Strip Search

Top 3 reasons I haven’t been posting:

1. I’ve been really lazy

2. I’ve been outside, reading Harry Potter on lawns

3. I’ve been writing, from time to time, for Philly.com’s Art Attack. Here’s my fifth article for them:

http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/art_attack/Getting-real-with-Strip-Search.html

I was fortunate enough to have a chance to interview Jerry “Tycho” Holkins of Penny Arcade, a webcomic I’ve been reading for at least ten years. I found him to be very intelligent, as could have been expected, and excited to talk about their newest project, Strip Search.

Read the article, and if you feel so inspired, comment!

Just the other day

Sonja Field as Raina and Christopher Burke as Sergius. Photo credit Shawn May.

So the other day I got my first paid article of 2013 posted on Philly.com’s Art Attack . . . about Quintessence’s production of GBS’ Arms and the Man. So many things came together here, resulting in me picking up Michael Holroyd’s massive, four-volume biography of Shaw.

This article is the first critical one I’ve published in a while—I haven’t been this against a piece I wrote about, probably ever—and the reaction has been exciting. I’ve gotten more comments on this than any other piece not on my own blog, and was even called a “LIAR”—in all caps, just like that.

One thing I actually deserved to get in trouble for on this article was for saying that few companies in Philly are daring, or willing to portray people as the ugly, problematic, aggressive, cruel things they can sometimes be. While I wasn’t “lying” as was suggested, I was maybe a bit incautious here.

A desideratum is something lacked, wanted or needed.

He had money, friends, a constant stream of productive activities, and had even constructed for himself a kind of legacy; the only desideratum of his life was love. We as a culture have money, good intentions, opportunity, and aptitude; the only desideratum of our efforts is understanding.

There are many artists in Philadelphia who produce intriguing experimental work. This is where our strength lies, and I’m glad to see it. I wonder if most people haven’t seen enough down-and-dirty thoughtful classic productions to even understand that something like Arms and the Man misses the point.

I wonder, too, if our theatergoers expect to leave the theater with thoughts, arguments, and even outcries.

Recondite, adj: 1. not easily understood, abtruse
2. hidden, concealed, little known

One recondite statement in his article made the whole thing ambiguous. She enjoyed reading the blog about recondite words, so much so that she told all of her friends to read it.

I certainly don’t want to suggest that any classic production should tether itself to the author or even the author’s intentions; Shaw says in his prefaces to BTM (I don’t have the exact quote at the moment) that the author’s interpretation of the work is not always the truest or most useful one. Any production company must put their own spin on a piece, sometimes even making it unrecognizable from its original appearance. An uncareful reading of my article might conclude that I disagree.

The BWay SBoro Boys – jazz hands!

What I take issue with is the improper use of a text. If you use a scissors to hammer a nail in you risk stabbing yourself in the head; similarly, producing The Laramie Project as a rollicking comedy would be disastrous. If you’re going make Arms and the Man a farce you had better have a really good reason to do so, beside selling more tickets.

Odd twistings of purpose can be of use. The recent Broadway show The Scottsboro Boys, about a group of black men in 1931 who are accused of a gang rape they did not commit, uses blackface, minstrel shows, and reductive, stereotypical portraits of blacks in order to explore the racism which is an inescapable part of our history.

But I am decidedly against any twisting which reduces a work and discourages thoughtfulness. It is particularly dangerous to do this with a revolutionary artist.

Ad hominem is another latinate phrase; it refers to an argument which is made not against an idea but against the person who presents or represents it. In other words, every political debate you’ve ever seen by actual politicians is a brilliant and numbingly ignorant example of ad hominem argumentation.

The ‘storical SBoro Boys. They’re being advised by their lawyer here . . . who will eventually get some of them out of jail

Work, work, work

The PIFA built a time machine; the best part was these lights

“What is there to live for but work?” asks a character in one of Shaw’s novels.

I respond, there are cocktails on the beach to live for; and if you can’t make it to the beach, they taste good enough in your living room.

Nobody reads Shaw’s novels, and even he decided to hate them, eventually. I’ve only come across the quote in Michael Holroyd’s Bernard Shaw.

Some words surprise you.

catholic, adj: 1. of broad or liberal scope – comprehensive. My English degree, being catholic in nature, prepared me for no particular job.

or:

2. including or concerning all humankind, universal. Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov, though a Russian Orthodox text, is also a catholic text.

Good work, fathers of the church. You’ve opened your religion up to some delightful punning.

This religion belongs to all, says its title, to all mankind. It’s a beautiful idea. This provided a framework for a campaign of proselytizing, saviorizing and missionizing, and also for the invention of Hell for those who refuse to believe, and, of course, of wars and executions and crusades, in order to expedite the heretics to this fiery destination.

