I’m thrilled to announce that my short story “Pandora” was a finalist in Solstice literary magazine’s Summer contest and is now published in Solstice and is available online. The judge was Columbian-American writer Patricia Engel. “With a strong sense of place and humor, Jan Schmidt’s “Pandora,” explores a friendship sprinkled with tension, conflict, learning, and guilt as the narrator navigates recovery and confronts racism and privilege. “Queens David died just two months ago . . . Sandra and I’d gone to see him in ICU … we didn’t realize he was dying, but David knew … Till recovery I didn’t know how to have a friend. Or how to not hurt people. How to be a true friend still troubles me.” https://solsticelitmag.org/content/pandora/
Trump was indicted on 37 federal charges, the Ukrainian Dam collapsed afterbeing exploded by a bomb, maybe; fighting and fires continued in Sudan; smoke from Canada’s wild fires amassed over New York City, giving us the distinction of, once again, being Number One, this time in having, on Wednesday June 7, the worst air quality in the world. With all this happening amid the thousands of arts and cultural events here, this past week I was privileged to see three of these inspiring performances, which have lingered in head and my heart and I’m grateful once again to be alive, even in the midst of global horrors.
Close Up: Three East Village Stories
At Metropolitan Playhouse on Fourth Street, my husband Arthur Rivers and I saw the final performance on June 4, 2023, of Close Up: Three East Village Stories, solo performances based on interviews with downtown folks. Three actors performed stories of three characters, who the actors had interviewed to create the monologues. For the first piece Marisol Carrere, in gender-bending fashion, played Nick Drakides, acting out his story of his crooning Frank Sinatra songs in front of his apartment building on 124 East Fourth Street while Laraine Goodman tap danced out front. East Villagers anassed around them to watch and even the cops got into it, creating a spotlight for them with their policing equipment.
Then Linda Kuriloff played Marcia A. Richard, now a crisis counselor, but formerly a woman who ended up in the women’s Third Street Shelter. From her interviews Linda related wild stories of traumatic events in Marcia Richard’s life, including that Marcia had been arrested many times—but, she said, getting arrested was good for her, like arrested meant she could finally get A Rest. Then her life turned around, she got sober and began writing. She is the author of the memoir of addiction and recovery, M!ss D!agnosed. Marcia Richard was in the audience and I kept one eye on her as she laughed and cried along with what looked and sounded like a perfect replication of her mannerisms, playful language, and compelling story.
Michael Turner, Linda Kuriloff, Marcia A. Richard, Nick Drakides, Marisol Carrere
The reason my husband and I came to see this play was for the last solo in which Michael Turner played Rafik Bouzgarrou, restaurateur and owner of Bin 141 on Avenue A, a place we dine at often. The minute Michael Turner came out and moved quickly about the stage as he “set up” for a day at work in the restaurant, shifting tables around, putting out expresso for passersby, and telling his story growing up in Tunisia on an olive farm, it was clear he nailed it. Rafik is a big guy, and Michael Turner not so much, but I was convinced I was watching Rafik himself, as he spoke with Rafik’s accent, told his story of coming the USA, finally to New York City and naming Bin 141 for his brother who passed. Turner had Rafik completely down, his accent, his rapid-fire movements, the way he pauses, and he’d only spent one morning interviewing Rafik as he worked setting up before opening.
Michael Turner, Linda Kuriloff, Marcia A. Richard, Nick Drakides, Marisol Carrere
This was part of a wonderful series put on by The Metropolitan Playhouse, The Alphabet City Monologues. “Over nearly 20 years, we have asked actors to interview the theater’s East Village neighbors—residents, shop owners, denizens—and create verbatim monologues from those interviews, sharing our neighbors’ stories. Theatrical snapshots, in a sense, of the people who make up the world right around us, these oral history performances are detailed portraits, but much, much more.”
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater at BAM
My husband and I see the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater at least once a year at City Center, our Christmas present for each other. On Saturday, our friend Eli called, said she had an extra ticket and—bam, I was at BAM to see the Ailey Company. I’d never seen them at this venue before and I was thrilled to spend an evening with Eli. This was Ailey’s modern masters program with my all my favorite choreographers, Ronald K. Brown, Robert Battle, Paul Taylor, and Kyle Abraham.
The first piece, a tribute iconic Judith Jamsion. by Ronald K. Brown was his 2009 work Dancing Spirit, which began with stylized movement and loosened into the more modern African based funky Ronald K. Brown choreography. The dancers demonstrated just how complex and alive their dancing spirt can be. I glanced at my friend Eli, more of a hip hop person, to see their thoughts. When I saw the glow on their face, I knew the Ailey company and Ronald K. Brown brought the goods. Eli said the costumes by Omotayo Wunmi Olaiya created a whole choreography of their own. Made me think of Deborah Jowitt’s article in the Village Voice from 1972, “You Can’t Choreograph a Penis.”
Jan and EliWayne, Jan and Eli
Next up was Robert Battle’s work For Four from 2021—a short, fast tour de force. The quick turns and movements made the audience erupt in joy. This was followed by Duet, a 1964 work choreographed by Paul Taylor that was also beautifully danced with exquisite lines in their form-fitting costumes.
The final work was the 2022 Are You in Your Feelings by Kyle Abraham with music by various artists including Erykah Badu and Jazmine Sullivan, which my companion Eli grooved along with in the seat next to me. The fun and tension of relationships between and among couples of various arrangements of genders, held us and the rest of the audience in rapture.
Yoshiko Chuma’s shockwave delay at La Mama
Writer Michael (Mickey) Hawley came with me for the final performance on June 11, 2023, of shockwave delay at the Ellen Stewart Theatre of La Mama. In this program, conceptual artist, Yoshiko Chuma, whom I’ve followed since the 1980’s, remixed and sampled forty years of work in her anniversary program for her company School of Hard Knocks. As it began, the host said it would be 180 minutes long. I gulped. No way. I went over and over the math. 180 minutes. Could Yoshiko really expect us to sit through three hours of this performance? Sit we did, enthralled the whole time.
She says her work has been called “organized chaos,” but in watching this final performance, I was once again struck by her brilliance and very tight composing skills. Her design and direction, including stunning array of constantly manipulated props, with music, films, and dance, all combined to create an overall experience that kept me/us involved in the moment. One element of Yoshiko Chuma’s genius is her ability to gather and use superb musicians, dancers, wordsmiths, designers, and filmmakers. This show highlighted the clever, fun, moving work of pianist Dane Terry. Just the right touch of power and lightness.
The program started with the utterly horrifying footage from Bruce Conner film Crossroads from 1976 that utilizes in slow-motion footage of the July 25, 1946 nuclear test by the United States destroying Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean. With that opening, where could she go? But shift she did. She described it this way, “Musicians, dancers and designers interact, but not directly—a parallel to incidents of sound, text and action, a metaphor for endless continuous circles of life, fluctuating between utopia and war.”
For her work, Yoshiko travels to many war-torn parts of the world and uses people from those places to amplify the political and personal elements of her work. She wrote, “I seek the place where a crossover can happen, where we can share. For 40 years, I have worked with young artists all over the world; and formed relationships across huge gaps of time, space and age, including Japan, Albania, New York, Romania, Macedonia, Afghan, Venezuela and Amman in Jordan.” She uses people she met on her travels and their private histories in often dire circumstances to create a world the opposite of war, a work of miracles. At one point she used large swaths of fabric that filled the stage and that dancers manipulated to create glorious flowing tents and waving water-like movement with the rippling sound of an ocean of fabric. Then for the ending, Dane Terry came out alone, sat at the piano and sang a plaintiff version of We’ll Meet Again from Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 movie Doctor Strangelove. A perfect ending for both the movie and performance.
