Things, arranged.

Drown My Book: a novel of sorts by Andrew Tsao. One-The Prison

THE PRISON

The river was there. Unseen, but there. How far beyond the walls? What does it bring? What carry?  Ancient waters of the deluge, where flowest thou in they stately progress? Flowing since the beginning. Darkness covered the face of the deep. A wind from God swept across the face of the waters. Then there was light. Then the land, the seeded things, the beasts and the fishes and the animals of the air.  Those in his image were created last. Blinking, shivering, huddling they came forth to behold creation. Out of Eden, into the wilderness, onto the road and further still they rambled. Still, they gather around the rivers; buzzing and bustling to make cities out of settlements, realms out of regions. The waters are the lifes blood of all of them of Babylon. Tigris and Euphrates. Tiber. Seine. Danube. Elbe. Volga. Rhine. Take life from the waters, they do. Move across, down, up, over them. Find things. Fish things. Sometimes frozen and sometimes overflowing. Also the river takes. Drownings, dark below sometimes. It takes what is lost. It receives what is falling, thrown. Buckets of slime and offal and blood and bones and excretia and dead flesh. Bags of rind and shell and husk and casing and splinters and rag and wattle and even dogs and cats and sometimes woman and man.

Thamesis. Our river. Dark waters.

Londinium. This city. The wild.

Sputtering flame. Heavy air. Ground felt unsure beneath boots. Sludge of a hundred thousand days, months, years? God created all of this, too. Man assembles, but the prison is still made of that which God made: stones, earth, timbers, iron and death. Life came unto this place, but only death goes hence. Womb of corpses, birth mother of despair. The afterlife, the afterbirth, the after ever after of all things world without end. Yet the river is beyond. Down here beneath the surface it is as if walking in graves. The nostrils alert to the unknown and the familiar. Rot, bone, excrema, oozes, blood and pain. The scent of the tomb. Last plague, the death odora sat hunched in doorways and hovels, feral and lurking for months until merciful rains came and then only the stink of the town remained, merciful rains dropping from the heavens blessing the takers and the givers and the living and the dead. Deus irae.

Can it be heard? In the silence there is something under, something behind. Hiding? Ashamed? Two men breathing. Candle flame insisting. All heaving in and out, bellows of life, ebb and flow of existence. Cadence of aspiration and counterpoint of beating heart. Once saw a pig’s heart still beating in the butcher’s hand as a boy. Blood jetting to the ground, burp, burp, burp and then nothing. Only offal, but of recent was there a soul released from hence? Childish question. Butcher swats away and the boy wanders off, still metaphysical.

No, cannot hear the river from here. A gaoler pulls a grate aside somewhere near. Resisting rust and shunt of key, then little cry as hinges let go. Some voices. Then, the grate claps again and the rest is silence. Just the two men, breathing. Something still lurking. The river?

- Will, was anything done? -

His voice is whispering, secret, dying. His body is wasted, leatherish, dried neat’s tongue. Eyes yet have light in them, though. Clawed hands still searching for something. Final days, final hours. The feet long ago mangled by the torturer’s boot, just lumps of broken bone and blackened skin now. Lying there on the litter, filthy overshirt and stinking breeches. Bowels leaking, piss soaked straw under.

- Was anything done? -

First there was the word, then the light to separate the day from the night, then the waters gave way to the land. Everything then followed. Much done. Six days. On the seventh, rest. Behold, your creation. You created us. In your image. Then you drove us out of the garden, into the wilderness. Now we are abandoned. Lost.  What was done? To whom? And for what? Drama. The old Greek. Do. Do something. Why don’t you do something? What’s done cannot be undone. Enough of that, say something. Say words now. Let there be words.

- You made them listen… -

The withered man sighs out a bitter breathe and his eyes roll up.

- Your words, Will. Your words. Good ones. -

Recall when this frail ghost man was astride the narrow world. Voice ringing around the Globe. Ears rapt. Brought to life a few of them: Lear, Hamlet, Caesar, Richard Gloucester, Falstaff. yes, Falstaff. My, my, my his Falstaff! Good words. Will’s words. Will’s words went withering without warrant while worlds went wanting. Words. More light!

