New Story: For Art’s Sake Accepted by Word Riot!

Huzzah!!

My flash fiction work, For Art’s Sake, has just been accepted by Kevin O’Cuinn, fiction editor at Word Riot.

This is a new milestone for me, a third piece of flash being pubbed in the same journal: Woo Hoo! (Deep endebted thankfulness to Kevin, as always.)

The pub date has not yet been determined but when it’s published I’ll let you all know with a joyous announcement and link for your reading pleasure. For now, a placeholder will go on the Published Stories page…

Thanks!

The New Normal

Readers, this writer is prone to thinking too much. I spend a lot of time analyzing the world, myself, other people (those I know, and those I don’t …in overheard snippets on the subway, in diners and at the airport…) and today my laser sights are focused on what is “normal” behavior and how does that affect creative output?

At some point in the past I realized I was normal in some ways, and in others very much not “the norm.” As a kid in junior high school, I hung out with a strange bunch of friends and we played Dungeons and Dragons. (D&D is a fantasy role playing game.) We used our imaginations to escape our regular lives to become magicians, knights in armor, theives and monks for a few hours each week as we pillaged and fought our way through imaginary towns and dungeons. We were often required to come up with innovative solutions for puzzles and problems we’d encounter in our “travels” and learned to work well as a group (or our characters would suffer the consequences!)

Once I got to college, I was out of the “norm” again as I joined a select group of kids who met in a basement in the student center once a week to put together a poetry magazine called The Anthologist. We too used our imaginations to debate and decide which poems would make it into our esteemed publication and which would not. (We often played “guess the rhyme” with the worst submissions, for our amusement.)

Out of the original group of D&D kids, there were a disproportionate number of us who were artists. Some of us liked to draw, others of us liked to write, some composed music, and now as adults we’re still doing that. Out of the Anthologist group, every single one of (the four) of us have published novels, poetry, short stories or academic works. Two of the four are university professors of English Literature, another is an English teacher at the high school level, and then there’s me… living in the corporate world but a weekend-warrior writer.

If I look across my lifetime of romantic relationships, it’s chock-a-block full of artists. My first boyfriend (one of the D&D kids) was a fantasy artist, something he makes a living at to this day. In college, my most important boyfriend was a writer, who now has published two novels (with more on the way). I’ve also had very significant relationships with painters, who are of a moody sort that I can’t seem to shake myself loose of… but none of these people were or are normal.

And these days I have too many friends to count that are writers, painters, photographers, musicians, dancers and others loosely or closely affiliated with creating artistic output as part of their daily lives.

I’m thankful for all these people who influenced (and keep influencing) me creatively and shared their out of the box thinking with me. Those that were the most “out of the norm” taught me the most about not conforming to standard ways of thinking or what society expects. Still others taught me about the philosophical underpinnings of creativity (and are still doing so.)

This, in turn, got me to thinking about how creative ideas manifest themselves. For those who are more constrained by “the normal” ways of living and thinking, does that mean they are hampered from coming up with the most innovative ideas for their fiction, paintings, or music? One of my good friends, an author, recently said to me that he thought I was too inhibited in my thinking and that it might prevent me from creating the most dramatic stories and situations. He may be right, maybe in that sense I’m still too normal?

In today’s shrill sensationalistic environment where people have the attention span of ten seconds perhaps being outside the norm is what it takes to attract attention to oneself and one’s art. I don’t know.

How about you, reader? Is your art outside the norm, and if it is, has that helped you? If it isn’t, do you think that is a disadvantage?

I’m going to continue to cultivate my abby-normal self in my creative life to push the boundaries of my stories, characters and imagination. I’m going to keep embracing the quirky, the odd and the unusual in friends and those close to me. Maybe, if I’m lucky, even more will rub off on me.

At the Brooklyn Museum: Materializing Six Years: Lucy R. Lippard and the Emergence of Conceptual Art

I recently went to the Brooklyn Museum to see a special exhibition “Materializing Six Years: Lucy R. Lippard and the Emergence of Conceptual Art.”

More than many museum exhibitions I’ve attended in recent years, I found this large and comprehensive exhibit fascinating and accessible. It covers six years of conceptual art activity from the late 1960′s into the early 1970′s. One of the most interesting aspects of the exhibit is that of the 173 “items” on display, many of them (perhaps most of them) are not art objects but the documentation of the conceptual art that was performed during that time period, or if not an art performance, the documentation describes a piece of art that could be assembled from the instructions provided.

