What Makes A Writer Necessary?

I think of writing as the creation of beauty and the cultivation of craft in language, as self-expression and social communication and political practice, and I also think of it as a form of spiritual sustenance--but what makes a writer necessary? I would have said honesty, intelligence, sensitivity, eloquence and imagination when I was much younger; and I would have added range and mastery of subject matter and philosophical heft a few years ago, but now I am not so sure. Are writers and their work necessary to most people?

100 Hundred Days, 100 Nights

“The world, which is the private property of a few, suffers from amnesia. It is not an innocent amnesia. The owners prefer not to remember that the world was born yearning to be a home for everyone,” says the writer Eduardo Galeano in an interview (“Through the Looking Glass”) with Parul Sehgal, online at Publishers Weekly (April 27, 2009).


This week marks President Barack Hussein Obama’s first one-hundred days in office, during which the Democratic president has made or supported a wide range of initiatives (one tally has the count at more than one-hundred), initiatives involving the economy, education, health care, international relations and more. Meanwhile, the longtime Republican senator from Pennysylvania Arlen Specter has become a Democrat, reports The New York Times (April 28, 2009); and that seems as symbolic an event as any.


The Journal of the History of Philosophy, a quarterly publication from Johns Hopkins University Press that is focused on the history of western philosophy, is looking for a new editor to serve a five-year renewable term, beginning July 1, 2010. The contact is Prof. Al Martinich, search committee chair (Professor Martinich is located at the University of Texas in Austin).


The web allows everyone to be a curator, claims Jim Richardson, a scheduled speaker at a June conference in Malaga on “communicating the museum” (The Art Newspaper, online April 32, 2009; Issue 202, May 2009).


Festival International took place this past weekend in Louisiana, beginning April 22nd and ending April 26, a very impressive event featuring musicians from around the world, particularly from Francophone countries. Next year’s Festival International is scheduled for April 21-25, 2010.


I am looking forward to listening to new music by Marshall Crenshaw and Jill Sobule, among others; and am still enjoying Andrew Bird and Death Cab for Cutie.


This Tuesday afternoon, today at 3 p.m., the poet C.K. Williams is reading his poetry in Alexander Hall, the Richardson auditorium (Princeton University) in New Jersey. Kevin Young follows in the same place at 5 p.m. As well the legendary (and incendiary) Jayne Cortez is reading her poetry tonight at Dixon Place, 161 Christie Street, in New York, 7 p.m., part of a program featuring Anne Waldman and Cara Benson.


This morning I watched a television news program and topics included film and music and there were even a few books mentioned but there was not literature, not fiction. I was trying to remember the last time I heard a discussion of literature as part of mainstream television. Didn't such books used to be discussed? Literature has become more marginal to our lives.


Is Anybody There?, a film starring Michael Caine, opens on Friday, May 1st, as does X-Men Origins: Wolverine, with Hugh Jackson. Atom Egoyan’s film Adoration opens a week later, May 8th, as does Carlos Cuaron’s soccer film Rudo Y Corsi featuring Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna; and Ron Howards Angels & Demons, starring Tom Hanks, will play beginning May 15th. (Source: Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel, April 28, giving release dates through August 2009)


The African Film Festival is held in New York in April and May; and there are film screenings scheduled for Columbia University for May 22nd through 25th, 2009: including screenings of the acclaimed film Shoot the Messenger. It is true that African films are shown at other times of the year and some of those dates can be seen with a visit to the AFF calendar at the web site of African Film Festival New York.

Enemies

Sometimes we have good intentions but make enemies anyway. Sometimes just wanting to achieve independence and integrity in our own lives frustrates those who want to control and exploit us; and they develop a great dislike for us and our activities.

Male Sensitivity

I think that it is hard, still, for many people to tolerate male sensitivity. Men are expected to be active, to do something, or to be stoic, silent and strong, rather than to be articulate and expressive about difficult matters that concern and trouble them. It is one reason why men become loners; and one reason why some men become artists--to have a place in which to put their feelings. It is hard for some people to accept that a man is not simply cursed with sensitivity (too weak to be anything else) but that he chooses to be sensitive; and that does not include a desire for suffering but it can include an acceptance that suffering may come--and suffering is to be lived through and lived through honestly, with acknowledgement, with candor, with intelligent pragmatism as well as the belief that things can, should be, and will be different, that suffering will end.

Art in Movies: Incognito; and Mona Lisa Smile

I saw on the small screen two films that took place in the art world this past weekend, a nice bit of film programming from the CW network: John Badham’s Incognito, starring Jason Patric as an art forger and Irene Jacob as an art expert; and Mike Newell’s Mona Lisa Smile, with Julia Roberts as a college art teacher and Kirsten Dunst, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Julia Stiles as her students. Each film managed to ask some good questions about art--what is it, why is it made, how is it understood and evaluated, and what is its ultimate worth?

The first film, Incognito, was a late 1990s crime thriller with some romance, and the second was a "teacher-who-inspired-me" story with feminist themes and some romance. Love is the universal subject, so those uninterested in the subject of art had something that might engage. Art is such a special subject and as I began to watch Incognito, I thought about how rare it is to hear sustained discussion of art in a popular medium and how hard it must be for a film director to know what tone to take (I wasn't sure that the tone at the beginning of the film wasn't off--but that may have been me just becoming acclimated to the subject, a subject I think about often but do not expect to hear spoken of by many others). I thought that Incognito seemed like an update of the kind of suspense film that Cary Grant used to make (Jason Patric is a good-looking man but he doesn't have the charm or spirit of Cary Grant, or even of Hugh Grant, whose movie Four Wedings and A Funeral was screened as well on Sunday; and there could have been more of, and more to, Irene Jacob). Incognito looked good, it was intelligent, and there was nothing "wrong" with the acting (I look forward to seeing the film again, at some point), but the film lacked that extra something--a bit of spirit and style that can make a competent film into a good film or a good film into a great one.

In Mona Lisa Smile, a film from a few years ago, Julia Roberts supplies the idiosyncratic spirit and style that makes an entrancing film object, a movie star. She understands what a film requires and she gives it. Her performance as the art teacher balanced wanting to be liked in a new place, wanting to do a good job, wanting to be true to rigorous intellectual standards, and also being subject to insecurities and physical attraction. She brings a liberal sensibility to a place that is conservate in old-fashion terms (marriage and bland conformity are respected goals). The circumstances and issues that both films present are the kinds of things that recur in different generations, in different cultures: the battles are won or lost but the war goes on. I think both films handled the issues involving art very intelligently (appropriate care was taken), possibly handling the subject of art better than they handled other matters touched on. Both films have their predictable aspects (in some instances, predictability might be another word for form or logic). I enjoyed both films, and am glad I saw them.

Criticism, As An Establishment Tool

It may be less so today than it is has been in the past, thanks to the social changes of the 1960s and 1970s and the cultural and theoretical leaps of the 1970s and 1980s, but criticism can be an establishment tool: a way to reaffirm conservative traditions and values. Criticism can be a way of solidifying the status quo, of policing works, things, and people who are different. Sometimes those people who are different are people who belong to traditional minorities--but sometimes they are people whose cultural interests are different: people who prefer Rembrandt to installation art or video; people who prefer European classical music and jazz to indie rock and hip-hop. Criticism can be used to mock, to shame. It can be used to disseminate prejudice. It can express malice and resentment toward figures of mastery, toward what is perceived as safety and security in a society that is impressed by hedonism and riot. Criticism can be a way for the mediocre to join together against excellence. It can be a form of laziness, a rebellion against having to recognize the abundant, diverse talent in the world. It can be an establishment tool simply by encouraging things as they are, the prevalence of the lowest common denominator in much of popular culture.

Earth Day, etcetera

Today, April 22, is Earth Day, a commemoration that began as an environmental education day in 1970 at the behest of Gaylord Nelson, a United States senator: an estimated twenty million people participated in the first Earth Day and it is sometimes called the beginning of the modern environmental movement.


Wendy Weinstein at Film Journal International has given the film The Soloist, directed by Joe Wright and starring Jamie Foxx and Robert Downey Jr, about the friendship between a journalist and a homeless musician, a very mixed review.


The Los Angeles Times, in association with UCLA, is sponsoring the Festival of Books, scheduled for this coming weekend, April 25th and 26th.


The Ford Foundation is providing ten-million dollars for the establishment of a new foundation to support indigenous American artists, according to the April 21 New York Times. (It is nice to have that news during a time when is watching the new documentary on PBS about the brutal historical treatment of native Americans.)


Yesterday, the Southern Poverty Law Center released a report titled Under Siege that focuses on poor Latino workers in the American south, based on surveys conducted with 500 low-income Latinos, legal residents and those not recognized by law, in Nashville, Charlotte, New Orleans, rural southern Georgia, and towns in northern Alabama. According to the Center’s web site, “The survey findings, coupled with accounts from in-depth interviews, depict a region where Latinos are routinely cheated out of wages by employers and denied basic health and safety protections. They are racially profiled by overzealous law enforcement agents and victimized by criminals who know they are reluctant to report crime to these same authorities. Even legal residents and U.S. citizens of Latino descent said racial profiling, bigotry and other forms of discrimination are staples of their daily lives.”

Personal Notes, Southern Blues

I am not happy to be in Louisiana today. I was in New Iberia yesterday, leaving the library and riding my bike on the sidewalk as the street was too crowded with cars, and a oldish—in her 50s? early 60s?—blonde, extremely pale woman in white shorts was coming toward me and she clutched her purse, which was on the farthest side of her body away from me already. After I passed her, I turned and looked at her go down the street and saw that she was no longer clutching the purse. The mental illness of too many “white” people continues. It does not help that in news reports criminals are identified by race, rather than age, height, and distinguishing marks or dress. (How helpful is it to say only that a black male or white male committed a crime, if there are more than two of either in any locale?) I must say, the purse-clutching is not as prominent here as in New York but it is annoying as it often is just so impractical, such nonsense (it is always contextually inappropriate: there is always some physical detail that makes theft unlikely or impossible even if one wanted to steal—such as purse-clutching in an elevator: where is one to go with the purse in a closed elevator, inside a building with other people around?).