- My words. -

In the small courtyard where the gravegoing wagon waits, a bleary boy with a limp asks about the corpse.

- E wert o da company o actors? -

Wide faced, gaping stare, turned in foot.

- He was an actor. -

Actor. King. Rogue. Villain. Beggar. Thief. These are things that a man might play. The actor hath within that which passeth show.

- You? You wert an actor, sir? -

Hand the boy a coin. Ha’ penny. He shows his teeth.

- Ay, danks you, sir. We trundle on to Geddins’ field wid da poor man’s body, sir, bury ‘im proper like an. -

The body in the winding sheet on the wagon. Cold out here. Still, the scent of the river. Dog barking somewhere. Must be near midday. No one to follow the body to the fields. No one dares. Might one dare? They would be watching. Noting. Spying. Scribbling names, notes, notions in notebooks. The wagon jumps forward as the drover heys the nag. The body rocks side side, then the wagon is gone, coppy coppy cop of hooves and leathers and wooden creakings out the gate then only the terrible understanding, the grotesque reckoning, the sinister suspicion - Now get you to my lady’s chamber and tell her, let her paint and inch thick - to this favour she must come. Make her laugh at that. -

When at the last, think of the first. Young men, all. Thick with blood and bluster. A company of players. Pages and pages passing hands, all ink and purpose. Words everywhere like puddling rain. So much has gone before. Was anything done? He used to grin so easily when the phrasing was true. A wink, a nod, a quick dart of the eye and then such a voice, such a man, such a player as he poured forth the sounds that made all dumb with listening. Yes, he was an actor, boy. One of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men. Favored of ol’ Queen Bess. Built a house just past Denby with four gables. Wife, three sons. A shareholder. A partner. A brother. A friend. Knew where to be on stage when, didn’t need to be shown. The younger actors perched along the rail in the mornings, watching him churn the lines through. Taught them all by doing it all; the drumming monosyllables, the tripping iambic, the one word here and the other word there and the third somewhere else all linked by the mind and then arriving at some great destination.

Remember when in the snow we tore down the timbers of The Curtain, carted them off to Bankside? You were laughing as the last of the boards were stacked all hey-willy on the borrowed lumber carts and we formed the procession. Shoreditch, where we trundled as an army in retreat. Bishopsgate where we waved like ambassadors to the shopkeepers and the bemused. Grace Church Street where we became Caesar’s legions about to enter Rome under arms. The bridge, where we saluted the pikemen and offered them tobacco. Then along the river to Clink and and Southwarke until we set our burden to ground and repaired to The Tabbard where we encamped for two hours among the tankards and plates, smoke and steam of sweaty men who had returned from the north with treasure and triumph. That was when we knew the theatre was ours. Now he goes on another cart. Goeth from whence he will ne’er return. Churchyard of Botolph, if there was room enough. Four shillings plus one for the coffin and a few pence for the diggers to be sure they laid him in their ground and did not shovel him into the charnel house at once. Earth is to earth. Food for worms. To this favour we all must come.

Remember when they broke him on the rack. Wanted the names of all concerned to add to the list. Spymaster men, all sallow faced and dark of soul. Took him from the theatre with a warrant investigation. Enemies of the crown. Believed the theatres were infested with them.

- You knew Marlowe. You knew who he was with that day. Polley, Turnbull. Who was the stranger who arrived for dinner and departed before supper.  -

They laid into his legs with the blunted ends of wooden cudgels. Left the bones and blood to fester. Then they crushed each finger with a steel mallet. Then his hands, his wrists, his forearms.

- Give us the name of the stranger. We’ll let you die in peace. -

Remember his agony, carried by his cries as if night bats in frightful flight.

Waiting outside Newgate. The barrister on his way, but his body already broken. Later, during a visit, the barrister recounts the charges, the barber lays the plaster on the crushed bones, the actor breathing shallow and fast, the gaoler watching silent and gaping from beyond the grate. Was anything done?

Remember…

 

As...

