Kim Dae-Jung, Rest in Peace

This year certainly feels like the the work of Kali's sword, from the current economic recession, a sense of house-cleaning, but also a sense of latent growth, burgeoning seeds under the surface, hybernation/preparation... all resonating a greater universal cleanup, with the passing of so many this year, for me, since September 1st. The weather in New York this summer has been dramatic. Rain, blinding visibility, comes with roof-shaking rumble and clatter. Winds that remind you of biblical stories. Today, so busy with work, I'm on the edge of mourning, but don't even have the time to mourn the death of this freedom fighter, Kim Dae Jung, who looms so large in my memory. He came to Laguardia Airport in my childhood, after being freed from so many years of house arrest and assassination attempts on his life. We went to the airport just to see him pass by. It was the first time I saw my father cry in my life, as he chanted with the crowd, fists pumping the air... KIM! DAE! JUNG! KIM! DAE! JUNG! Heroes come and go, and sometimes we are graced by merely witnessing them passing by. They leave their marks, inspire, plant seeds you carry and nurture for the rest of your life.

HAPPY vs. SAD

HAPPY VS. SAD from Karen B. Song on Vimeo.

You thought the ULTIMATE battle was between GOOD versus EVIL. Well NOW, you can witness the EPIC battle between HAPPY versus SAD. Sometimes disguised as HI versus LO. Or LOVE versus HATE. Or FUN versus YUCK. Be forewarned though, it can get pretty ugly (or ugly pretty, depending on your point of view). Can our girl find freedom from its destructive path?

Film I wrote, shot, edited, did music for in 72 hours for the 2009 AAFL 72-hour film shootout. Entry from Team Singasong. Starring Karina Michaels, Roi King and Catherine Song.

Ryan McGinness' Fishing Party

Last night I had one of those old skool New York nights, random and kewl. On my way home from an event, I noticed a bunch of objects floating and bouncing before me (I wasn't on drugs or drink, only Malaysian roti). On closer look I saw that they were tied to an end of a string. I looked far up to the top of the building to find a buncha folk with fishing rods. Of course, there was a guy sitting in a chair on the street. I asked what's going on? Then a folded up piece of paper fell in front of my face. I think that's for you, dude in chair said. So I take it off the hook. Alana wants to give you a warm hug. Well, um, ok. I ask dude, is Alana cute? He didn't know Alana. So I walk my way up I think 8 flights of stairs in this loft building. I get to the top floor and there are a bunch of smelly real fish hanging off hook & wire from the ceiling. Gone Fishing, was scrawled at the end of the hall. I made my way into the loft space, and was promptly tagged and led to the fish tank (an area blocked off by wall size plastic wrap) by the person who's line I took. Yes, I was the fish that was caught. And our fisherman came in often to check on us, make sure we had everything we needed to keep us happy in the tank.

I discovered that it was contemporary superstar artist Ryan McGinness' loft. He had proposed to do 50 parties in one year, every Friday, with a different theme. A custom-made-black-card carrying members only party. Last week was paintball. Last night's was fishing. The theme was delightfully thorough. He was dressed in overalls and a big messy straw hat, as were his friends. There was a bowl of fish. Snacks included swedish fish, goldfish crackers, fish sticks, breaded nuggets in fish shapes. At midnight, fish-shaped trophies were given to winning fishers in different categories. Most caught. Heaviest catch. Tallest catch. etc. Fish in the tank were given hefty tequila shots and told to drink like a fish. Since I just had surgery, I was granted leniency. Then there was the live fish eating competition. Middle-weight older dude swallowed his whole. Younger foreign hipster, chomped on his. They both went to ten. Chomp chomp chomp. DISGUSTING!!!!!! That part of the evening was unbearable. Other than that, it was a fun night. Met some cool folks. And went home with one of those red fortune telling fish! THAT, I was really psyched about.

An Ode to Character Actors: Edward Everett Horton, Jay O. Saunders, Jackie Earle Haley

There are iconic actors whose names go down in history, and other actors who don't. I want to celebrate the ones that aren't household names, who've appeared in sometimes more films than any leading actor, in films with all those iconic names, sometimes unrecognizable from one work to the next, and whose contribution to arts and entertainment is immense. They are critical in defining the tone and genre, and the telling, of the stories they're in. Their work is always delicious. Especially in comedies, and equally bone-chilling in scary movies.

