"Imagination is more important than knowledge"

After a few days wherein I was preparing for and then watching my play get read at Brecht Forum, I had a lovely day off today, in which I did very little, except talk to some friends on the phone, then go to a meeting nearby then come back home and watch a little football, then Downton Abbey (which the New Yorker reviewer also accused of being nostalgic about old class divides but admitted was also riveting - both true - I think she basically concluded it was a guilty pleasure that's wrapped up to look like something good for you - kind of like candy that looks like seaweed wrapped around sushi, but is in fact chocolate mouse coated with sugar.  I would agree)...

What followed however was as wonderful as it was unexpected.  A show on NPR called "On Being" about Detroit's unlikely renaissance (which is not economically driven but instead human-driven - e.g., older African American women who emigrated from the South who call themselves the Gardening Angels urban gardening on abandoned lots, other folks rebuilding with the help of wounded vets and all manner of self-sustaining urban-green-organic type stuff...the focus of the show was a woman named Grace Lee Boggs, a 96 year old Chinese-American philosopher, daughter of immigrants, born in Providence, RI (where I was born, I'm proud to say!), who got her PhD in 1940 and went on to become a radical political figure along with her husband in Detroit.  She became a big part of the African American struggle, which dovetailed into both feminism and socialism.

She spoke about Hegel and about negativity being the prerequisite for the positive, and how people have been finding ways to live in Detroit ever since the rebellion (her term) in the 1960s wherein many buildings were burnt down and led to white flight from the city.  The report, Krista Tippett, said she was "surrounded by radiant people" who see her as an elder.  Boggs was born in 1915, a year before both my grandmothers, one of whom was an activist feminist, so I pricked up my ears to listen closely to her.

After this radio show, I was inspired to go back to the Dick & Jani project, which may become a stage text...still not sure on that...and decided to write in a plausible but fictional account of Jani meeting this amazing Grace Lee Boggs.  After having fun with that, I then went back to Dick (aka Betty) at the same time (1976) commenting on the Carol Burnett show and her ceaseless criticizing or complaining about all things great and small.  This was deeply painful to write, as I lived with her for 2 years of this in the 1970s and was the focus of a lot of her deep frustration.  However, I forced myself to continue writing through this pain, because this is what I hear everyone who writes memoirs or stuff about their family in semi-fictional contexts say: it's fucking painful.  I don't know why/how/if I thought I got to jump over that bit, but I know from listening to Karr & Carr that that is impossible.  I set myself a time to stop though, because I knew if I kept going, it would be just too much and I wouldn't get back to it.  I also had to write through the ceaseless voice in my head saying "Who cares?  Who the fuck cares?  No one will want to read this!  It's just depressing..." etc.  Which when you think about the subject stands to reason, don't it?

The moral of the story is this: if I rest and do what I need to do for myself, I suddenly find myself with time and energy to burn, which translates into writing.  Good to know.

The last few days, which included the two readings, also included some emotional upheavals, most of which were not directly related to the play - except inasmuch as the night after the first reading I was overcome by how lonely I felt, as I didn't have anyone to share the experience with when I got home.  The first reading night was scary because, as per usual, we didn't have enough time, and I had also handed it over to a director and so had no control over what happened, like at all.  Also, there was someone there from a pretty big deal theater, which added to the Fear.  It went pretty well considering, but the Important Theater Person left before I could speak with her and I don't know what she thought...

We got some really good feedback that night (both positive and critical - but in a constructive way), and I was happy about all that, but was having my usual delayed-fear response on the way back home - like one of those cartoon/comedy routines where someone does something 'brave' and then is shaking after the confrontation is over...again, none of this is outside of my experience as a writer and/or director in the theater, but coming home alone, knowing the next day was B's birthday and I wouldn't be calling him because we're separated now, especially we had had shared our work with each other for 10 years, so the one person I would be talking to - either in person or on skype or whatever was not there, was quite hard.  So, I watched dumb movies that made me cry...