As he who wandered home to Ithaca

As he who home through Dublin

As they who wait and wait and wander on to no where

As she who wanders still in heather and in snow

As he who raged into the deep against the wandering whale

As those did wander in the desert slouching all the years

As he who wandered golden helmed from Mandrino

As he who wandered past the western gate aback an ox

As she who wandered from the Moorish wall all yes and yes

As all those figures gone before and evermore

All wandering on the ramparts bitter cold and sick at heart

List! List! O List!

Thus, I my wandering begins.

Leon, Spain

Before the town wakes.

Yorgos Lanthimos Changes Everything in "The Favourite"

The way Lorgos Lanthimos envisions the nature of a dramatic scene is entirely unique and utterly connected to true life. Instead of the standard "rising action" model, where characters overtly escalate tension and conflict leading to a breaking point, Lanthimos has his characters withhold much of what is going on with them; sort of a very slow, almost imperceptible boil until at the last moment, one character almost nonchalantly sticks a knife in the other character. Sometimes literally and metaphorically. If you've ever seen a horrible scene unfold before you in real life, you know that very often things seem very under control until suddenly, things get out of control. Often this occurs without warning.

Lanthimos creates relationships and worlds filled with real stakes, to be sure. In The Lobster, characters must either begin a meaningful relationship or choose an animal to become for the rest of their lives. In his new film The Favourite, the characters played by Rachel Weisz and Emma Stone vie for the favor of Olivia Colman's Queen Anne with their futures at stake.

There is an intriguing social critique at work in both films that suggests the things we fight for or fight our way out of are far beyond our own control, and are the result of some strange cosmic absurdity on the scale of Samuel Beckett. Nevertheless, the characters in his films struggle, and struggle mightily. Yet the tone he sets is one of discomfort and impending doom, with an avoidance of revealing emotional indications on the part of the characters that we are so used to. This restraint makes Lanthimos' story structure astonishingly dramatic and tension filled in a completely unique manner.

Whimsy also plays a part in the worlds Lanthimos creates. Manners, behaviors and societal rituals are turned into hilarious, sometimes grotesque displays of human excess and vanity. This touch enhances the sense that the world we strive so hard in is often childish, clownish and even depraved. Watch the scene with the oranges and the naked man in The Favourite to experience this touch.

It takes a particularly disciplined actor to work in Lanthimos' worlds: one must find a way to carry the inner yearnings of the character while at the same time appearing to toss away any overt need. Weisz and Stone do this with great detail and depth, as the volatility of Coleman's Queen Anne puts both of them at risk at every moment. Playing it cool has never been this good.

Cinematically, Lanthimos' breaks new ground by employing extreme wide angle lenses that give the audience a literal "fish eyed" view of the world of The Favourite. The ornate palace rooms are captured as sprawling, distorted landscapes in which our characters to and fro in a strange, balletic manner. Lanthimos was involved in experimental and physical theatre early in his career, and his ability to choreograph actors bodies in space and time adds a deft layer of tension to the film as well. 

Without special effects or CGI / digital excess, Yorgos Lanthimos changes everything. He reminds us that the cinema is a young medium that is still evolving and ripe with possibility.

The Stage and the Soapbox

The plays we have held as classics have one thing in common: the theatre as a metaphor. From the Greeks to Shakespeare to Tennessee Williams to Carol Churchill and beyond, great playwrights have understood that the power of theatre lies in the imaginative. A few people on stage, an artificial world, language and story all wrapped in a larger metaphor of human experience. Even Brecht, with his alienations and direct political messages still used metaphor: the chalk circle, the city of Mahagonny, etc.

What happened?

Most of the time when I attend the theatre these days, which I admit is not often, I am usually blasted with a polemic, didactic and rather obvious set of statements couched as theatre.

Identity politics drama and social issue plays are actually extended blog posts (like this one) intended to convince of something I already understand: racism, sexism, intolerance are bad.

I get it. Do you have anything original in mind?

Also, it seems like the audiences at these shows are the sung to choir of the cliché. They nod knowingly and embrace the stuff going with a strange sort of "we are with you, we get it" cultism.