Yoshiko Chuma and JanJan and Nicky Paraiso
After we left, Mickey said her work was so bold and inventive that it revived his faith in art and New York City too. Indeed. With all the banning and hatred going around, we do need our faith in the arts renewed. Besides, we are now all graduates of the School of Hard Knocks, going on, as Yoskiko says, to the University of Adversity.
Three for Three Plus One
Yesterday, June 15, 2023, I attended a new salon produced by Alyce Dissette, AMT TALKS! These gatherings at American Mime Theatre take place monthly, are free, 90 minutes from 6:00 – 7:30PM, and are on the 3rd Thursday each month (except August). Last evening, Tanisha Jones and I heard Evan Neiden talk about his program Monsters in the Wires: Theatre Anywhere for an Audience of One. He described a number of Candle House Collective’s innovative immersive theater personalized for one participant at a time by phone. Crazy and wild post-covid theater imaginings. If a participant in the phone/theater conversation got triggered, they’d created a safe word to end the way the conversation was going. A safe word. Damn, I could use a safe word for some of my conversations and meetings. A person starts yattering on, I get to say the safe word and, hallelujah, we move on. Brilliant.
At The Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center on April 3, 2023, a program from the Jerome Robbins Dance Division honored renowned dancer, choreographer, writer, and lecturer Agnes de Mille on the 30th Anniversary of her passing. With live performances, video clips, and a panel as moderated by Linda Murray, curator of the Dance Division, the program was educational, inspirational, and fun. With her receptive, generous manner Linda Murray allowed the panelists to enjoy a comradery that energized each other as well as those of us in the packed house at the Bruno Walter Auditorium. Not only is Linda Murray, with her expertise, humor, and intelligent observations, a walking Wikipedia of dance information, but she speaks with a charming Irish lilt.
First, Linda Murray introduced the distinguished panel in the order they sat next to her on the stage:
Diana Gonzalez-Duclert, former rehearsal assistant to de Mille, professor, and associate director and répétiteur of the De Mille Working Group
Virginia Johnson, founding member, former Principal Ballerina, and Artistic Director of Dance Theatre of Harlem
Kathleen Moore, Former Principal Ballerina, American Ballet Theatre, teacher at Princeton Ballet School and American Repertory Ballet
Diana Byer, Artistic Director Emerita of New York Theatre Ballet and stager of de Mille works and cultural
Elena Zahlmann, Associate Artistic Director and Principal Ballerina, New York Theatre Ballet, repetiteur, and dancer
Photo: Linda Murray, Diana Gonzalez-Duclert, Virginia Johnson, Kathleen Moore, Diana Byer, Elena Zahlmann,
After the introductions came the first live performance of the evening with Elena Zahlmann. dancing De Mille’s solo from Debut at the Opera from 1927. A humorous piece, the dancer fell, rubbed her sore feet, collapsed in fatigue. Then, with one hand using a chair for a barre, she practiced leg elevations, front, side, back and arms front, side, up. However, the dancer, in an outrageous, taboo, balletic expression of exertion, opened her mouth, very wide, and closed it in concert with raising and lowering her limbs. Then, as she mimed getting tired, the dancer stopped raising her leg. Almost like a puppet with the leg string cut, she continued doing the arm movement with her mouth still opening and closing with her arm. Amazing, I thought, although facial expressions were often used in ballet, this was the first time I’d seen actual choreography for a mouth. From my spot in the audience, my own mouth split into a grin.
After performing, Elena Zahlmann joined the panelists in conversation about working with de Mille. In talking about the deep psychological ground that de Mille excavated, they screened a clip from “Civil War Ballet” from Bloomer Girl, filmed in 1956, an emotional, wrenching occasion of women waiting for their men to return from the Civil War. The cast of anxious wives and returning union army men consisted of all white people. This wasn’t surprising as this dance was part of the 1944 Broadway play, Bloomer Girl, but I wondered how Agnes de Mille’s choreography would translate with an all-Black cast. I didn’t have to wait long.
In the discussion of how de Mille depicted empathy for complex characters, such as vulnerable misfits like Lizzie Borden, whom she showed as alternately a victim and a murderer, a clip was screened from a televised version of Fall River Legend performed by Dance Theatre of Harlem in 1989. Here’s Lizzy Borden, danced by stunning, inspired, cultural icon Virginia Johnson with an all-Black cast. The choreography, for either Black or white dancers, had a powerful emotional resonance and these DTH dancers, especially Virginia Johnson, killed it, knocked it out of the park. After the screening, we in the audience were so moved that we couldn’t stop clapping and Virginia Johnson had to quiet us down
In speaking about the work, Virginia Johnson noted that no matter where it was performed the audience would gasp when Lizzie pulled the ax out. She said in spite of the horror of Lizzie Borden’s life and this murderous act, that dancing it was “fun.” This audience “gasped” at this too and I could practically hear them wondering: if that’s “fun,” what’s a rough day for the Artistic Director of Dance Theatre of Harlem? Virginia Johnson laughed at the response and added that dancing in a wool dress was difficult because it was so hot and inflexible. Then Diana Byer, a wonderful story-teller and Artistic Director Emerita of New York Theatre Ballet, told us about a performance in which the ax that sits in a block of wood was too loose, so a stage hand or someone gave it a good heave-ho and stuck it in deeper. At the performance, when it was time for Lizzie to pull the ax out, it wouldn’t let go of the wood block, which rose as she lifted the ax. She tried to pry the ax out by pushing with her foot at the block of wood. No go. For that performance, she ended up having to strangle her parents to death.
The panelists discussed de Mille’s technique that incorporated not only balletic movements but natural movements, such as the dancers throwing their arms up in the air as they see their men come home alive from war. Kathleen Moore said that she herself was studying—some demanding scientific course which I don’t remember—and that de Mille use of this gesture showed her deep understanding of movement, as even blind people, who have never seen that gesture, spontaneously throw their arms up in excitement at a homecoming.
I don’t have the supersonic memory to offer more than a taste of this two-hour program, but panelists told more striking, affecting and often humorous anecdotes, dancers— who included, besides Elena Zahlmann, Emma Von Enck and Victor Abreu accompanied on the piano by Michael Scales, all of New York City Ballet—performed several startling pieces of de Mille works, and film clips showed how robust and dynamic her choreography still was. I wish I could remember in greater detail, but I can mainly only recall my enjoyment of the stories, dancing, and film clips
For the screening of the final clip, The Informer performed by American Ballet Theatre (1988), Linda Murray explained that people think because it is Irish that it is about the “troubles” but those came later. This dance is partly based on the novel The Informer by Irish writer Liam O’Flaherty published in 1925 about the Irish Civil War. Another panelist noted that de Mille’s choreography depicted highly emotional, personal accounts of events that spanned time from American West, to the United States Civil War, to the Irish Civil War.
The feeling of excitement was palpable as the audience left the theater. I spoke with Allen Greenberg, President of The Jerome Robbins Foundation and a Trustee of The Robbins Rights Trust. We agreed it was a wonderful program and I noted that Linda Murray was a terrific moderator. Very generously Allen said that, when I was curator, I put on some great programs too and that he’d never forget the African dancer summersaulting on stilts almost directly into the audience. Indeed, the Jerome Robbins Dance Division knows how to put on a program that sparks joy.
Kewulay Camara, Fanyuma Camara with photo of Papa Ladji Camara
On a blustery evening, April 28, 2022, I struggled against the wind along First Street to City Lore Gallery for the sold-out event about the history of the African Djembe Drum in New York. When I entered, the room buzzed with the excitement of celebrating the djembe and Papa Ladji Camara, the man credited with bringing the djembe to New York, if not the entire Western world.