The next day I went to a meeting and found myself crying for a long time on a friend's shoulder.  She also came to the reading the second night, so I dubbed her my guardian angel for the day.  It felt good to finally cry with someone after all my solo crying jags - to finally have my pain witnessed here in NYC.  It was witnessed in London, but here it hasn't been as acute and I haven't known where to allow it out that felt safe.  It's good to know that is gradually changing.

At that meeting someone said something very important, too, which is quite profound even though simple.  She said "I discovered that it's important when you say no, to know what you're saying yes to" - in other words, when you say no, you open up a space where something else can live - whether it's time, energy, money, creativity, whatever.  A no is not just a negative, it leads to a positive.

The Saturday reading, even though some audience was deterred by (gorgeous) snowstorm, was full of lovely folks, including, much to my surprise iconic 60s-activist writer Barbara Garson (most well-known play: MacBird!), who was generous in her response.  I look forward to meeting with her soon as I am sure I have much to learn from her.

We had a very interesting after-show discussion on Saturday including a fellow from Occupy Wall Street's banking committee, who had worked on Wall Street.  (Apparently in a few weeks they will be publishing a concept for a different kind of bank that "benefits the 99% rather than the 1%).  He spoke quite eloquently of attempting to get out of the winner-loser dialectic and how to work with a more cooperative model.  This shed some very interesting light on the play and the discussion.

The actors did an incredible job with only a few hours of rehearsal - making a staged reading seem like a very alive piece of theater.  The actors were Marietta Hedges, Matt Higgins, Terry Runnell, Kevin Scott and Alyssa Simon.  Kevin and Rik Walter (director) also managed to pull off a lot of technical stuff, which was way above and beyond the call of staged-reading duty.

As a writer, there is very little more moving than watching people work with passion and precision on words you have written.  By the end of Saturday, when Matt (who was playing the role of "James" - the one who does not want to go "off script"), allowed for the full scale meltdown that is implied by the text, it was extraordinary.  It made me want to cry, and I wrote the damn thing.  In these moments, I know why I work in theater, because there is nothing like it.  There is no moment watching a movie or reading or seeing a painting or even hearing/watching music when you can watch a human being connect with something in himself that connects with everyone in the room in a way that is that palpable and transformative.  Those moments shift the air, allow spaces for some kind of rearrangement of molecules...and well a connection...There is an Allen Ginsberg quote I read on (of all things) Twitter the other day and retweeted (the 21st century version of praise) that somehow touches this - though he's talking about his desire in his writing: 'to recreate the syntax and measure of poor human prose and stand before you speechless and intelligent and shaking with shame'


something like that - except it's not prose but instead the soul of the person him or herself...

When I came back last night, therefore, I did not feel alone.  Because there was that deeper connection - in the theater, in the meeting, at the diner afterwards with Marietta who made this all happen...

Can these moments change the world?  Can anything?  I don't know.  I do love the sense of possibility though.  Grace Lee Boggs raised the twin issues of necessity and possibility, saying that in the past political activists were only concerned with necessity, but now the idea of possibility is more important.  She was saying "this is more subtle, more interesting...and allows for more imagination."  She mentioned that Einstein felt that imagination was more important than knowledge.

So: let us get drunk on water (as Deleuze and Guattari suggest quoting Henry Miller) by beginning with a toast to possibility and imagination.

It was 31 years ago today...

well almost, by the time this post publishes, probably 31 years and a day...though also about this time of night I imagine...no pun intended, that John Lennon was killed.  As if Reagan winning the presidency wasn't bad enough, a month later a guy who just talked about peace was killed.

I remember reading somewhere that Hunter Thompson was talking to Ken Kesey about this and saying: "why him? Why not me? I'm the asshole" and Kesey saying "you never promised anyone anything, that's why."  I think he had a point.

I woke up the next morning (dec. 9, 1980) to my radio alarm blaring out the voice of a DJ saying "-n was shot last night" and then a Beatles or Lennon song playing - was it Yesterday?  Imagine?  Honestly, I don't remember.  I just remember knowing as soon as I heard the song that something terrible happened, the person's name ended with 'n', the Beatles were playing, so there was a good chance it was John Lennon.

