Things, arranged.

The Is-ness of things

Walking up a trail in the Tiger Mountain state forest near my home, I came upon a lovely waterfall. According to the conveniently posted information sign, the canyon created by the water was considered a "young" one. The fall is steep, rocky and rugged. The sign went to explain that in a "few million years" the area would be transformed into a much wider, flatter and meandering waterway. A few million years.

I took in the aggressive landscape: downed trees, jagged stone, the flotsam of seemingly random flora and the jigsaw-ness of it all. Time, nature and the laws of physics created this fascinating feature. I wondered about the millions of little forces that were brought to bear in the making of this scene: rain, wind, cold, heat, gravity, leverage, the pushes and the pulls.  So random, as the kids say. Or was it? Each little influence came from a previous influence, and a previous and a previous, back to the big bang or the prime mover or Shiva's toss.

Finally, I settled on what I believed to be the message of what I was witnessing. It just IS. It is there. I cares not about who it pleases, who it punishes, who it affects.  The only thing that mattered in that moment of revelation was what my own response was. Was I someone who wanted to turn it into a freeway, a logging resource, a park, a preserve, a Starbucks? It didn't know. It didn't care. However whomever came across it were to react, it would either continue to be, be altered or even vanish forever. It either IS or it ISN'T. Or it becomes something else which in turn, IS.

The world, the universe and I simply ARE.

I am the one who ponders this and considers "purpose" and "meaning." 

Often I try to emulate and understand the teaching of the waterfall: to just BE.

When I can get to that state, I feel a profound sense of connection and belonging that puts all my human needs, wants and desires in perspective. I know I'll be back to listen to the lessons of the waterfall again and again, as long as we both ARE.

Leon, Spain

Before the town wakes.

Les Impressionistes

My imp

Chiam Soutine

The impressionists were a group. A generation, to be more precise. Schooled in the classical art academies and ateliers of Paris, they knew the masters and their medium.

For over twenty years they labored to find a public. Repeatedly rejected by the establishment Salon, they attempted to form their own expositions. There, the Paris audiences jeered, scorned and derided the work.

Degas, Monet, Cezanne, Marisot, Manet, Pisarro and their peers all went through dark periods of self-doubt and nihilism. Poverty and isolation took their toll on the each of them. 

Success finally came for some late in life. Houses were bought, children and families were cared for, the work gained traction with a slowly evolving public.

The idea of paint on a canvas as a representation of an impression eventually captured the imaginationm of the world.

Today, one can find their work splayed on countless calendars, coffee mugs, t-shirts, posters, journal covers and screensavers. Quite a journey.

To look closely at the work of the impressionists is to see how the artists stood on the foundations of form, color, line and shape and ultimately leapt off into the unknown.

Emotion, psychology, commentary and question became intwined with technique. 

Paris itself is something of an impressionist city. One wanders the streets practicing the art of the flaneur,  taking in the range of realities. A modern city, defining itself anew through tech, industry and commerce. An ancient city, built on cobblestones and cathedrals. A dream city, where the ghosts of Joyce, Beckett, Hemingway, Wilde, Stein, Baudelaire, Hugo, Proust, Sartre, de Beauvoir, Camus, Rodin and others found their voices. It is also a city of reflection: the poor immigrant banileues of the outer arrondissements surround the inner areas of tourists and the affluent and proud Parisians. One can feel the circle tightening.

My impression takes in all of this. This is the Paris of the 21st century. It is still beautiful in its ugliness, startling in its revelations, romantic in its character and hidden as it is open. To examine Paris is to examine the work of the impressionists: it takes time, patience, an open mind and above all, imagination.

Monet's Garden

About an hour's train ride from gare St. Lazare in Paris, one arrives at the town of Vernon. There you rent a bicycle and ride a leisurely half-hour along an abandoned railroad path to the village of Giverny. Here, Claude Monet established his famous gardens which became the subject of some of his most memorable paintings, including 'Water Lilies'.

Although overrun by tourists these days, one can still stop and take in the views that became the frame for Monet's impressionist vision that by now is recognized the world over.

What makes this little pilgrimage from Paris so exceptional is that when you return to the city you can go to the L'Orangerie musem near the Tuileries and take in the actual panels that comprise Monet's most famous work.