According to the Associated Press (April 22, 2009), “The Tangipahoa Parish School Board will vote Monday on the final version of its multi-million-dollar school desegregation plan.” A school desegregation plan in year 2009—still? The plan is due April 30 in New Orleans, and will likely include school construction and renovation, and is motivated by a 1965 school desegregation case.


I was on the bike two days ago, and someone called out to me: a man doing work on a large agricultural truck (his job, a blue-collar job). He said my name and asked if I remembered him—I did not recognize him, and he gave his nickname, which I vaguely recalled, and then he gave me his full name and I knew who it was, though he, of course, did not look at all the way he did when I last saw him, when we were both very young men. (I am slim, so am more recognizable.) He told me that not much is going on in Louisiana. He made a comment about my riding the bike (rather than driving a car), and added that I’d been one of the smartest people. I told him that I had been here for only a couple of months, that I had been living in New York, and that I didn’t drive. (I did not say: I had not planned to come back to Louisiana without significant money or power—but, as Frank Sinatra used to sing, “That’s Life.”)


Blueprint Louisiana advocates a knowledge-based economy for Louisiana and states the problem as this: “Louisiana’s economy is driven mostly by ‘old’ industry sectors that, while they remain essential to our economy, are not growing sectors. In fact, more recent trends in these industries have been toward fewer full-time employees, either through improved efficiencies, a reduction of fixed costs or a shift of capital investment overseas. While many other states have increased their focus on knowledge-based industry sectors that will grow substantially in the coming decades, Louisiana has lagged in this pursuit. As a result, Louisiana now has little internal capacity to grow jobs in these ‘new economy’ sectors. This is confirmed by our low rankings in the numerous indexes that measure and assess states’ readiness for and participation in the new economy.”


According to the Associated Press (April 22), Louisiana lawmakers will be reconsidering film industry tax incentives: “If the Legislature takes no action in its session opening Monday, the current 25 percent tax credit for movie and TV show makers will drop to 20 percent next year and 15 percent in 2012. That’s a scenario those heavily invested in the industry say would be disastrous.”


The Public Affairs Research Council of Louisiana (PAR) published the Guide to the 2009 Louisiana Legislature, a pocket-sized that includes biographical information and photographs of Louisiana’s legislators, statewide elected officials and congressional delegation, with committee assignments and contact information. Copies are $10 each plus tax and shipping, from: PAR at P.O. Box 14776, Baton Rouge, LA 70898-4776. Order forms can also be faxed to (225) 926-8417, or requests can be sent by e-mail to connie@la-par.org.


New Orleans City Business (April 22) reports that a couple of Louisiana towns have been included in Relocate America’s “Top 100 Places to Live” list: Metairie and Mandeville and Bossier City.


In March 2009, the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities gave its Humanities Book of the Year Award to writer Ned Sublette for his book The World That Made New Orleans: From Spanish Silver to Congo Square.


I have been listening to the new recordings of two Louisiana musicians, Allen Toussaint (The Bright Mississippi, a very elegant recording of some jazz standards) and Buckwheat Zydeco (the smart, fun Lay Your Burden Down, featuring zydeco and popular music songs, even a Springsteen song!).


There is a crawfish festival scheduled for the Louisiana town of Breaux Bridge at Parc Hardy in early May 2009, and, in May also, a Bunk Johnson jazz festival in New Iberia, with an artwalk in downtown Lafayette May 9th, a Juneteenth celebration in Opelousas at the Farmer’s Market for June 20th, and a July 4th parade in New Iberia. There is a bluegrass music event planned for August 8th at the Rice Theatre in Crowley. A cultural festival, featuring reggae music, is slated for August 29th and 30th in Carencro’s Pelican Park, with a zydeco festival parade scheduled for Opelousas’s South Park in early September, and an arts and crafts show at Shadows-on-the-Teche in New Iberia, October 3rd. The Festivals Acadiens et Creoles is to take place October 9th through 11th in Lafayette.

Criticism, As Companion to Art

I have thought of art as a necessity; and I have thought of criticism as a companion to art, and it has become a necessity as well.

I see a film and read a review of it--before seeing or after; and sometimes, if I find the film interesting enough I write a review of it. I listen to music and try to imagine how I would describe it to a friend or a disinterested acquaintance. The content I discover in a work of art or entertainment, and the pleasure I find, is deepened and extended by a review--or a bunch of reviews.

Criticism is the recovery, in language and thought, of objects from the near and distant past; and it provides context, an explanation of genre, and a disclosure of artistic strategies that are social as much as they are aesthetic. Critics can help us to understand the current work of an artist in light of standards established by the artist's own work as well as the tradition or traditions to which he or she belongs; and criticism can celebrate the highest manifestations of craft, as it introduces us to new talent or reminds us of the existence of neglected or obscure artists: describing the rare qualities of each artist.

There is little more valuable culturally than the reinterpretation of misunderstood or maligned artists, sometimes offering retrospective summaries of artists' careers: that reinterpretation can tell us as much about ourselves, our society, and our values as anything, illuminating the politics of art.

We can learn about the nature of experimental art (what is to be gleaned from it); and about false radicalism, when experiment exists merely to impress and not to express or teach. We can be reminded that art has a spirituality, that it is infused, always, with the human spirit. We can learn about each other--through folk art, international art, expanding knowledge. Criticism can help us to understand how artists express themselves in ancillary words (in books, speeches, interviews) and how that complements or contradicts their works? And criticism can help us to appreciate, to sympathize with, to tolerate, how practical matters--money and power--affect the artistic world. Criticism can be a companion to art, to us.

Seeing Things

“I think my basic job as a critic is to get people out of the house, to get them interested, energized, inspired, or riled enough to just go see what I’m talking about,’ says New York Times art critic Roberta Smith to Irving Sandler in The Brooklyn Rail (April 2009). Smith talks about her early career and influences (including Sanford Schwartz, Pauline Kael, and Edmund Wilson). Smith also says, “I believe in individual taste, but taste-making is a kind of fiction. It’s just a way to organize things that as time passes are going to fall apart again.” There are more, and more complex, comments in the worthwhile interview, available online.


In an interview with Eliane Raheb, a Lebanese filmmaker and a founder of an Arab film festival called “Ayyam Beruit,” the journalist Mona Sarkis of Qantara.de asks Raheb about new Arab films. The "Ayyam Beruit" festival yields thousands of attendees every two years. Eliane Raheb speaks about a film category referred to as author cinema; and Raheb says, “We have noticed that author cinema is one of the true and rare mirrors of our identity. The truly authentic films are being made by filmmakers who express their individual vision of human beings with stories and experiences that seem unique to them and through which they question ‘reality’. This is, for example, the case in The One Man Village by Simon al Habre or low-budget fiction films like Ein Shams by Ibrahim Battout.”


David Hudson, formerly of the web log Greencine Daily, is now presenting his film commentaries and notes and assorted links, through The Daily at IFC (Independent Film Channel); and as of today he’s got items on Jean-Pierre Melville’s Leon Morin, Priest; Armando Iannucci’s In the Loop and Eran Riklis’s Lemon Tree and more…


Isn't it interesting, and good, to learn something we did not know?

Marc Broussard, musician, with writer Cody Daigle

Cody Daigle is a south Louisiana writer, and I have been reading his diverse, intelligent, lively work in The Times of Acadiana and sometimes in The Daily Advertiser; and I was impressed, just yesterday, with a piece he did on the musician Marc Broussard, whom he interviewed (Times, April 16). In the interview article, Broussard talked about his work, the music business and its single-minded search for "hits," and the peculiar reception Broussard's work gets in Louisiana: "I've grown up around this scene all my life, so I've seen bits and pieces of the irreverence to what's going on on stage but I'm not sure why it goes on." Yet, the balance of the piece is about Broussard pleasure with the state of his career and his life in Louisiana. It's worth reading for its candor.

Unanswered Questions

Greg Kot of “Sound Opinons,” What developments would you like to see in how music is reported and evaluated?

Gerald Early, essayist and Washington University professor, Do you think that the essays and reviews published by African American writers in established publications demonstrate intellectual, literary, political, and temperamental range; and what developments would you like to see?

Cecil Doyle of KRVS, How long have you been producing radio programs, and what have been some of the high points and frustrations?

Jane Ciabattari, National Book Critics Circle president, What kinds of things can writers, editors, and publishers do to make literary criticism more significant for others?

Wilson Savoy of the Pine Leaf Boys, How do you see your work, and the work of other Louisiana artists, in relation to the larger world?

Eddie Glaude author of In a Shade of Blue, What do you imagine political activism and political writing will look like, following the election of Barack Obama, in the years to come?

Frank Wilderson, author of Incognegro, What is the focus of your forthcoming book, Red, White and Black: Cinema and the Structure of US Antagonisms?

Manthia Diawara, NYU Africana Studies chairman, In what ways would you like to see African culture integrated in the lives of African-Americans?

Jesse Kercheval, author of Cinema Muto, What are some of the similarities and differences between poetry and film; and how did you approach these disciplines in your own work?

Irene Vandever of the Arts and Humanities Council of Southwest Louisiana, What are the principal arts of Louisiana and what might be their appeal to the larger world?

A. Deniz Balgamis, co-editor of Turkish Migration to the United States, What are the complexities—contradictions and possibilities—within Turkish modernity?

Lucious Fontenot of Valcour Records, What are some of the similarities and differences between Creole and Cajun music in Louisiana?