I was 17 and in love with all thing Lennon at that time, which made me incredibly unhip in 1980.  I think I may have written about this earlier in the blog, but this was when I was at boarding school on scholarship and my similarity with most people there was slim to none.  I of course thought this meant something was deeply wrong with me and didn't realize until years later it might have had something to do with the gaping chasm of a class divide between us wherein most of them were raised to rule the world or at the very least (some female students) to marry a ruler of the world.  Many of them, for the record, now do rule the world.  No, I don't know how to contact any of them now, though I probably could through the miracle of social networking, but then again I'd probably have about as much to say to them now as I did then, i.e., not much.

The students I liked and admired were into things like punk and new wave and went to CBGBs on the weekends.  They seemed like they orbited a different social stratosphere than I did.  I listened to the Beatles, Abbey Road mostly, sometimes the Doors and the Who - living in some 60s la-la land that probably never existed and certainly bore zero resemblance to reality in 1980.

But to those of us who lived in that world, and there were a few true believers at Choate, mostly other smarty-pants scholarship students like me who were pale and serious looking and clung to each other in un-hip-smarty-pants-ness, Lennon's assassination was brutal.  We were depressed for days, some even wore black arm bands.  I don't think I went that far, either because I thought it was odd or because I lived in a whole house of people who didn't really care, were Way too cool for school and which I had somehow ended up in because I got along with the Dean of the Girls, Francelle, and her husband Ken because of my growing interest radical left-wing politics.  I used to spend weekends in their living room drinking tea and talking Marxism and Latin - you know, the usual way one spends Saturdays when one is 17.

I loved her tea, though - Francelle's - and the ceramic handmade mugs, the honey that was fresh from some honeycomb somewhere, that you twisted around a wooden ridged stick thing.  It felt warm and safe in her kitchen and living room.  I met her many years later and told her she had saved my life that year.  She told me I had helped her a lot, too, which totally surprised me.  But in retrospect, she wasn't your usual person at Choate, especially not with her then-husband Ken, who was from Trinidad and had hair that went up straight, which always looked like he had just put his finger in an electric socket...seriously.  But he would talk and talk and talk about left-wing political theories and ideas and they would reminisce about Oxford and I would stare at them and think: wow.  I would then research lots of these ideas for various papers and teach-ins and like whatever...so I was their little protege I suppose.

So why, to this day I can't figure it out, was I alone in their little TV room watching Reagan bounce on to that stage with 'his Wife Nancy' to the tune of Happy Days Are Here Again?  I was crying and crying, thinking: things are going to be terrible...which they were/are still/as in we haven't recovered from the damage done - and it's only getting/gotten worse.  And I was ALONE.  Very, very alone. None of the other girls in the house gave a shit as far as I could tell and why would they?  They were safe and snug as bugs in a rug (oh except of course for the ones who would die of drug overdoses and stuff...yes it was an illusion, their safety, but they believed it is the point...I didn't know how to reach my parents half the time - this made things different - perhaps they didn't either, come to think of it - oh never mind - let's just say they had more money and leave it at that...)

Then a month later Lennon gets shot, right after putting out the Double Fantasy album and that haunting Rolling Stones cover with him naked in a fetal position next to Yoko, fully clothed.  I stared and stared at that photo - riveted by the possibilities inherent therein - not the least of which was the gender reversal that was Unheard of in 1980, even that late in the day - this was truly radical.  Now, probably not so much.  Then, truly shocking in a good way.

He was shot when he was what 42 maybe?  I'm 48, so I've already outlived John Lennon, which is depressing from both angles: i.e., he should not have died so young and I have accomplished only a teeny tiny shred of what he accomplished in his short life.  Both of these facts depress me, his death more so, because I can still rally (she said bravely).  At least I hope so.

I'm not going to even talk about the shooter or all that shit because it's sensationalist well shit.  The fact of his death is what matters and that it was violent and unnecessary but probably given our weird aversion to peace inevitable.

Is the Occupy movement the beginning of the pendulum swinging back...finally?  Too soon to tell I suppose but at least small things are changing in the way people talk - it seems to be rearranging certain politicians' spines back into left wing alignment where they were supposed to be according to their rhetoric...and so long may it continue.

