Insightful commentary

I've been blessed in much of my writing career to live in the same city as an insightful critic, Bob Hicks, who responds to what I'm up to, often praising my efforts, sometimes not, but always clear and fair. His retirement remarks include this advice to critics:

Do your homework. Be fair. Be accurate. Connect the specifics of your story to the larger world: what does it mean; where does it fit? Praise when praise is called for. Be stern when sternness is called for. Be clear. Don't show off in your writing; it'll come back to bite you on the butt. But remember, you're an entertainer -- people read you not just for information but also for the pleasure of reading good writing.

Hicks nails what Christmas at the Juniper Tavern is about in his recent commentary. This is not a knee jerk appreciation: for example, I think he completely missed the boat in his review, many years ago, of my play Varmints. Win a few, lose a few (for both of us!) -- but Hicks is always intelligent, reasonable, fair, even when I disagree with him about my work or the work of others. I can't over-estimate how important intelligent commentary can be to a writer.

Working, emerging writers want to be understood and appreciated. Old writers want to be respected and appreciated for what they've contributed. I definitely felt the former early in my career, thanks largely to Hicks but also to others here and in Seattle who responded to my work. I don't feel particularly "respected" in Portland now (there are exceptions in Hicks, Mark Zusman at WW, other journalists who were here in the 80s). I mostly feel invisible and marginal, but that is okay, too. I think my work will be reevaluated after I'm gone, literally or geographically, and many of my plays will find interest here once again. I firmly believe in one cultural truth: the movers and shakers prefer their artists dead. I'll have this artistic advantage in the (not so distant, at my age) future.

The best thing about my life is that I'm still working and I'm working with confidence, without stress, with my primary audience being an archive. This works just fine at this stage of my life.

Sisyphus is happy, and I'm content.

Obama's Nobel Speech

"To say that force is sometimes necessary is not a call to cynicism, it is a recognition of history; the imperfections of man and the limits of reason."

Let's not forget ...

From The Huffington Post

Ukulele prodigy?

Lump update

As I'm waiting for tests, the lump isn't waiting at all ... it's now about 3x larger than when I discovered it not quite two weeks ago. I go in for tests tomorrow, at last, and maybe we'll get some data about what's going on. Still no pain whatever.

I have been avoiding work. Not a single project read yet today. Ah, me. Sort of glowing in the aftermath of the anniversary and pretending I'm not worried about the lump, I suppose. And also very eager to get back to writing, but I can't do this until all my grades are in. Today, I need a second wind, a surge of energy. Ha.

Damn, Nobby's serves a fine breakfast!

Returned the DVD projector bright and early, then drove across town for breakfast at Nobby's, where I haven't been for a few months. Wanted to wish the owners, who have been running the place in the bad economy, Merry Christmas. So Greg and I talked football and "I wonder what happened to ..." and Barbara recommended a book, which I just reserved at the library, and I had the best traditional breakfast in town, where I've been having same for thirty years.

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Last night was small and sweet. About 20 gathered to watch the anniversary showing, and we all had a great time. Ron, who played Frank in a revival production, was there; and Dennis from Small Screen Video was there; and most surprisingly, Lianna and her husband were there, whom I haven't seen for years (Lianna and I, never romantically involved, used to dance a lot to Paul deLay 30 years ago). The play was much appreciated. It doesn't "still" work, it works better today than 25 years ago, as suggested by Hicks' wonderful tribute to the play. Alas, no one from the original production was there but now that I think about it, given the neglect by mainstream media to give us a plug or even an accurate listing, how would they ever know about it? Whatever. It was small and sweet, a great time had by all.

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Need to read a lot of projects today. Won't finish but should get most of them done.

Being fair is not being an idiot

What Susan Jacoby calls "perverted objectivity" is out in force with global warming reporting on the conference. It drives me up the wall until I remind myself to forget it and get back to my garden.

From The Age of American Unreason by Susan Jacoby:

"If enough money is involved, and enough people believe that two plus two equals five, the media will report the story with a straight face, always adding a qualifying paragraph noting that "mathematicians, however, say that two plus two still equals four." With a perverted objectivity that gives credence to nonsense, mainstream news outlets have done more to undermine logic and reason than raptureready.com could ever do."

Heading out

Think I'll get across the river soon, take the netbook and a book, find a Starbucks, and mellow out for an our or so. Next entry from across the river, I expect.

Copen-hey-gen v. Copen-hah-gen

I took two leaves to Copenhagen while in the Army. I learned that natives not only pronounced their city "hey-gen" but were insulted by the German pronunciation of "hah-gen". This was the very early 60s, only 15 years after the war, and many Danes still considered Germans "the enemy."