Alain Locke, scholar

Ross Posnock, on Alain Locke in the article "Black Is Brilliant," in The New Republic, posted online yesterday, April 15:

"Locke regarded his iron confidence as his birthright as a proper and proud member of an old free black family of educators. The son and grandson of highly cultivated people on both sides, Locke was nearly blase about entering Harvard in 1904. His letters home from college bear little evidence of anxiety. By 1912 he was a professor of philosophy at Howard, where he would teach for four decades."


Posnock's article is a review-essay in response to the new Harris/Molesworth biography of Alain Locke. I have admired Locke for years, and am hoping to read the rest of Posnock's article on the man soon. For the last two weeks, I have been doing a little writing on music and film, and trying to imagine the future...Locke remains an inspiring figure.

Elizabeth Alexander, Poet

Elizabeth Alexander published her first book of poetry, The Venus Hottentot, in 1990, followed by the poetry collections Body of Life (1996), Antebellum Dream Book (2001), American Sublime (2005), and, with co-author Marilyn Nelson, Miss Crandall’s School for Young Ladies and Little Misses of Color (2008), a book for young adults. In her poetry Elizabeth Alexander captures the ideas, the moments, the perceptions, and the sensations, that are missed, usually, in the first and second drafts of history, the real stories of human lives. I found her American Sublime a particularly beautiful book and was surprised that her essays in The Black Interior were as interesting, as impressive. Alexander, who teaches in Yale’s African American Studies department, has a second, more recent, book of essays, Power and Possibility. She is a writer to watch, and to listen to, as much of America learned when she participated in the inauguration of President Barack Obama; but, more significantly, she will be, for a very long time, a poet whose work is to be read. There have been appreciative and critical comments made about the poem she wrote for that historic day in January, and I was curious to know what Elizabeth Alexander herself had learned from the experience (I sent her an e-mail query at the end of March and she quickly responded).


Daniel:
What did you learn about public poetry as a result of your inauguration experience?


Elizabeth Alexander:
"From the literally thousands of letter and emails I have received form strangers, I learned that so many people are open and receptive to public poetry. They meet it as it comes to them and respond with their own words, feelings, stories. That has been very powerful and affirming of the ability of art to have a place in the everyday lives of Americans."

April, National Poetry Month

April has been National Poetry Month, established by the Academy of American Poets, since 1996, an opportunity to read and celebrate poetry and learn more about the nation’s historic literature and the work being made now. Poets Out Loud is a web site featuring poets reading poetry, sponsored by the publisher W.W. Norton, which published Robert Pinsky’s anthology on poems to read out loud. There are, also, recommendations for teachers in how to present poetry at Scholastic’s online page and that of TeacherVision.

Poets Jorie Graham, Mark Strand, and Rose Styron participated in the Academy of American Poets April 1st event at New York's Lincoln Center, “Poetry and the Creative Mind,” reciting poetry, as did trumpeter Wynton Marsalis (reading Sterling Brown’s “Riverbank Blues”), actress Maggie Gyllenhaal (reading Akhmatova), scientist Harold Varmus (reading John Donne) and others, an official beginning to April as poetry month.

Foolishness

I awake today in Louisiana, rather than New York. It is April Fool’s Day. Apparently, the top internet searches for the day, thus far, regard fashion model Heidi Klum’s pretending to be an ordinary worker for the television special “I Get That A Lot”; the story of a woman who starved her son for refusing to say “Amen” at mealtime; Sarah Palin’s replacement by Newt Gingrich for a scheduled Republican dinner; the retirement of automaker General Motors’ chief executive officer; and the death, as a result of heart disease, of actor-singer Andy Hallett (“Angel”). Several of these topics suggest mediocrity of mind—but, then, it is April Fool’s Day.


Yesterday, was Arts Advocacy Day. I have thought often that troubled people require more art not less; and Morris Dickstein’s article on culture during the great economic depression of the 1920 argues that. In today’s Los Angeles Times, cultural critic Morris Dickstein recalls, “The engine of the arts in the ‘30s was not escapism, as we sometimes imagine, but speed, energy and movement at a time of economic stagnation and social malaise. When Warner Bros. -- which avoided bankruptcy with its lively and topical gangster films, backstage musicals and Depression melodramas -- promised a 'New Deal in Entertainment,' it was offering the cultural equivalent of the New Deal, a psychological stimulus package that might energize a shaken public” (“How song, dance and movies bailed us out of the Depression,” April 1, 2009).


Of course, money itself makes up for a lot (if it cannot buy friends, it can help you forget you do not have any). New Scientist, Issue 2700: “In a study to be published soon in the journal Psychological Science, [Kathleen] Vohs and psychologists Xinyue Zhou of Sun Yat-Sen University in Guangzhou, China, and Roy Baumeister of Florida State University, Tallahassee, found that people who felt rejected by others, or were subjected to physical pain, were subsequently less likely to give a monetary gift in a game situation. The researchers then went on to show that just handling paper money could reduce the distress associated with social exclusion, and also diminish the physical pain caused by touching very hot water” (Mark Buchanan, “Why Money Messes with Your Mind,” March 18, 2009).


Louisiana has a unique cultural heritage (it has been multicultural always), and is known especially for its food, language, and music; and it is a culture that gets a lot of enthusiasm but not always adequate financial support: and, Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal is proposing a budget that makes severe cuts in the state’s arts funding for the coming year; and the Louisiana Partnership for the Arts is asking concerned citizens to write state legislators and ask them to restore arts funding and support the arts.


According to ArtDaily.org: “This spring, from now through May 24, the New Orleans Museum of Art presents ‘A Discourse in Abstraction: Jennifer Odem and NOMA’s Permanent Collection,’ an exhibition of new sculpture by the New Orleans-based artist juxtaposed with modern and contemporary works from the permanent collection.

‘A Discourse in Abstraction’ is the first in a series of exhibitions dedicated to highlighting Louisiana contemporary art. Situated in dialogue with abstract paintings from NOMA’s permanent collection, Odem’s works position themselves at the crossroads between monumentality and playfulness. Combining materials such as Hydro-stone with flocking fiber, Odem’s sculptures walk the line between extreme contrasts.”


The Hollywood Reporter has announced the many of the big media companies are experiencing a decline in the value of their stock. As well, Bloomberg says that Time Warner is no longer the largest media company, in terms of financial returns (that would be Disney, followed by News Corps). And, it is said that Conde Nast is letting a bunch of receptionists go and Forbes is planning staff cuts. It is always sad when hard-working people lose their jobs—it’s less so when billionaires lose a few dollars.


Blender, the music publication, is going out of business. I was not a fan. Its sensibility was relentlessly superficial. The “consumer guide” approach, so affixed to current taste expressed as snark, is part of the reason for the diminishment and disrespect of popular music criticism. Hardley remembered is the tradition of thoughtful criticism and cultural intrepretation—lengthy and logical, explanatory and exploratory.


Even some of the better publications do not serve us well. I think of how the New York Review of Books ignored Barack Obama for months and months and then, when Obama was winning in the presidential campaign, the publication used writer Daryl Pinckney (his books: High Cotton, Out There) to play catch-up and introduce its audience to the man and his ideas. Meanwhile, now, President Obama is in England, meeting with the world’s top foreign leaders (there’s a nice photograph of him and his wife with the queen of England, following his meeting with the British prime minister). In England, there are mass demonstrations against capitalism, against things as they are.

Words

In New York at multiple sites, the PEN World Voices Festival will take place from April 27 through May 3rd, with more than one-hundred and fifty writers from forty countries.


Late last year, the University of Chicago published Alain L. Locke: Biography of a Philosopher by Leonard Harris and Charles Molesworth. Locke, a Harvard trained philosopher, was one of the movers behind the Harlem Renaissance.


Robert Bolano’s novel 2666, Dexter Filkins factual The Forever War, and Patrick French’s Naipaul biographer received awards from the National Book Critics Circle for excellence in 2008.


The March 2009 issue of Poetry Internatinal (Poetry International Web) has poetry from Australia, Ireland, Portugal and South Africa.


There is a free “Philosophy and/as Literature Conference” in London at the King’s College River Room on May 5th and 6th this year, beginning at 9.30am and ending at 5.30pm. The work of Adorno, Iris Murdoch, Plato, Proust, and Richard Rorty will be discussed as well as such questions as “What would be the significance of identifying features of reasoning intrinsic to philosophy but not to philosophical literature?” and the topic “Responding to Fiction as a Form of Self-Knowledge.” Coffee, tea and lunch will be served. If you want to attend please e-mail Christopher Hamilton, with reservation details (one or both days): Christopher.hamilton@kcl.ac.uk

Acadiana Film Festival

The Acadiana Film Festival taking place at different locations (Cite Des Arts, and Grand 14 Theater, Lite, and the Natural History Museum, among them) in Lafayette, Louisiana, scheduled for April 16th through 19th, is focused on the craft, content, and pleasure of films, present and future, with programs attractive to film professionals and the general audience. There are workshops for film and sound editors, for actors on developing characters, and discussions on music composition and marketing an idea for a film (pitching stories), and the festival provides a location tour, as well as music receptions, and, most importantly, film premieres and screenings, with the subjects of films including hurricane Katrina and Mardi Gras, writer Kate Chopin and singer Patti Smith, coastal land loss restoration and plate lunch restaurants.

A few days ago, I asked one of the organizers, Jana Godshall, about the Acadiana Film Festival, and the expected audience:
Who are the likely attendants of the film festival (artists, educators, students, others)?


Two days ago (Thursday), the festival director Jana Godshall answered, "All of the above. We have artists, educators, students, producers, musicians, composers, directors, actors, writers, city and state entertainment industry representatives and not only that,...simply film enthusiasts. Anyone who enjoys independent cinema, as we have tons of free screenings open to the public Thursday through Sunday, April 16-19th," and she added, "our line up is great this year. we have so many feature film, shorts, documentaries, panels, workshops, parties, networking opportunities."