The gallery has been designed to display only the panels of 'Water Lilies'. To sit in quiet contemplation of Monet's work after visiting his gardens is to exist for a time in Monet's personal imagination. What was he considering as he observed the combination of pond, lily pad, willow branch and flowers? How did he manipulate his palette to find the colors that would define the painting? Monet was able to say something profound about the way human beings receive understanding from nature. The idea of the 'impression' is based on a sense of taking in a view that is more than the sum of its parts. It is to consider the order of things, the placing of the natural in a composition that transcends its own existence.

The irony of all this consideration is that at Monet's garden and L'Orangerie, along with most of the popular sites in Paris, are inundated by endless hordes of the deaf, dumb and blind: tourists selfie, chatter and skim through these places, unable or unwilling to consider anything beyond the device in their hands or the visual noise of their own existence.  The destination intended is the gift shop, the experience desired is to snap, snap and snap their surroundings into their digital archives of meaninglessness.

What does it propose when humanity no longer can make contact with the concepts of consideration, contemplation and questioning in the dimensions of time, space and thought?

The Aria in the Louvre

 

 

After he returned from his walk, she was still crying. He gave her the power adaptor so she could charge her phone. The man at the little tourist crap store along the quay said it was the only one he had. Twenty Euros. 

"C'est tres cher, monsieur."

The man just shrugged.

He put his watch back on. He had taken off his watch because she said she didn't believe he would come back if he left.

"I just want to talk a walk. To think. I'll go find you an adaptor."

"No, you won't come back. Don't go."

"Here. I'll leave my watch."

He took it off and set it on the table. It was a 1956 silver Rolex, the only thing he had gotten from his father's belongings when he died.

She arranged her plane ticket to leave in the morning. That was that, then. She wanted him to stay the night. He couldn't. It seemed ridiculous. What was that for? A memory? A scarring? Just thinking about it depressed him.  He decided to driveback to the Loire valley then, even though he had only arrived early in the morning.

She spoke of trying to have a moment of farewell, a moment of being together. She believed they could somehow find a way through this awefulness that wouldn't be so awful. He wished he could tell her, because he was so much older than she was, that none of that was ever true. There is only the awful, and there is no way through it. And that no one is ever really together. There is only various stages of apart.

After a while, it was settled.

"Can we go for a walk or something." She still seemed to be looking for away to find some closure, some end, some way of living with this. He did not know how to tell her that there was no such thing as closure, ends, living with all this. All of life was open wounds, loose ends, the day to day struggle of trying to live with the things we have done, the things that have been done to us.

In the end, these are the thoughts that kept him separate from the rest of humanity, and he knew it.

They walked down to the Seine. It was during one of those foolish periods of the summer when Paris tries to be more than it is. A ridiculous time when the city is out of character. The riverside had been transformed into a sad, silly beach area, with trucked in sand and brash, awful beach umbrellas and blaring Euro-disco-thumping noise and shaved ice trucks. They sat on a rail anyway, staring at the river.

Behind them, he noticed a couple on a bench. A smooth looking man with dark shades and the perfect stubble sat with his arms spread wide on the back of the bench. A pretty, slender woman lay her head on his shoulder, saying to the world: "He really loves me, he just doesn't want to show it." The man looked over and saw him. There might have been a hint of recognition there, a shared look of knowing about the impossibility of loving a woman too well.

Later, they walked over to the east side of the Louvre, where the great wide square is surrounded by the extended collonades of history. Here is where Marie and Louis and their children awaited their terrible fates. Here is where the optimistic and idiotic Axel came in the night to try and save the royal family, but really was trying to flee with Marie. As is predictable in life, there was nothing but tragedy waiting behind all these good things.

They sat on a stone bench in the courtyard. It was early evening. Somewhere from deep within the collonades, an alto soprano's voice arrived. Operatic, soaring, resonant, as if emanating from the old facade before them. It dressed the scene in maudlin melancholy. Both of them laughed.

"You couldn't write this if you tried." She said with a small laugh as she held his arm tightly and lay her head on his shoulder.

"No." 

Later, as he drove off down the rue de Louvre and just before he turned right down the Place d'Ecole, he looked in the rear view mirror and saw her standing in the street, watching him go.

The sun was setting, but the traffic wasn't too bad because it was Saturday.