It's heartening to see people so aware, awake and close to fearless - rallying here and there - defiantly remaining leaderless.  I can't help but think Lennon would have loved this rebellion/Happening.  It's part politics, part Fluxus (the group Ono was part of when they met - you can see home movie like footage of all of them Jonas Mekas took if you happen upon the right gallery one day...on the Staten Island Ferry as I recall...).  That's kind of great.

The students where I will be teaching next semester, Hunter, are already occupying their school.  My favorite tweet was from one of their professors saying "I'll join you guys when I've finished grading your papers."  I look forward to doing the same, except it'll be even more fun since I'm teaching acting. My base text will be Joseph Chaikin's ʼThe Presence of the Actor' - a great manifesto about theater and politics and what he refers to as 'the set up.'  That and my own stuff.  Should be pretty great.  And it will link in effortlessly with Occupy.  Not in a didactic way, and no my students don't have to sign up for political action, etc., but the theatricality of it will be made apparent...and the idea of how to create theatrical spaces in public places and the theatricality of political action...etc...

So here's hoping the great big gorgeous spirit that was John Lennon (and yes I know he had his dark side and yadeyadeya...but come on so does everybody - but not everybody sings Give Peace a Chance until they are hoarse...right?) is delighting in this new spin on the dance floor of possibilities opening up.  I hope the creaking sound is of the pendulum finally taking a swing back and not the damn thing just flying off its axis...always a possibility...but even then, something New would happen...

It's late now, I finished my last day of teaching for this term today.  Hurrah!  So I can stay up late again and sleep past 6:45am.  Anyone who knows me will know how important this is.  I am one of the 5% of truly night people.  I have decided I am descended genetically from the cave nightwatch shift, the ones who were supposed to keep their eyes peeled at 2am for marauding lions or whatever.  A small but proud minority.  For whom a 6:45am start is cruelty.

Back to watching the cave...but now, hopefully Ugo the cat can take charge of that so I - who did have a 6:45am start today, can toddle off to bed.

Occupation politics and art

There I said it: politics and art.  The phrase alone can be enough to make you want to hide under a pillow.

In these days of Occupy Wall Street and all manner of in your face politics, what is the relevance of artistic experimentation?

I ask this as someone who has a history of political activism (and who has been at the sympathy OWS marches in NYC) and who also creates theater (primarily) that is on the experimental edge of experimental, what some would uncharitably refer to as 'elitist' or if particularly miffed 'pretentious.'

I see the connection, but I can also understand if it's not crystal clear.  And there's the rub: does everything have to be Crystal Clear?  Am I being somehow self-indulgent or whatever by working in associative meanings, formal experimentation that creates new ways of seeing/creating?  I'd like to say no, of course I would.  And I do, and have, worked very hard to make these forms as accessible as possible without diminishing the quality of the artistic experiment.

But, I'm also aware now that I am teaching students who are in college who have a hard time writing even the most basic sentence, that to do what I do means having had access to a very good education, sets of ideas that are not generally disseminated and the concurrent sense of entitlement that comes with that.  I can - and do - tell myself all manner of post-structuralist stuff about how cool this work is and how it can disentangle fascistic molar meaning with molecular constructions that are liberating, etc.  And I do even believe all that.

However, does it matter?  Like at all?

My feeling on this now is: yes and no.

Yes in that at the far end of how we conceive of the world involves language and ways of framing our reality and any kind of active investigation into that is important.  But no in that the actions of a handful of people who started sleeping in a public-private park downtown has had more impact on shifting the way we see thing politically not only in this country, but in the whole world, than any number of artistic experiments combined.

But, that is also comparing apples and oranges to a degree, because for people to have the imagination to begin the occupation, they too must have been exposed to ideas - political and artistic - that led them to that action.

My favorite origin story to what is shaping up to be a global revolution, is that many of the activists in Egypt and I think Tunisia as well were exposed to the work of a very old, but still alive, American academic, Gene Sharp who wrote a treatise on non-violence as a means to democratic change called from Dictatorship to Democracy.  I downloaded it from the NYTimes site when they posted it.  It's an excellent read.  And can you imagine that this fellow, 92 when Arab Spring began, could have imagined the impact his writing would have?