Godshall works with festival coordinator Julie Bordelon, and can be reached at: Acadiana Film Festival, 101 W. Vermilion St., Lafayette, La 70501; and, more information about the festival is available online (search: Acadiana Film Festival).

Events in Louisiana Film Appreciation

In October 2008, I asked several persons involved in Louisiana culture questions about the impact of film, including, What are five important events in the development of film appreciation in Louisiana in the last five years?


Here is the response of film critic and journalist Alexandyr Kent (of the web log Louisiana Movies):

"For northwest Louisiana, the opening of the Robinson Film Center is a sign that film appreciation is, well, appreciated. The nonprofit’s challenge will be to sustain interest – or more bluntly put, sustain funding – as the entertainment dollar continues to be pulled in new, unpredictable directions.

Last year’s return of the New Orleans Film Festival, I think, can’t be underestimated.

The growth of the film industry – throughout La. – has probably drawn some La. viewers to look more critically at film.

We’re also seeing high schools and colleges add courses and programs in film study and filmmaking. That’s good.

Generally speaking, as cable/satellite TV continues to grow viewership, more people are being drawn to nonmainstream movies."

Shakespeare's King Lear

Children are born, educated, mature, and they go to work and have their own children, and in the midst of those basic activities are love and hate, ignorance and knowledge, possibility and disappointment; and our arts reflect those facts, those states. Our arts are embodiments of experience and reflection, and the extent to which they are honest and wise is a register of their integrity and use, their necessity.

I have often thought that it is a sign of respect to tell the truth about matters of importance, but some people receive the truth as an insult, preferring flattery, preferring false ideology. I was reminded of that while watching a televised production of Shakespeare's "King Lear," directed by Trevor Nunn with Chris Hunt and starring Ian McKellen as the king, in a play about a father who rewards daughters who fear and flatter him, a father who disinherits the daughter who loves him but tells him the truth without embellishment (Romola Garai plays well Cordelia, the daughter who loves her father despite his disapproving rage). Pride leads Lear astray, but it is also age that diminishes his mind, age that asks for a simple view and a simple response (in the early scenes McKellen's egocentric king reminded me of a grand baby). There is a parallel story in the play, focusing on an ambitious, bastard son (the seductive and lethal Edmund, played by Philip Winchester) who gets revenge on his father and brother--for a time. As the play is a tragedy, there are all kinds of betrayals and deaths. Shakespeare's ability to create situations that fully express the noble and the savage aspects of humanity is what keeps him current.

Miscellaneous Notes on Art, Society, Politics

Interesting: the presidents of the United States of America and of Israel have made appeals to Iran for a different kind of discourse and relationship, reports the New York Times, March 20, 2009. (However, there may be more comment now about Obama's incidental remarks regarding his bowling ability and its likeness to the Special Olympics. There is something questionable about taking every comment to task, even those said briefly, lightly, in humor by someone known to be sensitive.)


The European Union is troubled by the possibility of France’s protectionist policies regarding its car industry, according to the BBC.


Amnesty International has reported, March 18th 2009, that hundreds of people in the African country of Gambia have been accused of witchcraft, detained and forced to drink a strange mixture which has led to sickness. Apparently, the president of Gambia believes in witchcraft, and encouraged a witch hunt following the death of one of his relatives. Such a fact makes a publication such as African Studies Quarterly, or a film director such as the late Ousmane Sembene, or active musicians like Femi Kuti and Angelique Kidjoe, very important as symbolic representatives of African modernity and reason, and important as resources for alternative leadership.


Good news from Africa: “Somalia, long dogged by conflict, is ‘back from the brink’ following a peace pact, the top United Nations envoy to the Horn of Africa nation told the Security Council today, calling for a three-pronged approach targeting governance, security and development to ensure stability,” states a March 20th article from the United Nations News Centre, accessible online. The peace pact established is the "UN-facilitated Djibouti Agreement" between the Transitional Federal Government and the Alliance for the Re-Liberation of Somalia. The article calls for international aid for Somali, which has a rich coastline and promising business aspects.


“Society doesn't need newspapers. What we need is journalism,” states Clay Shirky, in a thoughtful piece (“Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable”) on the web pages of Edge: The Third Culture (March 17).


Bobby Jindal has vowed to reject some of the federal funding provided by President Obama's recovery package; and a few other governors have declared the same intention. Would they react differently with a better grasp of history? “The hardened antipathy of today's Southern politicians to public investment is especially ironic given the South's history. I'm reading Roger Biles' interesting book The South and the New Deal, and he makes a compelling case that public works programs were critical to pulling the South out of the Great Depression and allowing it to catch up with the rest of the country economically,” says Chris Kromm of the Institute of Southern Studies (“Kromm Report,” Facing South, online March 18).


Harper's magazine featured a good article on John Cheever's significant work and sad life, recently. Lee Siegel's piece on critic George Steiner in the New York Times was honest and intriguing too.


A recent PopMatters.com article discussed the need for sharper criticism of video games and used film critic Pauline Kael as a model of criticism, citing qualities it considered strengths and weaknesses. It's a stimulating read and a nice tribute to Kael's ongoing relevance.


The new Julia Roberts-Clive Owen film, Duplicity, written and directed by Tony Gilroy, received a very warm, even excited review, from the New York Times’s A.O. Scott today; and other reviews (such as in the Los Angeles Times and Variety) seem as welcoming. There have been good reviews for I Love You, Man starring Paul Rudd, as well.


The saddest news recently has been the death of Vanessa Redgrave’s daughter, Liam Neeson’s wife, the actress Natasha Richardson, in a ski accident. The accidental death of a bright and talented person carries a special weight: it is easy to see the lost gifts and promise, easy for the loss to read as an inescapable sign of unpredictable destinies.

Sarah in "Music and Friends," from A Stranger on Earth (Fiction)

Sarah sat on a bench in the park, amused, curious, dismayed, and repelled by the people she saw. She watched nannies and the babies they cared for, and thought many of the children adorable, though when they began to cry or be demanding she wished she could make them disappear. She saw and heard a couple of young men enthusiastically engaged in a conversation about music—whether Devendra Banhart was a celebratory and satirical visionary or merely foolish, in which they talked about Gilberto Gil, Caetano Veloso, and the Beautiful South—that made her wonder about the other things they cared about. listened to the inane conversations some of the girls were having—loud, bragging, full of curses, the kind of conversations she used to think typical of boys. She had been reading a book of poems by Denise Levertov and a letter from her Uncle Thomas, one he had dictated to his friend Mark. She wished that she could visit him; she wished many things. What good was it to keep thinking about the matter, if she could not do anything differently? She read a few poems by Levertov, and returned to the letter, again and again, a torment that ended when Timothy walked toward her: his smile made her smile.

“Mind if I sit here?” he asked, as he was lowering himself onto the bench.

“No,” she said, with a mild laugh.

She stuck the letter into the back of the book, which he looked at.

“Mm, Levertov,” he said. “I haven’t read her in a while. Do you like her a lot?”

“Sometimes,” said Sarah.

“Why?” he asked.

“I like her assurance. She seems to know who she is, what she feels, what thinks, and what’s important in the world,” said Sarah. “She has a spiritual wholeness. It’s very calming, very healing, to read her work.”

Timothy smiled, and he looked thoughtful, sad, and then pleased before he said, “I always thought there was a lot of romance in her work, that she made things seem better and simpler than they were.”

Sarah looked at him. She looked hurt, and was silent, and she looked around and then back at Timothy, and she asked, “Do you think conflict and difficulty and lack of faith indicates depth, or confusion, lack of imagination and intellect?”

Timothy laughed, and said, “Wait, wait, I didn’t say I didn’t think she was good or that the opposite tact was right.”

“What do you think?” she asked.”

“It’s true that we often think that if something is complex, even difficult, that means that it is more crafted and more true to experience, to society and life,” he admitted, “and that’s partly an instinctive response to all the cliches, ideologies, platitudes, and spiritual stuff we are fed, and I do look for complexity in work, for some representation of the real conflicts that are in the world, but I also think that not everything is in doubt, that we have to believe something, that we have to have a mission.”

They looked at each other. Were they going to accept their friendship, their affection and respect for each other and assumption that each meant well, or were they going to fight?

“What’s your mission?” she asked.

Were they going to fight?

Timothy said, “I just want to write and teach.”

“It was good that you learned that early, and that you found the place for it—here, in the university, that you didn’t assume you could do that as easily or as well in the ordinary working world,” she said, ending in a tone that surprised her in its bitterness. Sarah looked away. What could she say now? What would explain that tone, or restore the usual spirit they shared?

“Yes, it was lucky, I guess, though it was what everyone expected,” said Timothy.

“Did they?” she asked, and she wanted suddenly to end this conversation. What was it like to move in a world in which people knew what was right for you—truly?

“Yes,” he said. “They knew I liked to learn and to talk and that to do something else would mean I’d be losing something that made me who I am,” he said.

I’m not furious with him, Sarah reminded herself. I don’t have to be nasty to him, she thought.

Timothy looked at her, and he wondered what he should say. They were talking but they did not seem to be having the same conversation. He took a chance and asked, “Did you not have anyone who believed in you?”

Sarah looked around. She wanted to lie, say something pleasant, something less damning than what she was inclined to say: she could not think of anyone. She said, “It’s not that no one thought I was intelligent or might do something useful.” She paused, and then said, “Use is not always value. No one seemed to think I was important or that anything I was likely to do was going to be important.”

“That’s sad,” he said.

Sarah could accept that, especially as he did not seem false or pitying.

“What do you want to do now?”

“I wish I could study,” said Sarah. “Being here reminds me of that,” she said. “I cannot accord it. I have been sending out resumes—and it seems I’ll be lucky to get a low-paying job. It’s strange. I couldn’t afford school and the usual bills.”

“It must be very frustrating,” he said. “Of course, you know, you’re much smarter than most of the students in my classes.” He smiled, and said, “Smarter than some of my professors.”

