The Rake Magazine

Month: February 2008

  • Letters from Eurydice III

    First dress rehearsal:

    As I mentioned earlier, TTT makes camp in all manner of places not designed for theatrical performance and uses whatever light is present in the room. Occasionally we perform someplace that has natural light from windows, but it’s mostly artificial lighting and mostly fluorescent. That means that, unlike sitting in a darkened theatre, our audiences see Eurydice in full light. They can see the actors of course, but they can also see each other, which is sometimes unnerving. But more importantly, we the actors can see the audience. This often requires a radical adjustment for actors used to performing in the comforting, cloak of darkness — did for me at least. With the audience sitting so close and in full view, it’s practically impossible to not include them as participating members of the experience. This always works well with Shakespeare, where soliloquies and asides are meant to be shared directly with an audience. But as we rehearsed Eurydice, we found the solution to a problem often lay in finding a way to open the scene to the audience. (For more perspective on this subject read about my moment of TTT epiphany as described by American Theatre Magazine.)

    Eurydice had two dress rehearsals, and the first one was especially unnerving, at least for me. Remember that when we’re rehearsing there is no audience except for Larissa, our director, and any actors who aren’t in the scene, who perhaps decide to sit and watch instead of going to the bathroom or finding a quiet nook to run their lines. So, up until dress rehearsals, the actors are imagining the audience: speaking to and looking at empty chairs.

    For our first dress rehearsal, along with Larissa we had two other audience members: Michelle Hensley, the TTT artistic director, and Peter Rothstein, the brilliant artistic director of Theatre Latté Da and director of TTT’s upcoming spring production of Once On This Island. Larissa, Peter, and Michelle settle themselves among the seats, giving the actors at least three living breathing faces to react with. Except that Larissa, Peter and Michelle aren’t actually there as audience members, they’re on hand to help Larissa get some perspective on the play- they’re there as consultants. Sympathetic, encouraging consultants to be sure, but for an actor, anytime somebody sits down to watch you act with a pen and legal pad on their lap they are no longer your friend. They are a critic.

    In Eurydice my first appearance is a monologue (I don’t want to give away any more of the play than I have to so I won’t say what the monologue is about). I have worked with Peter Rothstein once in several new script workshops and have found him a wonderful director: affable, encouraging, intuitive and imaginative. Moreover, he has never seen any of the previous rehearsals for Eurydice. So for my first connection with the I audience, I choose Peter. I look at him in the eye, begin to speak, and before I’m halfway through the sentence, his head is down and he is writing furiously on his pad. I keep going, but my inner actor, the little dickie bird who sits on my shoulder any time I’m performing, immediately goes into a paranoid panic: what’s he writing down, and why is he writing so fast, and is it about me? Why isn’t he paying attention? It’s because I’m terrible! He hates me! And he’s writing down that he hates me and why he hates me! Mayday! Mayday! I turn away from Peter and look at Michelle, and omigod she’s writing too! Sheets and sheets about how I totally suck! Where’s Larissa? Oh, there she is, journaling away eight to the bar on the pluperfect putrescence of my so-called performance. I haven’t spoken five sentences and I know, I know, I’m a complete failure.

    What were Peter, Michelle and Larissa writing? I don’t really know. It may be that they were commenting about how awful I was. But just as likely they were making notes about sight lines, blocking or how much they were enjoying what they were seeing. This kind of note-taking happens in practically every dress rehearsal of every play ever produced. The difference is that in most theatres, the note-takers are sitting in the dark. The actors can’t see them scribbling madly and, in those cases, ignorance is our friend. At the end of the first dress rehearsal, Peter and Michelle smile at us (me) encouragingly, but I know they hated it (me). Then they dash off. They will call Larissa that evening to offer their thoughts and the first thing they will say to her is Steve Hendrickson has got to go.

    Next: Second dress rehearsal.

  • Happy President's Day

    LECTURE
    Jen Bekman

    American Photo‘s 2007 Innovator of the Year and famed New
    York gallery owner Jen Bekman packs up some photos and her affable
    lecturing style to pay the Minnesota Center for Photography a
    visit. The acclaimed artist, who makes frequent public appearances at
    portfolio reviews and seminars, charmingly refers to herself in the
    third person so as not to seem swell-headed when asked to rattle off
    her accomplishments. But, really, there’s quite a bit to be proud of:
    her Jen Bekman gallery sheds light on budding artists and affords them
    the inventive group shows they deserve. Hey, Hot Shot!, Bekman’s
    quarterly photography competition, follows suit, calling for a handful
    of talented young shutterbugs to line the walls. In the online realm,
    her Personism blog covers a healthy mix of fabulous design and
    noteworthy current events; and the Bekman-founded 20×200 site offers
    hard-to-find prints on the cheap. Those feats alone should fuel a
    couple questions. —Haily Joy Gostas

    7 p.m., Minnesota Center for Photography, 165 13th Ave. NE, Minneapolis, 612-824-5500.

