Sunday, August 17, 2014

Upon Further Reflection

When I was about ten I read the play, Inherit the Wind, and fell in love with it.  At 12 I was passing out campaign literature for Hubert Humphrey in southern NJ.  I don't know that I understand either thing at more than an intuitive level.  I have largely lived my life at an intuitive level, despite a capacity to communicate and rationalize.  I like to think that I am a better person for my attitudes and beliefs, but, of course, everyone thinks this.

My social media circles are filled with folks who are politically engaged and have strong opinions in a variety of ways.  Not all of them align with my own values and attitudes, but, of course, many of them do.  Those circles are also filled with a lot of people who don't give a fuck and wish the rest of us would chill out, which is one of the privileges of living in places and times where the essentials of life are provided in one way or another and the fundamentals of government policy are largely invisible.

Within that context I am often wondering how it is that otherwise reasonable and intelligent people could so completely fail to see the things that are so painfully obvious to me.  Irony alert.  For future reference all ironic statements will be offered in italics.  So there's no mistake.  Cuz, well, we wouldn't want that.

Irony aside, the capacity to even ask that question suggests several things: arrogance, curiosity, ignorance, experience.  There is a parallel within this conversation to another that I was listening to on NPR recently in which it was suggested that rather than ask folks who are struggling with mental disorders, "What is wrong with them," we ask the question, "What happened to them?"  Not in the sense of what event caused them to be broken, but rather in the sense of what accumulation of experiences led them to the place where they think and behave as they do.

I am very much engaged by this question of what is the accumulated experience that leads us to live within the place that we do.  There is much about our own experience and context that drives our beliefs and actions.  David Brooks has some interesting things to say about this in his book, The Social Animal.

My thinking in this area has been perturbed this summer as a consequence of spending four weeks traveling across the surface of Europe.  My engagements were not deep...in most cases I spent only about 48 hours in any given city...and largely I was intent on getting a flavor of the various places that I moved through.  What I gathered in that period of flitting, which fits into the nooks and crannies of my prior knowledge about these places, is that there is a difference in how much of the world perceives...what...perceives something?  Life.  Society.  Purpose.  Freedom.

I am reading David McCullough's book, The Greater Journey, which describes the experiences of Americans visiting Paris during the 19th century and it is serving to continue this reflection on how I, as an American, perceive the world...or, perhaps more accurately, how my own perceptions of the world don't seem to align very well with the dominant perspectives in America.

There is a possibly unique characteristic in the American psyche that seems to reject reflection in favor of an irresistible obsession with production and efficiency.  We have made a religion, a God, of the capitalistic work ethic, and in that pursuit something is lost.  It exists within our Protestant, northern European roots, to be sure...but whereas in the lands from which we received it (Germany, Denmark, the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway) this drive is contained within a communal and collaborative effort to build a balanced society, it is untempered here in America.

Recently, the German auto manufacturer Daimler made arrangements for its employees to ensure the sanctity of their vacation by allowing all email to be deleted as it is received while they are on vacation.  All of it.  Deleted.  This is such a foreign notion for Americans that even Daimler doesn't think they could do it in their US locations.  There is some irony in this since in Europe the vacation in question is probably at least four weeks long while in the US we do well to squeak out more than a week at a time.  And we work longer weeks, have lower benefits, etc. etc. etc.

This is a known thing.  It is a given that is recognized.  It is an assumption on which American policy and social structures depend and in many quarters in which it is celebrated.  But it may be a sickness in that the very success of that assumption has led the American experience to a place where it has no need to question its assumptions.  Success rarely breeds reflection.  Success breeds arrogance.  While America has had challenges and struggles, it has never in its short existence completely unraveled and hit the reset button.  As a result, we are able to assume that the system is sacrosanct and the individuals within the system that benefit from it, even those who don't benefit from it, continue to accept its structural defects without reflection.

Stepping off that soapbox and returning to Inherit the Wind, I begin to make some headway in developing an answer to the seemingly unrelated question of why I am driven to work as a director in the theatrical arts.  It seems to me that in my nature there is a connection between certain ideas and values that are existentially fundamental to my perception of myself.  They are existential in that I have repeatedly reconfigured my life to pursue them.  They are connected in that they are more compelling to me when they are grokked than when they are enumerated.  They are in my nature in that they were not chosen nor were then pursued, but rather they exist as a consequence of what has happened to me...in what I have experienced from moment one.