Sarah laughed.

“It’s an irony,” he said. “It makes me wonder about how we end up where we do.”

“I know,” said Sarah, looking away. She was afraid she was going to cry, or say something, make a confession, that she would regret. She did not want to be seen as needy, as wounded, but what else might she be? Foolish? Lost? There was no way of seeing where she was as ideal.


(c) DG

Poem

Talking to Myself

In any one of your moods,
you might denounce
seductions of the mind,
citing the cruelty
of the enlightened.

You might curse love
or praise hate
or deny feeling.

Like a true romantic
you intend to allow yourself
no illusions.

You do not know the root
of your torment
but everything mirrors
who you are: what you praise
and what you curse.
You are like a god.
You are like a madman.
You are like anyone of us.

If I could touch you,
I could tell you
but you are beyond reach.
Only the poem knows
where you live--not the poet.

I imagine that you pace
a circle of days
dreaming of tomorrow, trapped
on the straight line
your mind traces.
I want to tell you,
There is no progress,
only return and return,
but you have been told
and are yet faithless.
Either side of the road
is the same road
but it's yours, as you know
with pride and pain.
Will you believe in what
you cannot know?
and what might save you?

One day you will talk to me
and I might listen.


(c) DG

Fiction Excerpt, "Music and Friends"

In the chapter "Music and Friends," from the proposed novel A Stranger on Earth, a chapter focused on two old men, both musicians, Thomas and Mark: one is dying, and the other is his caregiver, and they prepare for death and its aftermath, including a possible inheritance for the dying man’s niece, Sarah. The chapter includes remembrance of the men's earlier days...


“One of the interesting things about jazz is that every phrase, every moment, can be delectable,” said Thomas, standing and rubbing a cloth over his saxophone and looking down into the face of an admiring woman.

“The music is that—it’s delicious,” she answered.

She had stopped him when he was returning from the rest room, during the band’s break. The club was half-empty, but the audience seemed to be with the band. It was a relaxed night. The men had things they were worried about—paying the rent, the next gig, but they were in a good mood.

Mark passed Thomas and the woman as he made his way out of the club. He wanted a few minutes away from everyone—he wanted to be outside. Mark wondered how Thomas had the energy for playing when he was so busy running his mouth, filling words with all that hot air. He wondered if Thomas would be having breakfast with the woman the next morning. He did not seem to have much discrimination about where he set his instrument down.

“Is the music just for a small group of people, or is it for everybody?” asked Thomas.

“It’s for whoever is willing to put the time into understanding it,” said Fred, a gregarious, and plump trumpet player.

“That’s right, that’s right,” said Nathan, the drummer.

Nathan’s affirmation was not one that Mark thought much of. Nathan was one of those people who agreed with whatever half-intelligent thing anybody said, even if it conflicted with what he had just agreed with five minutes before.

“Only some people are going to know what the music comes out of—the way of life, the relationships, the values, out of which the music comes,” said Kent, the trombonist, a lean and professorial man.

“Do I need to know that to enjoy Mozart? Do I really need to know that to enjoy Coltrane?” asked Mark.

“I’m surprised at you,” said Kent. “You’re always reading history.”

“It interests me—and it does give me a deeper understanding, but I would still like Mozart and Coltrane if I knew nothing about their lives and circumstances,” said Mark.

“You’ve got contradictions,” said Kent, disapproving.

Mark looked worried for a moment, then laughed. “Don’t we all,” he said. “Don’t we all.”

It seemed to Mark as if there was an attempt at some kind of artificial purity in Kent. He recognized it in him as he recognized it in himself. Was it fair to call it artificial, just because they had not been able to fulfill their ideals yet?

“People like what we do,” said Nathan.

“Now they do. What if we decide to do something else?” asked Kent. “Are they going to try to deal with it for what it is; or are they going to act like what don’t know what we’re doing?”

“You planning changes Kent?” asked Fred.

“Changes will happen. If we’re deep into the music,” said Kent.

“Why do they have to be difficult?” asked Fred.

“They don’t have to be, but if they’re really original they might be,” said Kent.


(c) DG

Monica Hairston of the Center for Black Music Research

Below is a query submitted to Monica Hairston of the Center for Black Music Research, from me. I am interested in a range of disciplines and fields, but few things give me the pleasure of music, all kinds of music, including jazz, independent rock, and music from other countries; and, of course, I am open to learning more about the things that interest me. I am aware, as well, that too frequently African-American music, as with much else, is thought of in terms of stereotypes. I wondered recently if a scholar could suggest new avenues of learning, for myself, for others; and, consequently, I asked the Center for Black Music Research's Monica Hairston, What have been some areas of black music that require more research and thought? The center is devoted to researching, preserving, and sharing black music, from wherever it emerges; and I thought the center's executive director Monica Hairston, who received a master's degree in music from the University of Georgia and is a doctoral candidate at New York University, and whose own interests include jazz and popular music (and feminism, ethnomusicology, etc.) would have an illuminating perspective. In February I sent her my query and I was grateful to receive the busy scholar's answer yesterday!


Daniel:
What have been some areas of black music that require more research and thought?


Monica Hairston of the Center for Black Music Research:
"A couple of areas that come to mind immediately include the following:
Historically: Any topics eighteenth century and earlier. Black musical history doesn’t begin with African American spirituals. From Vincente Lusitano to the Chevalier de Saint-Georges, black musicians and composers populate all historical eras and all corners of the globe.

Culturally: Issues of gender and sexuality. Men and women can have differently-gendered experiences of the same phenomena. These experiences often manifest in or are refracted through music and music-making."

Music Movements and Musings

I still remember Chuck Berry, Jimi Hendrix, Gordon Jeffries, Joan Armatrading, and Fishbone, as well as lesser known musicans such as Eye and I and Follow for Now, all part of the rock music tradition, a tradition that is more multicultural than usually thought: and, Ben Harper, Tricky, The Smyrk, and Janelle Monae are among the participants in the South by Southwest music conference in (Austin) Texas this week; and there’s going to be a discussion of “black rock” featuring Rob Fields of the site Bold as Love with Kandia Crazy Horse and Daphne Brooks.


Sometimes I've loved Bob Dylan; and sometimes I have been annoyed by how earnestly and indulgently other people love him. My favorite Bob Dylan albums are probably Blonde on Blonde, Blood on the Tracks, and Time Out of Mind, albums I like for the songs and for Dylan's tone of voice, honest, intimate, wise. Bob Dylan has a new album coming out next month, in April: Together Through Life, reports PopMatters.com (Justin Brooks, March 17). I wonder how good it will be (I wasn't particularly fond of Modern Times, his previous album to this new one.) As well, the magazine Magnet announces that the remaining members of the band the New York Dolls (singer David Johansen, guitarist Sylvain Sylvain, with producer Todd Rundgren) are releasing a new album ‘Cause I Sez So, due in May.


I do not know or like the music group Coldplay as much as others do, though I was impressed by a recent televised music performance. Coldplay will begin a North American tour in mid-May, in Florida (West Palm Beach) and end it in Florida as well, August 6th, according to Billboard (David Prince, March 17, 2009), with stops in Georgia, Alabama, Virginia, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and New York, among other American and Canadian locales.

Financial Data

“President Obama defended his proposed $3.6 trillion budget on Tuesday against critics who say it is too ambitious, declaring that American families cannot always choose which crises to tackle first and neither can he as president,” begins a March 17, 2009 New York Times article by David Stout (“Obama Defends Budget Proposal"). Obama's point is obvious—and should not have to be said. (Some of his critics have seemed ignorant to me, and some have seemed malicious, and some have seemed self-serving. It is also odd that he is expected to undo eight years of damage in less than two months.)


Time magazine has picked twenty-five people to blame for the American economy’s collapse and allowed readers to vote for each online, proportioning blame: and thus far Phil Gramm is first, Christopher Cox second, Angelo Mozilo third, Joe Cassano fourth, and Franklin Raines fifth. Bernard Madoff is eighth. Stan O’Neal is eleventh. George W. Bush is fifteenth, and “the American consumer” is sixteenth, Alan Greenspan seventeenth, and Hank Paulson eighteenth. Bill Clinton is twenty-third. Such a list is interesting, amusing; and, seriously, I certainly think those involved in the mess, now and in the past, should be identified, but it would be more useful to examine the workings of the financial system (to provide a history and analyses) and to compare it to alternatives.


U.S. Congressman Barney Frank, chairman of the house financial services committee, wants to better regulate the country’s financial system, and may begin writing legislation to do so as early as May, reports the New York Times.


Companies are beginning to suspend investment in 401 (k) retirement plans for their employees—because of the cost. As well, the value of these investments have diminished with the chaos in the stock markets. “The average 401(k) plan at the end of 2007 held about $65,000, but half of them held less than $19,000, according to a trade group, the Investment Companies Institute. They would hold much less today because of stock market falls. The suspensions mean that individuals can continue to contribute to their plans, but their companies will not,” reports Deborah Brewster, the Financial Times (March 10, 2009). Of course, I never trusted investment in stock as a main form of financial security (stock investment is gambling).


The Obama administration's economic stimulus package has had positive effects, already: “Before enactment of the recovery package, at least 34 states began closing their shortfalls by reducing services to their residents, including some of their most vulnerable families and individuals,” declares the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (“An Update on State Budget Cuts,” by Johnson, Oliff, and Koulish; updated March 13, 2009). Some states,now, are using stimulus/recovery package funds to reverse previously made budget cuts in public services. “Policymakers in at least 9 states, including Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Maryland, Oregon, South Carolina and Virginia have already advanced or enacted plans to use these funds,” says the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. There is a about a $350 billion shortfall, and the recovery package gives states about $140 billion, so states will still be making some budget cuts. However, I hope to see the results, which I expect to be significant, of the increased federally funded investment in education and infrastructure, etc.