If you are familiar with the work of Sol LeWitt, for example, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sol_LeWitt) you could see some diagrammatic illustrations on paper of some of the pieces Sol LeWitt wanted to either produce himself or to describe sufficiently so that the works could be produced by others. (As a side note, although I’m not necessarily a fan of his work, if you want to see a permanent exhibition of LeWitt’s work as executed by others, you can go to the DIA: Beacon museum in Beacon, NY.)

This exhibition is based on the curatorial work of Lucy R. Lippard, who participated in putting together shows and writing art criticism during this time period. Again, what is very interesting about this exhibition is that Lippard is not an artist, she is a critic and curator. Her “work” was providing the venues for artists to show their work rather than producing the work herself.

In the Brooklyn Museum there is a permanent Judy Chicago piece called The Dinner Party, which is a large set-piece of feminist art based on placemats, ceramic plates and settings for each female guest (such as Emily Dickenson, etc). The Elizabeth Sackler gallery is dedicated to showing feminist art as one of its primary objectives, and the Lippard exhibition surrounds the Judy Chicago set-piece as its center.

I didn’t particularly find this conceptual art exhibition to be feminist in nature, although I don’t know enough about Lippard to say if she was a feminist or not. There was a very good mix of male and female artists represented in this exhibition, and the themes represented were conceptual and not particularly geared towards feminist themes.

One of my favorite pieces in the exhibition was the “Secret Painting,” a piece by British artist Mel Ramsden. (http://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/works/30.2003.a-b/) It is a canvas painted all black, and beside the painting there is another canvas with a message saying “The content of this painting is invisible; the character and dimension of the content are to be kept permanetly secret, known only to the artist.”

However, one of the “dangers” I perceive with Conceptual Art is that it takes the elevated position of an art object and makes anything a possible art object, whether it was specifically created by an artist or not. Of course, so much of the art we see these days is exactly that – not something specifically created by artists, but actually items that have been assembled from pre-existing consumer objects in the world and then we (the viewer) are told (1) this is art, and (2) it is up to you to determine its meaning.

When you enter the exhibit, the first thing you’ll see is a glass case with perhaps two dozen post cards of various scenes of New York City… Central Park, the Empire State Building, whatever. On the back of each post card is a printed text which says “I Got Up At” and then a printed time (4:28 P.M. for example). The only other printed text is the artist’s address (the artist is On Kawara) and the address of Lucy R. Lippard. So in this case, the “art performance” is the sending of a post card through the mail. No one can actually ever see the “art performance” and in the end, Lucy R. Lippard collects and assembles the “art objects” (postcards) from the “art performance” (sending the post cards through the mail.)

While I like the idea that art and artists can be playful with art, can play with the concepts of what is an art object or what is an art performance, I still find it disturbing to think that classical art is basically dead in that world. No where in that exhibition will you find a painting with a subject, you won’t even find abstract expressionist paintings because they aren’t necessarily “conceptual enough” for this crowd.

Of course, in the end, they are all following Marcel DuChamp’s lead from 1917 when he tried to put a urinal on display in an art show and call it a “Fountain.” It’s been all downhill since then.

If you want to see this exhibition, it will be on display at the Brooklyn Museum until February 17, 2013. http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibitions/six_years/. A catalog for this exhibit, in the form of a handsomely published book, is available in the gift shop for $45.oo.

Mark Flood’s Art Star show in Chelsea

I attended an art event in Chelsea at the Zach Feuer Gallery today put on by artist Mark Flood as a part of his new exhibition at the gallery called Art Star.

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The show consists of a series of word paintings with sayings like “Museum Whores” and “Alleged Artists” and a video showing the judges from the Bravo TV show The Next Great Artist, but what the judges are saying is over-dubbed. Instead of giving real critiques, they are dubbed with computer generated voices and completely trashing the hypothetical artist they are discussing… then on the walls of the gallery are large canvases painted black in the center with borders of painted lace. (Lace paintings are works Flood has been known for in his career and how became known.)

The video tape of the judges was, for me, the most amusing part of the exhibition because of the cynicism Flood is showing about the whole way art is promoted by galleries and museums and how artists are commodified and sold.

Today’s event consisted of a panel of 10 men who all claimed to be Mark Flood, and 2 moderators who were there to ask the Mark Floods questions. One of the panel participants was actually Mark Flood, but he never identified himself as the “real artist” and similarly none of the questions that were asked of any of the Mark Floods sitting on the panel were answered seriously. All of the questions and answers were amusing and ironic, with one of the Mark Flood’s pretending to be a tree, another was a cat in a cage, and still others who pretended to represent some part of Mark Flood’s personality (narcissist, sell out, business person, musician, etc.).