    ART
    Cold Blooded, Warm Hearted

    First Amendment Arts, the Northeast Minneapolis basement space
    devoted to eye-popping prints and guerilla graphic design, has just the
    remedy for that notorious Hallmark holiday (hint: for many of us, it
    came and went with chocolate wrappers in its wake) with Cold Blooded, Warm Hearted. This
    group exhibition of prints brings together five established, eclectic
    artists (Christa Dalien, Bill Fick, Mark Hosford, Michael Krueger, and
    Jenny Schmid, each from a different place around the country) with some
    key concepts in common-past and present politics, personal and physical
    landscape, and cultural critique among them. Oh, a great sense of humor
    to boot, hence the title: one part cold-blooded irony; one part
    warm-hearted embrace of their bold subject matter; all parts
    fascinating. —Haily Joy Gostas

    1-5 p.m., First Amendment Arts, 1101 Stinson Blvd., Basement Rooms A & B, Minneapolis, 612-379-4151.

    THEATER & PERFORMANCE
    Joseph Scrimshaw’s Adventures In Mating,

    Taking to the Bryant-Lake Bowl stage tonight (and running every Monday until someone makes ‘em stop), Adventures In Mating
    sees its triumphant return to the Twin Cities with new scenes, new
    choices, and a new leading lady (that’d be Mo Perry, most recently seen
    in the Minneapolis Theater Garage’s production of Looking For Normal). Of
    course, Joseph Scrimshaw’s now-international hit wouldn’t entail the
    same madcap rom-com hijinks without plenty of audience interaction, so
    feel free to abuse your role as the swift hand of destiny in this
    couple’s hit-or-miss first date. Red or white wine? Soup or salad? Kiss
    or slap? It’ll rarely be the same show twice-kind of like Choose Your Own Adventure, but for the blackest of hearts. —Haily Joy Gostas

    8 p.m., Bryant-Lake Bowl, 810 W. Lake St., Minneapolis; 612-825-8949; $12.

    Also tonight:

    The Randy Weston African Rhythms Trio will perform at the Dakota. And Michael Oren, author of Power, Faith, and Fantasy, will discuss his book at Lyndale Congregational United Church of Christ (7:30 p.m.)

  • Day Off/On

    Today is one of those odd holidays. Some people have the day off, others must work. Restaurants are clearly open, but school is closed. There’s no real celebration or gift-giving or feast involved, but because it’s an election year, maybe we should spend some time thinking about President’s Day.

    Or maybe we should buy a German sausage rug.

    Or we could check out what Andrea Strong has to say about the New York food scene on her new blog.

    We’d be remiss if we didn’t take a moment to explore our feelings about cilantro.

    It’s important to weigh in on dark vs. milk, no?

    Then we’ll have to make lunch for the crazies.

    Plan your Spring Break.

    Get whisk wise.

    And finally, really get into the nitty gritty of presidentialism.

    Maybe you can top the day off by attempting Martha Washington’s cake recipe from Mount Vernon.

     

  • No More 2 a.m. Runs for Calamata Olives and Camembert

    I hear other teenagers hang out on street corners and in pool halls. My son and his friends? Throughout all four years of high school, at every time of the day and night, they could be found clustered in the same place: the St. Louis Park Byerly’s.

    Until now.

    Tonight (February 18) at midnight, all Byerly’s and Lunds stores will close their doors, not to re-open until 6 a.m. tomorrow. And this is the way it will be from here on in. It’s the end of an era: Byerly’s has operated 24 hours a day since 1971 and Lunds since the early ’90s. My son and his crew — many of them Orthodox Jews who rely on the kosher deli for a late-night, after-party nosh — are devastated.

    You may be, too, the next time you get a craving for baguette, fig spread, and cave-aged cheese after the jazz clubs close. Because from now on, Cub, Rainbow, and Perkins will be your only options.

    "This is mostly an effort to focus our resources on those hours when most of our customers are in the stores," said Aaron Sorenson, a spokesperson for Byerly’s and Lunds. "By closing overnight, we can take some of our staff and move them to peak hours. We expect aisles will be cleaner during the day and there will be more people there to increase levels of service."

    When pressed, however, Sorenson admitted there was another reason for the change in hours: A rash of recent late-night robberies have made store management fear for the security of its staff members.

    "We realized our overnight team members were vulnerable," Sorenson said. "There was only a skeleton crew and people knew it. So they were more likely to take advantage and put our people — and our customers — at risk." (Note: Sorenson asked me to be careful with this information, which is why I waited until the new hours went into effect to post — so as not to publicize the problem and invite more walk-in thefts.)

    From now on, Byerly’s and Lunds will operate more like other high-end grocery stores, locking their doors to stock and clean at night, then opening with sparkling, full shelves the following day.