Theatre, I believe, depends not just on its individual component parts, but rather depends on the way that the theatrical experience combines its component parts to create a context that privileges a particular intellectual or emotional experience.  The director's job is to craft the experience for the audience such that the essential idea that is of import to the director is foremost in the presentation.  The director creates a world, a world that exists outside of our own world, that allows us to see and hear and feel and believe in ways that we are immune from within our own world of experiences.  The world is created with the collaboration of actors, designers, technicians...all working together to highlight some substantive element from the original text that begs to be unified in the experience of a new world.

When I read a play, it is when there is an idea that presents itself to me as being worthy of highlight that I get excited.  I may not be able to articulate that idea in words, but there is an idea that is being developed, and the most effective way to develop that idea is through the wholeness of the theatrical moment.  It is intuitive.  It is an experience.  The question is not, "what does this mean," but, rather, the question is, "what have I experienced," and with a little luck, "how does that experience integrate or change what I value?"

In the end, experience is the defining element in who we are, what we believe, and what we value.  Theatre becomes a tool for change not when it articulates an explicit idea that the audience has already accepted or rejected in more didactic environments, but it is a tool for change when it leads its audience through an experience that contributes to the totality of the individuals world.  In the same way that sitting in the ancient medina in Fez or in the Jarden des Tuileries has the potential to affect that same sort of change, art which pulls the receiver of it into its world can be singularly powerful.  It is worth investing some energy to figuring out how to do it well.

Wednesday, August 13, 2014

Oh, God. I'm provincial.

Here's a bit of breaking news for you.  Greek plays work better in Greek.  French plays work better in French.

It's amazing how much of life is spent learning the obvious.  There is what we know, and then there is what we actually understand.  They are not the same.  So I apologize in advance for the painful obviousness of the following thoughts.  The fact that this should not be worth remarking on is the very thing that I am struck by...that is, for the moment, remarkable.  The following statement of the obvious begs questions that I suppose I'll spend some time on.

I consider myself a reasonably open thinker with a willingness to unpack my assumptions and understand the world from other viewpoints.  I have taken dozens of courses in what we call the Humanities and have a strong background in the sources and wanderings of Western civilization.

I have always thought it would be useful to travel and see the world.  Well, sure, of course that's true.

But...who knew?

Time takes on a new focal point.  Although I entered these travels with the intellectual understanding that time need be measured in much larger units than we apply to our new and energetic federation here in North America, a shift has most definitely slipped me off my comfortable stance.

I am an avid reader of historical fiction.  As a young person I loved the novels of the American revolution and the civil war which brought those conflicts to life for me.  I continue to read historical fiction, but also now enjoy the biographies and histories of writers like David McCullough and have read Shelby Foote's lengthy history of the Civil War twice (thank you Barry Edwards, who would like me to return those volumes some day).  In all of that reading the events and personalities of that period of time sat comfortably far off in the distant past.  The nineteenth century was a very effective barrier between the modern and the ancient such that the colonization of North America and the resultant development of a new nation were very much things of a distant, though enormously interesting, past.

Tonight, as I sit reading McCullough's description of Americans in Paris in the early nineteenth century, I realize that these men and women, who were born after the American Revolution and lived into the period of the Civil war, created a bridge of a single generation between the people and events of those two rumbling moments in American history, and that someone born around the time of the Civil War could easily have lived through to World War II, which lands them smack in the middle of the recent history of the twentieth century that feels pretty much like a part of the living history of people I have known in my own life...now...today.

It is a short history.  A history that when measured in complete lives rather than generations is really only the history of three or four lives.  A few heartbeats.

There is something to be said here about the arrogance of our rhetoric and the untested mettle of our political experiment.  History is long and arduous and this experiment has really just barely begun.

But that isn't the real point, however much it might be worth exploring and considering.  The real point is that I have lived my life on the assumption that the center of all things -- politically, economically, artistically -- that although there was this thing out there that I knew about called Greece and that it was the source of something we called Classical Humanities and that it spent several thousand years flowing through Europe before it found its way to my home -- that never the less all things were centered here.  Where I am.  Which, arbitrarily, is in the midwest of North America.