Following a New Orleans Times-Picayune article about post-Katrina housing, and the failure of a program to provide housing following the devastating hurricane (the goal was for 18,000 living spaces, a partial replacement of the 81,000 lost—but only 1,073 were restored, the New Orleans paper reported). Harry Shearer in the online Huffington Post states, “So the contractor collected almost as much money for administration as it disbursed for actual repair of housing units. But the program's goal, ‘fallen well short of,’ was to restore less than a quarter of the housing units lost in the flooding. Blame, should one care to assign it, can fall almost equally on the state, on the private contractor, and on the Feds, for not realizing that the affordable housing crisis in New Orleans called for perhaps a more ambitious goal.”


How open is Louisiana state business to review? “While some of the budget categories allow expenditures to be tracked down to the private-sector vendor providing a service or product, not all of the categories contain this level of detail. Moreover, there is no indication what product or service was provided for the expenditures and there is very little salary information available beyond summary totals by budget unit,” states the Public Affairs Research Council of Louisiana, regarding the Louisiana Transparency and Accountability (LaTrac) database; and the research council calls for more financial transparency in the hows and whys of official financial expenditures in the state (“PAR names Top Five Sunshine Solutions,” March 12, 2009). March 15 through 21 is “sunshine week,” a period affirming open government; and the Public Research Council of Louisiana is promoting focus on the public records law (minimizing, clarifying); reasonable costs for public records; pretrial mediation for disputes involving public records; and online access to meetings, as well as greater financial transparency.

Facts and Fictions: Distractions from Depression?

Sad news: the writer James Purdy has died at age 94. I love his strange, poetic and very funny books: Eustace Chisholm and the Works, In A Shallow Grave, Mourners Below, On Glory's Course, etc.


On a much lighter note: Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson has a new movie opening today, Race to Witch Mountain, a family film about well-intentioned space aliens who come in the form of children. The film has gotten some mixed reviews. I have seen some of Dwayne Johnson’s work and enjoyed it, and I liked him in the interviews I saw this week.


“The world’s best dealers bring their finest pieces to this most influential of art and antiques fairs and this attracts collectors and museum curators from around the globe who cannot risk staying away,” declares ArtDaily.org, of the Maastricht art fair, March 13 through 22nd, 2009, in the Netherlands (Limburg province)


The Bronx Council of the Arts is providing a tour, Saturday Culture Trolleys, to take interested persons to seventeen free cultural events, including artist studio visits, on March 14th, 12 noon to 5pm, beginning from Hostos College’s Longwood Art Gallery, at 450 Grand Concourse and 149th Street. (Riders will get Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird and be able to participate in a trivia contest with literary prizes.) Sounds great!


Unfortunately, the Metropolitan Museum in New York, a favorite of mine, is eliminating some of its staff, due to the current economic crisis which has diminished its large financial endowment, which pays some salaries.


The Conference on Southern Literature will be held April 2nd through 4th, 2009, in Chattanooga. Tennessee. Participants include poets Wendell Berry and Rita Dove and fiction writers Edward Jones and Barry Hannah (about one thousand writers and readers attend in all). Most of the events will be held at the Tivoli Theatre on Broad Street.


In Seattle, April 16th through 19th is the Experience Music Project’s conference, focused on dance music, and featuring Nona Hendryx and Diane Warren with a range of critics, scholars, and writers. It’s great that Hendryx, who made and released a new album with Patti Labelle and Sarah Dash, her long-ago partners, is getting some of the attention she deserves.


I have been enjoying Andrew Bird’s album Noble Beast. It seems a musician’s attempt to make the best music he can.


The American Religious Identification Survey says that more Americans are claiming to be disbelievers, about 15%, according to the Council for Secular Humanism's March 2009 online newsletter. Only 15%?


Rasmussen reports that only 34% of Americans believe the U.S. will be the most powerful nation in the world by the end of the twenty-first century. Is that pessimism or realism; and how will it affect the way Americans think of, and respond to, the rest of the world?

An Afternoon's Notes

In “Between Critical Rationalism and Eastern Wisdom,” an essay on the web pages of Qantara.de, Alessandro Topa considers Iranian philosophical tradition (March 5, 2009). There are articles at the online magazine there, as well, on Gaza, Iraq, and Turkey.


This past Wednesday in New York began a nineteen day “Celebration of the African American Cultural Legacy,” at Carnegie Hall and other sites, curated by opera singer Jessye Norman, featuring a wide range of African American music, from classical to hip-hop.


A spirited tribute to Stevie Wonder took place at the White House, and was broadcast by PBS recently, with the first lady introducing the program and the president presenting the performer with an award for his music. Performers such as Esperanza Spalding, Tony Bennett, India Arie, Martina McBride, Anita Johnson, and Paul Simon were there. Bennett's roughened voice was commanding and I didn't like Diana Krall's voice (too low and oddly accented), the duo of Mary, Mary did a funky version of "Higher Ground" and McBride's "You and I" was very good (she gave it jazz and country aspects), and I liked Paul Simon's singing and guitar playing. Stevie Wonder's performance of his own work was quite good.


Responding to Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal’s criticism of the Obama stimulus package allowing a $50 million funding increase for the National Endowment for the Arts, Jane Alexander, in an interview with CNN, argued that the NEA has been underfunded for years and that increased funding is going to people (artists) who are workers and family providers and consumers of various goods and services in the larger economy(March 4, 2009).


“In More Than Just Race, the Harvard sociologist William Julius Wilson recaps his own important research over the past 20 years as well as some of the best urban sociology of his peers to make a convincing case that both institutional and systemic impediments and cultural deficiencies keep poor blacks from escaping poverty and the ghetto,” writes Richard Thompson Ford in a review of Wilson’s book More Than Just Race (the article is called “Why the Poor Stay Poor” in the New York Times Sunday book review section, in print March 8; online March 6). It is hard not to wonder why such an obvious point must be made again and again: is prejudice that resistant to fact?


On writer John Cheever's legacy: “Cheever’s novels, like his journals, belong to his lewdness and his pain, and it is easy to see why they have never been as popular as his stories. They are blunter instruments than the polished scalpels of his short fiction; they can be sloppy, challenging, even inscrutable, but they hit the reader with great force. In his stories, Cheever tried to make sense of the world and of other people; in his novels, he mostly tried to make sense of himself. Naturally, the world was more interested in reading about itself, but it would do well to revisit John Cheever’s patient, determined attempt to understand and make peace with John Cheever,” writes Stefan Beck near the end of his review-essay on the collected works of John Cheever and a new Cheever biography, appearing in The New Criterion, March 2009.


Performer Chris Brown has been charged with two felonies, involving an altercation with his girlfriend, the singer Rihanna. These two have had, before this terrible incident, the most innocent and glamorous images of today's performers. It is an irony that people who represented the sunniest aspects of human experience are now, in their own lives rather than in their work, associated with the darkest facts of life: aggression, conflict, pain, violence. It seems impossible to escape the more troubling inclinations of human nature and it seems better to be aware of those conflicting traits and to acknowledge them, as the repressed seems to return always.


There was a good profile of film critic Armond White by Marc Jacobson in New York magazine, February 15. (White is known for his odd and insistent responses to film and film culture, responses that are sometimes thought of as brilliant and other times thought of as perverse.) Armond White reviewed with praise Molly Haskell's book on the film Gone With the Wind, a book from Yale University Press, Frankly, My Dear, in the March 1 Sunday New York Times book review (online Feb. 26).


Scheduled: On March 7th, in New Iberia, Louisiana, is a Shadows-on-the-Teche arts and crafts festival; and there will be a Cinema on the Bayou Film Festival March 25 through March 29 in Lafayette, Louisiana.


Yesterday, I saw a snake in the backyard, near my mother's house, a black and gold snake. I prodded it with a long pole to dissuade it from coming nearer and that worked for a short time, but I suspect it may approach again...It was six months ago that I began this log, "City and Country, Boy and Man," documenting aspects of New York life and my planned travel to Louisiana; and since then it has included short fiction and excerpts from a proposed novel, poetry, film reviews, political comment, descriptions of Louisiana, observations about family, theatrical play excerpts, a glossary of values, notes on the election of Barack Obama, articles on African culture, music comment, book criticism, and questions and answers featuring a few excerpts such as film critic Alex Kent and historian Aram Goudsouzian on Sidney Poitier. The move south has helped me to survive a little longer, but it has involved an iteration of things I cannot get away from, certain facts: I prefer life in the city to life in the country; I am interested most in work involving intellect and culture; I am not inclined toward unconditional love of anyone (particular character and qualities engage me); and I am inclined to withdraw and be withholding when I am uncomfortable (when I cannot be my preferred self, I'd rather not be any self); and time is passing, passing, passing...

The Uses of Intelligence and Sense: News and Notes

In a web article for Filmmaker magazine (February 25, 2009), Nick Dawson writes about film director Astra Taylor, whose her first film was Žižek!, about Slavoj Žižek, following her sharing duties for other film productions: "With her sophomore feature, Examined Life, Taylor once again brings together her two main passions: film and philosophy. The title is derived from a quote by Socrates (who deemed that 'the unexamined life is not worth living'), and over the course of the film Taylor introduces us to eight contemporary philosophers who delve into the issues and problems of the modern world. Though Cornel West talks to Taylor as they drive around New York, the other seven participants – Avital Ronell, Peter Singer, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Martha Nussbaum, Michael Hardt, Judith Butler, Sunaura Taylor and Žižek – hold forth on foot, as Taylor conceived the film as 'philosophers on walks.' Going against the norm of 'serious' documentaries tending to be depressing, Taylor here creates a film of substance that is nevertheless light on its feet." I am pleased to see that the film director has included such a varied group of thinkers; and it is encouraging to have one more avenue for the introduction of significant contemplations. The Filmmaker piece includes an interview with director Astra Taylor, in which she says, "The thing that attracts me most about philosophy and filmmaking is that both those disciplines are concerned with shifting perception, shifting the way you see a problem when you have a new theory – it's illuminating, you suddenly see the world in a new way. And going to a really good documentary film can have the same effect: your whole sense of the world is different."


