substituted body parts. I find it easier to believe in the alignment of particular bodies in a particular way.

When I began this venture, I asked about thirty friends if they believed the Warren Commission that Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone, killed Kennedy. About half did. A quarter believed others did it; a quarter didn’t know what to believe. When I asked those in that half what influenced their doubts, I was referred to Oliver Stone, Mort Sahl, Stephen King. One said she was “not a great believer in the rational process.”
Two of those polled had read the one-volume Warren Report. (They split one pro, one con-.) None had read Douglass or Salandria or Bugliosi. This led me to reflect upon how little people – and I include myself – base their opinions upon. Yet we all have opinions about all manner of things of political and social import to which we hold strongly and about which we argue forcefully. But it takes a great deal of information to understand an issue. You can take an entire college course and still have understanding elude you. You can earn a PhD and still have other PhDs attack you in the NYRB.
Toward the end of Bugliosi’s book, I ran into this assessment of those who believe in the Kennedy conspiracy. “It’s essentially become a religious belief… and with religious beliefs, the believer knows the truth, so there has to be an explanation for everything that contradits that truth… In situations where even they can’t come up with an explanation, they shield themselves from the evidence by distorting or ignoring it.” Imagine my surprise – and delight – at seeing him voice, after 20 years of work, what I had divined by talking to M without undertaking any of it.
I also wondered if this 30-part effort had been necessary. Maybe not, but it was fun

Whodunnit xxix: Dueling Narratives

John Sparrow has written, “In order not to believe in the probable there is so much of the improbable one has to believe in.”

Or look at it this way.
In one view of the world, Lee Harvey Oswald takes his rifle to work and kills President Kennedy. He rushes to his rooming house, changes clothes, picks up his revolver, and, when stopped by Officer Tippit, kills him. He attempts to hide inside a movie theater, where he is arrested.

In another, for two months prior to the assassination, one or more CIA-connected people impersonating Oswald, who is himself CIA-connected, visit embassies in Mexico City, write a letter ro another, and drop in on a gun shop, rifle range, car dealership, and airport in Dallas, to create an after-the-fact impression he was preparing to kill the president.
In mid-October a CIA-connected woman masquerading as a friend of Oswald and his wife. induces him to take a job at the book depository.
On November 20, two Cuban or Italian men, who don’t resemble Oswald, drive with a heroin addicted stripper named Rose Cheramie from Miami to Dallas, planning to kill the president, before continuing on to Houston to pick up 10 kilos of heroin and a small child and move to Mexico.
On November 22 at 11 am, Jack Ruby, who had been involved in a long homosexual relationship with Oswald, drops a man carrying a rifle off from his pick-up truck at the grassy knoll. (It is unclear if he is one of the men from Miami.)
At 12:30 pm, Kennedy will be shot. Either one or two shots are fired from the grassy knoll. The shooter of the one shot will have an accomplice. (It is unclear if these are the two men from Miami or if either was the man Ruby dropped off.) These men, along with the man or men in the book depository (see below) will be among those who contribute to Kennedy being shot 6 to 8 times from at least three directions. (Which directions and by how many shooters is unclear.)
In the book depository, a man with a rifle is leaning out of a 4th or 5th floor window with a man in a brown suit coat beside him. And/or a man in a sport coat fires four shots from a window on the 5th or 6th floor. And/or a man in a tan sport coat and glasses fires three shots from a window on the 7th floor. This man will enter a green Rambler driven by a young Negro. This may or may not be the same man who is either Oswald or his twin seen entering a green Rambler driven by a husky Latin (but probably not since Oswald was not wearing a sport coat or glasses). Whichever Rambler had Oswald or his twin in it was also owned by the CIA linked woman contrary toe fact that state records say she did not own such a vehicle. (It is unclear if any of the men on the 4th, 5th, 6th and 7th floor were those from Miami.)
Oswald or his twin flees the scene in the Rambler, while the other leaves by bus. The real Oswald makes his way to his rooming house where he retrieves his pistol. He is picked up by a police car (or a “counterfeit” police car) and driven to the Texas Theater to await his CIA-handler. Meanwhile an Oswald impersonator (It is unclear if is the one from the Rambler or bus) kills Officer Tippit, thereby branding the actual Oswald as a cop-killer, so the Dallas police will kill him. The imposter leads the police to the theater. After the actual Oswald is subdued (though not killed, even though he has pulled his pistol, providing ample cause), the impersonator is whisked out the back door to travel, first by red Falcon and then by jeep, disembarking with a companion who has been picked up along the way, for a cargo plane which has been diverted from its flight pattern to pick them up on a highway under construction, in order to fly them to Roswell, New Mexico, to join the flying saucers. (What happened to any other Oswalds and any other shooters is unclear.)
After that it became a simple matter of substituted body parts, doctored films and X-rays, military-controlled autopsies, compromised Chief Justices and Senators, and lay people bribed with offers of $500 or cast into mental hospitals or murdered or scared into temporary silence by attempts on their lives with knife and gun and dynamite and automobile.