It's not just time.  It's everything.  I have discovered that even though I knew that Oedipus was written by Sophocles in the fifth century BC and that it was written in Greek...as much as I knew that, I didn't really understand it.  All I knew was that largely I didn't enjoy the experience of reading it or of seeing performances of it now...here...in my enlightened modern world.  It seemed too broad.  It seemed too direct.  The realities of the characters escaped me.  For what it's worth, I was willing to believe that the problem sat in my own failure.  I didn't understand it, and for the most part it was easier to just dismiss it.

Eureka!  Greek plays make more sense in Greek.  Even without understanding Greek it makes more sense in Greek.  Language is more than just different ways to codify words.  Language speaks to the character of a people.  To the essence of the people who live in a particular place at a particular time.  It is the primal expression of the values and characteristics that make a people themselves.  The sounds of the language speak to the history and culture of a people.  In Hippolytus, a woman can find the deep emotional horror and anguish that comes from a love that is forbidden at the elemental level of society's existential boundaries and express that horror and anguish in words.  In Greek, that emotional eruption rings true and carries beyond the stage and into the souls of the audience.  In English, it really doesn't manage to do that.

Oh, sure, a talented actress or actor can make it work.  They can find the truth in the text and make it real in ways that wring pathos from the stiff necks of an audience.  But I have trouble believing it and it is difficult to fit into the language of a people whose character and values are misaligned with the voice of the story.

And having heard it in Greek, that makes sense to me in a way that it didn't before.  We're just copying something...and it's a copy that struggles to retain the color and clarity of the original.

And Moliere sounds better in French.  And, you know what?  Theatre didn't originate on Broadway.  There's this place called London where if they could keep from burning the damn theatres down we'd be seeing shows in the same place they'd been doing them for over 400 years.

I knew all this.  Still and all, somehow it's something I never really knew.

Friday, April 11, 2014

Cycles

After a couple month hiatus while I was busily attending to the realities of being in graduate school and living the life fantastic I have been musing of late on the cycles of life that I have observed.  This began a few weeks ago when the extensive winter wonderland that is the upper midwest this year was finally brought to heel by warming winds and intensifying sunlight.  The most striking example of that change comes to me courtesy of the Minnesota river.

This is the first year that I have ever lived in such close proximity to a river.  I lived in Minneapolis, which boasts of its embrace of the mighty Mississippi, but somehow the way that the flow of that great body of water is managed and overcome by the civilizing force of dams and locks minimized the reality of its annual changes.  Yes, the roar of the St Anthony Falls in the spring is certainly impressive, particularly as I have sometimes observed it from the dramatic vistas afforded by the Guthrie's Endless Bridge.  Still, it always presented itself more as a moment of beauty than as an endless cycle of natural change.  What struck me differently in this new environ was the quiet power of that same annual cycle in a place where it is less obviously controlled.

What I witnessed recently is found in a little stretch of highway 169 between St. Peter and Mankato, which I drive several times each day in my commute from home to school.  In that drive I follow a long, lazy curve of the Minnesota river stretching along an arcing, tree covered ridge of high ground.  I moved here last summer, at which time a lengthy period of drought had reduced the river to a narrow, winding channel flowing through sandy bars beneath wooded banks.  At that time what struck me was how little water there was flowing in this presumably significant river valley.  The Minnesota River valley is a place of orchards and farms stretching back through the short recorded history of both native and European settlement.  It is a significant eco-system, and, yet, there just wasn't that much water out there.

Except, of course, that there is.  And, to be more specific, right this moment, as the snows melt and the new year begins, that is to say the seasonal period of Invigoration that follows Mortification and Purgation, there is a whole lot of water out there.  And, presumably, more to come.  Jubilation sits on the horizon.

To be brief, as unlikely as that is, what I am getting at is that when one lives in the proximity of a living river the cycle of the year suddenly comes into clearer and significant focus.  The living river that sits in front of me now is not the same living river that I witnessed in August, and, though I am but a stranger here and cannot speak to the centuries or even decades before and after me, I suspect it demonstrates a change that is available to be witnessed every year.

It speaks to a different kind of calculus.

Slower and inexorable and more willing to succumb to the forces of decay and death.  Mortification, Purgation, Invigoration and Jubilation.