    As for my son and his friends, I do worry. . . .Frankly, the deli and luncheon counter WAS a nice place for them to congregate: Wholesome, close to home, and full of exactly the sort of quality food I advise them to eat. Now, when I want to find my 17-year-old, I’ll have to start calling people’s houses instead of simply driving over to Byerly’s. Next thing I know, he and the boys will be reduced hanging out at Walgreen’s. . . .or Holiday.

    And who, I ask, will bring them kosher club wraps and cream sodas there?

  • Ancient Aborigines and $6 Australian Wine

    Here it is, practically the eve of the Oscars, and I’ve yet to see two of the five movies nominated for best picture. I didn’t care for No Country; I liked but did not absolutely love Juno. So far, my money’s on There Will Be Blood, which was not only a magnificent film but the richest evocation of loneliness and megalomania I’ve watched since Citizen Kane.

    Saturday night, we decided to see Michael Clayton. My husband, myself, and about 200 other middle-aged, middle-income, mid-level professionals. John and I got to the theater in plenty of time but there was a line, literally, around the block. Round white faces and L.L. Bean-clad bodies for as far as the eye could see. Damn, it’s humbling to be confronted with your own incredibly predictable, privileged, demographically determined life. . . .

    By the time we’d stood waiting for ten minutes and hemmed and hawed and finally departed because we didn’t want to be stuck inside some crowded auditorium with all those other lemmings, it was too late to catch any other show. So we dashed to Hollywood Video and picked up a film sure to make us different from all of THEM: A Cannes winner from last year called Ten Canoes.

    Then we stopped at Hennepin-Lake Liquors for a bottle of wine.

    Now let me remind you that Henn-Lake DOES NOT TAKE CREDIT CARDS. I do this, of course, because we didn’t remember ourselves, and John and I ended up digging through pockets and purse to come up with the price of an Australian Pinot Noir from Lindemans Wine that was bottled — get this — in 2007.

    This made the pinot roughly the same age as the orange juice in our refrigerator. And it cost only a tad more at $5.95. But the Lindemans came highly recommended by the girl behind the counter, who was at least 21 years and 2 months old. Also, luckily, we had just enough pennies and dimes between us to take it home — which we did, along with our DVD.

    It turned out to be a very odd but charming little film. The first full-length feature ever made in native aboriginal language, Ten Canoes is more fable than drama. It begins with a voiceover narrator, then reverts to a tribe in which an elder is telling a story to his younger brother, then reverts a second time to an ancient camp in which men’s instinctual jealousies cause a series of dire things.

    This is what I call a "recessive" narrative — one that goes back in time then flashes back yet again, so like concentric ripples in a pond, you can never quite remember where you started. It is, in fact, a structure I advise my undergraduate writing students to avoid. It’s nearly always confusing. (Last year’s Sweetland suffered from the same problem.) I can think of only two films that used this paradigm well: Sophie’s Choice, in which the adult Stingo recalls his young adult years in Brooklyn then yields to Sophie’s memories of the war; and The Princess Bride, which broke all the rules anyway and still managed to do everything well.

    Ten Canoes is not quite so successful. At least one of the stories — the "middle" one, if you’re looking at them chronologically — eventually fizzles out and gets lost. But the cast is extraordinary, actors who do as much with facial expression as they do with words. And it was wonderful simply to be some place else for 90 minutes: In this case, the swampy northern tip of Australia camped by the side of a river with men (mostly) who think nothing of walking around with only a braided string tied around their waists and routinely have three wives at a time.

    In the end, the central story — the one that takes place in ancient days — is tight and satisfying, its life lessons relevant even today. And it is comforting to me, somehow, to know that men take the same scatalogical glee in their own body emissions and sexual habits whether they’re carrying cell phones or spears. (See the extended flatulence scene, which is oh, so effective, by the way, when done nude.)

    And about that wine, you’re wondering?

    It was. . . .fine. Strawberry, cherry, and raspberry, like liquid candy with a tiny bit of oak (a very tiny bit) and a hefty kick (13.5% alcohol). This is the Tom Collins of wine — appealing, apparently, to those drinkers who are stranded in the decade or two between Juicy Juice and Chatauneuf-de-Pape. Even for we grown-ups, sitting curled up in a big chair and watching a magic realism tale about dignified warriors who giggle as they fart, it was pretty damn good. Especially for six dollars and change.

  • Fugaise: Have You Forgotten?

    Tons of successful restaurants are hidden in obscure buildings or out-of-the-way places: duplex, cafe Levain, 112 eatery. In these cases, the humble, back-door, sidestreet locations seem only to make them hotter. . . .more desirable. So I can never figure out what, exactly, is going on with Fugaise.

    The two-and-a-half year old enterprise of wunderkind Don Saunders (formerly of La Belle Vie and A Rebours), Fugaise consistently gets excellent reviews. Saunders serves a classy short menu of contemporary French cuisine with a beautifully-tailored wine list to match. And while his restaurant is a cool, windowless cave without a real storefront presence — sandwiched between Pizza Nea and a high-end baby store called Pacifier — it’s located on Hennepin Avenue North, just to the east of Surdyk’s. Not bad in terms of demographics: a great many well-heeled, wine-drinking people move through here.