Lately I've been watching lots of classic black & white films with names like Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Cary Grant, Katherine Hepburn and Clark Gable. And there's this guy you keep seeing, that's just so funny and delicious to watch. His name is Edward Everett Horton. You'd know him by face. And boy does he look familiar. Cause he's been in everything! Seeing him in a film makes "instant-happy."

Then seeing the brilliant and rip-roaringly funny (yeah, when done well, Shakespeare will have you bent over, holding your stomach) production of "Twelfth Night" in Central Park. I refer to him as "the drunk"... Jay O. Saunders. I could just watch only him through the entire show. I even followed his exit, studying his "drunkeness" waiting for it to crack. Nope, he was definitely drunk, through and through. Then reading the playbill when I got home, and discovering that he was "THE donkey" in the Park's horrible production of "Midsummer Night's Dream" 2 years back. He was the ONLY thing happening in that play, a performance I never forgot, and I studied him onstage too. I don't know what I hoped to find studying him, but I was completely mesmerized. I didn't realize that these two characters were the same actor! Today I discovered he was also the wife-envy neighbor in "Revolutionary Road." Again, didn't recognize him to be the same person as these other two.

And then there's Jackie Earle Haley. You couldn't convince me that he wasn't the person he portrayed in "Little Children," a tortured pedophile. Then to discover that he was the incredible actor who played Rorschach in the crap film "Watchmen"? He was so alive on that screen, so nuanced a performance, so real a person, I couldn't believe what I was seeing. He seemed so familiar. Then later discovered he was "the ped"! Mesmerizing.

I love these actors. Their presence, and their work. And especially character actors in older films during the studio system, where stock characters were a distinctive and colorful quality of the storytelling palate. It traces back to storytelling-entertainment roots in Commedia dell'arte, Shakespeare's theater, and vaudeville. Will write more later about stock characters and different forms of theater as extensions of folk storytelling and pagan ritual. Something I've been thinking about for years, while traveling, and studying pagan traditions, both, interconnected passions of mine.

Francis Bacon Retrospective; Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC

Francis Bacon's paintings at his recent retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, are powerful visual manifestations of a dialogue with mortality, loss, alienation, time, sanity, and the brief nature and struggle of life, form and decay. The viewer's struggle to grasp elusive "form," yet experiencing something material left behind by a man who is dead and in the ground, is overwhelming. His forms are as elusive, and frustratingly so, as trying to grasp this illusion we call "Reality." One takes grand comfort in the solidarity, of someone being able to express this intangible quality of life, in so tangible a form as painting with Bacon affirming so poignantly, form as a mere suggestion, a whir of energy translated into color. Each painting, a poem. His color palate, even dissected from an idea of form, is beautiful and viscerally meaningful, in the same way de Kooning's colors hit me.

Bacon's forms are tortured, struggling for solidity, struggling to come into being. Melting away. A whisper away from cascading into darkness. Light and color being a brief manifestation, a gathering of dust particles, if even. Form as an "event" in the way a firework explodes into the sky for a briefly beautiful, exciting yet violent and quietly disappearing moment.

There's nothing to grasp or hold on to. Meat and carcass, the fragility of the body. And yet, these forms exist in their own confined space, a stage, a ring, a glass box, not physical, defined by just lines...self imposed? Sometimes there's a door in frame. Exit or entrance? Freedom or hell? Can it even open? Or is it just a picture? A tease of the cosmic joke variety. Conclusion, we are a perpetual and delicate balancing act between extremes. Being and not. Spatial materiality and energy. Flesh and spirit. Love and torture. Beast/deformed and human form. Order and disorder. Becoming and receding. Scream and silence. Authority and powerlessness. I and the Other. Insane and sublime... The triptychs confirm relativity, perpetual change in spatial/time relationship, non-authority of a single take. Time and event is constantly being dissected like a film reel, and form within that, constantly disintegrating.

The only thing, the exhibit, although quite extensive and filling, was missing a lot of his works. I thought it would be a more thorough collection. Also reminds me, I have to watch "Love is the Devil" again for the umpteeth time, one of my favorite films, directed by John Maybury. It focuses on Bacon's life with George Dyer, his lover and muse, who ultimately killed himself. Yes, tragic. He did it in their hotel room on the night of Bacon's opening at the Grand Palais in Paris. Bacon was the only other foreign artist next to Picasso to have been given that highest honor. If ever the opportunity to see "Devil" on the big screen, do so. The film is very painterly, with a story as intense as Bacon's paintings, as intense as his life.

