I blame myself. Honestly. My ignorance. My, er... prejudice. But this was not my cup of tea.
We went last night to Disney Hall to hear the John Adams/Peter Sellars collaboration, The Gospel According to the Other Mary conducted by the inimitable Gustavo Dudamel. My ignorance? The music. My prejudice? The story. Guilty on both charges. The piece was in two acts, the first of which was seventy minutes long, and the second, sixty-five. The truth is that we left at intermission. So this is not a music review, for which I am in any event unqualified.
The music. Taken in two-minute slices--any two minutes, really--it was absolutely compelling. I loved hearing the singers--three (count 'em) countertenors, a contralto, a mezzo-soprano, a tenor and a chorus, all lovely voices, solo or in counterpoint. I loved the noisy parts of the music with wild syncopations and dissonances; I loved the soft parts, serene and meditative. But my musical attention is such that I'm unable to keep focused for long enough to follow its thread. After two minutes, I have totally lost it and my mind is a busy scold, telling me that if I had paid attention I wouldn't be feeling so lost and, well, bored. Add all those two-minute pieces together thirty-five times and you could see that I was in a daze of musical confusion. So... mea culpa. Absolutely.
The story. My prejudice. It's the Jesus thing. Okay, no disrespect. I go along with him being a great prophet. I see that his teaching has a great deal in common with the Buddha's (and wish that his contemporary followers would pay more attention to his actual words--his compassion, then--than to his deity and his promises of salvation.) The Gospel according to Adams and Sellars sounded many a millennial theme (see my recent review of Heaven on Earth by Richard Landes): the messiah arrives to save humanity from itself with his death and resurrection. With the apocalypse comes redemption, our suffering will end, and this wicked world will become a place of peace and plenty.
I don't believe any of that stuff. I'm with the Buddha: if we wish to end suffering, the work is ours, individually. No one is going to come and save us. The Jesus that is presented here, as magician (raising the dead) and object-of-worship (allowing his feet to be bathed by Mary Magdelene) just doesn't do it for me. I don't fault him one bit for being on the side of the meek and suffering, the homeless, the hungry and the sick. The politics of the piece is nothing if not correct and timely. As Jesus said, the poor are always with us. They are with us today, both abroad and at home, whether we admit it to ourselves or not; said Adams in an interview with the Los Angeles Times, "tragically these are also the people on whose backs budgets and acts of Congress today are being balanced. I think that this is a very meaningful story on a social level because Americans in this moment of national anxiety are basically beating up on the poor. We've always beat up on the poor, but now for some reason we've found the language that empowers us to abuse them even further." Amen. This is a terrible and shameful truth. But as the "Son of God," his Jesus comes across, for me at least, as more than a little self-righteous.
This all blows up into great melodrama: Lazarus rising from the dead--well, being risen--is the centerpiece of the first act. But I found it all simply overbearing. I respond more readily to the quieter art work, the less imposing, less portentous. I don't like to be beaten over the head. Expressionism works less well, for me, than impressionism.
But that's my ignorance. My prejudice. I'd like to read a proper review, written by someone who know's what he's talking about. I'll check out the Los Angeles Times this morning. See what's what. Here's a preview, which offers some good information. If I find a full review, I'll post it. To be fair.
Friday, June 1, 2012
Wednesday, May 30, 2012
PROMOTION WEDNESDAY
MIND WORK
If you have not already ordered a copy of Mind Work, please consider doing so. The publisher tells me there has been a glitch in the "shopping cart" process, so you may have experienced difficulty ordering. Would you try again? If you enjoy my daily entries on The Buddha Diaries, I'm sure you'll find a lot to like in this collection. It's about taking the self apart in order to find greater creative freedom. Your outlay also helps to keep me going at The Buddha Diaries, so it's very much appreciated. (NOTE: If you have a blog and could give the book some coverage in exchange for a review copy, be sure to let my assistant, Emily know.) Please give this a thought. Also, while I'm in promotion mode...
ONE HOUR/ONE PAINTING...
This is the picture we'll be looking at next Tuesday, June 5, at the "One Hour/One Painting" session at William Turner Gallery, starting at 6PM. The painting is by Ned Evans. It's called "Sun Biscuit," and its jazzy interplay of horizontals, verticals and diagonals, along with its brilliant colors should give us plenty to play with. The gallery is located at Bergamot Station in Santa Monica. Please contact Emily for further information and reservations.
Tuesday, May 29, 2012
THE END IS NIGH
Millennial madness is with us again as December 2012 looms and, with it, the end of the world as we know it, as "predicted" by the Mayan calendar.
It's a good moment, then, to take note of Richard Landes' Heaven on Earth: The Varieties of Millennial Experience. It would take a mind more scholarly than my own to do justice to this book with a properly critical review. It's a hefty tome and its language is that of meticulously argued academic analysis. The footnotes alone often take up half a page or more--and that's on every page of this 500-page book. But--please note--this should not deter anyone who is seriously interested in attempting to come to at least a partial understanding of the bewildering, dangerous insanity that threatens to engulf our world in this twenty-first century. That should include all of us.
Okay, I'll admit I glossed over some of the more esoteric passages. I did not pay that much attention to the footnotes. And I struggled, at times, with the language. But I was so engaged by the stories of human gullibility, folly and delusion that my fascination never lapsed.
