Monday, October 14, 2019
How to Transition From Spanking to MouthSoaping in a Single Session
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Friday, December 22, 2017
End of 2017
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| Matthew S. Petersen, left, a nominee for a judgeship on a federal district court, was unable to answer basic legal questions asked by Senator John N. Kennedy, right. Left, Alex Wong/Getty Images; Susan Walsh/Associated Press |
You know it's bad when a conservative Texas Republican cannot approve #dearleader's judicial nominees to the Federal Bench.
The lying and #fakenews generated by this POTUS is reaching it's apex. But last night on the PBSNewsHour, they FINALLY had something he really was the very biggest at accomplishing. He has moved 12 mostly unqualified candidates to the federal bench faster than any president in history. Woo Hoo! It's appalling because it took 12 candidates before the Republican Senators on the committee realized these folks didn't know the law and had received "unqualified" ratings from the Bar Association.
So, water under the bridge, we know how 12 political hacks sitting on the federal bench. I'm hoping to have the time moving into 2018 catalogueing the daily manifestations of #DoublePlusGood that litter this new post-Obama America.
Let's begin with a quick look back at just one amazingly verifyiable lie: (The entire thread can be read here.)
Trump twice told his Pensacola rally this month that he had 32,000 people at his election-eve rally in Michigan. The capacity of that Michigan arena was 4,200.— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) December 22, 2017
At what point do we just say, "Uh...no...not on my watch!" And how do we say it and mean it?
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Monday, October 9, 2017
The Sound of Flapping Wings
The sound of the flapping wings serves as
The sense memory of what I recall, when I think of Angels in America.
How is it that it's pull and and it's push
Can still be so profound decades later?
Perhaps the power of epic theatrical art provides
The ability to still bowl me over. To stop me in my daily tracks.
You forget your everyday-ness with some degree of confusion,
The way you forget where you put your glasses.
And in that way, sometimes—without your glasses—
You see more than you do when you have them on.
And you experience with new senses
Emotions and feelings you forgot you possess.
Oddly, the experience can be so rare, so important and valuable
That you realize theatre—to be valuable and meaningful—can be more than
The written word, the kitchen sink drama.
Theatre can aspire to the supernatural and the expansive possibility of what could be.
Monday, October 2, 2017
Subsequent Performances
*to Jonathan
Once when I knew so little,
My boyfriend said to me he was reading about Subsequent Performances.
You see a performance and the art evolves over them
Over the Subsequent Performances.
So you see a theatrical expressio—be it singing, dance, theatre—
And you see more in it the next time you see it.
Not more meaning, necessarily, although that can happen too.
You see an extension of the original work, reimagined in time.
Before your eyes, through subsequent performances
You find new meaning and new light in the darkness where art evolves.
From the Publisher's Weekly review:
- "he examines the resonances that a play or opera presents to later generations of theatergoersthe period of its 'afterlife'''
- "Miller's advocacy for the virtues of live theater is passionate..."
Monday, September 25, 2017
When You Get That One Chance: Feel It
It isn't everyday you get to be there when it's happening.
For some reason or another, I'd met the right people.
My boyfriend was the right person; his friends were the right people, and
I had the right chutzpah.
I was able to be one of the many reviewers for "Angels in America."
After catching the most incredible,
Eye-opening, spleen-rending early editions at the Mark Taper
I returned to Broadway to see the east coast iteration
After it had been rediscovered
Apparently in San Fran
But instead of just reviewing,
I'd asked to interview the cast or director or writer
And they brought me the head of Joe Mantello
And we had breakfast in ChelseaAt a Greek diner
The memory is still good, but lost.
I was so enamoured with what they were producing
That my notes were a complete mess
And my recollection of our conversation wasn't crystal clear
And in the moment, I recall merely being lost in a feeling
Lost in the specialness of knowing I was near something great
Joe was welcoming and friendly.
But my experience was not that of a review in any way.
.
On the walk back, I remember a substantial Brownstone he pointed up at saying,
"That's Tony's place." (Or was it George C. Wolfe?)
Then dragging out our time together,
I ran my mouth off trying to be insightful.
Embarassed that I knew so little
It was good our time was coming to an end. I was no critic
I was what I truly am: a dilettante and fan
I was enamoured and enraptured and I felt every moment of it.
And I write this now,
Wishing against wishes that it was happening right now
All over again. Because happenstance like that.
Doesn't happen often.
Like Alisyn Camerota told me (probably as she was editing my interview with him at work),
"When you meet celebrity, remember as much of it as possible.
Don't let those moments go, remember that you may never meet those folks twice.
You get that one chance. Feel it."
*upon hearing that Angels was moving from Southbank to Broadway
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Monday, September 18, 2017
The Charity Shop Shirt
Last Night The Smell in Your Shirt Was Gone
I kept a shirt, and it was yours.
I used to be able to smell you in your old shirt: that shirt you'd gotten from the charity shop.
I remember thinking how that smell was you.
Even after a million washes, there was still you.
Then we stopped. It stopped. The mind is fascinating:
No sooner have you told yourself you'll never forget,
Then you live and then in the living and the moving on,
You forget.
You forget with every ounce of the effort you intended to remember with.
You can't remember, because your mind chooses what the spirit cannot.
The shock to the system was profound after the move from the old house here.
In the old house, I swear to god that smell of you was always in that shirt.
But no, no it must not have been.
When I looked up, after unboxing and storing. I noticed.
The smell in your shirt was gone.
And I stood up and thought. Now
Where did it go?
Where was I when it left?
How is it I cannot keep that moment, that sense memory?
And why? Why is it we cannot have what we hope for
In spite of the brutality of partition.
The nation of our lives was cleaved. And the smell of you was gone.
And the smell of that shirt in the charity shop
Left, during the move.
I suppose I should be grateful.
But I'm left with the feeling that if I'd only paid attention.
If I'd only opened that box first
If I'd only opened that box first
If I'd only remembered which box it was in.
If I hadn't run into it in a peculiar moment,
I'd have known what it was from that shirt from the early 20th century
That bonded us.
Monday, September 11, 2017
On Louise, or Thank Your Toaster
On Louise
(upon the death of Louise Hay)
You and your thoughts were there in a way that The Bible couldn't be.
There's almost no way to express how opaque the Bible was
When I reached out and there were no words.
I only had the catechism and that was a mantra I could repeat to speak through the fear.
Then came Louise.
The voice of a Bible that spoke in sentences, not mythology.
The affirmations that were so silly, yet
So tangible when you are dying of something that has no cure.
Then you look up and you say, "Thank you toaster for helping you make all those meals."
Thank your toaster.
*on her passing, Sept. 2, 2017, New York Times obit
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