Little Dragon's "Twice" Directed by Johannes Nyholm

This song sounds like falling in love in the summertime. Love the video. Beautifully poetic with Yukimi Nagano's ethereal voice carrying you, the timeless quality of the video's sepia color tone, and its simplicity (altho these puppets eye's blink) of the puppet imagery and backdrop. After seeing "The 39 Steps" on Broadway, an amazing show, using puppetry, prop ingenuity, and just amazing acting and imagination, I wanted to investigate puppetry. And here we have it again, so simple, beautiful...with an epic journey unfolding.

Listerine

"Bunny Mellon, the reclusive 98-year-old Listerine heiress"... pulled from yesterday's Sunday New York Times Style Section... sounds like something I made up in one of my absurdist short stories I was writing years back. Above is an ad JWT São Paulo did for them, which I find kinda sick and hilarious. While the NYT's quote, just surreal and hilarious: the words are funny; the image too. If you can't see the details of this ad, click the image, or to see more in its series, click here. It'll show a Catholic altar scene of a germ bride, and the emptiness around her with the tagline "KILLS 99% OF GERMS."

Walter Kronkite, R.I.P.

The passing of Walter Kronkite invariably reminds me of my father. Childhood memories of my dad in the 70's has him planted in front of the TV eating dinner watching the news, or not being home and driving his yellow cab around the mean streets of New York City. The City felt so dangerous back then. I remember always being relieved when my parents came home from work. My mom went out into the dark night for her shift at the hospital. My parents couldn't afford a babysitter for me so they watched me in shifts. She worked nights. He worked days. My fears were confirmed when once dad came home robbed and mildly knifed after a shift. Our 7-channel (if we were that lucky...channel reception depended on our jagged wire-hanger-bunny-eared antenna) black and white tv set, blared all the crimes of our graffiti-covered city. I used to sleep under blankets for fear of break-ins. We lived within a block of a busy elevated train track with the frequent train chuggs as our ambient soundtrack.

Life was so different back then. Despite having to sit in front of the tv set to hold the antenna in a certain spot or to turn the heavy channel dial, even tv was much simpler. I remember the ticking of CBS's "60 Minutes". I remember Walter Kronkite's mustache. He was a celebrity in our humble apartment--I think I was 4 or 5 years old. Years later, I remember when my father told me he had picked Mr. Kronkite up in his cab to take him to work one day. I asked him, did you say anything to him? I can't remember what my dad said. I think he said nothing, which would've been in character. Or maybe he couldn't resist and told Mr. Kronkite that he was once a journalist. What I do remember was that it was a memorable enough event for my dad, who doesn't communicate much, to have shared with me. Mr. Kronkite was a common fixture in our one-bedroom apartment in Queens, as common as those subway cars outside floating to and fro the city skyline, as common as my dad's yellow cab pulling up on our block at sunset, as common as that sunset spilling through Manhattan's skyline into our apartment with sherbert colors, past the smelly fish hanging in our kitchen window, that my dad put up to dry (amidst my mom's protestations), as common as the Twin Towers book-ending one side of the skyline, as common as the dreams my parents had of "making it" as struggling young immigrants to this country. With each celebrity passing, we also remember the lives we had that were intricately entwined with them.

Michael Jackson R.I.P.

So much has happened since even before my last entry, that I haven't been able to put my head around it all to blog so casually. First being the passing of Michael Jackson, and the ensuing global ubiquitous celebration of his life. A time marker of my generation. Finding images or songs to re-post here felt inadequate. I think his memorial service covered all ground, and I was able to mourn the tragedy of his life, and celebrate the almost mythical heights he accomplished and how much he shared, as an artist and humanitarian, in his life. If I could (embedding on youtube turned off), I would now post his "Beat It" video.