So, as I drove to school one morning and suddenly realized that the essentially empty riverbed was no longer empty but fuller and filling and unconcerned, as I had been, with its annual depletion I felt a deep kinship with this cycle.

I am no farmer.  I have no interest in digging in the soil and toiling to bring forth painfully nurtured life from the richness of ingredients that are intellectually available to me but that I really don't understand at all.  Still, something about this striking example of cycle struck me...and I could not help but reflect.

I have always lived within the comfort of clock time.  I keep a detailed calendar of clock-driven activities and even when I am organizing my own efforts to complete my work I do so within the context of clock driven appointments with myself and my limited attention to task.

Still, within that, cycles call to me.

I have mentioned before the idea of having a driving question that engages a person for a decade or so at a time.  This wasn't my idea.  It was articulated to me by Brian Mertes from Brown.  It is a concept that resonates so deeply for me that it could rise to the level of a philosophy of life.  It is a concept clearly focused on the idea of cycle.

Sometimes when I look around me at the America in which I live I am struck by the predominance of the paradigm of linear growth.  It may have its roots in the industrial revolution that still frames our expectation of social discourse.  Linear growth is essential to the current American paradigm.  Without this linear growth we believe ourselves to be in a world of failure.

And that linear path, which many folks that I know have engaged to their own benefit, is somehow elusive to me.

Instead, I find myself more likely to accept a cycle that allows for Mortification.  For Purgation.  I abandon the linear path, lie fallow, and begin again.

I like this cycle, and, still, after living within it for what is now a sixth decade, I struggle to name and define it.

Hmmm....more on this now doubt as this year continues.

Happy Spring!  Time to pour libations on the gods of Invigoration!


Wednesday, January 08, 2014

Traveling in Morocco

This is based on a very short trip to Morocco, so this in no way purports to be a knowledgeable recommendation, but on the other hand, I got really lucky with my lodging in both Tangier and Fez, so there are a few things here that may be useful to anyone planning a journey.  If you are concerned about street hustlers, take a peek at my blog entry on my experience with this as well as some reflections on those experiences.

For my first night in Tangier, I stayed at Dar el Kasbah.  This is an old hotel located alongside the old Medina in Tangier.  I had a single room for fifty Euro, which I booked through Expedia.  The place is charming, consisting of a stacked set of rooms accessed by a towering staircase.  At each level there were six or seven rooms opening on to a common landing.

The bathroom was super small, but it did the job.  There is a nice little breakfast, but I woke up late and wanted to get going, so I didn't take advantage of it.  The best thing about this place was that it was located in the middle of an area that bridged the ancient medina and the newer section up the hill.  Consequently, I was able to easily access both areas on foot.

To get to the Dar el Kasbah, take a cab.  Cabs from the airport are pretty straightforward and you can expect to pay 100 to 150DH.  If there's no meter establish the price up front.  If you arrive by ferry, there are two strategies to getting through the ferry station.  If you don't want to overpay for your cab, disentangle yourself politely from the various folks who will try and become your friend and keep moving through the station.  Exit down the stairs and walk to the official petite taxi stand.  You will want to get in a taxi that is blue and actually has a meter and your cab fare will just be a couple of dollars.  There is a place to exchange your currency just to the left of the taxis.

On the other hand, if you don't mind overpaying a bit, you can go ahead and hire a taxi as soon as you exit the ferry.  In this case, negotiate the price up front because their won't be a meter.  Tell them you are going to the Dar el Kasbah and when they say they'll take you there, offer fifty Dihnar.  This is about six dollars US.  It's way more than you need to pay, but on the other hand you now have someone who will assertively usher you to your hotel.  It's a bit of a lark.  You could pay as much as 100dh and it's still a bargain by Western standards.

The young host working the desk, whose name I didn't capture, gave me a number of very good recommendations.  If you are looking for a nice place that feels a bit more like home to have a cocktail, I recommend Le Coeur de Tangier, located above the Cafe de Paris near the French Embassy.  To access it you go upstairs and it seems like you might be in the wrong place, but keep going.  Drinks come with a nice plate of fish and are about $5E each.

Cafe Haffa is also worth a look.  This is a bit  hard to find.  Get a good map and when you head down the side street veer left sharply after a hundred yards or so.  [If you stay to the right there is an open space with a view to the sea, but nothing else is over there.  Take a peek if it's nice out, but then head back to the street to go down the hill to the cafe.]  Go in the afternoon as it is in shade in the morning.  Seating is tiered on a hillside overlooking the beach and crashing waves from well up the hill, so the setting is quite excellent.