Don't get me wrong: I'm about as leftist as they come, somewhere just to this side of Ché Guevara on many issues. However, the liberal soapbox that is the typical stage event makes me embarrassed to be a liberal.

Do the artists putting on the play, which is expensive, difficult, laborious and unprofitable not realize they are speaking to an ever shrinking club of enablers? There is no one's mind out there in the audience that needs changing. It's all your friends, Facebook and actual, who are egging you on. You are hollering into an echo chamber.

Where are the playwrights exploring worlds that provoke my imagination? Where is the stagecraft that transforms a simple setting into a universal symbol? Where are the stories that touch my deep human need for myth, fable, folktale? Also, why are you yelling at me?

If the theatre continues this slide towards becoming a very small soapbox, it should come as no surprise that most people have no use for it. Netflix is so much better and a lot less expensive.

Theatre has always had a special set of elements that make it a unique art form: a live event where imaginative forces touch on powerful themes through language and images that can only occur in real time.

I'm still seeking that kind of theatre, but I seem to mostly find reductive, badly staged, predictable and polemical theatre in my home town of Seattle.

Waiting for Godot is a pretty good play. It's two guys and a tree. It's also a powerful metaphor for the human experience.

I wish more theatre makers appreciated that. 

The Studio Seattle

After decades as a professional director of television and theatre and university professor of drama, I am now embarking on a new venture.

The Studio Seattle is a place where actors can go deeper, challenge themselves, explore more and improve their craft with a focus on getting actors ready for the real profession.

There is a vibrant and dynamic acting community in Seattle, but there is a dearth of instruction from teachers who have actually worked at a national level. I'm talking prime time television and nationally ranked professional theaters along with top-ranked MFA actor training programs.

I've been there. I know what it takes. 

If you are interested in taking your craft to the next level, check out The Studio Seattle's workshops and classes. And yes, I have a blog there about acting, too.

Because there is no substitute for real experience.

We all live in Plato’s cave now

Recall that in Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, the prisoners are shown shadows on the wall created by firelight and diffuse sunlight. These shadows are created by those who aim to distract and deceive. After a time, the prisoners accept that the images on the wall are reality itself.

Indeed, should one of the prisoners be freed and led into the true light of day above, they would be painfully blinded by the sun and desire to immediately return to the familiarity of the cave.

It doesn’t take much to see ourselves as those prisoners, gazing intently as we do at our mobile phones, tablets and computer screens, Facebooks, Twitters and Instagrams. It doesn’t require a huge leap of imagination to envision outselves as gaping cave dwellers as we switch from FOX to CNN to MSNBC to SNL to Oprah to HBO to NETFLIX and back again.

Our reality is the reality we consume for most of our waking life. It is a manufactured reality in the age of convergence where fiction, fact, fake news, entertainment, headlines, commercials, causes, spin and ratings all blur into one great miasma of non-stop images and sounds.

For me the most important aspect of Plato’s allegory is the notion that the prisoners actually prefer the shadows on the wall to reality. It is far less painful and far more entertaining.

What then should those of us do that are willing to endure the harsh sunlight in order to better ourselves in the long run? We will have to engage the parts of our minds that have been atrophied over time and by those who prefer we not think too much.

Critical thinking. Slow thinking. Dialectical reasoning. Semiotics: understanding the difference between a Sign and The Thing Itself. Recognizing who and what is to gain when a new shadow is presented to us in the cave. Seeking elusive objectivity. Resisting the urge to seek the lowest common denominator. Embracing complexity. Living with uncertainty and doubt. Denying extremism and polarization. Exalting learning. Valuing intelligence. Knowing reason.

These once lauded attributes are becoming rarities in the 21st century as more and more of our reality becomes digitized, pixelated, commercialized and profitized. I can attest to being a first hand witness to the extinction of whole mind thinking. For 12 years I taught in higher education as a tenured professor who always endeavored to inform every subject I presented to students with a caveat: develop the tools so that you can make up your own mind. In order to do that, develop a mind first. Learn how to think critically. Most of my students simply wanted to know what was on the test and how the material being presented would help them since employers never listed having a whole mind as a job requirement.