Not too many years ago I would have found this kind of art exhibition completely ridiculous, but these days I think I can appreciate the humor and cynicism Flood is depicting in the show. The world of “high art” has become (has always been?) controlled by powerful forces and heavily driven by money. Who becomes the next “art star” has probably very little to do with actual talent and more to do with the proximity of an artist’s relationships to art power structures and influence.

Unfortunately though, I didn’t find the paintings in the exhibition to be “art star” worthy – but I could not figure out if that was purposeful by the artist. Perhaps Mark Flood wanted to create a set of paintings that would be seen as mediocre to underscore his point about how actual talent is irrelevant in the face of all these power structures at play. Or maybe the idea was that mediocre paintings are what galleries are selling today, along with the hype selected artists get by being represented by those galleries.

Regardless, I can appreciate the narrative commentary Flood provides in the word paintings and the video installation to underscore his points, plus the pointed humor he uses to get his message across. The art event today was a lot of fun, although I learned nothing more about Mark Flood as an artist by going, the 45 minutes I spent laughing at myself as an audience participant and laughing at the 10 Mark Floods give silly answers to silly questions makes light of what can normally be a serious endeavor to try and understand what an artist is trying to say with their work.

If you’re in the Chelsea area, I’d recommend checking out the exhibition… the gallery is located on 22nd near 11th Ave. and Art Star will be in residence there until October 15th.

New York City Music: Dizzy’s Club and Terra Blues

The other night I decided to “stay up late” and go to Dizzy’s Club for the ‘hang set’ at Jazz at Lincoln Center to see the Bryan Carter Trio.

It was the first time I’ve seen a live performance at Dizzy’s Club, which is located in the Time Warner Building at Columbus Circle on 59th Street (at the southern edge of Central Park.) The club is a beautiful space with a wood paneled interior and an intimate, cozy club setting with small tables facing the stage.

Also unlike some clubs in New York, the tables were far enough apart that everyone has their own space, as opposed to some clubs where you are practically sitting on top of the people next to you.

Dizzy’s Club was set up to give everyone who wants to see live jazz a chance to do it in a great setting for an extremely reasonable price. The cover charge at the door for the ‘hang set’ which runs from 11pm – 12:30am Tues, Wed, and Thurs is a mere $5 per person. Once you get in, you do have another $5 minimum drink or food requirement per person, but it would be impossible to find such a fantastic place with a great view at that price.

The Bryan Carter Trio was a group of three young musicians, a pianist, base player and drummer who made their debut at Dizzy’s Club the night I saw them. Not only had they never played at Jazz at Lincoln Center before, it was also the first time the three of them were playing together for a crowd. They did not disappoint either, they gave us an hour and a half of high energy jazz, some laughs and a great time.

In addition to Dizzy’s Club, I have another favorite music hang out in New York City: Terra Blues. As far as I know, Terra Blues is the only Blues club in Manhattan (unfortunately BB King’s club in Times Square is NOT a Blues club).

Terra Blues is a small venue located on Bleeker Street. They have the most authentic local and national blues talent come to play there, and on any night you can hear some truly amazing acoustic or electric blues depending on whether or not you see the early set (acoustic begins at 7pm) or the late set (electric blues begins at 10pm and runs until 2am during the week or later on the weekends.)

The cover at Terra Blues is $10 bucks a person, but you can come in for the acoustic set and stay through the electric set and it’s all covered by your $10 spot. They do have a drink requirement too, I think it might be 2 drinks per set per person, but it’s well worth it for an entire night of Blues entertainment.

I’d like to mention a special shout out for Saron Crenshaw. He’s an extremely talented bluesman who plays Terra Blues regularly for both the acoustic and electric sets (I’ve seen him play both.) Crenshaw has what I’d call a Blues soul, someone who has been playing blues all his life and when he gets up on stage his talent and energy is unstoppable. If you get the chance to see him live for the electric set with his band, you’ll know what I mean.

Terra Blues Calendar: http://www.terrablues.com/cal/thismonth.html

If you enjoy jazz or blues in Manhattan and want to shout out the name of your favorite club or venue in the comments section – please feel free – and keep on grooving, these musicians need their audiences to thrive!