    Yet, despite a nearly pathological precision in the kitchen, and heaps of raw talent, Saunders and his Fugaise have never quite hit the big time.

    This is the restaurant everyone means to visit, but they don’t. On the Friday night I was there, my friend and I occupied one of four full tables at 7 p.m. And I have to admit, I was offended on Saunders behalf: at two of the other tables sat people in scruffy jeans and weekend sweatshirts. I’m all for casual dress. But c’mon people: This is a really nice place and it deserves better than your Green Bay Packers gear.

    We drank a bottle of the Bouchard Pere & Fils Bourgogne Rouge, a light, cherry Burgundy made entirely of pinot noir. Then we started with a butternut squash soup, which was nutmeg-laced and creamy, scattered with pecorino and drizzled with pumpkinseed oil. It was more delicate than most pumpkin and squash soups, which was nice, and a little sweet for my taste. But my friend loved it, and I am generally less inclined toward sweet than salty.

    The second course, however, was perfect all the way around: Foie gras with carmelized apple and parsnip couscous on a bed of braised Swiss chard. The dish was finished with a Moroccan vinaigrette and full of those marketplace flavors such as pepper, mace, and allspice. The serving of chard was hefty, enough to get a forkful, and like the couscous, it was ideally cooked. Soft leaves under firm grains. The foie gras, from Hudson Valley, was tender and crustily seared.

    With food this diligent in its marriage of color, nutrients, and taste, I find it’s easy to feel satisfied with only a small amount. This is the paradigm on which Fugaise operates: carefully prepared medium-sized meals with a basket of crusty, wholesome bread on the side.

    Which brings me full circle.

    Now, I don’t want to set off alarms. Other critics once sounded a "death watch," saying Fugaise was so slow it had to be on the way out. Not so. It turns out Saunders has a cadre of dedicated fans who keep the restaurant alive by booking it for private parties. He’s stopped serving lunch because, he says, it simply wasn’t worth it, given the overhead. In other words, Fugaise is getting by. But the dining public’s tepid response does, frankly, have me perplexed.

    It is true that the decor is not for everyone: While other, more popular neo-French bistros go for the cozy, candlelit look, Fugaise is stark and silvery, with slashes of colorful modern art hanging on the walls. The name, too, is odd. People say it’s slang for a lot of things; Saunders claims it stems from a childhood nickname. Whatever the case, it’s not as approachable as, say, The Beautiful Life (La Belle Vie) or simply, Vincent.

    Whatever the reason, people haven’t flocked to Fugaise the way one might expect. And time may be running out (remember, you heard it here). No, the restaurant is not closing for lack of business. But it may be closing because its chef — 31 years old and a brand-new dad — says he’s thinking about switching careers. After more than ten years of cooking, Saunders is going back to school to pursue his education degree.

    The man wants to be a high school social studies teacher, in part so he can be home in the evening for Henry John, his now two-month-old son.

    "Having a baby is awesome," Saunders says with a grin. "It’s definitely changed my life. It’s crazy how much Henry changes on a day-to-day basis. If I have a long day at Fugaise and go home, I feel like I’ve been gone a week."

    Barring a fire in the kitchen, Saunders says he’ll probably stay open for the next two years while he earns his degree. After that, if the restaurant is doing well, he’ll stay on as owner and weekend chef. If not, no hard feelings, he’ll close the doors.

    So in a way, the decision is up to you.

  • The Wasteland

    This month marks the third anniversary of Yo Ivanhoe, and considering the similarly wasted years I spent shoveling words in a similar hole (Open All Night) at City Pages, I’m not much in the mood to celebrate five years of futility.

    When I first started doing this nonsense I was nothing but a clueless conscript to an online enterprise that meant absolutely nothing to me. Blogging? Seriously, what the fuck?

    I still don’t understand it, but I’ll be damned if I haven’t blogged. And I’ve discovered that in five years a guy can shovel a serious shitload of words in a mighty big hole that just seems to get deeper and darker all the time.

    Originally I decided to just approach this monkey business as an illogical extension of my usual pointless routines; every night for the last fifteen years I have sat down at the bottom of the day –usually in the wee hours– and written at least 300 words in a series of uniform, lined black books that now fill an entire small bookcase next to my desk. Most of those words are utter nonsense, and a small fraction of that nonsense has found its way here.

    I never wanted the black books to resemble a diary, but I did want to be able to look back at those words and find enough recognizable clues –however small– that I would be able to remember the exact day and circumstances that I wrote them. Little things like snippets of conversation I might have overheard or engaged in that day, a quote from something I’d read, or details from someplace I’d stumbled into while traveling would work their way into each entry, usually as little more than launching points for something entirely else, but from these fragments –and this never ceases to astonish me– I can now piece together days and weeks and months of my life, often with such clarity that the black books really have come to function as diaries of a sort.