I learned that WWII was a very recent history to Europeans, not a distant war as for Americans. Frankfurt still had bombed out buildings. I found Nazis sympathizers everywhere, the most extreme treating wars like games in a world series, America was up 2 wars to zero but there was still much war to be fought in the future to see who gets the best of 7. When I befriended a German student in Copenhagen, Danish acquaintances asked if I knew what I was doing.

With the climate conference in Copenhagen, I hear both pronunciations on the news, which brought these memories to mind.

Getting excited

Ventured into the cold, which wasn't too bad, to pick up a projector for tonight. Man, what a cool machine! I decided to rent one rather than use the configuration at Blackbird, just to be safe. In my experience, movies with computer-driven projectors often have memory issues before it's over. Wasn't much to rent a first rate DVD projector.

Question now is when to cross the river. Want to get there early to set up but I also want to avoid rush hour traffic across the bridge, so that means going early. So how do I kill an hour or two across the river? Find a warm coffee shop and read, is what occurred to me.

Read some student work this morning and should do more before I leave. Not that I will ha ha. May just catch up tomorrow.

Favorite lines

Best first line of a novel: "They threw me off the hay truck about noon." The Postman Always Rings Twice, James M. Cain

Best last line of a short story: "Art doesn't save anyone from anything" (from memory). "The Moon In Its Flight," Gilbert Sorrentino

Best curtain lines from one of my plays: "What the people expect, they get. What they get, they deserve. Always." "The Stiff," a one-act play, part of The Death Cycle.

Best Norman O. Brown line: "Resisting madness is the maddest way of being mad," Love's Body
(Runner up: "Personality is the original personal property.")

Best family line: "People are more interesting than anybody." My mother.

Best e. e. cummings line: "as long as you and i have arms and lips which are for kissing and to sing with, who cares if some oneeyed sonofabitch invents an instrument to measure spring with"

McKinley's Dream

One of the great defining moments in American history happened at the end of the 19th century. Filipinos, with our help, fought Spain for their independence and won. The question now was, for Pres. McKinley and Congress, whether to withdraw our troops and let the folks determine their our future, or to retain a presence and "guide them" to their future. There was a very strong isolationist faction in this country at the time, and for a while it looked like we'd leave and let Filipinos be Filipinos.

Then an amazing thing happened. A mind-boggling thing, something that says so much about the American political character then and now.

Pres. McKinley had a dream, and he shared the dream with the press. He was visited by Jesus Christ, he said, and Christ told him that it was our duty to stay and help "our little brown brothers" and by God, since Christ told him this himself, this was exactly what he was going to do. And so he did.

Unfortunately, Aguinaldo and other homegrown patriots didn't want to trade one master for another, and so now we found ourselves fighting the very folks we helped "liberate." And we became the moral policeman of the world.

Too bad Christ didn't mind his own business. Too bad McKinley wasn't a little more skeptical about the dream. We've been the world's policeman ever since and not always to results in our best interests. And today it's deja vu all over again, in one of the most boring and destructive habits in history.

Blessings

I think I've had a pretty amazing life. Even if I get bad news Friday, even the worst news, I still have been treated well by the gods. Nothing can happen, or nothing I can imagine, that would change this. In life's lottery game, I've been one of the lucky ones.

So I feel almost guilty when I want to complain about something, a painful knee, a sore ankle, some ego-hurting slight hither or yon, whatever. In good conscience, I can't complain about anything without catching myself being greedy.

What I've enjoyed most in life is doing my work, and perhaps my greatest blessing is that I still have the mental faculties to do it. I had more fun when my closest friends were still alive. I wouldn't call myself "happy" but I definitely am "content."

I remind myself of all this each morning. My first waking thoughts, blessed, lucky.

Publicity

An interesting sidebar to the 25th anniversary happening tonight. I made two major publicity mailings, in late October and mid November, to our local papers, off and online, sending fliers both to individual arts reporters and special areas like Calendar sections. From all of this, as near as I can tell, the event was mentioned in only four resources: on the Soapstone email newsletter; on the PSU Currently newsletter; on the stage play openings calendar (which it is not) of The Oregonian; and in Bob Hicks' arts blog, with a long and generous piece putting the event in historical context. Nothing in Willamette Week or the Portland Tribune, which doesn't surprise me: it shocks me.

But it's definitely interesting, from a local cultural point of view. There must be young artists in town pulling out their hair, trying to get publicity for their events. I thought something would be mentioned as a matter of course, especially online where it costs no one anything. Apparently not. Unless there are a lot of incompetent employees out there who can't keep track of things.

For my event, none of this matters one way or the other since Hicks now has covered the bases. I admit disappointment that more interest wasn't shown by the major media but memories are short and all that. But, thanks to Hicks, there's a record now. We can be Googled now ha ha. This event isn't going to disappear unnoticed, no matter how many show up.