Creative Non-Fiction: The Car of Your Dreams

The Car of Your Dreams

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I’ve been carrying around traumatic events from my adolescence for decades. Now that I’ve reached my forties and my parents are gone, it’s time to start telling other people what happened. I don’t want to carry these rocks around forever; I’m ready to have others help me carry them.

 

I feel a strange urge to defend my well-meaning but harmful parents. I didn’t suffer from physical or substance abuse in my family, it was nothing that traumatic. Even the word abuse seems too strong. But there were events that have had long term effects on my psyche. Sometimes I have irrational insecurities and feelings of inadequacy. No matter how hard I work in life, it never seems hard enough. In other words, my parents gifted me the prerequisite conditions to be a writer, or more broadly, a driven person.

 

From the earliest age I can remember my parents told me I was going to college. This was not a discussion they had with me, it was an indisputable fact of my existence. As the oldest of two children in a middle-class Jewish family it was my obligation to meet my parents expectations. I wasn’t unique in this regard. In Jewish households across America, every day a kid is told they’re going to college. And they will.

 

My grades underwent regular scrutiny from kindergarten through middle school, and by the time I got to High School my father became a harsh critic. I dreaded showing him my report cards. If I got a B in Math my father would ask why I didn’t get an A. I don’t know why I didn’t realize it, but no reason would satisfy him. He said I wasn’t working hard enough. For him it was the only rational explanation for why I didn’t get an A. A simple formula was applied: anything less than perfection showed a lack of dedication. On the flip side, always getting an A in English and French was passed over without comment. A was the expected grade; it required no chastisement.

 

But neither of us understood getting into a great college was going to be impossible for me anyway. I was unaware of the odds against me and my parents were ignorant of the admissions process, which they incorrectly assumed was fair and balanced.

 

I was getting good grades, that wasn’t the issue. But I went to school in a blue collar town with an undistinguished middle-of-the-road academic program. Ivy League schools turned their institutional noses up at high schools like mine. No one told me and certainly no one told my parents. (Our valedictorian, a painfully shy blond-headed boy who I had the worst schoolgirl crush on for years, went to a two-year community college to study Forestry.)

 

Anyway, there I was, editing the school newspaper, playing cymbals in the marching band, joining the Honor Society and the French Honor Society, and serving as the President of the Principal’s student advisory team. I don’t remember what else I did to have enough extra-curricular credentials to impress college recruiters, but I did my best to show everyone I was a bonafide nerd and it was working.

 

As I rounded my last academic lap senior year, my father saw me doing everything possible to accomplish what he expected. He decided to give me extra incentive. He told me if I graduated in the Top Ten of my class, he would buy me a new car. Really? I remember asking him. Yes, he said. Graduate in the Top Ten – Get a New Car.

 

As a seventeen year old girl the dangling carrot of a new car was beyond enticing. I was thrilled at the possibility my academic suffering could create a real-world result manifested as four tires, a gas pedal and a steering wheel. I dreamed in shades of robin’s egg blue. Whatever academic ambitions I fostered were now ratcheted up to inhuman proportions. I took on extra-credit assignments and became maniacal about the Top Ten goal.

 

My father knew I was part of the Honors classes. In High School I was in an advanced studies track which put me in the same classes with the other nerds. (This is one reason why I developed such a long standing crush on the blonde-headed boy, I was in every single class with him for four years.) But what my father didn’t know was I had a secret weapon: Denise L.

 

Miss L was our senior year Biology teacher and a newcomer to the teaching profession. I recall we didn’t have an Honors track Biology class, I don’t remember now why we didn’t, but Biology was a mixed class with goons from the general population mixed in with the nerds from the Honors track. (Of course the blonde-headed boy was in Miss L’s class too, a sweet torture for me.)

 

Miss L, like many of the teachers at my middle-of-the-road school, wanted everyone to do well in her class. It occurs to me now this might have been a tactic on her part to stay in her job a second year, since she’d be able to cite good grades for students of all levels. At the time I saw her as a nice but naïve new teacher.

 

Miss L gave all of us the same unconditional offer: turn in every single homework assignment and she’d add 8 points onto our final average at the end of the year. Despite my poor math abilities, I realized this opened the door for a perfect 100 in Biology senior year if I could at least get an A. I enjoyed biology so it was just the extra gas in the tank I needed for the Top Ten convertible of my dreams.