    At some point I decided that this project (and at some point I did start to think of it as a project –I haven’t missed a single night since I violated that first page all those years ago) was a personal version of The Thousand and One Nights, with me playing the roles of both Scheherazade and King Dunyazad. I really believed those words and stories and stretches of impenetrable automatic writing were keeping me alive. Night after night they provided a bridge to another day, and somewhat to my surprise the days and nights did keep coming, and the words kept coming right along with them.

    This part of that project has eaten up a lot of my time and energy, and there have been times when I’ve tried to wean myself, but I always seem to creep back. I’m not sure why, to be honest with you (and to be honest with you, I’ve seldom been honest with you, just as I’ve steadfastly refused to believe in your existence).

    I guess, though, that there’s some sort of challenge to it. In the earliest days, and for a long time, actually, I would just move the words from the black books directly into cyberspace. As time went on, though, I started spending a bit more time fiddling with them, and trying to become a better writer. On many occasions over the last couple years by the time I finished fiddling and hit ‘post,’ the words that appeared here barely resembled the words I had originally written in one of the black books. I don’t know that they were truly improved, but the effort, and the time spent looking at them and thinking about them and moving them around felt like some sort of progress.

    It still, though, doesn’t feel like real writing to me, and for the most part it still feels like a waste of time. But if I’ve learned one thing about myself over the last five years, it is that I am a Titan of wasted time –mine, and yours.

    This is my life, more or less. This is who I am. This is what I do, and all I know how to do. I read books, look at photographs, listen to music, talk to my dog, ramble with my dog, literally stop breathing whenever I try to sleep, and get the hell out of town every chance I get.

    I am trying to write a story about a bullfrog who falls in love with a cow, and a man who has his cat turned into a woman, and a goat who smokes a pipe, wears spectacles, and speaks the plain, hard truth. Old, old stories, every last one of them, yet still, I think, worth telling.

    I worry, though, that I’m not long for this world. But who doesn’t?

    I’ll leave you with some selections from the Yo Ivanhoe Commonplace Book, another in-progress and almost certainly never-to-be completed project of Open All Night, Inc.:

    A Very Troubled Human Being

    What if an
    individual is perceiving a daydream and a series of external sensory inputs at
    precisely the same time, and has lost the capacity to distinguish one from the
    other? What happens to his perceptual world? Clearly he will be peopling his
    universe of awareness with elements that are altogether private, presences
    generated within which for him will be a genuine part of the real world; these
    are what he sees, or hears, or is otherwise sensing. And should he then be
    unable to differentiate these from his everyday perceptions, then indeed he may
    move into a haunted, nightmarish world, and be a very troubled human being.

    —Joseph D. Noshpitz,
    “Reality Testing: A Neuropsychological Fantasy,” in     Comprehensive
    Psychology

     

    Mr T: A Flower Unfolding

    No more small-time stuff for Mr. T. No more bit parts, no more local
    talent jive….I call the shots. I am in a position to pick and choose. More
    movies, more TV commercials, talk shows, speaking engagements, banquets,
    receptions in my honor, autograph sessions, the red carpet treatment everywhere
    I go.

    In the words of my pastor, Henry Hardy, Mr. T, you are a shining star.
    The heavens are warmed by your presence. You are a flower unfolding its petals.
    The universe is alive with your fragrance. You are a voice caressing the dawn.
    The silent spaces are filled with your joyous hope. This is your day! Live it
    in love because you are an expression of the life of God.

    —Mr.
    T,     Mr. T: The Man With The Gold. An Autobiography.
    St. Martin’s Press, 1984

     

    Talk Radio Explained

    I’ve been poking through this great book, African All Stars: The Pop
    Music of a Continent     (Chris Stapleton and Chris May) for several days, and
    last night I stumbled across the Yoruba word for radio, As’oromagb’esi,
    which is literally translated “One who speaks without expecting a
    reply.”

    Also, here’s a terrific quote from Ko Nimo, a Ghanaian musician: “The
    old people are my friends. I think of them as libraries on fire. They are
    passing away….as a musician you must be versed in the history of your
    people.”

     

    The Bush Bible

    …And you
    shall conquer every fortified city, and every choice city, and you shall fell
    every good tree, and stop up all springs of water, and ruin every good piece of
    land….

    —Second
    Kings, 3.19

     

    Elvis In Prophecy

    For Memphis shall become a
    waste, a ruin, without inhabitant.

    —Jeremiah,
    46.19

     

     

    The Gospel According to Red
    Sovine

    …For the spirit of the living creatures was in the wheels.

    —Ezekiel
    1.20

     

    Of the Frying Pan As An Instrument of Torture

    Mention is made of the frying pan in the Second Book of the Maccabees (Ch. VII) and in very many collections of the Acts of the Blessed Martyrs, as of St. Eleutherius the Bishop, Saints Fausta and Justina, virgins and martyrs.

