brooding ’bout stuff
I remember seeing the band Future Islands on a late night show, except that I rarely watch network television. It must have been their “Seasons (Waiting On You)” from Letterman’s Late Show in 2014 before Colbert took over. I thought, “Joe Cocker lives.” And I swear I recall telling my wife Andrea about lead singer Sam Herring: “He looks like he’s about to pee his pants.” That was then. Continue reading “Islands Past: Future Islands’ “Thrill””
Yesterday my brother Richard remarked in our weekly transpacific Skype chat, that the cell phone camera has changed everything, from unmasked undistanced kids walking down a hallway in Georgia (I hadn’t yet seen it; he’s on Bangkok time) to gals getting their nails done getting zip-tied on the blacktop near my neighborhood. Continue reading “Everybody Dance Now 5: The People’s Panopticon”
This fourth edition of Everybody Dance Now involves travel in space and time, beginning with a short from Arizona filmmaker and photographer Harrison J. Bahe of Navajo Joe Films. “Xibalba” comes from the soundtrack of The Fountain (2006) composed by Clint Mansell, which also accompanies Bahe’s film. Xibalba is the Mayan underworld, which figures in The Fountain, a once-and-future picture that weaves together Mayan and Hebrew mythology, featuring a Spanish conquistador astoundingly being recognized by a native priest as the First Father, the life source. Continue reading “Everybody Dance Now 4: Time/Travel”
This is a second conversation with dancer-choreographer Rudy Perez, taking place last month on May 30. During our review of Part 1 Rudy raised a few topics that I wanted to pursue. And, of course, there had been the murder of George Floyd on Memorial Day, and the reactions from coast to coast.
What follows has been lightly edited for clarity. Many thanks to Susan Perry Miick for her help with photographs. Continue reading “Portrait of Rudy Perez 2: Remain in Light”
Comment by David Hughes: The present pandemic has inspired many performing artists: locked down, they are reinventing old works and coming up with new ones. A century ago in 1914, labor bard Joe Hill did the same from his own lockdown—a Salt Lake City jail—lifting lines from “The Internationale” and composing new ones like these from “Workers of the World, Awaken”:
If the workers take a notion,
They can stop all speeding trains;
Every ship upon the ocean
They can tie with mighty chains;
Every wheel in the creation,
Every mine and every mill,
Fleets and armies of the nation,
Will at their command stand still. Continue reading “For a Clinic Without Supervisors”
Last year, in Everybody Dance Now 1, I reminisced about studying with dancer-choreographer Rudy Perez in the early 1980s. Nearly four decades later Rudy agreed to let me interview him a week ago, on May 13. What follows has been lightly edited for clarity.
We begin where I left off in that prior post. Continue reading “Portrait of Rudy Perez”
Little Richard died Saturday. He instinctively figured in my review of Martin Aston’s Breaking Down the Walls of Heartache: How Music Came Out:
Continue reading “Penniman, Shelley and Lee”
Years ago I was surprised when my brother Richard told me that filmmaker Penelope Spheeris was singer-songwriter Jimmie Spheeris’s sister. She: creator of The Decline of Western Civilization, the punk rock doc I saw only last night, tho’ I saw the bands she shot. He: creator of ethereal ballads I found amongst my brother’s LPs when I returned home to Boulder from Los Angeles in the ’70s while he was living abroad. Continue reading “Left the Nest: Jimmie and Penelope Spheeris”
Before Christmas I checked out a book from my little public library branch: Naomi Wolf’s Outrages: Sex, Censorship, and the Criminalization of Love. I had a lot of other things to read and left it for last, not knowing what it contained, vaguely recognizing the author’s name. Turning to it, I recognized Wolf’s photo. If nothing else, readers might remember her defense of Julian Assange when he was accused of sex crimes in Sweden. I thought the book would be a history of censorship, but it’s more comprehensive. By introducing and then returning often to her cast of characters, Wolf creates an intimate narrative against the mise en scène of her historical sweep and sociopolitical stance. Continue reading “Symonds, Whitman, Rossetti and Rake”
In a comment to my post The Stranger Alongside Me in September our friend Milania remarked on my being a rescuer. In reply my husband David Hughes said, “I guess you could say she rescued me forty-four years ago this month! We’ll have to have Andrea tell that tale some day.” Milania urged me to do so “sooner rather than later.” Okay, but I should say that “rescue” sounds more dramatic that it really was, although David and I agreed that this story could get a little bit personal. Continue reading “And He Never Left!”