Thankfully, a small percentage of my students came to believe that thinking critically was important. Perhaps one day they will come and lead us out of the cave and into the sunlight. If it hurts too much and we need to crawl back inside, we can always return to our virtual reality and lose ourselves by spending too much time writing and reading articles online.

Fast Food May Days

 

On May 1 2018 some people decided to petrol bomb a McDonald’s in eastern Paris.

It was the 50th anniversary of the famous student May Day riots of 1968, which was a turning point for French cultural, political and economic thinking. The May Day events of 1968 were begun by students. Workers, unions and their supporters joined. President Charles De Gaulle fled the country, and when he returned he dissolved parliament and called for new elections.

It’s hard to say who burnt the McDonald’s. They wore masks and are called the “black bloc” by authorities. It’s doubftul students were involved, because most of them really like McDonald’s. Same with workers and union types. They eat at McDonald’s often.

The Paris riots were a level up in violence from May Day demonstrations past and those that took place in other parts of the world.

Why is the “black bloc” so angry at McDonald’s?

There is the symbolism of attacking a global capitalist enterprise that pays low wages and has no regard for the health, safety, culture or well being of the countries in which it chooses to open stores.

There is the resistance to the seemingly inevitable corporatization of the globe, where sameness and lowest common denominator goods, products and services come with a heavy dose of crassness and shallow profiteering.

There is the highlighting of the wage gap and working conditions of poor workers who increasingly feel like lifelong serfs.

However, the so-called “black bloc” seems to be less concerned with messaging and more interested in provocation. That’s what you do when you are an anarchist. You don’t actually want to promote anything, you just feel a deep passion for tearing things down.

Maybe that’s unfair. Maybe the poor of the world need events like May Day to remind us all that poverty, disaffection and dissilussionment are very real. Curiously, a watershed work on global poverty by Bourguignon and Morrison proposes that fewer people on earth live in “extreme poverty” than ever before in human history.

(Our World in Data: Global Extreme Povery by Max Roser and Esteban Ortiz-Ospina https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty)

Perhaps the May Days of out time are not about highlighting, resistance or symbolism. Perhaps they are about visibility. Perhaps they are about the deep human need to be acknowledged as existing. Perhaps the target of the petrol bombers on May 1 2018 was the singular, greedy eye of the a corporate cyclops, who obsessively counts its sheep and guards its cave with covetousness. Perhaps the petrol bombing was a kind of heated stake driven into the eye of this global cyclops. An act of literally “sticking it to The Man.”

As Norman Mailer wrote in his 1974 Esquire article on the graffitti phenomenon: “Perhaps that is the unheard echo of graffitti, the vibration of that profound discomfort it arouses, as if the unheard music of its proclamation and/or its mess, the rapt seething of its foliage, is the herald of some oncoming apolcalypse less and less far away.”

(Test Pressing; Esquire magazine, March 1974 http://testpressing.org/2012/06/esquire-the-faith-of-graffiti-norman-mailer/ )

Did you know that the French name for the Big Mac is “Le Royal”? Did you know that the first two names McDonald’s tested for the Big Mac were “The Aristocrat” and “The Blue Ribbon Burger”?

Vive la revolution and one Happy Meal, please.

The Extinction of the Whole Mind

After over a decade in the halls of higher education, I am leaving the world of tenure and academe as an associate professor of the dramatic arts. There are many personal reasons I have departed such a secure and coveted position, the most important one being that I am continuing to evolve and grow as a human being and want to apply my experience and skills with story to writing full time. What is disheartening about my departure from many valued colleagues and students is how the American university is becoming a place of de-evolution and shrinkage.

De-evolution in the sense that after the financial crisis of 2008, a new era of austerity, economic expediency and specialization has gripped the academy. Shrinkage in the sense that instead of enriching minds and enhancing the essential citizenry of our next generations, the academy is undergoing a narrowing and shallowing of education that will, in my opinion, come to haunt us soon in the 21st century.

Renaissance, Enlightenment, America as a Democracy of Informed Citizens. Noble sentiments that were major the themes of the past many hundred years of western civilization. When the twentieth century was dubbed "The American Century" by some, one of the key proofs therein was the dynamic transformation of our society that was a direct result of a broad based, world class and accessible university education in each of our fifty states.