When I returned to Tangier I stayed at the Atlas Rif and Spa, which is a French hotel located along the coastal road on the north side of Tangier.  This was a really nice hotel which has a bunch of bad reviews on Expedia.  Not sure why.  The reviews all relate to service, but I had no problem.  The bar and restaurant were staffed by friendly, helpful folks as was the front desk.  No one spoke much English, but the basic transactions were not hard to negotiate.  I selected this modern setting after having been pretty overwhelmed by the cultural differences in Fez and wanting a night of comfort and familiarity while still staying somewhere that differed from the standard fare back home.  I had dinner in the bar, which was very classy and the meal featured a plate of fresh vegetables and fruit along with some tasty fish.  It also included a hard fruit that was very much like a meat in its flavor and texture, which the bartender explained was a Moroccan artichoke.

I took the train in both directions between Tangier and Fez, which was a pleasant journey away from the coast and up into the foothills of the Rif mountains.  The train, which takes about four or five hours, cost less than $20 for a seat in a first class compartment.  First class is nice as there is more likely to be someone in your compartment who speaks English and you may meet some interesting folks.  If you bring food it is customary but not required to offer to share.  While riding the train I met several wonderful locals including a teacher and a young, energetic entrepreneur.

While in Fez I stayed at a Riad in the Medina.  This guest house is a Moroccan version of the B&B and was a pure delight.  Everything about it made me smile.  The architecture, the rooms, the host, the staff, the food...all extraordinarily comfortable and comforting.  It creates this oasis of peace within the sensory assault of the Medina itself.  There are a number of these in the Medina, but the one I stayed at was the Riad Idrissy.  It is operated by a charming English fellow named Robert who bustles about pretty much twenty-four hours a day making everything hold together.  The Riad is anchored by his restaurant, The Ruined Garden.  Located a short walk off the main thoroughfare in the Medina, it can only be accessed on foot.

I stayed in their smaller room, The Mezzanine, which was still really comfortable and spacious and overlooks the interior courtyard.  The other rooms have high ceilings and are larger and fancier, but for me this was perfect.  The place cost me $65E per night, which included a great breakfast everymorning.  When I woke up in the morning there would be a basket of tea and coffee that I could take in my room or take to the balcony or garden.

I suspect that any of these Riads would be pleasant, but check reviews and make sure you get a nice one.  It totally makes being in Fez or other Moroccan cities less stressful for the traveler.




Thursday, January 02, 2014

Happy New Year 2014...From Fez Morocco

Happy New Year!

New Year's in Fez is a closed door...here are a few thoughts from yesterday as I left Fez.

I just returned from the bathroom here on the train from Fez to Tangier, where I discovered that the mechanics of the facilities are simplified to the level of a straight pipe leading down from the stool and emptying onto the tracks below.  It took me a moment to process such a choice, but the fact is that the countryside, here and in the States, is covered with animals, domesticated and otherwise, who are pretty much doing the same thing all the time.  The little bit of human waste being added to that total along the train tracks is pretty minimal.  Odd what we consider to be important.

I have made it through my three nights in Fez with a host of thoughts, feelings and insights and a cacophony of emotions.  Unlike my trip last summer, this trip is so filled with odd and unknown experiences that it is not really desirable or even possible to try and journal them in a direct way as I did when driving through the Rockies.  Every moment brings another moment that seems worth noting or exploring so that eventually it is impossible to really note anything.  Also, the sheer exhaustion of it all makes immediate processing more challenging...important, perhaps, but also slightly out of reach.

The last thirty-six hours have also been somewhat complicated by the fact that I have been not feeling well. I assume it’s just a reaction to new parasites, and it hasn’t been terribly bad, but it has lowered my energy and increased the need to know where the bathrooms are located.  As I write I can tell that the tone of these journal postings have that lower energy.  It's hard to communicate the extraordinary beauty and richness of this place when I am so spent. 