Which makes the “Catholic” belief no different from any other; believers, whether in vegetarianism or Islam or Buddhism or pacifism or the Red Sox, consider themselves catholic, and attempt to convert. Is the wisest thing is simply not to attempt to convert anyone in any way?

Now, to teach you more words.

Inside the PIFA Time Machine

A vade mecum is a useful item that you carry with you wherever you go. If the phrase looks super latinate, that’s because it is. And when you translate it directly, “go with me!” is what it means, exclamation mark and all: the verb is in the imperative (direct address). “Go with  me!” it orders anyone who will listen.

Every great adventure hero has a vade mecum; for The Doctor it’s the sonic screwdriver, for Harry Potter it’s his wand, for Mario it’s the mustache; you and I have our smartphones.

But consider, too, the uses of the binky or teddy – think about Linus and his blanket. The comfort object is actually one of the most constantly used devices – it is always being used for comfort. Linus’ blanket in Peanuts dramatizes this concept by acting as a kind of inanimate factotum, with all kinds of uses from self-defense to warmth to object retrieval.

The other definition of “vade mecum” is: a guidebook, or any book containing useful, ready reference.

It’s a dictionary, it’s Planet Earth, it’s the Hitchhiker’s Guide; and once again, it’s also the smartphone: both a constant, useful companion, able to sort out most problems that might arise on the daily, and a catholic reference book.

At the top of this ladder awaits your dream job

A factotum, a word I used just now and you should have looked up, is a person employed to do all manner of duties. These people are the personal assistants and secretaries; they’re probably more and more common as more and more jobs are eliminated and more able and beleaguered underpaid staff-members with titles like “Visitor Services” or “CSA” or “Program Manager” who, when you ask them what their job is, just laugh at you and change the subject.

The opposite of these poor creatures is the sinecure, another kind of human which has mostly died out except in politics and perhaps organized crime. A sinecure is a job or a post with little to no responsibilities or duties, but which provides a steady paycheck. Their titles are often vague just like a factotum’s, but rather than being all-encompassing umbrellas designed as a dumping ground of responsibilities, they rather seem to exclude any possible duties you could ever conceive of; think Lead Solutions Engineer or Future Accounts Representative.

In 1871 the New York Times published a snarky article disrobing a list of “those political parasites . . . whose sole duty it is to draw money from the City Treasury.”

Factota are a fact of life; I want nothing more than to secure a sinecure.

More Philly.com stuff

Hi everyone -

Sorry I haven’t been posting much but I’m on Philly.com again!

Been away, and been working on some profesh writing. I’ll have more up soon about BTM and some fun words. But check out my Philly.com article about Philly Young Playwrights’ Time Machine – and then check out Time Machine, too.

And check out this spider:

He may be a spider, but he’s a social butterfly.

Steps 3 & 4 / Another great word here

Gus Depenbrock at the oneiric Plato’s Porno Cave

The Final Steps to Learning New Words – involve interaction.

If I wanted you to learn how to use a wrench, I wouldn’t just give you a document that lays out its uses, or a definition of a wrench, or even just show you how it works. I would want you to take it in your hands and use it to wrench something.

We have this conception of our brains as infinitely absorptive; we think that if we know something NOW we will know it tomorrow and the days after that. Unfortunately, that’s not true. Our brains are made to sift through all of the seemingly useless information we’re observing and receiving every day.

Taking the wrench in hand provides a physical context for its definition. We can watch someone use it, but until we actually heft its weight against a lug-nut or a screw we don’t truly understand the physics of it, the three-dimensional reality of its work.

Words are the same way, and there is a physics to language. Once you’ve looked up a word, you need to define it for yourself, in your own words. This way you get past thinking you understand it to actually understanding it. I suggest keeping a pocket dictionary where you list all of the new words you learn, with their definitions.

Then, use the word itself. Discuss it, use it in sentences, share it with people, see how it interacts with your world and the concepts and ideas you find important. Find sentences to put it in and come to grips with its weight.

That’s, basically, the reason why I started this blog – to discuss new words and train myself in using them, so that they find their way into my daily vocabulary. It’s been working wonderfully.

How to use a tool

Oneiric, adj.: Of or relating to dreams.

Thanks for this one go to Liana at the Hour of Soft Light. In her short poem – or story – she is on a treadmill and writing furiously. Her friend asks her why she risks falling off of the treadmill – and she answers, “Well, I’ve just found the word for dreamlike.”

The word for. Why do we need more than one word for one meaning? What is the difference between “oneiric” and “dreamlike”? Between “German” and “Teutonic” or even “healthy,” “hale” and “salubrious”?