    The
    frying pan –if we may trust the the natural meaning of the word and
    the afore-named histories of the Blessed Martyrs– was a wide open dish
    or plate, which (as the Acts of the Martyrs bear witness) was
    filled with oil, pitch, resin, or sulphur, and then set over a fire;
    and when it began to boil and bubble, then were Christians of either
    sex thrown into it, such as had persisted steadfastly and boldly in the
    profession of Christ’s faith, to the end they might be roasted and
    fried like fishes cast into boiling oil.

    –Rev. Antonio Gallonio, Tortures and Torments of the Christian Martyrs

     

    Madame Curie Dreams of Radium

    Whenever
    Pierre and Marie, alone in their poor place, left their apparatus for a moment
    and quietly let their tongues run on, their talk about their
    beloved radium passed from the transcendent to the childish.

    I wonder what it will be
    like, what it will look like    , Marie said one day with the feverish curiosity of
    a child who has been promised a toy. Pierre, what form do you imagine it will take?

    I don’t know, the physicist answered
    gently.

    To which Marie replied, I should like it to have a
    very beautiful color….

    –Eve
    Curie, from     Madame Curie

     

     

    Amish Recruitment Drive: Serious Replies Only

    Wanted: Able-bodied
    men and women to join ongoing, harshly-restrictive experiment in rural
    living. Requirements: severe dress code, piety, hard work, frugality,
    and facial hair for the gentlemen (with the understanding, of course,
    that one can’t get blood from a stone). Bee-keeping skills a plus.
    Absolutely no modern monkey business.

    –Classified advertisement, Grit. January 5, 1988

     

    Socrates: The Man Could Hold His Liquor

    And we are
    told that Socrates, though indifferent to wine, could, on occasion, drink more
    than anybody else, without ever becoming intoxicated.

    –Bertrand
    Russell, A History of Western Philosophy

     

     

    Adventures in Etymology

    How about this definition (from Cooper’s Thesaurus Linguae Romanae and Britannicae) for ‘fanatic,’ by way of the Latin fanaticus:
    ‘Ravished by a propheticall sprite’? And how can you not like a word like absquatulate,
    and wonder not just at its meaning but also it’s origins? (To make off,
    away, skedaddle     –one marvel to define another, and, as for origin, the
    experts throw up their arms). The etymology of abstruse couldn’t
    be more perfect: from the Latin abstrudere, to push away. And here is
    the lovely South African name for an antelope: klipspringer (cliff
    springer). Finally, I give you the Greek origins for testicles,
    translated literally as ‘bystanders.’

     

    Curiosities of Science

    …in the
    year 1639, a woman was delivered of two eggs at Sundby, one of which was sent
    to Olaus Worm the famous naturalist, with ‘attestation signed by
    Ericus Westergard, Rotalph Rakestad and Thor Venes, coadjutors of the pastor in
    the parish of Niaess.’

    They
    certified, that upon ‘the 20th of May in that year, by the command of the
    Lord President in Remerige, the lord Paulus Tranius pastor in Niaess, we went
    to receive an account of the monstrous birth in Sundby by Anna, the daughter of
    Amundus and wife of Gudbrandas Erlandsonius. Upon the 7th day of April she
    began to grow ill and her neighbors came to her assistance. She brought forth
    an egg like that of a hen which was broken by the women present. They found
    that in it the yolk and white answered directly to the common egg. Upon the
    18th of April, about noon, she was delivered of another egg, which in figure
    was nothing different than the former. The mother reported this to us and the
    woman with her confirmed the truth of it.’

    Dr. Olaus
    Worn, the ornament of the University, preserved the egg in his study to be seen
    of as many as please.

    This story is
    reminiscent of the case of Mary Tofts, ‘the rabbit-breeding woman,’ who deceived some of the
    leading physicians in the time of George II by her assertion that she had given
    birth to a number of living rabbits.

    —C.J.S.
    Thompson,     The Mystery and Lore of Monsters. 1930

     

    The Perils of Home Schooling

    We are a
    community theater whose players are comprised of home-schooled Southwest area
    children between the ages of five and eighteen, devoted to enriching the lives
    of our children and our neighborhoods through challenging and creative explorations of stories, ideas, and identities –in short, the very best of
    the theater arts. Our first offering of the 2003 season will be a performance
    of Harold Pinter’s The
    Homecoming    , with 11-year-old Tim Rickard in the role of Max, the aging patriarch
    of a dysfunctional London
    family.

    —From The Southwest Harbor
    Gazette    , June 14, 2003

     

     

    Auto-Eroticism: A Brief Reader

    Consider the
    serious psychic struggle that the onanists undergo before they yield to the
    temptation of going through the act. They surround themselves with a thousand
    oaths, they try to protect themselves with prayers and resolutions, etc. They
    are strongly determined not to fall again! If they must yield –this one time–
    let it be the last! And yet, in spite of all self-conjurations and in spite of
    all their resolutions, the instinctive craving persists within them and –there
    is a ‘next
    time,’ they
    yield once more; they slip back, again and again, in spite of everything. The
    spiritual katzenjammer of defeat naturally brings on a severe depression.