"A dynamic new school of thought is emerging that wants to kick down the walls of recent philosophy and place experimentation back at its centre. It has a name to delight an advertising executive: x-phi. It has blogs and books devoted to it, and boasts an expanding body of researchers in elite universities. It even has an icon: an armchair in flames. If philosophy ever can be, x-phi is trendy. But, increasingly, it is also attracting hostility," announce David Edmonds and Nigel Warburton of Prospect magazine (March 2009).


I love to hear news that Americans are recognizing and responding to other cultures, as I think that is not only intellectually stimulating, but politically necessary: it is easy to despise what you do not understand and harder to hate what you do. And there is such good news from Washington: "From the Arabian Gulf to the Levant to North Africa—this region of the world is the birthplace of human civilization and features extraordinary diversity in geography, traditions, landscape, religion, and contemporary aesthetics," according to the web site of the Kennedy Center, which is presenting an Arab arts festival, "Arabesque: Arts of the Arab World," February 23 through March 15, 2009, in Washington, the District of Columbia. The notice continues, "In cooperation with the League of Arab States, the three-week festival brings together artists, many of whom are making their U.S. debut, in performances of music, dance, and theater, as well as exhibitions featuring art installations, fashion, a soundscape, cuisine, a marketplace, and much more." The literature portions of the program are scheduled to discuss audience, language use, fantasy, gender, and national politics.


It is especially important to remember the diversity and riches of the world in difficult times, and in places in which the culture most available may be too simple. I have been enjoying the beautiful, soothing music of Ancient Future (Planet Passion), Matthew Montfort (Seven Serenades), and Mariah Parker (Sangria), world music produced by Ancient-Future.com Records.


Christian John Wikane writes for PopMatters.com about Diana Ross’s early solo work: "Despite their historic significance, Everything Is Everything and Surrender have been widely unavailable for nearly 40 years, though each album made a very brief appearance on CD in the mid-’80s. Hip-O Select has lovingly dusted off the masters, dug through the vaults, and re-released the albums in stunning expanded and re-mastered editions. These albums offer a wealth of undiscovered gems in the sorely underappreciated Motown catalog of Diana Ross" (Feb. 26).


Carl Wilson at his blog Zoilus has declared, "I've put together a quick (well, not so quick) cultural history on how musicians have tried to transform human speech into music through the ages (but particularly, often thanks to technology, in the 20th century)," and that history is interesting reading (they are part of a February 19 posting).


There a great Picasso exhibit at London’s National Gallery, and an exhibit of Cezanne, whom Picasso and many others admired, at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, reports ArtDaily.org. The Yves Saint-Laurent/Pierre Berge art and antiques auction has broken sales records, yielding a little more than $483 million, according to the Art Newspaper. Meanwhile, the High Museum of Art is cutting staff and salaries (Atlanta Business Chronicle), and the Walters Art Museum is eliminating staff as well (Baltimore Sun).


Chris Edwards of the Cato Institute, worrying about the increase in federal spending and government size, claims there’s a gap between Obama’s rhetoric and policy, but the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities' writers Iris Lav and Nicholas Johnson state that if states refuse the funds the federal budget is making available that refusal could undermine economic recovery. (Comments are available online, at the organizations' sites.)


Apparently even the well-known conservative David Brooks did not like Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal’s Tuesday night response to President Obama’s policies, reportedly calling it stale and insane. Others have piled on. "How many Americans know that Jindal boasted of participating in an exorcism that purged the spirit of Satan from a college girlfriend?" wonders Max Blumenthal of The Daily Beast, Feb. 25.


In an article on the New Orleans CityBusiness blog titled "Council Plan Seen as Racist," Deon Roberts writes about a mayor-council conflict involving Mayor Ray Nagin, "Nagin, early in his administration, created a panel that involved a public representative to award the contracts, which total $150,000 or more. On Feb 5, the council decided it wanted the awarding process to be totally open to the public, and it adopted an ordinance to make the process adhere to the state’s open meetings law. Nagin vetoed the ordinance. Now, the public is waiting to see what the council will do now"(Feb. 26). Some people think the council is trying to sabotage the mayor's authority.


Frank B. Wilderson, III, a professor of African American studies and drama at the University of California, Irvine, has received the 2008 American Book Award for Incognegro: A Memoir of Exile and Apartheid, and has announced a forthcoming writing project, Red, White and Black: Cinema and the Structure of US Antagonisms.


The stock of the New York Times is now considered junk by investors. The Washington Post fourth quarter profits plummeted 77 percent, reports Associated Press. These publications have been important, and are not now without their uses or influence, but how many of us care as much now about the fate of these elite institutions when there are so many exciting alternatives, as we cared before when many waited for their public recognition and support, these elite media institutions that for so long were indifferent to our ambitions, concerns, and needs? We are alive, feeling and thinking and working, in a world of changed possibilities, of new resources and unexpected obsolescence.

Film Comments: The Great Debaters & Notes for an African Orestes

Excerpt from "Once More, with Feeling: Denzel Washington’s film The Great Debaters and Robert Rosenstone’s book History on Film/Film on History"

“Like the shape of Africa,/ the raison d’etre of Art is a question mark,” poet Melvin B. Tolson wrote in the poem “Delta,” Harlem Gallery (Collier Books, 1969; 28). It may be impossible to reduce any art worth contemplating to a simple idea or explanation, but part of the value of The Great Debaters is its giving form and spirit to questions that have haunted too many of us concerning the place of African-Americans in the world. Are we to be discouraged by circumstances and expectations, or inspired to excel and exceed them? Are we to be whole or forever condemned to self-division—“a half-breed,/ a bastard of Barbarus and Cultura,” as Melvin Tolson described a character in “Upsilon,” Harlem Gallery (105). The principal characters in The Great Debaters choose excellence and are exhilarating and touching because of it (and their challenges and doubts are merely some of the dragons that every hero has to slay, but heroes they are); and the film pays tribute to them, and offers encouragement as well as pleasure to its viewers, something the actress Jurnee Smollett realized when she said to Movies Online: “it’s giving voice to the voiceless, putting lips to something, and that’s one thing that makes you so proud to be part of a film like this, because you’re giving a salute to everyone who has come before you.”


Excerpt from "Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Notes for an African Orestes"

In Notes for an African Orestes, we see Pasolini in Africa, mostly in Tanzania but also in Uganda, looking for casting and locations (he thought of using sites in Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, and Kampala in Uganda, as Athens). Pasolini has a severe handsomeness, and, attentive, he speaks quickly and smartly, as he explores the culture, commenting on how the transformation of the furies, the Erinyes, into the Eumenides, the benevolent, is a metaphor for African political experience. Tanzania, between Kenya and Mozambique in eastern Africa, near the Indian Ocean, and rich in iron, coal, diamonds, gold, and gas, was formed as a nation after Tanganyika and Zanzibar won their independence from England in the early 1960s, and Tanganyika and Zanzibar united in 1964. The country has more than one-hundred tribes, making up the Bantu people, who speak Swahili and English in addition to diverse Bantu languages. The Tanzania that Pasolini visits is poor; and it remains poor. It is an irony that many people farm (coffee, tea, cassava, corn, cotton, nuts, tobacco, wheat), but that less than ten percent of the land is conducive to farming. It might be easier to think of Tanzania as a probable place for a Greek play if one recalls that few Greeks participated in democracy—those who did were like a village within a town. If one thinks of democracy as a dynamic process involving consciousness and choice, one can see how promising this could be for Africa, which, following colonialism, has seen so many despots (such is the case for Uganda, which Pasolini considered for his proposed feature film).


All texts (c) DG: the texts were written in July and August of 2008.

Generational Purposes

Excerpt from "A review of Michael Winterbottom's Tristram Shandy"

I know what some of the members of my generation are doing, and I know a little something about who they are: Paul Begala, Ralph Carter, Joan Chen, Thomas Haden Church, George Clooney, Nadia Comaneci, Douglas Coupland, Dinesh D’Souza, Kim Deal, El DeBarge, Melissa Etheridge, Laurence Fishburne, Wayne Gretzky, Woody Harrelson, Bonnie Hunt, Peter Jackson, K.D. Lang, David Leavitt, Carl Lewis, Wynton Marsalis, Chi McBride, Dylan McDermott, Christopher Meloni, Isaac Mizrahi, Rick Moody, Jeremy Northam, Barack Obama, Alexander Payne, Scott Ritter, Dennis Rodman, Henry Rollins, Tim Roth, Arundhati Roy, Douglas Rushkoff, Campbell Scott, George Stephanopoulos, Isiah Thomas, Steven Weber, Irvine Welsh, Forest Whitaker, and Michael Winterbottom. Many of us do: as people whose work has achieved some renown, they are allowed not only personal fame but individuality, a measure of freedom and fulfillment. Those of us whose efforts have been less well rewarded (thus far) might feel a certain indifference to the world’s glance and judgment—genuine or cultivated indifference. Of course, as with much else, money makes this indifference easier to achieve; without money, the world often still has the power to irritate and to irritate with little relief. What the world offers many, rather than the freedom of individuality, are socially recognized—if not always socially accepted—false selves: selves rooted in simple notions of purpose, place, and personality, with the responses to one’s public situation being all that is understood as one’s personality; selves that have little to do with one’s own perceptions, philosophy, or private personality. In a word, stereotypes. Think of class, skin, gender, religion, or national origin, accept these as existential facts, as elemental aspects of being, and you need not ever have another independent or honest thought again.