 

Meanwhile, the long march to college proceeded. I applied to four schools. In my order of preference at the time: Princeton, Cornell, Douglass College which was part of Rutgers University, and Stockton State College. Stockton was my back-up school. I got in with ease but had no intention of going. I also got into Douglass, which was a very good school, even though it was all-girls. Cornell wait-listed me and told me if I could delay my start until the following academic year I could get in, but I didn’t want to do that.

 

And then there was Princeton.

 

My father came with me to the Princeton recruiting event in his best dress slacks, a polo shirt and a suit jacket. I also got dressed up but still felt awkwardly out of place.

 

The nice people at Princeton set up the interview room with cafeteria tables representing each high school, so you didn’t have to wait on line too long to speak to a recruiter. For Westfield, an affluent town fifteen minutes away from where I lived, there were three tables set up for the kids and their parents. I think Montclair had two tables for their school.

 

For my town, along with the next town over and Elizabeth – the third largest city in the state of New Jersey – there was one table. One. And guess what? There were very few kids from these three towns, so my father and I walked right up and spoke to the recruiter who wore a jacket emblazoned with a Princeton crest. I was suitably intimidated.

 

Later, when my application to Princeton was declined, my father said it was just as well since he couldn’t afford to send me to Princeton. From his perspective this simple financial logic applied to Cornell too. I don’t know why my parents never thought far enough ahead while they psychologically whipped me year after year to get the best grades possible if they didn’t have the means or intention of sending me to an Ivy League school? I guess it was too logical to equate forcing your kid into academic achievement and the parental obligations that should have proceeded from it.

 

If I sound resentful it’s not because I resent being over-educated or the only person in my nuclear family to go to college. It’s because of the trail of tears I had to march for twelve years in order to go to our excellent state university. I could have gotten in there minus a lot of drama.

 

Thankfully though, I had an important alternate incentive. The car dangled within reach if I made it into the Top Ten. It helped me temper my disappointment on college choices. I loved Douglass College and Rutgers as it turned out and their English Literature program was fantastic.

 

Meanwhile, as senior year drew to a close, we were told final grades would be announced just before graduation. There were about 275 kids in my class. If I made it to the top 27, I reasoned, I’d be in the top 10%. I thought that was pretty good. There were at least 30 kids in the Honors track classes, and although we were a minority in our school, we were representative of the kids we’d be meeting when we got to college. For me, making it into the top 10% would mean I was competitive with my Honors track peers. But I didn’t have to worry: Miss L came through. I got a perfect 100 in Biology.

 

I graduated 12^th in my class. I was so close to Top Ten! My father agreed that 12^th was great and he was proud of me. But I wasn’t getting a car. I begged and pleaded with him to reward me: a used car, a motorized scooter, something, anything, as acknowledgment of my achievement. No, he said, rules were rules. Besides, he added, he couldn’t afford to buy me a new car.

 

I still believe now, decades later, his decision was cruel. It undermined my ability to trust the good nature of human beings. How could I imagine a situation where I worked my ass off and got rewarded fairly? It didn’t happen in my house. Ever.

 

The American credo, especially for immigrant families, was hard work leads to success. Eight years, three advanced degrees and tens of thousands of dollars in student loans later, yes, my hard work lead to my success. My parent’s brainwashing took root deep in my psyche; I learned how to beat myself up without their assistance. It turned out I was an excellent student after all.

 

In the end, I guess I turned out okay. I’ve got a well paid corporate career and I make more each year than both of my parents did at any point in their lives. Some might say I’m compelled to do it. I’m still not sure that’s my definition of success, but it was theirs. One day though, I hope to fulfill my real promise and become a successful writer.

Maybe someday I will.

 

Will The Real Artists Among Us Please Stand Up?

I’ve been thinking about what I might want to say about the disruptions in my life here on the blog… disruptions which have sidetracked me from my normal writing routines.

I’ve been considering what it means for me to be a writer. I’ve talked about this with other writer /artist friends and we all have our way of dealing with the situation of juggling responsibilities (pay the rent, buy food, keep the lights on) and our desires to create art.

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But… I don’t know if I’m a REAL writer.

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I know you won’t agree with me putting forth such an outrageous comment, but hear me out.

What I mean is:

• I write a blog;
• I’ve had my stories published in online literary journals;
• I am compelled to produce fiction;

So yes, I write things. That much is true.

But of what consequence are these writings? I’m not dedicating my life to my writing. I’m not making essential sacrifices to be a full time writer. I’m not doing my utmost to achieve visible success.