I was in 6th grade, immersed in the "Flashdance" soundtrack, and wanting to be one of the kids in the movie "Fame," recording songs with my tape recorder in front of my transistor radio of Casey Casem's Top 40 Countdown, and staying up all hours of the night to catch music videos on tv's "Friday Night Videos". God forbid I went to a friend's house with cable tv...I want my MTV! No one had cable back then, so if we found it, we hogged it. Pre-internet days, we had to sit and wait, through commercials and other songs, by the radio, by the tv, until our cherished songs were played. It was the summer of Men at Work, Hall & Oates, the Police, Irene Cara, and of course, Michael Jackson. As far as pop-music was concerned, Cyndi Lauper, Madonna, Prince, Duran Duran, and break-dancing were still half a year away. We sat in front of the radio, and then that gong came on (OMG!!!!), then that beat came on, then the unmistakable whirring sound like the dropping of a bomb, then the guitar riff. Then the video...

I will never forget seeing "Beat It". Even watching it now, it is so amazing! The narrative is so well put, this impending battle just felt so dangerous! And that it ends in a dance peacemaking?!!! But not just any old kind, it was the precise MJ kind. Yes, his dance was just that big and dramatic enough to stop war! The precision of his moves, still keeps your eyes glued. I mean, in the pool hall, WHAT IS HE DOING?!!!! And the END SCENE?!!!!! When we first saw it, there was NOTHING like it, or him. He broke shapes and conventions. Knees and legs angled in the air, hips turning in 3 directions at once, head snap turns! We went berzerk! It still makes me a little crazy with giddiness watching it now. Oh how we imitated those dance moves...dealing those deck of cards out, so effortlessly. And that jacket! The introduction of that jacket! That also made us a little berzerk. Red leather with the metal net and studs, and just irregular. Silver socks?!!! And the endless changes in the music. The dramatic guitar riffs, the heavy breaths, the hiccups, the woohoo's, and eee'hee's! The whole experience was just overwhelming: on the radio, and then the big video debut on tv! (Yes, music video "debut's" were BIG events back then, at least for me). I wish I was a fly on the wall in that studio with him and Quincy Jones. To watch those artists at work at that time in pop music history.

How MJ sang and moved, there was nothing like it. Every time that song came on the radio, with the sound at the beginning of the gong!!!... I can remember the anticipation. And then again with THAT BASS LINE!!! for "Billie Jean". And I guess what we understand now, is that his music was so intricately married to visuals, imagery, movement, fashion. It all just helped to heighten and express the dramatics of the music. It was those early days of MJ's and music videos in general that planted my love for that genre that led me to a career in that field. There is so much more to say, but it's all been said. MJ's work stands on its own. Let us continue to celebrate the work of this artist who went to the farthest reaches. Rest in peace Michael.

Pina Bausch R.I.P.

Frida Kahlo's "Henry Ford Hospital" and "Roots"; Ben Harper's "Alone"

Alone - Ben Harper & The Innoc...

My awesome yoga teacher once advised me about some physical ailments I was having, to try and observe and address the pain and ailment without the emotional attachments. This reminder gets at the crux of our health and identification. Stuff is happening, but what are we emotionally attaching to that stuff? In essence, whatever "that" is, is the pain itself. Not necessarily the neuron signals, but how we interpret them emotionally. So if we can identify the emotions, we're on the road to recovery, by addressing the fear factor. This week was particularly hard to practice this belief... but at least I had his words in my head as a mantra so as not to get completely lost in the emotions, and dive into utter despair. When health is compromised, it makes you think of lots of things, mortality on many different levels, and brings images you've known to mind. Again, same yoga teacher in class yesterday, also told us a story that reminds me in this context, that perhaps those feelings of mortality are not misguided. It's just, not necessarily of the whole being. It's more about, what part of you needs to die?... And thus give way to another rebirth. That's my mantra for today.

"BitchesBrew" Miles Davis

Bitches Brew - Miles Davis

What today's rain conjured. One of the best album covers of all time. I kept thinking, as I battled wind that changed its mind moment to moment and rain that followed it, that the storm felt like a witch's brew, and I heard this soundtrack with this visual projected in my head as I swam and beat my way through city blocks.

Jason Nocito, Photographer

The top 2 images is what today feels like. The third (Cat Power) and fourth is what I wish today was instead. And the tubesocks-in-heels is just dope. Photographer is Jason Nocito, have no idea how I ran into his site, but I particularly like the collages/juxtapositions in the "The Ego Has Landed" section, and the Mumbai section. His colors tend to be muted, they feel like film gone bad by age and exposure, flat lighting, wispy. What I particularly appreciate is an artist with a website that's fast and easy to navigate, well organized, good looking, with good work. Oh, and I would also add the drill sound from my dentist visit today as the soundtrack for the first two images.