(c) DG, 2006

The President's Speech to Congress

“Volcano monitoring likely saved many lives - and significant money - in the case of the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines (where the United States has military bases), according to the USGS,” the United States Geological Survey, writes senior writer Andrea Thompson of LiveScience.com, in an article following up on Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal critique of government funding of volcano monitoring in the recently passed economic recovery package legislation. (Louisiana is not known for its educational successes and recently a science group objected to some of the state's policies regarding science, or, more precisely, anti-science.) Jindal’s comments, part of the Republican response to President Barack Obama’s speech to Congress last night, were a litany of Republican ideological points promoting wealth and ignoring the real needs and concerns of ordinary people in a time of crisis. Of course, Jindal plans to take a lot of government money for various state projects, though he is, reportedly, refusing money that will help the unemployed. It was an interesting choice having Jindal give the Republican response, as many well-informed people fault him for leaving Louisiana to travel around the country for Republican fundraisers and conferences while problems go untended in Louisiana. President Obama made his own motivation and policies as clear as anyone could; and an early poll suggests most viewers and listeners understood that and approved. I was fascinated by the ritual address, and the ovations the president received (how odd it must be to have one’s remarks continually saluted with a standing ovation).

Hollywood's Academy Awards, and More: Appreciations and Repudiations, Part Three

The film industry Academy Awards program, televised last night on ABC, has found a way of making each actor-nominee in the most prominent categories feel like a winner, by personally addressing and describing her (his) performance before the official winner is announced: it was very nice to see past winners in the best actor and actress and best supporting actor and actress categories introduce the nominees. I thought most of the program was entertaining, and I didn’t turn away from the show with the empty feeling I sometimes have after watching an awards program (I still thought the show was too long by about two hours). Hugh Jackman was an entertaining host; and it was good to witness the wins in the major categories, specifically that of Penelope Cruz, Kate Winslet, Sean Penn, and Heath Ledger, and I liked seeing Beyonce, Anne Hathaway, Nicole Kidman, Alicia Keys, Will Smith, Robert DeNiro, and Meryl Streep. The lovely Penelope Cruz, in an elegant vintage dress, gave a charmingly sentimental acceptance speech. Heath Ledger's family was dignified and (spiritually) healthy with its comments upon his posthumous award. Kate Winslet, who with age is becoming more handsome than beautiful (there is such strength and intelligence in her face), was obviously gratified to win, and Sean Penn seemed well-intentioned and was both sharply political, affirming equal rights, and sometimes obscure.


The New York Art Resources Consortium is providing material online from the libraries of three museums, The Frick, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Museum of Modern Art, at an online site called Arcade. Meanwhile, the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C., is showing federally-funded New Deal paintings, according to ArtDaily.org.


No Line on the Horizon: the music group U2 is making its new album available for listening on its MySpace page; and the band is planning a stadium tour for the summer.


Last Friday night, I saw Sarah McLachlan and Duffy on PBS’s “Austin City Limits,” and I thought Sarah McLachlan’s presence very strong—emotional, musical, sensual; and her voice was particularly impressive, as she played guitar and piano. I had listened to Duffy’s music in New York, liking some of it and not sure about the rest (was she too imitative of past music?), but I was disappointed watching her on Friday: I didn’t like the way she sounded, looked, or moved, finding her intonation and pitch frequently uncertain or unpleasant; and her gestures were busy, excessively choreographed.


The four-day, annual conference of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs was held recently in Chicago, February 11 through 14, 2009. There’s a Festival of New French Writing at Manhattan’s New York University, February 26 through 28, with the participation of E.L. Doctorow, Philip Gourevitch, Francine Prose, Bernard-Henry Levy, Emmanuel Carrere, and Jean-Philippe Toussaint.


“It’s not that Americans aren’t interested in the world at all. It’s just that we seem to want someone else to do the ­heavy ­lifting required to make a cultural connection. As the ­Peruvian-­born writ­er Daniel Alarcón ob­serves, Americans would rather read stories by an American about Peru than a Peruvian writer translated into English,” notes writer Aviya Kushner in the article “McCulture,” from Winter 2009 The Wilson Quarterly, available online.


There’s a new philosophy blog called Matters of Substance, focused on metaphysics, at Blogger.com (look for “substantial matters”); and, though not yet well-known, if it is as good as it promises to be, it will provide interesting reading.


Criticism can describe and evaluate the form and content of a work, theory, or experience, and criticism may be an art but is not a popular art; and criticism, which reveals the mind of the critic as much as the object of contemplation, is done both well and badly these days and sometimes it is hard to know the difference. As everyone is aware, there’s a lot of mutual masturbation involved within the communications media, both online and print, so that work that might not be distinguished still gets supported. For instance, media sites that are well-funded such as Slate and Salon received respect before they had done anything to deserve it; and, consequently, habits good and bad continued, without significant critique. One can read some of the self-important, unnecessary political musings of Joan Walsh at Salon, and clueless attempts to identify the cultural zeitgeist by Jody Rosen at Slate, and wonder if they have editors or even attentive readers.


Everyone is concerned about the American economy; and one notices that some journalists seem afraid to be optimistic despite the daily attempts by the new presidential administration to take decisive actions (journalists seem to both want something to be effective and to disbelieve in anything being effective). Now, Henry Blodget argues for the nationalization of American banks, at the Huffington Post.


President Barack Hussein Obama continues to make overtures to the Republic party, while its members play politics-as-usual. Obama and his administration attempt to address the important economic matters feeding the current crisis involving jobs, banks, housing, and health care; and the president has a small summit of leaders gathered today at the White House to discuss the economy and fiscal responsibility; and, among other things, one of his goals is to discuss how to cut the federal budget deficit.

"Music and Friends": A Stranger on Earth, fiction excerpt

Writer's Note: "Music and Friends" is a chapter in a proposed novel, A Stranger on Earth, a work-in-progress; and here is the beginning of that chapter.


Thomas had asked Mark to bring him his personal papers—banking records, insurance policies, pension records, mortgage papers, and other things, and though weak, Thomas read them, and read them, and read them again. Thomas made calls, he wrote notes, and he told Mark to remember certain things—Give people photocopies of this stuff, if they ask, and if they want to see an original, don’t let the original out of your sight. This is New Orleans—people will do what they can get away with. My father had a son with a woman other than my mother—I never knew the boy. If he or somebody connected to him comes ‘round, I have nothing for them. It’s in my will—they get nothing—no money, no thing, nothing. I have a niece in New York—there’s some money for her. She used to write me. She hasn’t written me in years, but I liked her letters. She was a smart girl—Sarah. I want her to have a little something. See that she gets it. It’s in my will. There’s a copy of the will in the courthouse. There’s a copy of my will in the bottom drawer here. There’s copy of it written on the back of a music sheet I sent to the congressional library—“The Blues Is Nothing but a Good Man Saying What He Saw.”

Mark heard what his friend had to say. He supposed he would not forget it, but he made notes when he left Thomas’s bedroom and went into his own. Mark did not know what he was going to do when Thomas died. There had been years to think about it—but he did not know, now, what he was going to do. Mark thought of their careers, of their lives. They were hardly more than boys, though each thought himself a man when they had met at the same audition. Mark had been the serious one, the one who thought that Armstrong and Gillespie were too much the entertainer and Parker and Coltrane bad examples for their use of drugs. He loved their music, but none was an icon for him—he was going to be his own hero. Thomas just wanted to play—he wasn’t about representing anything, and Thomas was the one who had the early success. Doors, wallets, and women’s legs opened for Thomas. Mark did the apprentice thing, learned under flawed masters, played in cheap clubs, and got small-time contracts—and that entire hard work ending up giving him some kind of legend he had not anticipated. By the time the big money started to come his way, he and Thomas had found each other again, weren’t so rude about each other’s differences, respected each other talents, and Thomas began to be sick—his body began to cave in on itself. Mark had come to help out a little until Thomas got better or until one of Thomas’s people came to take care of him—and Thomas never got better and the people who came wanted to help Thomas into the grave and Mark ending up staying for twenty years. Mark ended up saying no to the big gigs and big money and did small records for small labels that let him alone, or almost alone, to live his life—and he ended up taking care of the fun, shallow bastard who meant no real harm and had become his best friend.

Mark put the dishes in the sink. He let the water run. He poured liquid soap over the frying pan with its tiny grit of bacon stuck to the bottom, its slight brown fried foam of egg on the sides. He put his fingers under the flow of water, testing for heat. He thought about the hopes he had years ago for the music, the conversations about the music’s relation to folk, blues, and classical, literary and sculpture, to history and politics. He had wanted a high art that people would finding meaning and pleasure in. He wasn’t the only one—he thought of Abbey and Max, of Archie, of Anthony. He wondered if musicians weren’t the only people who really cared about the music, who really saw it as important. Weren’t the others just using it, using it for dancing, for easy fun, using it to justify a false idea of who they were, using it to intimidate people? It was a path to freedom, and they could not see it. Mark picked up the wash cloth and began to scrub the plates first. He went back and forth between using paper plates and regular dishes. The plates came clean easily. He scrubbed the forks, careful to remove the grease near the printing of the maker’s name. The music was for everybody, but who wanted it? Mark picked up a spatula and scrapped it against the bottom of the frying pan, then scrapped the sides of the pan, before washing the spatula. The children today were listening to another kind of music, simpler music, what somebody called music for morons. Why did things always have to begin at the bottom? Why did they often have to stay there? Why couldn’t you just hand the next generation the task as you had completed it, and let them go on and develop that? Mark looked up from his task and looked out of the kitchen window. He saw small garden of vegetables—potatoes, egg plant, string beans—and the few fruit trees (apple, plum, fig), and the garden chair next to the garden. He thought he might take a book and sit outside for an hour or two. Would Thomas be alright inside? Would he want to try to sit outside today? Mark wanted some fresh air. He opened the window. It was not enough. He looked down and scrubbed the frying pan. He reached below the sink and pulled out some powdered cleanser and sprinkled some into the pan. The scrubbing became easier. You had to have the right tools to make things come right.

(c) DG