I know many artists who are so obsessed and compelled to produce art they are incapable of doing anything else. They cannot work at a regular job because it does not give them sufficient time to produce their art. Many of them (most?) live in poverty and undergo terrible intellectual suffering wondering if they will “make it.”

And sadly, many of us (most?) won’t achieve large-scale success like Stephen King, JK Rowling or Richard Russo. We will never sell enough of our books to be wealthy, we will not be published by a well known publisher, or make the NY Times bestseller list, or reviewed in the NY Times or LA Times Book Reviews, have our book (or story) picked up by a movie studio, or selected by the Oprah book club, given the Pulitzer Prize or provided with any other socially visible signs of artistic success as a writer.

And for artists such as painters and sculptors it’s the same. Many (most?) may never have a major gallery pick up their work, they won’t sell enough paintings at a sufficient price to make a full time living, they will not have their works collected by museums, and they will not achieve the visible success of people like the Chuck Close’s, Damien Hurst’s or Jeff Koons of the world.

A writer friend complained to me recently that there is too much content being produced nowadays. There are too many blogs in the world, he said, spewing out stuff (much of it mediocre he postulated) and overwhelming any potential audience from finding the “good” content. But who will be the first to stop producing their content if they do not believe it is of the highest quality? And then we must multiply blogs by the Facebook accounts, Twitter tweetings, and all manner of other mechanisms belching out relatively meaningless content day after day.

To what end, should we dare ask?

All of the people who call themselves artists: writers, painters, sculptors, photographers, actors, musicians, singers, songwriters… all of us… what chance do we have to become a successful version of our best artistic selves?

Or should we accept that, perhaps, we are nothing more than dedicated hobbyists? Do we pitter, patter and piddle around producing stuff to be burped out of the massive gut of an online machine of similar hobbyists in a world-wide act of continuous public mental masturbation?

What is the mechanism we must trigger to achieve success?

What does it mean to be successful?

To close, I’m going to turn this entire post on its head by quoting the Wikipedia article about Mark Rothko, an internationally acclaimed abstract expressionist (he hated that label, by the way) and whose work hangs in the most important museums all over the world.

Despite his fame, Rothko felt a growing personal seclusion, and a sense of being misunderstood as an artist. He feared that people purchased his paintings simply out of fashion, and that the true purpose of his work was not being grasped by collectors, audiences or critics.

Re-reading Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet

I’ve been re-reading Letters to a Young Poet by Rainier Maria Rilke, and his words resonate with me more than a hundred years after he wrote them.

And while I continue on with my own struggles about being an artist, here is a clear voice from the past with wisdom to share.

“…And if out of this turning inward, out of this absorption into your own world verses come, then it will not occur to you to ask anyone whether they are good verses. Nor will you try to interest magazines in your poems: for you will see in them your fond natural possession, a fragment and a voice of your life. A work of art is good if it has sprung from necessity. In this nature of its origin lies the judgement of it: there is no other. Therefore, my dear sir, I know no advice for you save this: to go into yourself and test the deeps in which your life takes rise; at its source you will find the answer to the question whether you must create. Accept it, just as it sounds, without inquiring into it. Perhaps it will turn out that you are called to be an artist. Then take that destiny upon yourself and bear it, its burden and its greatness, without ever asking what recompense might come from outside.”

- Rilke, Paris, February 17, 1903

Film Review: Pina, a film by Wim Wenders

Pina is an art film by Wim Wenders dedicated to Pina Bausch, a German choreographer who has given the world some amazing avant garde dance … which is very hard to describe.

I’d like to share this clip from the soundtrack by talented musician Jun Miyake. It’s called Lilies of the Valley. It gives you a sense of how upbeat some of the music is, although many of the pieces were also dark and deeply emotional to watch.

This piece, from the Opening, I felt to be the strongest of the entire film. You immediately know, when you watch a piece like this you are going to be watching something extraordinary.

What you don’t see in this clip though, is how the dancers start the scene – by spreading dirt on the stage to dance on as their surface.

There is a lot of use of open air settings, using “props” like dirt or water, or other natural elements… leaves, grass, etc to convey something larger than just human beings interacting with one another, they are interacting with the entire world and its environment.

Here are some other arresting images and music from the film:

I have one criticism of this film though. First, Pina was presented in 3D and it was the concensus of me and my friend, along with the chatter of others in the audience when the film was over, that the 3D didn’t add enough to the presentation of the film to justify its use. When going to the art house for one movie costs $16 or $17 bucks in Manhattan, you know your audience is expecting you to wow them if you’re going to bother with 3D.