Daddy's Girl

This daddy's girl
is still trying to accept
that she'll never get to know
her father. He's long gone.
He doesn't want to be known.
He's such a fragile thing,
he who was once her hero.

And when time
takes its bounty,
what will she be left with
for the rest of her heart-beating days?
Why is she holding on?
Today he beats his chest,
screams a torture from depths
that shake her to the core,
but she stands unmoved
she sees his pain.
He tries to break things,
he is forgiven but
his door is closed
and she must accept this
so that it is not her
he breaks, beats, tortures.
She screams in private

from where she sits,
she sees the expanse of gray
puff clouds
sun rays file into
the body of water
out yonder
reflecting silver
over there
green fluffer about
an excuse for trees
bees busy
in bees balm
birds shoot past
purposeful
two at a time
in times like these
one must look up,
and see beyond
the distance of
the screams

"Rabbit In Your Headlights" by UNKLE featuring Thom Yorke, Directed by Jonathan Glazer

One of my favorite videos ever made. Directed by Jonathan Glazer, the music is UNKLE featuring Thom Yorke. Great story build through subtle shot edits and the amazing music. And who can deny Yorke's voice? Epic ending. I think the dude is Denis Lavant from Les Amants du Pont-Neuf, a great French film, where if my memory serves correctly, he plays the same character. The final image of the video reminds me of the Dali paintings he did later in life, such as Christ on crucifix that hangs at the National Gallery in D.C. That same quality of light. See a pristine version of this video on youtube... click here and hit the HQ button. The mega label Universal didn't "allow" embedding information on youtube so I couldn't post it above... don't get me started on the music industry. I'll just say, they, like Detroit, dug their own graves. Free potentially exponential publicity reach through the youtube posting, but they'd rather employ someone to search and destroy on the internet. How else would this video/song be known? I only saw this video years back because I had access to director reels in my past life. But the public doesn't get to see even a small portion of the great art (and commerce) videos and commercials that get made. What's the point?

Staggering statistics from an incredible book I'm reading now, Pepe Escobar's "Globistan: How the Globalized World Is Dissolving into Liquid War": only 7 companies dominate the GLOBAL film market, and only 5 companies dominate the music industry. The ramifications are scary. Orwellian.

"Embrace" performed by Shae Fiol 6/3/09

"Embrace" by Shae Fiol from Karen B. Song on Vimeo.

Shot and post-production by yours truly. From Shae Fiol's "Catch A Ride" CD Release Party on June 3rd, 2009 in NYC. Mireya Ramos on violin.

"The Botticellian Trees" by William Carlos Williams

I have no image for this entry. This poem, one of my favorites, in text, is enough:

The alphabet of
the trees

is fading in the
song of the leaves

the crossing
bars of the thin

letters that spelled
winter

and the cold
have been illuminated

with
pointed green

by the rain and sun—
The strict simple

principles of
straight branches

are being modified
by pinched-out

ifs of color, devout
conditions

the smiles of love—
. . . . . .

until the script
sentences

move as a woman's
limbs under cloth

and praise from secrecy
quick with desire

love's ascendancy
in summer—

In summer the song
sings itself

above the muffled words—

(click here for audio recording of the poet)

"Embrace" by Shae Fiol (Lyrics by Solange Foster); by Egon Schiele

Embrace - Shae Fiol

em·brace
Pronunciation:
\im-ˈbrās\
Function:
verb
Inflected Form(s):
em·braced; em·brac·ing
Etymology:
Middle English, from Anglo-French embracer, from en- + brace pair of arms — more at brace
Date:
14th century

transitive verb1 a: to clasp in the arms : hug b: cherish, love2: encircle, enclose3 a: to take up especially readily or gladly b: to avail oneself of : welcome 4 a: to take in or include as a part, item, or element of a more inclusive whole b: to be equal or equivalent to intransitive verb: to participate in an embrace

he reached around her body
to the soft underbelly
and with a kiss pulled out a heart
that she had left unguarded
his attention was her intent
and her body was his instrument
and he played her
hypnotic rhythms up and down her spine
let the fantasy build and climb
craving in the maximum tension
stopping just short of completion

her rhythms lost his time
she fumbled to fix the broken with rewind
breathe the pain inside
he could never be her rhyme
the real hits hard
letting it all in to heal her scars
painting the heart shape over
embracing it all to move forward
and he played her...