So I go back to my original hope that is: if experimenting with ideas and forms and if you have a political bent to begin with, which I do (as do many others), this can have some value.  The value is in opening up spaces for new possibilities, ways of conceiving other than what is given.  Everything happening now - that has been happening since the Arab Spring - is turning 'how it is' on its ear.  You have to know that's possible.  Certain kinds of artistic experiences can aid in that mind opening moment.

However, there are certain actions people can do in the world - sleeping in Zuccotti Park and not leaving - or setting oneself on fire in Tunisia - that - at the right moment (and timing is as key as action here) - can have a huge impact.  Action, bodies on the line, is what is most important.

And while it is not, nor meant to be 'theater' per se, these actions are highly theatrical (or in the academic parlance du jour - 'performative' - a parlance I use with somewhat gritted teeth having suffered enough getting a PhD and just wanting wanting wanting to go back to the old Strunk and White 2 cent words...)...And for all the social networking, which of course has had its place and been an incredibly valuable tool, without People on the Street, their Live Presence, Vulnerable Human Bodies on the Line, none of this would be happening.

This is the kind of action I dreamed of, this is the kind of action in my own little way I've tried to make openings for in my artistic work and of course all those seemingly futile political protest marches, sit-ins, teach-ins, articles, etc. I've engaged in, organized, written about...etc.

I am delighted that this generation of young people unlike my frankly sheep-like graze mindlessly to the slaughter generation (young in the 80s) is Awake and Fighting Back.  You guys Rock the House.  I would like to think/pray/hope those of us who kept the faith in the dark times kept open the stream for you, but no matter - you are doing it.  This is your time, and that's just great.

My little bit now is sending my kids from Bronx Community College downtown to check out Zuccotti Park, talk to people there and write about it.  They now see themselves as part of the 99% (not all of them but many - I'm not asking them to believe what I believe but simply to go see for themselves outside of the media filter what's up) and some are more engaged and enthused politically.

I also wrote a play in 2008 about the first financial collapse We live in financial times, Part 1: Blackberry Curve that resonates now more than ever.  I'd like to think this was my way of throwing into the ring some ideas that are now out there and having an effect.  We will be doing a reading of this play at The Brecht Forum in January, so stay tuned for that if you're interested.

This play, perhaps relevant to the subject of this post, is way more 'normal' in terms of form than my other work.  I did not decided to do it that way, it's just how it turned out.  The form falls apart by the end of course, but initially it looks like a recognizable play and story.  I wonder now if this was partially a desire, unconscious, to reach out to more people?  I don't know, but it's an interesting proposition.

I am, as the title of this blog indicates, in transition, so I want to take this valuable time to interrogate all my assumptions, including about what makes artistic creations relevant, vital, etc. and how that may or may not impact what I create.  I say may or may not because it's not always clear what will impact what.  I cannot make 'ideologically pure' art nor would I want to do that.  So, it's this balancing act that in my experience is worked out in the doing rather than the thinking.

I start writing a stage text and it comes out whatever way it comes out.  I start working in a rehearsal room or a lab space and bring in ideas to try but then they change.

Without this vitality art dies.

And I think, back to the Occupy movement, that they have remained so vital because they are not afraid to be in process, to Not know, to Not have an agenda, but be there anyway, saying: you know what: this isn't right.  We are the 99% and we are being screwed.  That's enough.  Yes, there will be calls to do this and that, and everyone and God with a half-baked progressive agenda will try to attach themselves to this movement, but at the core it's this: here we are.  We aren't going away.  Shit has got to change.

And it already Is changing.  News stories are being written that would never have been written a month ago, like the NYTimes article about how none of the presidential candidates are part of the 99% (except maybe one and they are not sure even about that one when savings are included).  That article does not get written in mid-September.  Bank of America backed off its debit card fees and now OWS even has port-a-potties.  Miracles do happen.  But not miracles, no, human action made this happen - real concerted action.

Rock on, 99%.  It's our time now.

I'm too old to sleep in the park with you all (plus teaching in the Bronx) but I will keep making my work, cheering you on at marches and fighting the good fight with my 'pen' (i.e. computer, blog, plays, etc...)