Born in Guinea in 1923, Papa Ladji Camara began drumming as a child and went on to become a world-renowned djembe drummer, performing with Les Ballets Africans de Keita Fodeba and the National Ballet de Republic of Guinea. Over the years, he also played with Babtunde Olatunji, Pearl Primus. Katherine Dunham, Art Blakey and many other notable artists. Papa Ladji Camara passed away in Senegal on October 24, 2004.
Before the program began, people gathered to hug and talk after our long period of Covid isolation. What a joy to see those faces: Sierra Leon poet, drummer, and documentarian Kewulay Kamara; jazz percussionist Chief Baba Neil Clarke; renowned dancer, drummer, professor Carolyn Webb; folklorist Tom Van Buren; videographer Penny Ward; master drummers Kofi Donkor, Mangue Sylla, M’Bembe Bangoura; and Fanyuma Camara, Papa Ladji’s son,.
Chief Papa Neil Clarke with photo of Papa Ladji Camara
City Lore folklorist Ray Allen moderated. Chief Baba Neil Clarke offered the traditional libation, followed by a short drum session with master drummers Kofi Donkor, Mangue Sylla, and M’Bembe Bangoura. Even in this brief section of drumming, the energy erupted as the drummers performed their quick shifts from sudden loud explosions to delicate complicated rhythms. Following this introduction, Kewulay Kamara, Chief Baba Neil Clarke, Kofi Donkor, told stories about working with Papa Ladji and offered philosophical nuggets such as “to be a drummer is to be of service.”
I think it was Chief Baba Neil Clarke who said that he’d played many different drums, but was astounded to find the tonal range of djembes. When he was young, there were no djembes in New York City, “none,” he exclaimed. Then Papa Ladji arrived, showed everyone what a djembe could do, then taught people how to play the djembe, and, “now you can’t walk anywhere in the city without tripping over a djembe.”
Kofi Donkor
The speakers talked about Papa Ladji’s gifts as a great teacher, and how he taught them to be disciplined and respect their elders. The moderator Ray Allen had his work cut out for him, as African drummers and story-tellers could go on all night, even so, the audience was eager to hear the panelist’s remembrances of Papa Ladji.
Photos and video clips were projected as well. One video excerpt showed Papa Ladji drumming in Dankarafule, An African Cultural Celebration: A Tribute to Papa Ladji Camara, presented by Kewulay Kamara at Symphony Space in 1995. Mamadou Niang recorded the performance for the Jerome Robbins Dance Division of The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. Papa Ladji’s passionate playing, complicated rhythms, and fascinating theatricality nearly exploded off the screen. In the interest of full disclosure, I was the person at the Library who produced this recording for the Dance Division, so it could be available for all and preserved for posterity.
Tom Van Buren
Before showing his videoclips, folklorist Tom Van Buren talked about working with the Ethnic Folk Arts Center, later named Center for Traditional Music and Dance. He showed a clip of Les Merveilles d’Afrique, choreography by Mohamed Kemoko Sano, from Niani Badenya, the Mandeng Heritage: Domba Concert of Dance, presented by Ethnic Folk Arts Center in collaboration with Kewulay Kamara at El Museo del Barrio, in 1997. In one piece, the women dancers also played drums. As in the earlier clip, Mamadou Niang recorded this event for the Jerome Robbins Dance Division.
Fanyuma Camara
Kewulay Kamara invited Papa Ladji’s son to speak. Fanyuma faced the audience—his face an exquisite sculptural mask of serenity. After thanking the speakers and audience, he said, “Being Ladji’s son was a little like being in the military.” His mask cracked with a delicate loving smile and he added that, as a child, his dad would give him a rhythm to practice and he’d do it for a half hour then quit to watch cartoons. When his dad found him, he made him go back in the room and do the same rhythm for eight hours. The audience laughed with Fanyuma at his picture of an artist’s discipline and a child’s resistance.
Mangue Sylla, M’Bembe Bangoura, Chief Baba Neil Clarke, Kofi Donkor, Kewulay Kamara, Fanyuma Camara
For the final portion of the evening, Kewulay told a story, with breaks provided by the drummers, about naming the skin of the drum. Cutting a long story short, he summarized by saying the point was that the skin of the drum was the heart and soul of the drum. In closing, the drummers took over. Their hands connected—skin to taut drum skin—and the hearts of the drums connected to our hearts. Carolyn Webb, who performed in Papa Ladji’s Les Ballets Africains among other companies, was invited to dance. Wearing her lovely lavender blouse, she was the embodiment of the music, dancing with bent legs and scarf flying and it was good to see a woman included in the presentation. I’d be interested to hear her speak about Papa Ladji since she worked with him for many years.
As she danced, the audience rose, clapped and swayed, completely energized by the music and dancing. The night was a huge success and I’m still smiling with the joy of the faces, hands, and drums.
I was clapping and dancing so ecstatically at the end of the performance that I forgot to get a picture of Carolyn Webb, so I asked her to give my a photo from another performance. This is Carolyn Webb dancing with Retumba, primarily a women’s percussion and dance ensemble..
Carolyn Webb, dancing with Retumba, July 1, 1988, at the 79th Street Boat Basin Rotunda Photographer Unknown
At the heart of the latest issue of Witty Partition, Issue 14, appear three astonishing pieces. The video Gonna Die by Bill Hayward commemorates the anniversary of the 1965 Bloody Sunday voting rights march in Selma with the words of a woman who was fourteen years old at the time; following that comes Eric Darton’s angry and frightening essay that looks at what’s happened or hasn’t happened since the Attica Prison rebellion; and Teddy Jefferson’s brilliant review of Gianfranco Rosi’s documentary Notturno, which was recorded in Syria, Kurdistan, Iraq and Lebanon, about the aftermath in people’s lives under Isis. Plenty of other delicious reads in this issue but these three stand out as extraordinary political and artistic statements.
Gonna Die, a video by Bill Hayward, uses images, movement, and interviews to evoke the 1965 Bloody Sunday voting rights march in Selma. Watching it launched me backwards and forwards at the same time. A woman who was fourteen at the time of the march speaks about getting hit on the back of her head and on her face and said that she was so scared she “I didn’t want any freedom, I didn’t care if anyone voted, I just wanted to go home because I was so scared that I was going to die.” Just wanted to go home. I was bowled over hearing her voice as she became her young self again. Then she talks about a white guy with one leg, on crutches, who told her he’d die trying to protect her. “Okay,” she says, “He eased my fear a little bit,” though she adds that she “never felt fear at this depth.” Once again the courage and bravery of those protesters is astounding.
Drawing by Eric Darton, after a photo by Bob Schultz. Ink on paper. 11 x 14 inches. 1971.
Be Cool,Eric Darton’s essay, begins with a frightening quote from Ernst Bloch. “Of course, humanity always sets itself tasks it can solve, but if the great moment of solution is met by a faint-hearted generation . . .” Filled with emotion, Darton’s essay “Be Cool: Fifty Years Down the Line from Attica.” illustrates the results of that “faint-hearted generation.” Darton writes, “’Attica means fight back,’ a hoarse-voiced slogan if ever there was one – accompanied by D-Yard style clenched fists pumped in the air. But that forest of clenched fists never fought back, or forward. And what was not clearcut by the Man got excised by the Movement itself in its self-excoriating degeneration. After Attica, to paraphrase Lou Reed, came bitter nothing. Nothing at all.” So Darton asks us to read about it, do our research, and get active. Inspiring in spite of its despair.
Teddy Jefferson’s review of Gianfranco Rosi’s Notturno follows Eric’s call to action. Jefferson writes that in this documentary: “We are taught that those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it, yet human behavior suggests the opposite is true. We do what we know. Knowing history is what causes us to repeat it. What does this mean for the representation of atrocity, or a documentary about life in the wake of Isis? Can a work of art provide some inoculation against its reoccurrence? Or is absolution a worthy enough goal: soothing the audience’s guilt at what happened to others with the illusion of having taken some sort of action?”