his weight caused a break so deep it resonates
rebuild, embrace the heartache completely
and let the pain in sweetly

by Shae Fiol, lyrics by Solange Foster

"Your Childhood in Menton"/" Tu Infancia en Menton" by Federico García Lorca

When no words or actions can comfort life's unthinkable presentations, one reaches for poetry. God in the evocation of images and in the spaces between words.

Your Childhood in Menton
Yes, your childhood now a legend of fountains.
The train, and the woman who fills the sky.
Your evasive solitude in hotels
and your pure mask of another sign.
It is the sea's childhood and the silence
where wisdom's glasses all are shattered.
It is your inert ignorance of where
my torso lay, bound by fire.
Man of Apollo, I gave you love's pattern,
the frenzied nightingale's lament.
But, pasture of ruins, you kept lean
for brief and indecisive dreams.
Thought of what was confronted, yesterday's light,
tokens and traces of chance.
Your restless waist of sand
favors only tracks that don't ascend.
But I must search all corners
for your tepid soul without you which doesn't understand you
with my thwarted Apollonian sorrow
that broke through the mask you wear.
There, lion, there, heavenly fury,
I'll let you graze on my cheeks;
there, blue horse of my madness,
pulse of nebula and minute hand,
I'll search the stones for scorpions
and your childlike mother's clothes
midnight lament and ragged cloth
that tore the moon out of the dead man's brow.
Yes, your childhood now a legend of fountains.
Soul a stranger to my veins' emptiness,
I'll search for you rootless and small.
Eternal love, love, love that never was!
Oh, yes! I love. Love, love! Leave me.
Don't let them gag me, they who seek
the wheat of Saturn through the snow,
who castrate creatures in the sky,
clinic and wilderness of anatomy.
Love, love, love. Childhood of the sea.
Your tepid soul without you which doesn't understand you.
Love, love, a flight of deer
through the endless heart of whiteness.
And your childhood, love, your childhood.
The train, and the woman who fills the sky.
Not you or I, not the wind or the leaves.
Yes, your childhood now a legend of fountains.

Tu Infancia en Menton
Sí, tu niñez ya fábula de fuentes.
El tren y la mujer que llena el cielo.
Tu soledad esquiva en los hoteles
y tu máscara pura de otro signo.
Es la niñez del mar y tu silencio
donde los sabios vidrios se quebraban.
Es tu yerta ignorancia donde estuvo
mi torso limitado por el fuego.
Norma de amor te di, hombre de Apolo,
llanto con ruiseñor enajenado,
pero, pasto de ruina, te afilabas
para los breves sueños indecisos.
Pensamiento de enfrente, luz de ayer,
índices y señales del acaso.
Tu cintura de arena sin sosiego
atiende sólo rastros que no escalan.
Pero yo he de buscar por los rincones
tu alma tibia sin ti que no te entiende,
con el dolor de Apolo detenido
con que he roto la máscara que llevas.
Allí, león, allí, furia del cielo,
te dejaré pacer en mis mejillas;
allí, caballo azul de mi locura,
pulso de nebulosa y minutero,
he de buscar las piedras de alacranes
y los vestidos de tu madre niña,
llanto de medianoche y paño roto
que quitó luna de la sien del muerto.
Sí, tu niñez ya fábula de fuentes.
Alma extraña de mi hueco de venas,
te he de buscar pequeña y sin raíces.
¡Amor de siempre, amor, amor de nunca!
¡Oh, sí! Yo quiero. ¡Amor, amor! Dejadme.
No me tapen la boca los que buscan
espigas de Saturno por la nieve
o castran animales por un cielo,
clínica y selva de la anatomía.
Amor, amor, amor. Niñez del mar.
Tu alma tibia sin ti que no te entiende.
Amor, amor, un vuelo de la corza
por el pecho sin fin de la blancura.
Y tu niñez, amor, y tu niñez.
El tren y la mujer que llena el cielo.
Ni tú, ni yo, ni el aire, ni las hojas.
Sí, tu niñez ya fábula de fuentes.