 

Tokyo Rockabilly

 

American pop culture has always been an obsession with many generations of Japanese youth.

Rock and Roll, as an American invention that came from Blues, Folk, Hollar songs, Gospel, Appalachian porches and more, is a particular brand of Americana that is appreciated by many Japanese.

Each Sunday at Yoyogi Park in Tokyo near the venerated Meiji Shrine, Rockabilly clubs gather and celebrate American Rock and Roll history.

They dance, pose, preen and hang out as if they were at the local Drive In on Main Street USA.

All this in the shadows of one of the most important shrines of the Meiji era.

Globalism takes many forms: economic, political, social, etc. However, it is in these unusual connections between people and their fascinations that we can see a true glimpse of the future: if we can rock our together, perhaps we can understand each other better.

Buddy Holly and Elvis and the Meiji shrine. Globalism defined.

The Crossing - A Short Video

The elaborate pedestrian social dance of urban Japan is a global marvel to behold.

In Tokyo, a combination of tradition, necessity (how do you move 30 million through a city with some level of efficiency?) social agreement and experience with living in close quarters has evolved to transform a simple street crossing into an adventure.

Watch the 60 second video:

If the YouTube link isn't working, here is a Vimeo URL: https://vimeo.com/176021363

The Heavenly Sounds of Sainte Chapelle

The vaulting glory that is Sainte Chapelle is breathtaking on its own. The rare quality of light in Paris exalts the monumental glass, radiating a spiritual power that is singular among gothic cathedrals.

When the rich Baroque sounds of Bach, Vivaldi and Telemann are added to the experience, the ancient stones and glass seem to reverberate with something otherworldly, sublime, even heavenly.

Concerts are a common occurrence at Saint Chapelle, but this summer there is a special quality to the music. The Barok Ensemble, which includes Charles Limouse (flute) and David Braccini (violin) are playing on period instruments in the chapel concerts.

The indescribable sounds that fill the space provide a few brief moments when one can sense the kind of wonder, majesty and grace that once was the primal force that moved so many to work so long to build such a magnificent monument to God. It is as if a veil is lifted for a hour, and we are allowed to know something more, something secret about the beatific expressions on the statuary, the sacred patterns and rhythms of the design and decorative art, the essence of faith that permeates the entire, exalted space.

Baroque composers were exploring ideas that blended mathematics, faith, reason, mystery, emotion, wit and powerful intelligence as they carved out this époque-making genre of music. The hear these sounds come to life in Sainte Chapelle is to bear witness to Beauty in its purest form.

Carlo Colla & Figli: The life of the marionettes

 

Piero Corbella, general manager of Carlo Colla & Figli Marionette Theatre explained the mystery of animating a marionette: "It is like learning to play and instrument." After I saw their performance of Excelsior,  one of the early repertory pieces developed by Colla, I think he meant: "It is like learning to play Paganini well on a fine Stradivarius."

Indeed, when we spoke about the process of learning how to present this distinctive and legendary marionette work, Piero explained that a year of preparation was required just to be ready to begin working with the marionettes. Part of this preparation involves learning about the construction, costume and movement vocabulary of each marionette.  As you can see from the image above, Piero is surrounded by hundreds of marionettes, each with their own history, character and particular movements.

As I explored the basement workshop of the theatre, I witnessed a phenomenon that is quickly becoming a rare event in our time: hand tools, artisans and a process that focused on doing things the right way. The company of Colla maintains a tradition that is as fascinating in terms of its process as it is in performance. As I watched the remarkable show, I kept wondering about the artists above and behind the proscenium. I could hear them moving, almost could hear them breathing and definitely could feel their presence. What remarkable choreography was going on in the marionette heaven above where the strings seemed to soar? What god-like antics and gestures were happening as the life of the marionettes played out on the stage below? What kind of concentration, commitment and investment must be involved in making these marionettes seem so remarkably alive?

After the show, Piero and I spoke about what it would be like for his company to teach some basic principles to my American drama students. I wondered aloud if perhaps in a four week summer workshop, perhaps the best we could hope for was for the students to be able to get a marionette to just walk forward a few steps convincingly. Piero smiled at me and said, "Well, that seems a little ambitious." I pointed out that I would bring him drama students who were agile, deft, imaginative and curious. He smiled again: "Yes, that is good, but the truth is, these are things that we want from the marionettes, not the students."