About the reception to Notturno, Jefferson adds, “It was praised by critics for celebrating the “humanity” of its subjects, though this is precisely what it does not do, which may be why it was bypassed for the top prizes. It refuses any interpretation or sweetening.” Jefferson describes how the film allows the viewers to see in order to feel and his essay does the same, allows us to “see” the film. His descriptions reminded me of Butoh dance and how it conveys meaning through the body. “The shifting of the mode of the scenes from the (seemingly) allegorical to the surreal to the clinical to the quotidian would be considered in a fiction film stylistically incoherent. And yet this anomalous assembly feels seamless and deeply coherent. Though its sequence follows a logic nearly impossible to identify, its build and culmination have extraordinary visceral power.”
So Witty Partition Issue 14, offers an assembly of poems, short stories, essays, and book reviews that feel “seamless and deeply coherent.” Heading up the delicacies, Dana Delibovi’s essay, Found Poetry, looks at Found Poetry, Dada, Blackout Poems, and Tristan Tzara. Setting the tone for rest of the issue, this article examines our debt to the past and the fun and usefulness of unconscious choices. However, the Tzara fragment Delibovi quoted from “Vegetal Swallow” with its “nonsense” images: “rain falls under the scissors of/ the dark hairdresser-furiously/ swimming under the clashing arpeggios.” I had to laugh: these dadaesque random words were an almost literal picture of my husband, a Black hairdresser who listens to jazz as he snips at someone’s hair. Something about Dada both attracts and repels me; this article showed me see the freedom at its center.
After the Dada poems, comes poems by two writers. Teddy Norris “English Teacher’s Recurring Post-retirement Dream” reminded me of my English teacher dad whose article about teaching fiction appeared in Issue 7, https://the-wall-archive-issue-7.weebly.com/the-short-story.html. And Carmen Firan poems about time and nothingness flowed with the same blood of the rest of the issue:
raised on a heap of nothing the truth sits at a table with the lie the scale tips from nothing stars are annihilated and put themselves back together again
what is unyielding plays with us; nobody believes in nothing anymore
Broken Kismet is an excerpt from a novel by Hardy Griffin. Following her mother, the narrator leads us through the streets of Istanbul, the day before the narrator is to leave for college in the United States. We go to a strange place to meet a strange woman to partake in an ancient Turkish custom of spilling lead. The chapter ends with:
“Mom, do you really believe in that stuff?”
She opens her palm and I see she still has the hunks of lead in it.
“You know the old Turkish saying, ‘Don’t believe in fortunes, but don’t go without one.’ Think about it Eser, it’s a ritual that’s been around for more than three thousand years. Must be a reason, right?”
Hearing Eser and her mother’s fortunes read made me want to go on whatever path writer Griffin leads us towards his characters’ futures.
Then comes three chapters of the memoir Becoming by Chris Sawyer-Lauçanno, These chapters are so filmic in their attention to detail they reminded me of Teddy Jefferson’s review of Notturno: “The minds of the viewers are given more -and trusted more. They are neither told nor led. Each scene is set before them, intact, complete, uninterpreted, without music, comment, or indication. The goal is not to transform or wow or fool or move; the goal is to make us see, not feel. Seeing must come before feeling, as well.” In Chapter 24 “I Become a Resident of Piedras Negras, ” Sawyer-Lauçanno writes about his initial difficulties as a seventh graders struggling with new language in a new place, “I saw the store front to which he had directed me. I walked in expecting to wander as inconspicuously as possible down the aisles until I found the coffee, then pay for it at the cash register. But there were no aisles. Instead a large counter filled the front of the store. Behind it an array of bins, boxes and canned goods stretched nearly to the ceiling. I divined, probably by observing the customers in front of me who were placing their orders and receiving goods, that the same procedure was also expected of me.”
Then we’re treated to Basil Kingsix non-representative paintings from “The Black Opal Series.” They offer a meditative experience, somewhat akin to the desert area Chris passes through on his way to the mine in his memoir chapter. His images are followed by Diggin’ the Scene, a meandering essay by me of my meandering thoughts on meandering through the books around me, an ode to superabundance and the discreet charm of gorging on books.
In Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Christopher Sawyer-Lauçanno writes about the Tribute to Lawrence Ferlinghetti heldon March 24, 2021, “what would have been his 103rd birthday.” Sawyer-Lauçanno recalls protesting against Kenneth Rexroth’s forced retirement from UCSB in 1970. He helped organize a protest with poets. “I wrote Lawrence. Within a few days I heard back. ‘Yes,’ he wrote. ‘I’ll come and I’ll bring a few pals.’ A week later I heard from Allen Ginsberg who said he was coming, too. So was Gary Snyder and Diane DiPrima.” A link to the video of the tribute is available with this article.
In Ed Foster, Dana Delibovi writes: “So it’s no surprise that Edward Foster’s new collection, A Looking Glass for Traytors, warmed me like hot cider in a drafty old Colonial manse. Of course, to be warmed in New England is to feel a heady mix of grief, loneliness, and more than a touch of rancor; to pull on austerity like a well-worn flannel slipper. But it is also to bask in the freedom to be authentic, or more precisely, eccentric.”
Bronwyn Mills reviews Ngugi wa Thiong’o epic The Perfect Nine, a book originally written in Gikuyu, the language native to central Kenya that explores epics, myths and written vs oral story-telling. Mills sums it up: “I remember Ngugi saying that another argument for the use of Gikuyu, of one’s mother tongue, was the simple fact that if a language is not used creatively, as a means of invention, to tell stories, for literature, the language becomes impoverished. That won’t happen on Ngugi’s watch, that is for certain.”
So go for it. Check out Issue 14 of Witty Partition, its stories, essays, poems and videos are like a salve after watching and listening to the terrifying news these days. And I’m not just saying this because Witty Partition’s editors recently bestowed upon me the title of “Consulting Prose Editor.” I’m saying this because I’m moved by the writing to want to tell you about it, to let you see and feel it. But if you go to only one thing, go to Gonna Die, the video by Bill Hayward about the march in Selma.
I read Brandon Taylor’s debut novel “Real Life,” a finalist for the 2020 Booker Prize and a New York Times Editor’s Choice, right after I reread Camus’ “The Stranger” whose famous first line “Mother died today,” resonates with Taylor’s book. I wouldn’t have put these two together, other than that I’d read them one after the other, but they do have a lot in common. In Taylor’s novel, Wallace’s father has died and he’s living a similar anxiety, alienation, and streak of rage as Camus’ Meursault, whose mother has died. Yet, the time and place and situation between the novels have little in common. Meursault is French Algerian in Northern Africa in the 1940s and Wallace is Black, gay, and a biochem grad student at an unnamed Midwestern University with only white friends, in the present.
With exquisite detail Taylor trains his literary microscope on Wallace as he finds his nematode experiment ruined, then he trains this same tight focus on Wallace’s life in the Midwest, his friends, his memories of traumas, and sex, present and past. Simple things increase his alienation, such as Wallace bringing a homemade meat dish to his friends’ dinner party to find it left untouched, his new friends all vegetarians. At the center of the book, is a dinner party where Taylor, for the first time, has his white characters directly voice the racism previously implicit and directly “unvoice” the other white friends who say nothing. Throughout this lengthy night, Taylor is able to keep these eight characters distinct and clear in my mind, while he delivers a devastating account of the evening with Wallace’s analysis of complicated relationships, kindness, racism, silence, love and hate. A tour de force that primes the reader to hear Wallace’s back story.
Taylor’s ability to evoke deep emotions and then analyze them is one of the reasons, I assume, that it’s been so well received. Reviews often quote from a paragraph about white cruelty, but his examination of cruelty is all-encompassing: “Cruelty, Wallace thinks, is really just the conduit of pain. It conveys pain from one place to another—from the place of highest concentration to the place of lowest concentration, in the same way heat flows. It is a delivery system, as in the way that certain viruses convey illness, disease, irreparable harm. They’re all infected with pain, hurting each other.”