You’d think a clip like this would be enhanced by 3D, but I swear, what you see here is basically the same thing I saw in the theater:

Finally, I’m not a big dance afficianado, but I enjoyed this film. My friend, who loves dance, came out of the movie on a cloud, she really loved every minute of it. There were spots that dragged a bit for me, and because some of the dancing is deeply emotional, it’s quite difficult to sit through two hours of dancing with no plot and essentially no dialogue.

I would recommend going to see this film if you enjoy dance, especially contemporary avant garde dance, but be prepared to pay that extra bit for 3D glasses you don’t really need.

What is the future of the Small Literary Magazine community?

Short story writers and small press literary magazine editors are an important community.  This wasn’t apparent to me when I first started submitting my short stories around, “way back” in 2010. I also didn’t understand the majority of these magazines operated with volunteer staffs and a lot of love, fantatical dedication and sweat equity.

Think about that for a moment. The time it takes to create a short story and then the time it takes for a staff of dedicated volunteers to assess that work and determine if it’s a fit for a journal. We all keep doing it, in a positive reinforcing circle, and it’s produced inspiring work.

There have been several postings I’ve seen around the web recently about what it takes to run a small literary magazine (SLM). Most of these discussions talk about the financial, or lack of financial, support for the small literary magazines (SLM).

As a writer who has placed 15 of my pieces with SLM’s, and I’ve not gotten (nor expected) any payment from it, I can tell you I’m also personally unwilling to pay reading fees to an SLM to read my work. This would be the case for me if I got paid for my short stories or not. It’s also why I don’t participate in contests that charge reading fees. To me, that feels more like gambling than a contest. It’s more like a poker game where everyone puts money into the pot and winner takes all.

(As a side note, and my apologies to the U.S. Post Office notwithstanding, I’m also unwilling to kill trees to circulate my work. It boggles my mind that some of these ancient, old-guard SLM’s …The Paris Review, for example… still get away with living in the 19th Century when it comes to accepting submissions. Get with the program, people. The New Yorker accepts electronic subs, so there should be no excuse for others. Support Submittable and get a Submishmash account for your SLM and come into the 21st Century. You know, where the real people live with computers, email accounts and everything.)

I’m ready, willing and able to interact with a volunteer staff as a writer volunteering to provide my short story for free in exchange for publication, and I’m also ready to help publicize that SLM and encourage others to read it. I’m happy to see (some) advertising on the SLM’s website, or for people to pay for subscriptions, or merchandise, or door-fee fueled special events. I have no issue with SLM’s that solicit for donations on a voluntary basis either.

I volunteered for a short while as a slushpile reader at an SLM, and I’d be willing to do it again. I enjoyed it tremendously and I felt like, even for a brief stint, I was able to give back to my community.

Where does all this leave us as a community of writers, editors and staff, small literary magazine afficianados, readers and everyone else who participates in this wonderful machine we all feed every day of the year?

You may not like it, but it leaves us exactly where we are today. We have decided to participate in this thriving community because we are compelled to write and produce our work, and others are compelled to dedicate themselves to provide venues for writers, artists, photographers, etc. to showcase that work.

While it’s unfortunate that the economic climate for artists in the United States has never been fantastic, it’s never going to stop writers from doing what they need to do: write. Short story writers and SLM editors are no different. Their compulsion to support the community is real, and their dedication to it palpable.

I’m grateful to be a part of this community, and proud to count myself among their multitudes.

NoLa Diary #11 – A story in signs

Everywhere you look in New Orleans you’ll find scribbles, scrawls, grafitti and interesting street art. I took some of the shots I got and made up a little story.

If the Angry Birds had NoLa cousins, these would be them.

These grafitti birds (above) were on the side of a building on Magazine Street. I imagine they have names like Earl or Bobby Joe, and they’re probably the NoLa cousins of the Angry Birds (who are city slickers.) The NoLa birds aren’t as angry as they are mean; they’re so mean they have teeth, which is saying a lot for a blue bird.

Then again, NoLa is also a place where dirty means tasty. We can stroll through the French Market to buy a plate of Dirty Rice at the Cajun Cafe, which you might eat along with your Alligator Sausage Po’ Boy.  Yummy, n’est pas?

Alligator Po' Boy anybody? Get one at the Cajun Cafe in the French Market

After you’ve eaten your share of Gator, you say you want to do some dancing to work off those Cajun calories. So, we point our feet to Frenchman’s Street. Before we get there, at the corner of Decatur and Esplanade, we’ll pass the BMC club. From the look of their artwork (below), they sure like to swing.