However, today's public universities have been commoditized, politicized and legislated into something strange. Let us list here just a few of the more bizarre and existential conundrums facing today's universities:

* Seats to the highest bidder: Chronic budget cuts and a demand that universities behave in a more "entrepreneurial manner" by increasingly vocal stake-holders have led to a disproportionate level of foreign and out-of-state students who pay premium tuitions displacing local students. In-state students, some with exceptional academic qualifications are being turned turned away. They don't pay very much tuition. Universities that try and quota enough seats for local students face enormous budget shortfalls as a result, with no relief due to forced tuition increase caps. So much for the noble intentions of the land grant state university movement.

* Silo-ed departments competing with each other for student credit hours to get a slice of the ever shrinking budget pie must increasingly "popularize" their curriculum in order to attract students. The result is a dumbing down of curriculum to the lowest common denominator. Student credit hours mean dollars. Therefore, butts in seats by any means necessary. Hence, the Impact of the Hong Kong Kung Fu movie and Sex, Drugs, Rock n' Roll become two of the most populated entry level classes for incoming freshman in the Humanities department. Welcome to higher learning in America circa 2018.

* Credit pressure on students to specialize early and remain committed to one narrow track of study: competitive programs demand specific pre-requisites, and deny the student any real opportunity to explore other areas of knowledge due to heavy credit loads. The result is a collapse of the very essence of "universal" knowledge. Instead, students are tracked into ever narrower fields of specialization to feed a voracious economy. Know less, study harder, graduate and embark on a career as a human widget.

* The culture war wasteland: Today's university is a battleground of polarization, narcissistic identity politics and "us" versus "them" thinking that reflects much of our current wider culture, but is exacerbated by a fractured, isolated and limited world view which is the by-product of over specialization. There is little possibility for real learning when there is no light, space or air for an idea or argument or concept to be presented without the threat of retribution or lawsuit.

I could go on, but these are a few of the top factors that have rendered our universities impotent and ineffectual. When the ability to consider both sides of an argument or issue is lost, when the idea that a well educated, well informed citizen is a better citizen for a democracy is disregarded for expediency, when the belief that a narrow mind is of greater value to a society than a whole mind is advanced by those who wield power, then we have come to a dangerous time in history.

Finally, just so you don't take this article as the post-professorial whinings of a frustrated academic, consider this: in one of the most fascinating and challenging research projects I ever engaged in at the university, I tried to help Amazon's human resources people in Seattle solve a problem with their college recruiting programs. The problem was that Amazon had a seemingly limitless number of college applicants who could fulfill their technical, logistical, computational and industrial needs, but they have been struggling to find college graduates who could become future leaders; students who could think critically, solve problems, imagine creatively and see the bigger picture. They were looking for whole minds. I hated giving them the bad news:

Unfortunately, we just aren't educating a lot of those in these times. They don't seem to be in much demand.

Ragged Claws

 

 

 

Here at the bottom of the sea

Silent sirens and mystery

Caverns of chorus vaulting high

No need for anything dry

 

Here at the bottom of the sea

A pair of ragged claws is me

Sunken bodies drifting by

Mermaid sings a lullabye

 

When I did sail the great wide ocean

The wind was my map and chart

Chasing dragons on the horizon 

A moral compass was my heart

 

On the shore a flag was flying

The battlements were steel and grey

Storm warning signs arriving

Live to fight another day

 

On the shore her voice was calling

 

Though lovers be lost

Their love shall not

 

Can’t forget the song she sang

 

Though lovers be lost

Their love shall not

 

 

The Cost of Doing Business

“When gun violence becomes commodified as content by the media, we consume it rather than experience it. As a nation, we’re dead to it now. Despite our momentary hysteria, we’ve pretty much compartmentalized gun death, random mass shootings in particular. Consequently, we live in a country that seems to agree that 33,000 gun deaths a year is an acceptable price to pay for our unique, constitutionally guaranteed access to firearms.”

 - Gregory Gibson, New York Times, Sunday February 18, 2018