As I read about his world in a non-diverse university science department, I was saddened, though not surprised, to find this still happening. When I started UW Madison in 1968, it was a wild time—anti-war protests, the blowing up the Army Math Research Center, and the Black Student Strike, which got the National Guard unleashed. Among the demands was that at least 500 Black students be admitted to UW by September 1969. A modest number when you consider at the time the student population numbered around 33,000. Terrifying to see how little things have changed.
In the last chapter of Brandon Taylor’s “Real Life,” Wallace journeys back in time to his first day meeting these friends and we feel the circularity of life. Brandon Taylor’s dexterity with language has the ability to make me feel as though Wallace’s pain and ambiguity and alienation were mine. And it made me feel the unrelenting whiteness of the Midwest. As I read, I kept longing for some Black characters, some Black jokes, some Blackness. Though I love the Midwest and my white family there, though this may not have been Brandon Taylor’s intent, I sure was damn happy to walk out my door and find myself in New York City, where I was immediately met by a swarming cross-section of humanity—where our dinners include rabid bacon defenders, fervent pork-eschewers, vegetarians, vegans, and the lactose or gluten intolerant—with everyone fighting the universal sugar urge.
Throughout this pandemic, lockdown to-do lists have risen to the level of holy orders, many even note that Shakespeare wrote “King Lear” and “Macbeth” during London’s Black Plague. But I gotta ask: since when is Shakespeare the bar? Though my bar is the how-low-can-you-go type, a sense of urgency hounds me to get things crossed off before the lockdown ends. The most crucial action-to-take on my list is fixing up our fourth-floor walk-up apartment on the Lower East Side, LES. Or some say East Village. Or maybe you prefer Alphabet City. Whatever. The science says, algorithms confirm: lockdown can’t end until our apartment is spruced up.
For three decades my hubby Arthur and I have lived together in this apartment and we still love our humble home—in spite of its having no closets. We did have a tiny backroom that was our closet/guest room with single bed, till our teenage granddaughter moved in and took over that space, causing us to put everything we own in the living room. Clutter, clutter, clutter. Several friends, upon seeing this jumble, offered to help us de-clutter. I wanted to strangle them. You take everything out of your closets and put it in your living room, see how that looks. What they somehow can’t comprehend is that without closets, everything is everywhere. Our stuff, which we actually have only small amounts of, looks like clutter because the only place to put it is where everyone can see it—piles of shoes, CDs, books, photos, ironing, six packs of toilet paper, bins of writings from dead friends and family. They have no idea how bare our place would be if we only had a closet. (Cue singing: If I only had a closet.) I don’t get anything new unless I throw something away—new t-shirt in, old t-shirt out.
Now, with our granddaughter grownup and moved out, as have her mother and two other grandkids who lived in that backroom at various times, it is ours again. Time to fix up the apartment with its ugly ceiling stains from radiator leaks, disgusting rust and black ridges on the window frame from the ancient gates we removed a few years ago, and, worst of all, the carpet in the backroom. When we had our floors leveled, about eight inch slant over a ten-foot span, they put in a plywood frame. Instead of wood flooring over it, we stupidly chose a rug, me seeing the wall-to-wall carpet as luxurious and lasting forever. And back then, thirty years seemed like forever. But time had its way with our carpet (and us). What I thought of as our bougie status symbol morphed into its opposite—no symbol, just a filthy, stained, very tangible rug. Even its backing was disintegrating. So we stacked the bed, desk, and dresser into our living room, leaving a tiny walk space, and the construction guys pulled that evil-looking thing out, gross fibers flying everywhere. Then they installed shiny oak flooring and built a closet with sliding white doors. Serious bougie.
Over the course of two months, we moved our every possession, stacking things in every not-being-worked-on crevice of the apartment. Once the backroom was completed, we put much of the living room “clutter” into our new closet. Then it was the living room’s turn for a makeover. After the ceiling’s recessed canned lighting was installed and the painting finished, we put photos and art back up, thrilled to have some blank space around them to better showcase Arthur’s ceramics, my five-foot wide weaving, and the framed family pictures. We walked through the apartment, awestruck; though we have been here together for thirty years, it suddenly hit us: we owned our apartment, our very own home.
Arthur Rivers ceramics; portrait painting by Anthony Varalli; egg painting by Gail Williams, a photo, signed by Christopher Wheeldon, of Morphoses/The Wheeldon Company 2008; and live cat, Sade
Left is the corner of my tapestry; top photo by Jerome Robbins given to me at retirement by Jerome Robbins Foundation; Middle ceramic mask by Arthur Rivers; and bottom is photo of me, some forty plus years ago taken by Dean Snyder.
But don’t get it twisted. Our low-income coop ain’t all that upscale; our leveled floors tilt slightly, our window frames are chipped, that warped metal cabinet in the kitchen needs replacing, and we still have to hike up four floors. But it is our home; we’ve been blessed by the apartment gods.
I looked around. Everything in its place. Lighting upgraded. A cover over our ancient chipped cast iron radiator. Our home, clean and orderly. I freaked: this isn’t me. I missed the hodge-podge that meant our daughter or granddaughter lived here. I missed having our apartment look like what I always felt like, a struggling artist/writer, a person who stuck things on the wall impulsively with a slap-dash sensibility that meant change, action, life. When my first hubby and I lived in Berkeley, California, we got an apartment, but for months we had no furniture, except a mattress on the bedroom floor and a radio we bought for a dollar. At that time, I loved looking at the empty living room, nothing but blank walls and a window. Standing in the silence, I felt it all as possibility. Future. A dream of a new life. Fifty years later, our rehabbed New York apartment suddenly felt like a finished life, a life being wrapped up.
Drawing of her mother by grandaughter Rori when she was child; drawing by grandson Niles, when he was very young; and ceramic clock made by Arthur Rivers.
Maybe this was just the ordinary response to finishing something, heightened by the fact that crossing apartment painting etc off the list meant lockdown can end. Do I want it to end? Covid can end, but I’d like this interim state to continue so I can live in the world that is all possibility. My brain swerves, takes a turn, and I’m practically gleeful about seeing people again. Then I think, People are way overrated.I just want to stay home.
When they announced lockdown was going to last two weeks, I was horrified. No way I could stay in that long, but now we’ve done fifteen months and I don’t want to leave. At the same time, I’m thirsting to travel to see family, go to the movies, see a play, hear live music, visit friends,. And I want to do it all right now!! Maybe I’m simply suffering from Covid-Brain: can’t make a decision while some deep anxiety surfaces and emotions boomerang—fast, rash, and fickle. You know, the way Covid-Time makes us miss appointments and forget what day it is. And Covid-Love—oh, the stories I’ve heard. But for right now, you’ll be happy to know, apartment painting etc has a slash through it. Let Dr. Fauci and the legislative gods be advised: Covid and lockdown can end now. As Bob Marley’s three little birds say, everything’s gonna be alright.
Emily Nemens novel “The Cactus League” was released in February to great reviews and, since then, she’s been doing readings all around town. Earlier, I finished reading Henry Dunow’s memoir from 2001, “The Way Home: Scenes from a Season, Lessons from a Lifetime.” Both of these books, one by editor of Paris Review Emily Nemens and the other by literary agent Henry Dunow revealed baseball’s transcendent, actual, and metaphoric significance, something I had no clue about. Or thought I hadn’t. So whether you’re quarantined or not and looking to read something, try these out.
