Just reading about Candice Bergen starring in Gore Vidal's play "Best Man" restores the faith and quietly calms the nerves; reminiscent of when celebrity inspired us to project our dreams onto their beauty. How could you not love her, I always did, 'specially when everyone else didn't...
Gore Vidal, my uber idol, America's biographer and prescient for over 6 decades, no wonder the plays' hitting a nerve.
Almost makes me want to go to New York, hit broadway and see the play.
Almost.
Continue reading "Greg Proops; Smartest man in the world podcast, ctd." »
It was as meaningful, emotional and surreal as it could have been, to see the man in motion, the maestro I met by chance over a decade ago. Back when Berlin was but a city of cranes and Potsdamer Platz was under way. Before I'd moved here, when I was young, so blissfully naive and surprisingly unaware of the world.
Never, ever could I have imagined how deeply Barenboim's ideas would become embedded and continue to loom large in my mind and life across the pond. His genius in music is without dispute but wonderfully enough, it's also available in written form. He has the most fascinating exchange with the elegant Christian Arab, Edward Said in Parallels and Paradoxes. To read this piece is to know how little you will ever know how to experience music as they do, did...how artists strive to solve life's conundrums through their art
So few subjects like Lenny Bruce; only one quite like Kenneth Tynan to cover such a subject, Tynan's earthy, bawdy, style, w/out bitterness, blissfully politically incorrect.
"Constant, abrasive irritation produces the pearl: it is a disease of the oyster. Similarly-according to Gustave Flaubert-the artist is a disease of society. By the same token, Lenny Bruce is a disease of America. The very existence of comedy like his is evidence of unease in the body politic.
Continue reading "Kenneth Tynan on "night-club Cassandra" Lenny Bruce" »
It took 4 hours for Carmen to die but the moon and tunes made it a memorable way to while away a mid summer's eve.
Opera in Verona's Coliseum is the bomb. Forget La Scala and La Fenice, Italians need a space in which to deposit their drama, a place to give it up to the gods above...the voices, mis en scene, la luna, completely full, lulled our views and minds up towards the sky as the emotions below hung along notes so deep, long and raw. Who needs to memorize the libretto when you have so many well known melodies emanating from the independent Spanish vixen named Carmen and her many lovers.
Alas I was alone, sans mio marito and petite chiens....my mind decides to rewind, reviewing live performances from my past but once the internal exercise began, I was slightly terrified at how little I could recall.
Sitting outside the arena, anticipating the next extravaganza, a little insalata mista, tortellini, lite greco di tufo alongside, the mind tries.
In London's West End I saw Dame Maggie Smith in Three Sisters, Billie Whitelaw (Samuel Beckett's muse) rocking away in that chair, oh yes, I did. Listened in rapture as Tom Hollander sang that song, blowing everyone's socks off in Threepenny Opera at the Donmar Warehouse, just before he and Mendes became such international IT hits. A few musicals like Wicked and dramatic darlings Private Lives with Alan Rickman were't quite as stellar but close and several others, I just can't recall. Age.
Brecht's Causasion Chalk Circle and Mamet's Glenngarry were brilliant but Mamet's profanity missed the mark with English actors...my favorite Mamet happening across the pond at The Seattle Rep during Daniel Sullivan's heyday; he put the Emerald city on the theatrical map with "Heidi's Chronicles" and then Intiman's "Angels in America", saw and loved them all. Seattle's always had tons of theatre and my family had season tickets to everything. For a short time I lived next door to Sullivan downtown, such a cool guy, he once said after meeting my parents and a brother, 'is all of your family that nice', well no, but it was nice of him to say.
6 seasons at PNB with Muv, cooing over Patricia Barker while we sat in the front row, center stage just makes me smile but when invited backstage the sensation was strange; those magical ballerinas morphing into human form, exhausted, leaning against the walls, feet flat, I was grateful to get back to our seats and allow the magic to begin once again.
In NY, I bared witness to one blue and naked Nicole Kidman not even try to act, saw John Turturro overact in Waiting For Godot, met him at a fundraiser afterward, asked him about the scene in 5 Corners when he threw his mother out the window, suffice it to say, conversation didn't last long...but in the winter of '98 finished off that trip by laughing my head off at Sandra Bernhard's one woman show. Funny, clever woman.
Opera in Vienna and Salzburg feel the most civilized, exotic and authentic, it's the fabric, but the piece di resistance was seeing the maestro at Berlin's Staatstoper, the costume and make-up. Watching Herr Daniel Barenboim conduct and then meeting him at a party backstage afterward, well, that's heady stuff for a quirky kid from Seattle.
Absorbed everything in Paris, the ballets @ Garnier, the opera and modern dance at The Bastille, in Rome, grooved on Herbie Hancock and Alicia Keys at Circus Maximus, a randy, rough but cool setting, listened to Susan Sontag at the forum ruins, she wasn't interesting, actually, but the environs were...the Italians have forgotten more about lighting than anyone else remembers...got blissed out while watching/experiencing Swan Lake at the baths of Caracalla, beyond surreal, but listen, why brag when the rants' gone on long enough.
Just grateful I can boast of how my time has flown, it'll be over soon enough.
I outta know, I waited for 12 hours to see JPII during my peaceful pilgrimage at the Vatican.
But Michael, my beautiful man/boy Michael, well, if dance is the most natural means of artistic expression he was certainly the most naturally gifted, the craziest, and jazziest of them all.
I've sat all morning, watching the videos, did he ever miss a beat, was he not always just 'on', perfect, fabulous. Everyone else slips or fades or tries to override their arch of creativity, but that boy! from the age of 10!
Fred Astaire said he was a angry dancer, well, maybe, yes, and he certainly rocked my world, yes, he did at that.
Could give a hoot about his personal life, odd the land of Britishers and eccentric Lord Berners that painted their pigeons primary colors still refer to him as wacko jacko postmortem....in a world of freaks, I'd have to say, he was simply thee most gorgeous super freak of them all.
Loved the way he walked, the way he talked, the shuck and jive waltz while pursuing his prey, those graceful fingers as effortlessly effete as any ballet dancer when they flew behind or beside him to create space, the slight slump at the neck, as he tucked in, then exploded.
Loved the wee one in the purple hat, laughed out loud when 'he' was floating down the Thames, could perfectly understand his desire to look like La Liz...the only time I was jealous of Brooke Shields was when she dated him.
From start to finish, I was, am, forever mad, mad, mad about the beautiful boy....