Bravo.

 

From Shanghai to Edinburgh

 

My parents both grew up in Shanghai and left China in the wake of Mao’s victory over the Nationalist forces led by Chiang Kai-Shek in the aftermath of the war of occupation with Japan.

They settled in Seattle in the early 1950s and started a family, their memories and hopes as gifts to their three children who often heard about the world left behind, while growing up in America.

As a Chinese-American boy growing up in the 1960’s and 1970’s, all of the tumult from the Vietnam war, Woodstock, Watergate, the moon landing, Andy Warhol, the Rolling Stones, Robert Rauschenberg, Jackson Pollock, the Sex Pistols, computers and the rise of OPEC proved a heady mix when combined with Bach, Shakespeare, Cezanne, Picasso and New German cinema.

Later came Tarkovsky and Arvo Part, Eugene O’Neill and Tennessee Williams, the Musee D’Orsay and the Tate Modern, all the canonical and the anarchic aspects of Art that might reflect back something unspoken yet true about life.

In 1987 I was admitted to the California Institute of the Arts for graduate study in directing for film and theatre under the tutelage of the Scottish director Alexander “Sandy” Mackendrick.

During our first week of study, Sandy wondered aloud how he could teach us anything about art, because we had grown up in the plenty of post world war two America, handicapped by having what he called “the souls of peanuts”.

As a case in point, he challenged any of us to demonstrate a knowledge of Art in the classical sense by reciting Hamlet’s “To be or not to be” speech. He was very confident that all he would get would be guilty, indignant stares.

However, I raised my hand, rose and recited the speech from memory.

I was quickly named his graduate teaching assistant for the remainder of my time at Cal Arts.

One day, Sandy brought us a news article that described the eminent arrival of Tadeusz Kantor to America. It was 1988, my second year of graduate school.

Sandy simply declared that any student who imagined a life connected to art in the 20^th century had to journey to New York to see Kantor’s work.

I and a couple of adventurous classmates promptly went to the financial aid office, took out student loans, bought tickets and went to New York to witness what would be a life changing event.

Kantor had brought his Cricot 2 production of I SHALL NEVER RETURN to La Mama.

There in that humble space, Kantor’s work transformed the way I thought about how the theatre could describe the human experience in total. There, I encountered a vision that shook me to my core, left a resonating impact still with me today.

Since then, over a twenty-some year career as a professional director of film, television and theatre, I have never once considered a creative work without thinking of Kantor. Over the past eight years of my life as a university professor, I have returned again and again to Kantor’s work through books, videos, archives, articles and his own writing.

At this point in my life, the work I make now for the theatre that is deeply personal. I have had some success in the profession of director. However, the notion of achieving “success” has been replaced by a desire for exploration and meaningful encounter with what the theatrical experience is all about.

Interestingly enough, the further down the road I go towards unknown artistic destinations, the closer I feel I am getting to Kantor.

His “total art” where history and memory, object and space, image and utterance, disappointment and hope along with the discarded and the precious exist all at once remains for me the summit of achievements in the space we sometimes call the theatre.

Kantor destroyed borders between fine art and dramatic art, creating a world where each and every element contributed to an indescribable profundity where every moment was fraught with a terrible and beautiful Truth.

Coming to Edinburgh to me meant coming to where Kantor first encountered the world beyond his native Poland. It meant meeting Richard Demarco, the man whose courage and vision made it possible for people like me venture further into the world of the European avant-garde. Demarco has shared his memories, views, archives, writings and images with me that are the culmination of over sixty years at the very center of the beating heart of European arts.

Bringing a theatre work to Edinburgh from America is no easy task: the costs, the logistical and creative difficulties, the awful crassness of what the Edinburgh Fringe has become, all conspire to degrade and demean the work.

However, presenting a new work before Richard Demarco, one of the original founders of the Edinburgh International Festival means I am presenting new work to the world of Kantor and the integrity of a vital, important history.

To have a man like Richard Demarco offer me his heartfelt congratulations and admiration, as he did to Tadeusz Kantor, means that the work I am doing belongs somewhere in the world, somewhere between Shanghai and Edinburgh.