Between feeling off and also being really engaged with how I am much I am drawn to swimming in the cultural pool of the Medina, I did not do the larger tourist activities I had considered for Fez.  Instead I stayed in the Medina, biting off little chunks of what I could manage.  So, Monday was spent on long walks about the narrow paths of this ancient medieval city while being overwhelmed by it all, and then Tuesday was spent doing little one to two hour outings into the Medina, followed by an hour or two of rest.  It was a strategy that was suited to both the realities of my mental and physical state, as well as the underlying strategy of this trip – ie, knowing that somehow the universe will decide what happens here.

As a part of my stay at the Riad I had booked the New Year’s Eve Feast at Riad Idrissy.  I wasn’t sure if it would really be what I wanted, and while quite affordable, it was on the high end of what even a large meal costs here…650dh (about $75).  On the other hand, it was New Year’s Eve and what the hell else was I going to do?  Amine, who was on the train to Fez with me, had suggested I call him and celebrate with he and his friends; however that seemed like more adventure than I was prepared to initiate...and also would have been out in the new city which was of less interest.  Since I was feeling pretty shaky anyway, I decided to stay with what I had booked and went down to the garden at nine prepared to be slightly bored, possibly lonely, but well fed. 

Waiting outside was a friendly fire pit and a few guests had begun to gather.  A glass of champagne in hand I began a conversation with a couple from London, Alan and Susan.  I did not have to worry about making conversation, as Alan was pretty much unstoppable as a one-sided conversationalist.  Susan would routinely disengage from the conversation and gaze about the garden as Alan prattled on.  They were clearly a couple, but it was hard to see what she might see in this guy.  I was happy to listen to him, but I would think it would get a bit old after a short time.  So it goes.  At least I didn’t have to worry about standing around looking isolated and alone.  

After some time we were invited into the salon to begin the meal.  I was seated at a table with five others, and if I had been concerned that I would not be entertained I was happily mistaken.  Somehow the conversation moved rather quickly to the politics of homosexuality, and the benefits for a straight man of learning how to make love at the hands of a lesbian lover.  Honestly.  It didn't stop there and took wonderfully obscure turns.  Conversation ebbed and flowed through everyone’s interests and experiences during the course of the night and time disappeared. 

The accents around the table were really lovely.  All five of the tablemates seem to be in their early forties.  All of them had traveled more than I could even imagine. Here’s who we were (as best I recall...my facility with names is highly limited). 

Tara – A charming and beautiful girl from Wales who, after spending some time in the Netherlands had lived the past decade or so in Barcelona and Fez (simultaneously).  An international food and travel journalist, she was a delightful conversationalist and completely disarming.

Richard – The owner of a Riad near Riad Idrissy, he was the quintessential gay man with the tiniest hint of a speech muffle.  A lot of stereotypes going on here, and also very genuine and kind. 

David – He and Richard are brothers.  David is straight, but my introduction to him was the middle of a conversation about a handbag and scarf and how wonderfully they went together and how he hoped that the gentleman who was looking to distribute them deserved to have great success as he had a lovely aesthetic sense.  He is from Scotland but is currently living in LA where he works as a promoter of some kind.  Is it possible to be both genuine and slick?  If so, he pulls this off.  Charming, completely open and engaged, and in the middle of a string of romantic conquests that beggared belief.  Maybe it’s a Scottish thing. 

Susan and Rebeccah – Rebeccah is a patent attorney and they seemed to fit together very nicely.  They live in Sydney and had clearly done a lot of traveling in Africa.  I don’t know if it was mentioned, but it seemed like they had been a couple for a long time.

I rounded it out as a bit of a novelty act.  First time overseas from the American heartland and I go to Fez.  Really?  They were dumbfounded.  Oddly impressed, though, so that was nice.


The band in the garden.
Everything about the evening was sumptuous and overflowing.  Conversation, food, atmosphere…all mingled together and functioned as a kind of healing balm to the outlandish challenge of the preceding five days.  For four and a half lovely hours I ate and talked and laughed in this warm cocoon of international good will.  The food included offerings such as a buttery Atlas trout pate, duck soup, sea bass, roasted lamb, vegetable dishes of all kinds, wine and champagne.  Richard had an inside track on a flowing sequence of vodka tonics with a variety of lemon that I’ve forgotten the name of but was very tasty.  At midnight a band stopped by and drummed and trumpeted in the New Year.  Definitely one of my favorite New Year’s celebration ever.  A true gift.