From the beginning, I hoped the event could be a celebration among those who made it happen. It remains to be seen how many will show up. Some have passed, I know, but it would be great if a few showed up. We'll see. I'll have a ball in any case.

An ending

The year, this month, feels like an ending to me. Not The End, the big ending, the final curtain, but the end of a period, an era, a focus. Both professionally and personally.

Professionally, three things mark the moment.

• I got two monkeys off my back. For years, decades, I've been sitting on personal experience screaming for expression, to be the foundation of creative work, and this year I got each off my back. In my video Deconstructing Sally I finally told my "Sally" story top to bottom and resolved it as best I can.
• I also finally dealt with my Army material. I also saw this as an epic novel, one of those 700 page paperbacks, but its final influence was on a story of novella size, Baumholder 1961. As surprising as this was, I'm very pleased with the result.
• The 25th anniversary tonight, which is both a party and a farewell, celebrating the theatrical scene here in the 1980s. It's long gone, of course, but it's great to remember that it happened, and that it was special, and I hope some of the folks involved show up tonight. Whether they do or not, in his usual intelligent and insightful way, Bob Hicks has summarized much of those times as well as anyone in a number of posts at Art Scatter, his blog, and he was here for most of it. He's been especially generous to my work, including his recent remarks about the 25th anniversary.
  

If this is an ending, what comes next? I have some notions about that but that's for later.

Personally, obviously the transition's focal point is the unresolved Big C business, which serves as a reminder -- I actually didn't need one, I've been living the gravy years for, well, years -- of one's mortality. But I do want to articulate more about "the end" in this final sense, which is one of the themes in the short novel I'm working on, and also of the new video idea. Again, more later.

It's a freezing busy day. Onward.

Busted pipes

The arctic blast here is busting pipes all over town, according to the news, but not here, knock on my wooden head. I think it's as much from lack of preparation as from the weather. We're not used to this kind of cold.

Raised spirits

Hicks' generous piece on the 25th anniversary lifts the spirits. At least someone in town remembers the 80s ha ha. So tomorrow can happen without me fuming inside that no one remembers the 80s. I think I'll have a grand time.

First, through the day, I need to read as many finals as possible, hopefully enough to finish up on Thursday and get all my grades in. I have a couple "missing" students, which worries me, especially one whom I pegged for a pretty easy A. Disappeared in the last few weeks.

Friday, of course, is the Big Test to see if I have the Big C, and all that entails. I again refer to Doris Day and let her sing all replies.

Saturday is the Army-Navy football game, a favorite sporting event in my life, and a time to make blackeyed peas.

Next week I hope to be in high gear on my two writing projects. And, it never fails, I've been brooding the last several days about a new "avant-garde" video project. Ah, me. The ideas never end. When I pass I'll be pissed because I'll be in the middle of something.

A plug for the anniversary!

From Bob Hicks (who else?) in his blog.

A quarter-century after a literary landmark in Oregon, and the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Let’s see. Urban/rural split, with a vengeance. A recession in the city, which means a depression in the small towns and countryside. Newcomers wide-eyed with enthusiasm over their new home; old-timers narrow-eyed with suspicion and mistrust. Jobs disappearing as fast as the trees and fish. An almost desperate love for the land. Merry Christmas, everyone!

A few evenings ago I sat down and re-read Charles Deemer’s 1984 stage comedy Christmas at the Juniper Tavern. It was maybe the third or fourth time I’ve read it in the 25 years since it debuted, to great acclaim, at the old New Rose Theatre in Portland. In that time I’ve scratched my head repeatedly over why some Portland theater company doesn’t revive it for a December run. It’s topical, it’s seasonal, it has terrific characters and it gets to the heart of that elusive thing called the Northwest spirit. I’m convinced that with a good production it’d be a hit.
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The parallels between the Rajneeshee movement and Christmas at the Juniper Tavern were obvious, and audiences and critics alike assumed the play was a comic riff on current events. Deemer declared his play was not about the Rajneeshees (more on that below) but people didn’t pay much attention. Now, the play’s broader themes are easier to see.

As neatly as it strikes the historical chords of an outrageous cultural clash, in a larger sense Juniper Tavern belongs with a series of plays Deemer wrote in the 1980s about the social and economic strains of mostly small-town life in the Northwest. He included it in his 2006 collection Country Northwestern and Other Plays of the Pacific Northwest, which also included the title play plus Varmints, Waitresses and The Half-Life Conspiracy. Those plays mark a considerable achievement in documenting, with insight and humor, both the stubborn will of the region’s hardscrabble rural romantics and the fading of a way of life.

Read it all

Mrs. Bridge

Evan Connell's masterful novel has been at the top of my short list since I finished it for the first time in grad school. I'm delighted to see a best-selling author plug it as well.

James Patterson on Mrs. Bridge.

See it all tomorrow

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