    A young man,
    23 years of age, showing all the typical signs of a severe neurosis confesses
    that for the past two years he has given up the habit of masturbation. Since
    that time he suffers from anxiety attacks and sleeplessness. Freud, as is well
    known, has pointed out that masturbators become victims of anxiety neurosis
    when they give up the habit. They become unable to live without masturbating.
    Any physician is able to verify this pertinent revelation. We find the most
    severe neuroses among those who give up the long-standing habit.

    *****

    [The female patient] was
    firmly convinced that indulgence in the habit had made her ill. She resolved to
    masturbate no longer and kept to her resolution for about three weeks…. Then
    she was amazed to find herself masturbating during a state of
    half-consciousness. Great was her horror, and she now feared going to sleep;
    she tied a bandage around her pelvic region, and woke up from sleep with a
    feeling of dread. Nevertheless her craving was supreme and she felt herself
    giving in. She could not bear the thought of confessing to her husband. He held
    so lofty a view of woman’s purity that he would have scorned her and
    possibly would have left her. But she loved him passionately and could not live
    without him. In her dilemma she decided she must die, took a large dose of
    veronal, and wrote her husband a parting letter, which I reproduce below as a
    touching document illustrating the depths of human suffering….

    My Beloved
    Otto,

    When you read
    this letter I won’t be among the living any more. I pay with death for my
    wrong. I cannot keep on under the burden of a terrible habit, while you held me
    to be a pure woman. So, therefore, know: since childhood I have practiced
    masturbation. The habit began during childhood and I have kept it up after
    marriage. Finding myself too weak to give up the habit, unaided, finding that
    the consequences of this terrible habit already begun to show themselves, and
    as I do not want to burden you with a sick wife, I part voluntarily and give up
    this life, though with heavy heart. Indeed, how shall I look you in the face,
    how shall I look my children in the face, when I find myself so badly dishonored
    and disgraced.

    No! I cannot
    stand this any longer. For the love you have so richly bestowed on me, I thank
    you. I wish you the company of a woman worthy of your confidence and love. Do
    find a woman worthy of you. Kiss our dear children for me. It is hardest to
    part from you.

    Forgive me. I
    cannot help it.

    My last sighs
    go out to you.

    Yours,

    _______

    An
    examination of this case reveals two important facts: first, that ideas of
    suicide bear a certain relationship to masturbation….

    Suicide
    represents merely the extreme consequence of abstinence. It is possible to
    construct a scale, approximately as follows: anxiety neurosis, hypochondria,
    moodiness, depression, melancholia, suicide. From the day masturbation is given
    up life ceases to be worth while….These cases demonstrate to our satisfaction
    that many persons are unable to live without masturbating and that they would
    rather renounce living altogether than try to get along without their customary
    gratification.

    Attempt at
    suicide through the abuse of masturbation is by no means rare; it is a
    particularly frequent occurrence in jails. This form of self-annihilation
    I have called ‘chronic suicide.’

    –From Wilhelm Stekl’s Auto-Eroticism. 1950

     

  • Wilson’s: Loss of jobs and my junior-high jacket

    When was the last time you entered a Wilson’s? For me, it’s been a while. But the
    trip that’s forever etched in my memory goes all the way back to junior high.
    My sister had just scored a cool Michael Jackson Thriller-style red
    windbreaker. Not wanting to be outdone, I commenced to scour the shopping mall for my own status jacket.
    Eventually I settled on a black suede bomber from Wilson’s that had a lil’ feminine flourish: a
    tiny puff at each shoulder (the closest approximation of a Juliet sleeve that
    can be done in buckskin, mind you). All that remained was begging poor mom to shell
    for the modest pricetag, which she happily did. "You’ll have this coat for a long
    while," is what she said, the foolish thing.

     

    Of course, subsequent visits to the store, years and years later, proved
    disappointing. But rather than trash this local "heritage" retailer (the Strib
    sez     it’s been around since 1899), I’ll merely point out that it failed to
    fulfill our expectations for such businesses. Consider the example of, say, Duluth
    Pack    , another centenarian company (sine 1882) that, rather than get greedy and
    try to mass-market its products, concentrated on steadily crafting their
    simple, quality line of luggage, sacks, and bags–all of which are united by a
    singular rough-hewn aesthetic. Meanwhile, Wilson’s
    knocked off every which department-store trend in leather coats and
    accessories. Plus, I noticed they use really shitty buttons. "Disposable" is
    how I later came to regard my sole Wilson’s
    possession, and I don’t suppose that’s an enviable position for a leather
    jacket.

    It’s not surprising, then, that the business is starting to
    tank. Still, it’s always a shame when jobs are lost–especially Minnesota jobs!