But since we’re going on to Frenchman, we’re going to have to cross over Esplanade at that corner, go past the firehouse on the right hand side and continue towards the left down Frenchman Street.

BMC Club - 504 Esplanade

Frenchman has tons of clubs and is known as Bourbon Street (minus strip clubs, thank you very much) for the locals and those in the know.

It's all about the mermaids and jesters on Frenchman Street

I don’t know the name of the club whose doorway I photographed (above) but we can call it The Mermaid. Remember, in NoLa, you get extra points for no signage, or if you’re place is very hard to find, and especially if it looks run down. This club qualifies in a few of those categories so it must be fantastic inside.

Dark Meat Fried Chicken Special

But look! Across the street we could have had Jamalaya Dark Meat Fried Chicken and Greens on special today. Too bad we ate that Alligator Po’ Boy, now we’re full…

Electric Ladyland Tattoo - Frenchman Street

Oh gosh, I told you not to go drinking with Earl and Bobby Joe, those guys are bird brains! It’s no surprise you wound up at the Electric Ladyland Tattoo parlor on Frenchman Street. Thank goodness they have a sign in the window (not shown here) that says No Drunks. Whew, you almost wound up with that mermaid on your forearm.

You can hardly stand up anymore with all that dancing and those shots of bourbon you drank. Let’s head on home…

Possible Side Effects

Wow, I should have never let you convince me to go for a beer at the Saint, that after-hours place on St. Mary Street near Magazine. As we saw from the “possible side effects” sticker on their dumpster while you puked alongside it, there is some truth in advertising.

 

 

NoLa Diary #4 – Ogden Museum & Contemporary Art Center

Originally I thought the Ogden Museum of Southern Art , located on Camp Street, was free to visitors on Thursdays but I was mistaken. The Ogden is free to any resident of the state of Louisiana on Thursdays, but not a Yankee like me. I was also informed by the helpful desk clerk that the Ogden After Hours program (Thursday evenings between 6-8pm) requires a second admission fee 0f $10.

Travel Tip: However, despite the rain today, there was a silver lining. The Contemporary Art Center of New Orleans  - which is directly across the street from the Ogden was offering a one day $10 “Prospect Pass” which included admission to both the CAC and the Ogden, as well as numerous galleries across the city as part of a group “Prospect” show.

I wish the CAC allowed photography inside their NOLA Today show on the 3rd floor, but alas they did not. The show was well curated and there was a lot of narrative work about New Orleans and artist’s interpretations of life in NoLa now. Of course, references to the flood were plentiful, and the art it inspired was moving. I recommend it highly, and NOLA Today will be on display until the end of January 2012.

Lovely mural on the side of the Contemporary Art Center of New Orleans, Camp St

Once I took in everything the CAC had to offer today, I went back across the street to the Ogden and I’m so glad I did.

The red and white building on the right is the Ogden and the really old building on the left is a Civil War Museum which I didn’t visit

The one reason I wanted to go to the Ogden was to see native New Orleans artists work and I’m happy to report the work of George Dureau, a well known NoLa French Quarter artist, was worth the visit alone.

Entrance piece (a self portrait by the artist) to the George Dureau exhibition at Ogden

I loved Dureau’s use of color and abstract figuration and I enjoyed the fact that he appears in nearly all of his own work as a model, which is intriguing and I think unusual.

Dureau self portrait red background

Other than the amazing Dureau exhibit, I was really astounded by the work of New Orleans photographer Josephine Sacabo. Her surrealistic negative images of women’s faces are hauntingly beautiful and inspiring. Her work (according to the biography on her website) is in MoMA in NY, the New Orleans Museum of Art – NOMA, the Smithsonian and the Library of Congress collections, just to name a few.

Sacabo piece on display at Ogden

To say the work I saw today was “crazy good” is not an understatement. I was excited by these more contemporary works, even though I thoroughly enjoyed NOMA and the sculpture gardens yesterday. Today I felt like I was putting fuel in my creative furnace as I continue to soak in what the city has to offer.

Another strong Sacabo piece at Ogden – woman with smoke

Although I’ve focused most of my diary entries on museums and art galleries almost exclusively for the first few days of my visit here, I think anyone can easily see why it’s so easy to get pulled in by the artistic heartbeat of New Orleans. The city is so old and has such a strong character, it makes sense to me that so many artists would call this place home.