In some cases, like the latter, the different words have slightly different meanings. “Healthy” has many distinct meanings, but “hale” specifically refers to a person or thing which is in good health, while “salubrious” usually means something health-giving.

But “oneiric” and “dreamlike” are synonymous. So to what special world does “oneiric” take Liana, in which she risks falling off of her treadmill she’s so bound up in the excitement?

Words are like spells which, with all the fullness of images, present experiences for our minds and our senses. Generation to generation new images are needed, new styles of art, which express the new age’s sensibilities – or just as importantly, provide a new way of experiencing the same sensibilities. New words, even when they say the same thing, create fresh impressions of old ideas.

Except for slang, which is fairly limited in its scope, and technological developments, we don’t invent so many new words in each generation in the same way that we invent new styles of art and new images. There are not schools of word-smiths, inventing neologisms for the new ways of looking at the world. We enjoy, instead, the rush of combining old words into new phrases, or the excitement of discovering a word we never knew existed, which expresses something we’ve always wanted to express.

We think we know our language, especially those of us who make daily, in-depth use of it: writers, poets, orators, etc. But its scope is always broader than the user’s understanding of it. “I’ve just found the word for dreamlike,” says Liana, smilingly. What she’s pointing out here is the pleasure of being proven, to some degree, ignorant; the naturalist does not want to think that she knows every insect and leaf, she wants there to be something left to discover.

And every word, through its differing sound and combination of letters, its various background and history of meaning and subtlety (even if its dictionary definition is the same as another’s), claims its own texture, its own special feel as it’s used.

She says “I found the word.” “Dreamlike” becomes a clumsy conflation compared to “oneiric”; there is no word for this concept, it seems to suggest, and so we had to lump two words together. We had no trains, so we hitched the cars to one-another; no wagons, so we’ve tied baskets to our saddles. There is an elegance to a word which has seemingly sprung up out of the earth to form a meaning, which a compound conglomeration cannot touch.

The snow turns the familiar streets oneiric, deserted, soft. The film’s oneiric scenes illuminated a landscape of fear behind the protagonist’s actions.

Vainglorious!

Napoleon is deposed by an alliance of jerks. Photo: Tasha Doremus

I’m on Philly.com again! They like me, they really like me. This time it’s about Vainglorious, by Applied Mechanics (with a 26-person ensemble) which you should totally go see before it’s gone forever.

Read it HERE.

mere human mushrooms

If you look at a conflict map of the world, like this one, you start to wonder about where exactly we’re heading as a culture (species, world, etc). I only started reading the news a year or so ago—has the outlook always been this grim?

Read about this person: “Lucy” of Blog del Narco. Not a bad way to start off your day: though riddled with pictures of the dead and incomprehensible statistics of the murdered, it’s a story of one person’s passion, and heroism in the face of death.

Note: This article makes a big deal out of her being a 25-year-old girl. The Blog del Narco wikipedia page, with no reason to assume this, originally called the blogger a “he” and I think still does. I have to admit, it does go against the grain of our expectations. How long will it take for that to change?

Mexican drug wars have don’t have much to do with George Bernard Shaw’s Back to Methuselah. But the horrors of world news are a fair enough jumping-off point because Shaw lived through the world’s first two great, international, multi-continental tragedies, World Wars I and II, respectively.

“Everybody would like to have a million of money. Why haven’t they? Because the men who would like to be millionaires won’t save sixpence even with the chance of starvation staring them in the face. The men who want to live for ever won’t cut off a glass of beer or a pipe of tobacco, though they believe the teetotalers and non-smokers live longer.” (84)

I’ve spent some time puzzling over Shaw’s “creative evolution” and the reasoning behind it; I conclude that it is a scientific cul-de-sac, simply bad biology (if he’d known about the function of DNA he could never suggest that our offspring retain learned traits). But from a non-biological perspective he’s pointing out something which is, in effect, already happening. I’ll come back to that shortly.

The really weird thing going on in Back to Methuselah is the task which Shaw prescribes for creative evolution: the expansion of the human life cycle from 70 to 300 years.

“They will live three hundred years, not because they would like to, but because the soul deep down in them will know that they must, if the world is to be saved.” (84)

Perhaps, he reasons, if we have 300 years to live, we’ll gather some wisdom and eventually even exhibit some signs of foresight. In The Brothers Barnabas, the second part of Back to Methuselah, Franklyn Barnabas, an ex-rector, and his brother Conrad, a biologist, deduce that humans must life for at least three centuries.

Shaw splits himself into two men, representatives from the religious and scientific communities.

“It is going to be the religion of the twentieth century: a religion that has its intellectual roots in philosophy and science just as medieval Christianity had its intellectual roots in Aristotle.” (80)

To illustrate the age-old divide between the spiritual and physical sciences, in Franklyn’s first words to Conrad at the start of the book, Shaw describes him as “familiar and by no means cordial” (37). But there’s no other intimation of fraternal antipathy. On the contrary, they support and respect one another, even asking each other for favors.