  • Letters from Eurydice II

    So, Eurydice in a nutshell. Many of you will be familiar with the Greek myth Orpheus and Eurydice. A Cliff Notes synopsis:

    Orpheus, the son of Apollo and the muse Calliope, is presented by his father with a lyre and plays with such beauty that that nothing can resist the charm of his music. Orpheus marries Eurydice. Soon afterwards Eurydice, fleeing the unwanted attentions of the shepherd Aristaeus, is bitten by a snake and dies. Overwrought by grief, Orpheus descends into the underworld for an audience with Pluto and Persephone. Through his music, Orpheus pleads for Pluto to return Eurydice to the living. Pluto (and just about everybody else in hell) is moved and grants Orpheus’s request,with one condition (there’s always a condition). Eurydice may follow Orpheus back to the world of the living, but during their ascent, he must always look ahead, If, for any reason, he turns around to look at her before they both have reached the surface, Eurydice will instantly return to the underworld forever. Orpheus and Eurydice ascend and the moment Orpheus makes it to the top, overwhelmed with joy, looks back at Eurydice who still has one foot on the pathway. She vanishes immediately and Orpheus, re-overwrought with grief, rejects the attentions of the thracian maidens who finally, in a fit of Bacchanalian pique, tear him to pieces. He then descends to the underworld and is re-united with Eurydice.

    This legend has been adapted and co-opted many times by by such poets, composers and playwrights as Dante, Auden, Offenbach, Monteverdi, Philip Glass and Tennessee Williams. Our playwright, Sarah Ruhl, decided to look at the story from Eurydice’s perspective and has created a haunting exploration of the choices we make about love and the consequences we face when those we love are taken from us. The TTT website description of the play is “An exploration of loss and grief, revisiting the mythic tale of Orpheus’s descent into the underworld through Eurydice’s eyes. A humorous and haunting new play by the MacArthur award-winning playwright.” Works about as well as anything else and must, in the end, suffice because, like all great art, Eurydice defies description. Any further attempt to explain the play further simply does it a disservice: it truly defies description. In order to understand it, you must experience it. I will say, however, that Eurydice is one of the most beautiful, spare and compelling scripts I’ve ever worked on.

    Our production is directed by Larissa Kokernot who, despite a long list of impressive acting credits and a growing list of achievements as a director, may be condemned to be ever known as “one of the hookers in Fargo.” Personally, I don’t think this will turn out to be the case- Larissa is young, exceptionally talented and will doubtless accumulate a substantive body of work which will turn her bouncing on a bed with Steve Buscemi into an amusing footnote on her CV.

    The cast stars Sonja Parks as Eurydice, Sonja was named by American Theatre Magazine as one of the five actors worth travelling across the country to see. One look at her and you’ll know why- she’s mesmerizing. Marc Halsey, who plays Orpheus, recently appeared in Pen at the Guthrie and is one of the marvelous BFA graduates that the University of Minnesota is starting to produce with startling regularity. And then there are the three stones of the underworld, who function as the chorus of the play. These are played by a brilliant trio of actors who double in other (unforgettable) parts in the play. Leif Jurgensen, long-time CTC stalwart, plays Big Stone as well as Lord of the Underworld and a very disturbing Mysterious Man. Vera Mariner, a TTT veteran who has sung with the Minnesota, St. Paul Chamber, Cleveland, Boston Symphony, and Philadelphia Orchestras plays Loud Stone and Eurydice’s Grandmother. Lisa Rafaela Clair, late of the acclaimed production of Sarah Ruhl’s The Clean House at Mixed Blood plays Little Stone and the mother of the Lord of the Underworld — a woman who has has  “special needs.” The sound & music design is courtesy of the remarkable Peter Vitale, who not only can play just about any musical instrument you hand him but coaxes strange and beautiful music out of household utensils, found objects and cobbled together devices that can only have appeared to him in dreams. And yours truly plays Eurydice’s father.

    Next: Final dress and opening day!

  • …leaving community hurt, too

    Here’s the headline from yesterday’s Strib: "Girl, 6, is grazed by bullet, leaving community hurt, too."

    It’s tempting just to let that stand as one more blob in the insipid lump of goo that is the Star Tribune. OK, I will, but with just one comment: Doesn’t every bullet that hits a six-year-old hurt our community?

    I wish I had such an overstaffed news room that I could send a reporter out to the scene of a shooting to ask everyone who lives near the incident what they think of a little girl getting shot. What do they expect people to say? "Hey, no big deal. People get shot here all the time. What really makes me mad is the Twins letting Johan Santana get away."

    Actually, there was one detail of the Strib story that’s kind of funny. The assailant’s gun went off because his pants were so loose that the gun slipped down his pants leg and discharged when it hit the floor. How much funnier would the headline have been if the gun had hit with the muzzle pointed straight up?

    "Man, 20 or so, grazed by bullet, leaving future generations hurt, too."