Nemens’ “The Cactus
League” uses the structure of baseball—without employing the often-used
literary device of an actual game, think Casey
at the Bat—to temper, for the reader, the nightmare struggles of the person
at the core of the story, Jason Goodyear. As he descends into a hell of
gambling addiction, we see him from perspective of people on the periphery of
his life. Divided into nine chapters/innings, Nemens gives us an entertaining
crew to guide us through the baseball domain: batting coach, groupie, agent, Black
co-owner, pitcher struggling after elbow surgery, organist, seven-year old kid
hanging with his homeless mom who works the concession stand, the organist, and
finally Jason who shares the final chapter with his wife. Nemens passionate treatment
of how baseball, geology, architecture, and music mirror each other slows the
narrative, yet somehow intensifies the drama. That these disparate elements
hang together and construct a compelling novel is a testament to her writing and
her characters who are surviving love, terror, and miracles.
Early on in “The Cactus League” I came across this paragraph that brought me back to fifth grade, a time when I experienced a baseball miracle—and, since we girls didn’t do sports in the fifties, it was a once and only once in a life-time event. “There’s something cathartic about swinging a piece of wood at a hurtling knot of leather and yarn. The sting that happens in your palms when you connect, the ball bending ever so slightly at the collision. The reverberations of that rubber center that run up your arms, plugging into your shoulders with a little zing. The sound of it.” Of course when I once felt this —and only once—it wasn’t a hard ball traveling at 90 miles an hour, it was a big old softball traveling at the speed of a paper airplane, but nevertheless, when I swung and hit it, the feeling of being in concert, in the zone, in my body, thrilled me. Nemens closely observed moment brought this memory viscerally back to me.
Through vivid, loving characterizations and musings about
life and time—from the glacial geological tectonic plates’ progress to the slow-motion
action of baseball, to the timing and rhythm of music—Nemens evokes a realm in
which “enough” exists—in relationships, sports, the arts, and the natural world—in
the face of the “never-enough” world of addiction.
Henry Dunow’s memoir,
The Way Home: Scenes from a Season,
Lessons from a Lifetime, uses his experiences in non-professional baseball
as a method for finding connection. His
humorous, biting, charming prose and his generosity of spirit and understanding
hooked me immediately in this story of family life in New York City. Dunow describes
his attempts to connect with his son through baseball, as his own father hadn’t
been able to do with him. This lively paragraph depicts his young son and his
wife’s worry: “It’s a little scary. He’s a walking 24-hour all-talk sports
radio station, an IBM mainframe saturated with sports statistics and trivia, stores
of arcane knowledge growing like some diabolical virus in a cheesy sci-fi
movie. Wendy worries that there will be no room in that little brain for
anything else, and I try to assure her that sports knowledge is like a useless
vestigial organ—it can expand endlessly and accommodate vast stores of data without
cramping rest of the brain. There’s no real damage.”
When Dunow begins coaching six-year olds—hilariously—and
comparing himself to another cocky assertive father/Little League coach, memories
of his own father, a powerful and stubborn Polish Jewish immigrant, emerge. Dunow
writes with great intensity of his son, his father, other children, and
baseball. Of his father, he writes: “After years of terror and running halfway
across the world to save his life while everyone and everything he knew
perished, it had come to this: in the hands-and-knees search for jagged pieces
of glass on the kitchen floor, in the harried nagging to get us to clean our
rooms, was his need to banish the chaos of his past, the horror of what had
happened to his family—his mother, his father, his brothers and sisters—and his
world. His constant preoccupation with household order obscured a whole
constellation of feelings and thoughts kept separate from us. A piece of him
was missing, not available.” This anguish went through me like a switchblade
Each performance of this version of From the Horse’s Mouth In November 2019, to celebrate the Jerome Robbins Dance Division of The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center began and ended with charming, funny, multi-talented Arthur Aviles, gay Puerto Rican dancer/choreographer of BAAD! The Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance. As we waited in the wings to begin, I chatted away with Kevin Winkler and Kathleen Leary, as though I had nothing to do with what was about to happen. Then I noticed Arthur Aviles. He was wrapped in silence as he concentrated, focused, prepared himself. Whoops. I thought, I should be doing something to compose myself.
Stage lights came on and Arthur Aviles walked purposely to stage left and danced alone in the spotlight. His muscles contracted, released; he gestured, twirled, bent low, rose high, creating lines and life out of body, air, and breath. Suddenly, I was out of breath: he was done and it was my turn. I was to tell a story before I danced. Damn. I walked to the middle of the stage, picked up the mic, and sat on a chair set at a slight angle to the audience—a sold-out audience I couldn’t see because the light was on me.
Tina Croll and James Cunningham,
creators of this unusual format of story-telling and dance, have, for over
twenty years, successfully produced these From
the Horse’s Mouth programs that each year honored different people and
institutions in the dance world. Other than Arthur’s solo at the beginning, the
format was that, one by one, after each person told a story about whoever or
whatever was being celebrated, (for this section all were to dress in black
with bit of red somewhere—I had red toenails and fingernails) then performed a
solo stage left as the next person spoke, then that person got up to solo and
the last soloist went on to the “traveling section” dancing all along the stage
before and behind the next speaker towards the last dancer, whom they could
interact with. Interspersed in the evening were crossing-the-floor sections
where all changed to colorful costumes and dance in a line from one wing to the
other.
Henning Rübsam, Arthur Aviles, photo by Whitney Browne
This time, at The Theater at the 14th
Street Y, one by one, we were to tell personal stories to celebrate the Jerome
Robbins Dance Division, the place I worked for thirty years. I retired as
curator nearly four years ago. So what did I say in my two minutes on the chair?
Here it is.
The Dance Division was my job and my family. This included not just the talented, devoted, knowledgeable, and comedic staff, but also researchers, dancers, writers, critics, and choreographers. And donors. Not just donors of materials, whose generosity made us the world’s largest collection of dance, but financial donors, Jerome Robbins, the Jerome Robbins Foundation, Anne Bass, the Anne Bass Foundation, the Dance Committee, the Friends of the Dance Division, and among others, Helen Gebig.
In 2010, Helen Gebig, a regular at public programs, an unassuming, retired teacher in a well-worn winter coat, donated to the Dance Division a $100,000 from her personal savings.
In her interview, she talked about growing up in the foster care system in Flatbush Brooklyn. Extremely poor, the only place she went was the library. She saw her first ballet in the early 1950s, when a neighbor who couldn’t attend gave Helen her ticket for New York City Ballet. She went, not knowing what ballet was, and fell in love. Swan Lake with Maria Tallchief changed her life. Later, she went to the ballet as often as eight times a week. Of Balanchine she said it didn’t matter whether you were a dancer, choreographer, orchestra or audience, you were his family. Ballet and the Library were homes, she said, to a girl who didn’t have a home.
Helen Gebig’s gift reaffirmed to me the importance of the Library’s work and the Dance Division’s ability to provide a home for our community.
In 2014 in the Freddie Franklin Horse’s Mouth tribute, I danced. Since I am not a dancer, that performance was meant to be both my dancing debut and my final dancing performance. However, today, after seven months of surgeries and hospitalizations I’m back for another finale!! With stolen choreography from Djoniba’s African dance classes.
Grateful for the clapping, I stood and
handed the mic to the next speaker, Kevin Winkler, retired archivist at NYPL,
and author of “Big Deal: Bob Fosse and
Dance in the American Musical.” Once at stage left to do my solo while he
spoke, out of nowhere, my last two years flashed before me: my mother got sick then
died; in the next few months her sister and two more very close friends died
and our granddaughter spent nearly a month in ICU; then I got sick for seven
months. In my corner on the stage, a terror came over me, who did I think I was trying to dance African dance, without drums, in
front of an audience, still recovering from surgery? I asked my mom and dad
in the next world to help. And I called on two people, also dead, also
important to me, Beth Young and Gwen Jones Diallo, strong, terrific dancers
from African dance classes.