This is the first example of evolution (biological or sociological?) which Shaw offers us. Unlike Cain and Abel, though they have opposed systems of understanding the world, they haven’t murdered one another; what’s more, they’ve united, despite their mutual dislike for one another, to work toward a common goal.

The brothers present their idea to a series of people including Franklyn’s ill-mannered daughter, a simple-minded local rector, a pair of politicians, and a parlourmaid, with reactions ranging from skeptical through cynical to fearful. The politicians, wooed by the promise of a philosophy that would unite the entire human race (under their flag) at first take up the brothers’ battle cry—”Back to Methuselah!”—but when they learn the secret to immortality is not a potion or a funny diet but a rhetoric of abstinence, pacifism, work, and striving for a longer life, these “practical politicians” lose steam.

“My idea is that whilst we should interest the electorate in this as a sort of religious aspiration and personal hope [. . .] it would be in the last degree upsetting and even dangerous to enable everyone to live longer than usual.” (83)

They take the marketable aspects of it to heart, though.

By placing this chapter in the late 1910‘s, the years he’s writing it, Shaw is in effect saying that he’s ahead of his time.

FRANKLYN: We had better hold our tongues about it, [Conrad]. We should only be laughed at [. . .]
CONRAD: I daresay. But Creative Evolution doesn’t stop while people are laughing [. . .]

Is that humility or arrogance? He’s certainly right that nobody is going to believe him and follow his lead. The concept is too radical. American prohibition, enacted, ironically, the year BTM was published, was a hideous failure that did little but pave the way for the emergence of organized crime in the United States. But it strikes me that to explain failure by saying that you’re ahead of your own time—in some way superior, or looking on from a superior vantage point, than most other humans—is arrogance in the extreme.

“It is my hope that a hundred apter and more elegant parables by younger hands will soon leave [my play] as far behind as the religious pictures of the fifteenth century left behind the first attempts of the early Christians at iconography.” (lxxxix-xc)

Is this just an excuse for failure? Shaw, a veteran radical, understands that radical ideas only succeed in one of two ways: through violent revolution or long, painful, societal development, sometimes over decades, sometimes over centuries.

I would like to believe, as Shaw does, that we are evolving, as a species—or even just society—toward a more peaceful way of being which no longer accepts violence as a way of dealing with our problems. But how much of this is superficial?

Look at Blog del Narco and the uncontrollable violence and destruction of these previously peaceful Mexican cities. Look at the conflict map. Look at the women in India who must resort to violence to protect themselves—and we cheer for their initiative, strength and success. Look at the rapidly compounding disaster of radical Islam and the terrorized people of Asia and Africa, a state of horror caused by violence and oppression and which seems to have no answer but more violence.

“Neo-Darwinism in politics had produced a European catastrophe of a magnitude so appalling, and a scope so unpredictable, that as I write these lines in 1920, it is still far from certain whether our civilization will survive it.” (xi)

Returning again to Shaw.

“The village atheist and the first cornet in the local Salvation Army band meet on the village green and shake hands.” (79)

Shaw expects his unification of the religious and the scientific, his system of biology based on the Garden of Eden and his discovery of immortality within it, to galvanize humanity.

“I had always known that civilization needs a religion as a matter of life or death [. . .]” (lxxxvii)

Every known civilization has been bound, on a nominal level at least, by religion. Even the Soviet Union was created under the flag of the abolition of religion. Even Free America is so much a Christian/Protestant state, now as much as ever.

In the same way that Soviet Russia’s atheism was its “religion,” Shaw’s mythology is designed looking forward to an idealized future.

What can we say for creative evolution? Shaw’s concept of it is wrong on a basic biological level. But our technological and social developments, powered by creativity, do change the way that we behave, live, and interact with the world around us.

As a society, if we want, we can bend our creativity and efforts (and funding) toward extending the human life cycle. Many people are doing this already; medical doctors have long been on a quest to annihilate all that makes us die. Another pair of men, like Shaw’s Brothers B, will are revolutionizing the way we interact with our biosphere.

As a society. This is what we’re missing. Many powerfully intelligent people are doing exactly what Shaw suggests, but they do so with a diversity of motivations, and there is no binding element, no single vision to unify the efforts of the disparate organizations, corporations and individuals.

Part 4 of an exploration of Shaw’s interminable epic. Read Part 1 here. Read Part 2 here. Read Part 3 here.

All of the quotes in this essay come from my tattered Bernard Shaw: Complete Plays with Prefaces, published in 1962, Volume II, Back to Methuselah. The title of this article comes from page 69.