Lynn Nottage's "Ruined" at the Manhattan Theatre Club; Neil LaBute's "Reasons To Be Pretty"

I experienced Lynn Nottage's (shout out Brown alum) Pulitzer-winning masterpiece "Ruined" yesterday, listening to the stories of the characters unfold, and how they came to be here at Mama Nadi's cafe. It's a place that serves liquor and women to soldiers in civil war-torn Congo. There is so much violence and the conditions in which the characters live prove a no-win situation. All are precariously perched in a world where whims have guns and cocks. None of the violence told happens onstage, but it's as vivid as the set and people you see before you. Each person has a story that is unimaginable. And as a collective, you sit wondering how can life possibly ever return to anything other than this? Especially after all they've seen.

You've heard the horrors before in the media. You've felt helpless and wonder how this situation will ever end and how could it even be in the first place. Young boys armed and machete-ing people's heads off and raising it in victory. A woman tied to a tree by a string to her foot "like a goat to a stake" and raped repeatedly for 5 months, returning home then being chased out by her family and community for the shame she brought to them. A woman "ruined" (by female circumcision) and chased out by her community because of the bad luck she brings. Sides in the war changing so fast, sometimes within a day... "leaders" and his men, rising, killing, falling, being killed. The cyclical violence. Chaos. Fear. And more violence. Life costing nothing. One trigger decisions. And you sit there keeping it all together. It's so horrible, you hold tight trying to keep your rational hat on, when nothing is rational. So you listen some more, all the while thinking about the nature of mankind, and how does this problem get solved? Are the conditions the result of post-colonial instabilities exacerbated by the land's wealth of gold and diamonds? Can there ever be any kind of peace on this earth until mankind has connected war with and transcends the conflict embedded within each person, manifested simply and partially in the 7 deadly sins? So many thoughts searching for an out, a solution.

Story after story. Men have it bad, but women have it worse. The men are at their tipping point, and women become their last bastion to empowerment, when there is no other source. By the time we get to the middle of the second act, to the climax of the play, we see blood for the first time, blood from a woman who's just committed her own abortion and screams "stop waging your war through my body." At this moment, you no longer have any control over all you've just experienced, all the information you've taken in, all the images painted in your head. The crushing weight of feeling like there's no way out. All the stories you've heard, the collective psychic pain of everyone in this war, culminate at this moment, and becomes real. I wept out loud. But the women, continue on. They continue to live with the scars of violence in and on their bodies, in their hearts and minds.

We see the girls who dream of love and tenderness through their romance novels. Despite all they've seen and experienced, they can still imagine love. And the most powerful engine of the story that hits you from left field is that of Mama Nadi, cool and strong-willed, hardened. Love has no place in her life. She believes, 'everything is taken away so what's the point?' It's a weakness and a luxury that one cannot afford at this place. She too is hardened by her own history. She fights and fights this traveling salesman who is trying to woo her through the duration of the play. And ultimately, she finally admits that she too is "ruined" and opens her heart to love and vulnerability and salvation.

Nottage is an incredible playwright, deftly weaving together this multi-charactered plot to completion. The interchangeable use of the same male actors covering all the different soldiers, is a very subtle and powerful way of making that statement of there being no sides in this ever-changing war, and no difference between soldiers for the women working in the brothel.

I did a double-feature yesterday and also caught Neil LaBute's highly acclaimed, "Reasons to be Pretty" in the evening. The play had some moments, but overall was subpar. LaBute's really good at breathless, stream of consciousness conversational language and portraying a certain kind of absurdity in relationships. It's enjoyable to watch. One can easily relate and laugh. Good scenes. But I think the audience is conned by this...they clapped after every scene change, egh...because there was no engine in the play. Are we supposed to be waiting for the "lovers" to get back together? Where are we going? Do these characters even really love each other? Do we even care? What's the point of the main story or the secondary story? Is it just to show the expectations of "pretty," the ugliness of people, and thus the irony of the title? The premise was precarious (I think the actors didn't sell it at all) and there was NOTHING at stake, if love or friendship was gained or lost. The characters were completely unsympathetic. I'll be really pissed if it wins anything in tonight's Tony's. There is way too much good work out there.