When I switched from my first step
into the second, without the drums to guide me, I lost the rhythm. This shook
me, but I carried on, stomping and jumping. Then, rat-a-tat-tat, I expelled a
trail of gas. I looked around. Did anyone suspect? Then another stream of wind.
Reaching high then bending to touch my palm to the ground, I farted and toot-tooted
with every step. First I was embarrassed and horrified, then a giggle brewed. The ancestors are speaking through me. I’m a
medium, channeling through my body the voices of my parents and Beth and Gwen.
Like a gas bubble, a memory
surfaced. After my mother’s funeral, my youngest sister told me about drug
problems in Wisconsin. She meant to say methamphetamine, but accidentally said
methane amphetamine. We cracked up. Methane
Amphetamine: Builds Gas Fast. We thought of our mother, our beautiful,
peace and social justice, poetry-loving mother, who could often be found, back
when she had a body, tooting along in a blaze of methane. When I told this the
next day to Gwen’s daughter, Chantay Jones, she irreverently sang to me: “You
are the wind beneath my wings.”
With my two minutes up, I got off
stage and headed for our dressing rooms. Grinning, I told this to my colleague
from the Dance Division, Arlene Yu, a champion Latin Ballroom dancer, already
in costume for the crossing-the-floor section, which happens sporadically in
the evening. Gorgeous, in her canary yellow sparkly dance outfit, a
professional dancer, she told me this often happened on stage and that I should
be grateful that at least they weren’t loud or stinky. Whew, thank you ancestors!!
Arlene Yu, Photo by Whitney Browne
Theara J. Ward, Photo by Whitney Browne
For anyone not doing the second and third dance sections, dancers, many from New York Theatre Ballet, replaced us. I only did the solo, so while I went to the back, the handsome, young, powerful, red-headed dancer Julian Donahue danced for me. (The others, all one more terrific than the next, included: Alexis Branagan, Lauren Hale Biniaris, Victoria Dombroski, Silken Kelly, Lindsey Miller, Abby Marchesseault, Kendra Dushac, Jessica Stucke, Dawn Gierling, Heather Panikkar, Monica Lima, Kristina Shaw, Katelyn Conrad.
For the rest of the night, I sat in
shadows in the wings, looking into the bright lights, and watched the dancing
and listened to stories. Wave after wave of pride and happiness flowed through
me. So many people found the Dance Division important to them and I’d had some
part in its running. Legendary dancers, writers and critics spoke and danced
including: Arthur Aviles; Diana Byer, Artistic Director of NY Theatre Ballet,
who spryly danced in point shoes, which she hadn’t been in for years, if not
decades; Yoshiko Chuma, post-modern conceptual dancer and old friend from Lower
East Side; Ze’Eva Cohen; Alberto Del Saz; Joan Finkelstein, Executive Director
of Harkness Foundation for Dance; Julia Foulkes; Deborah Jowitt, dancer and
author and dance critic for The Village Voice for over forty years, who talked
to me back stage of Derrick Damon, Dance Division’s 27-year-old page who was shot
and killed on February 16, 1992; Phyllis Lamhut; Dianne McIntyre; Elizabeth
McPherson; Rajika Puri, dancer choreographer of Indian dance trained
Bharatanatyam and Odissi; Henning Rübsam, hilarious story teller and Artistic
Director of SENSEDANCE; Margo Sappington; Preeti Vasudevan, choreographer and
dancer of classical Indian dance; Tony Waag; tap tapping his way across the
stage; Theara J. Ward, once baby ballerina from Dance Theatre of Harlem; Lynne
Weber, Executive Director of Dance Notation Bureau; William Whitener, acclaimed
dancer choreographer; and Kevin Winkler.
Henning Rübsam, Rajika Puri, Deborah Jowitt, Photo by Whitney Browne
And professional dancers from Dance Division’s staff danced: Phil Karg, Kathleen Leary, Cassie Mey, Alice Standin, Arlene Yu. All amazing. But standouts in the costume department Arlene Yu in ballroom dress and Alice Standin in Baroque outfit with many layers including old school lace up corset!! Unfortunately my picture of her has disappeared.
Cassie Mey, Jan Schmidt, Yoshiko Chuma, Deborah Jowitt, Selfie by Yoshiko
Deborah Jowitt,
Henning Rübsam
Yoshiko Chuma, Joan Finkelstein
Yoshiko Chuma, Dianne McIntyre
Arlene Yu, Yoshiko Chuma, Kathleen Leary
Then showing up on video: Alastair
Macaulay, Joseph Houseal, Tanisha Jones, Charles Reinhart, Judith Ren-Lay, and
Madga Saleh.
That first night ended with a
knockout. After Arthur Aviles’s sang a wild Nuyorican version of When you wish upon a star, an extra-special
star performed that first night only. Ann Hutchinson Guest. A Broadway musical
dancer, who recently celebrated her 101st birthday. Yes, you read that right—one
hundred and one. And could she dance! She swirled and twirled and side-stepped
and sang as she used the entire stage as her home. She brought down the house.
Ann Hutchinson Guest, Photo by Whitney Browne
By the last performance on Sunday we
were all relaxed and exuberant. When I took a moment to breathe before I soloed,
the drum rhythms rang in my ears, pulsed in my body. Spontaneously, the music
was in my muscles and spirit, I was connected, buoyant. I danced, exact,
rhythmic, on the mark. My body was a drum, as Djoniba often told us to be.
This run was over. Thank you to
everyone who performed in honor of the Jerome Robbins Dance Division, The New
York Public Library of the Performing Arts.
From the Horse’s Mouth celebrated
The Jerome Robins Dance Division, The New York Public Library for the
Performing Arts co-presented by The Theater at the 14th Street Y.
November 6-10, 2019, Conceived and Directed by Tina
Croll and James Cunningham
How can I possibly tell you what Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference last August was like? First, for those who’ve never heard of it, learning to bake bread it wasn’t. Bread Loaf is the oldest and most prestigious of writers’ conferences in USA, an iconic place that accepts writers by virtue of their applications and writing samples. For decades I’d heard people talk about it in the hushed tones of devout worshipers. Recently I saw a stat that only 17% of applicants are chosen. I was thrilled to be accepted.
First, old friends from college drove me to the mountains in Vermont, a fabulous ride through green hills and wondrous vistas, with good conversation.
Traveling with Jane Sloan and Dosier Hammond
Relaxing in my room
Once there, I found that my room happened to be at the Inn, which is the heart of the campus. I only had to go downstairs to eat, whereas many of the two hundred or so participants stayed at cottages scattered around the estate. At dinner that first day, I realized that, for each of three meals a day, I’d be finding a seat at some table of six or eight or twelve strangers. A nightmare for solitary introverted writers. However, it turned out, that writers have a gift for telling stories and even asking others about themselves.
Here I am at breakfast, without lipstick, with Richie Hofmann, poet, Taymour Soomro, his story was in New Yorker in January, and Jonathan Parks-Ramage, who was in my workshop.
After breakfast on day one of the conference I went to the daily 9am lecture. These astonishing hour-long talks were full of insights into the process and craft of writing as seen is fiction, poetry and non-fiction. The excerpts chosen by readers and lectures were so powerful and emotional I often found myself in tears. I had a craft class with Christopher Castellani who talked about minimalism vs maximilism, through stories on AIDS crises, like Susan Sontag’s The Way We Live Now, from 1986. So painful to hear, I was crying again. Ravi Howard gave a craft class on musicality and time frames in fiction. In an inadvertent comic illustration of his thesis on time, he timed us in a three-minute exercise, first by eyeing his watch, then by staring up at the large, no-where-near-the correct-time clock on the wall for its thirty second hand ticking by.
The rock star of poetry, Jericho Brown, gave voice to a moving powerful sense of Black life, which including singing, Lift Every Voice and Sing. Pulitzer Prize winning poet Yusef Komunyakaa gave a reading that rightfully garnered a standing ovation.
Jericho Brown picture taken from Germantown Academy
Yusef Komunyakaa
Each day was filled with the chance to talk to agents, publishers and well-known writers, as well as my fellow participants, who often had published books. I had conversations, short and long, with Emily Nemens, new editor of The Paris Review; Kevin Young, poet who is also the new Director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and Poetry Editor of the New Yorker; and Matthew Lansburg, who won the 2017 Iowa Short Fiction Award; Henry Dunow of Dunow, Carlson & Lerner Literary Agency; and Malaga Baldi of Malaga Baldi Literary Agency.
For the workshop led by Maud Casey, ten of us sent in our work before the conference so we’d already read each other’s short stories. In the five meetings, we critiqued two stories each, proceeding alphabetically, so mine was dead last on the last day of the conference. The stories were all well-written and charged with emotions. The criticisms were on the money, sensitive and getting to the heart of the piece. Maud Casey created an atmosphere with her own clear and insightful look into each of our stories that allowed the group to find the most useful and creative criticisms. Recently I read Maud Casey’s most recent novel The Man Who Walked Away. This meditative work on searching for those feelings and situations at the center of one’s psyche, takes place in a very concrete asylum in 19th century France. The bicycle-riding doctor wants to help a young man who can’t stop walking in a fugue state. Maud Casey teaches in the MFA Program at the University of Maryland. She also delivered a powerful lecture Hello, Darkness,My Old Friend: The Sound of Silence in Fiction. Not only did her words keep resounding in my head, but they kept me humming. And I’d hear others singing Simon and Garfunkle’s words in empty halls and bathroom stalls.
When I needed a respite, I could walk along the road behind the Barn through the woods for exercise and solitary joy. And I often needed a break. I can’t seem to find words to express the excitement of being picked up from my home in Lower East Side of Manhattan and plunked down in the mountains with 250 writers. There, in the midst of the wonders of nature, I was swirled and twirled, bumped, twisted, and juked, to a galaxy of wild and emotive language, vibrant ideas, crazy humor, and huge personalities. Non-stop for ten days! I didn’t think I’d make it through, but when it was time to leave, I found myself saying, yes, I want to return.
With its crammed daily schedule of lectures, craft classes, workshops, panels, and readings, the conference turned out to be a mashup of camping in small cottages with 250 strangers and of a semester of grad school jammed into ten days. But no exams. An insane thing to do, but a miracle.
If you’re a friend of John Iversen or if you want to learn more about him, check
out the video of the Memorial for John Iversen (1949 – 2018). The event was
held at the South Berkeley Senior Center, May 5, 2019 in Berkeley, California,
was hosted by Dosier Hammond, and recorded by Todd Darling. https://youtu.be/2tVYG4B7L7c
John and I were friends from the late sixties till his death. One night in
the early seventies, John Iversen and I sat up all night near the front door of
our apartment that we shared with four of five other students in Madison,
Wisconsin. His old car had been firebombed, supposedly by forces against his
involvement with the United Farmworkers. So we kept watch for anyone coming to
firebomb our apartment. Nothing happened and what would we have done if something had happened? But we had a good time, laughing, telling stories, taking turns peeking out from behind curtains covering the door’s window. Being an activist
with John Iversen was serious, but often full of fun—from his work with the
Black Panther Breakfast program in Chicago, to Wounded Knee in 1973, to ACT UP
East Bay, to his protesting Berkeley mayor Shirley Dean, by dressing as Shirley
Mean in drag in wig and frumpy dress at her open events. As he said, “If you
aren’t trying to make a better world, you’re wasting your life.”
As you can see from the list of speakers John Iversen had a startling
history of varied interests, from activism and human rights, to singing rock
and roll then tango, to his work with Native Americans, to teaching yoga. And
he pursued each with enormous energy and conviction that he was able to
transfer to the rest of us—all while living with AIDS for thirty some years. He
was never embarrassed as we might have been at his sometimes silly antics. He
was always just himself, wholly authentic.
Some highlights you might want to check out if you don’t have the hour to
watch the whole program:
0:10 Amar Khalsa on piano
7:01 Wayne Haught and friends play “Wild Horses”
by Rolling Stones. Years before he died, John had asked him to play this at his
memorial.
15:33 Michael Berkowitz reads the Proclamation from Barbara Lee, local
congress person, which was read into US House of Representatives congressional
record to honor John Iversen.
21:50 Ezra Goldstein, telling hilarious John Iversen stories from University
of Chicago, noting that John could make him feel both proud and embarrassed.
How John encouraged actions, even stupid actions, though they might be right.
John made us “co-conspirators in the Pride and Embarrassment Cabal.”
25:00 Beth Somers reads her haikus of John’s work on human rights and his
award as Social Worker of the Year in Boston.
26:39 Marie Coburn, singer with John in Rhythm and Sleaze Review, talks
about their Sutro Baths gig.
31:00 Mark Weider reads a poem for John
36:10 David Modersbach, friend from getting arrested for Needle Exchange and
John’s Argentinean Tango singing days
42:00 Tony Gonzalez Director of American Indian Movement (A.I.M.) West in
San Francisco spoke of John’s work for the release of Leonard Peltier. He sang
in Native language “Have Pity on Me, I Want My People to Live.” Jessie Riddle
and Bruce Gali say a few words.
50:00 Wounded Knee performed a ceremony to signify John’s journey to his
ancestors. He requested not be recorded.
51:16 Marvin Granlund reads one of his poems in honor of John, clocking in
at less than a minute, including introductory remarks!!
52:11 Notes. From Ellen Shaffer read by Dosier Hammond, Ann Magnuson read by
Jane Sloan, and Gar Mcvey-Russell read by Francie Sloan
1:04:10 D.J. Lebowitz plays piano versions of John’s songs.
MORE JOHN IVERSEN
John Iversen Singer on YouTube
https://m.youtube.com/channel/UCp4JRwo845TI9XxOWGEOxZA
Including the music videos “Chastity Center” by Sian Murray, the original
and the revision.
“Party on the Streets of New York,” a music video, 1984, with John Iversen
and The Stickers. Camera by Dean Snider and John Sloan. Editing by Todd
Darling/On Time Offline. Design by Jane Sloan. a memory piece about John
Iversen by Jane Sloan.
“Portrait of an Activist” is a memory piece about John Iversen created by
Jane Sloan. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgSpojwosRU
Interview with John Iversen by Jan Schmidt published in Downtown Magazine
10/18/1995, “Playing the Cards You’re Dealt.” http://contactprod.com/janschmidt/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/JohnIversenDowntown10.18.95.pdf
Check out and subscribe to In Commemoration of John
Iversen on Facebook.
Went to see Hilma af Klint exhibit at the Guggenheim this week. Went with Arthur Rivers and visiting British friends, Sian Murray, Fliss and Helen. Walking past these paintings lining the walkway from first to fifth floor of the Guggenheim, I was struck by their warmth and sense of serenity. Passing by, I enjoyed their colors, their seeming calmness and symmetry, their scale, from small drawings to enormous canvases. But when we stopped to look, suddenly, while remaining serene and calming, they exploded into vital, alive, shimmering emotional experiences. The symmetry was not symmetry at all, but unusual breaks within that, while maintaining the equilibrium, upset its conformity and delivered a feeling ones gets looking at the creativity in nature. And it did this over and over as we stopped. Loved it!!
Also we saw the Robert Mapplethorpe exhibit, which flowed from his portraits, his flowers, and his more controversial sexual images in a stunning sequence of forms and shapes, electrified by his framing and the way he uses light and shadow. However, we were a bit disappointed by its small size, an adjective not usually equated with Mapplethorpe. Sill wonderful to see.