As have many people like myself who think of themselves, as I do, as rational, thinking human beings, I have been confounded by the absurd, sometimes outrageous, and ostensibly religious beliefs that govern the thoughts and actions of so many of our fellow travelers on this planet, who in their fanatic dedication to deluded notions gladly endanger our very existence on the planet Earth. I think not only of those "Muslim terrorists" who brought down the World Trade Center towers and plot the demise of Western civilization, but also of their Christian brethren in madness who preach their fundamentalist, end-of-times versions of reality in our own churches here in America. Such extremist views are not merely tolerated, they are embraced by alarming numbers of our fellow-citizens--and they coalesce into a powerful political force. It behooves us to pay attention, and to attempt to understand the incomprehensible.
Enter Richard Landes, who helpfully frames all this insanity in the context of the "millennial experience." In our attempt to explain and envision a reality beyond the human condition that is all too frequently one of suffering, bondage, injustice and violent conflict, we humans have often in our history rushed to embrace the prophecies of messiahs who promise us peace, freedom and justice for all--"heaven on earth," just over the hill, past the (imminent!) end of the world, if only we will repent, believe in them, and follow them if necessary to the ends of the earth. Whether by rapture or vengeful apocalypse, "we shall overcome" the forces of evil and find salvation through their intermediary.
Trouble is, of course, that the end of the world never comes, and the inevitable disillusionment needs some explanation: in the most benign of cases, the date of the cataclysm merely gets postponed; in the worst, we descend into mass suicide or mass murder, even genocide when the megalomania of false prophets explodes into homicidal frenzy.
I found this book to be both amazing and enlightening. As I suggested at the start, I am unqualified to review it in the critical perspective of other work in the same field of study, but I found its arguments compelling and its stories fascinating. We know these characters, from Jim Jones to Adolf Hitler, and Landes offers a plausible framework in which to understand their seemingly inexplicable power over their followers. The stories he tells help us to tease out the underlying patterns of human behavior that permit atrocities like the Holocaust, and leave us open, in the current century, to real and actual self-destruction as a species. In reading the deplorable history of apocalyptic prophesies and events and in understanding how they come about, Landes suggests in his conclusion, we might just possibly avert the biggest one of all.
Unless, of course, the Mayan calendar proves us skeptics wrong... (It may account for all those typos! Oxford University Press? Really? For shame!) See you in January.
It's a good moment, then, to take note of Richard Landes' Heaven on Earth: The Varieties of Millennial Experience. It would take a mind more scholarly than my own to do justice to this book with a properly critical review. It's a hefty tome and its language is that of meticulously argued academic analysis. The footnotes alone often take up half a page or more--and that's on every page of this 500-page book. But--please note--this should not deter anyone who is seriously interested in attempting to come to at least a partial understanding of the bewildering, dangerous insanity that threatens to engulf our world in this twenty-first century. That should include all of us.
Okay, I'll admit I glossed over some of the more esoteric passages. I did not pay that much attention to the footnotes. And I struggled, at times, with the language. But I was so engaged by the stories of human gullibility, folly and delusion that my fascination never lapsed.
As have many people like myself who think of themselves, as I do, as rational, thinking human beings, I have been confounded by the absurd, sometimes outrageous, and ostensibly religious beliefs that govern the thoughts and actions of so many of our fellow travelers on this planet, who in their fanatic dedication to deluded notions gladly endanger our very existence on the planet Earth. I think not only of those "Muslim terrorists" who brought down the World Trade Center towers and plot the demise of Western civilization, but also of their Christian brethren in madness who preach their fundamentalist, end-of-times versions of reality in our own churches here in America. Such extremist views are not merely tolerated, they are embraced by alarming numbers of our fellow-citizens--and they coalesce into a powerful political force. It behooves us to pay attention, and to attempt to understand the incomprehensible.
Enter Richard Landes, who helpfully frames all this insanity in the context of the "millennial experience." In our attempt to explain and envision a reality beyond the human condition that is all too frequently one of suffering, bondage, injustice and violent conflict, we humans have often in our history rushed to embrace the prophecies of messiahs who promise us peace, freedom and justice for all--"heaven on earth," just over the hill, past the (imminent!) end of the world, if only we will repent, believe in them, and follow them if necessary to the ends of the earth. Whether by rapture or vengeful apocalypse, "we shall overcome" the forces of evil and find salvation through their intermediary.
Trouble is, of course, that the end of the world never comes, and the inevitable disillusionment needs some explanation: in the most benign of cases, the date of the cataclysm merely gets postponed; in the worst, we descend into mass suicide or mass murder, even genocide when the megalomania of false prophets explodes into homicidal frenzy.
I found this book to be both amazing and enlightening. As I suggested at the start, I am unqualified to review it in the critical perspective of other work in the same field of study, but I found its arguments compelling and its stories fascinating. We know these characters, from Jim Jones to Adolf Hitler, and Landes offers a plausible framework in which to understand their seemingly inexplicable power over their followers. The stories he tells help us to tease out the underlying patterns of human behavior that permit atrocities like the Holocaust, and leave us open, in the current century, to real and actual self-destruction as a species. In reading the deplorable history of apocalyptic prophesies and events and in understanding how they come about, Landes suggests in his conclusion, we might just possibly avert the biggest one of all.
Unless, of course, the Mayan calendar proves us skeptics wrong... (It may account for all those typos! Oxford University Press? Really? For shame!) See you in January.
Monday, May 28, 2012
EXQUISITE TORTURE
We went with friends at the weekend to see the movie "First Position." It's a documentary that follows a handful of youngsters, aged ten to seventeen or so, who are vying for glory--and the chance for a successful career--at the Youth America Grand Prix competition in ballet dancing. A diverse group--one girl comes miraculously from traumatized, war-torn Sierra Leone, a young lad from relative poverty in Columbia, a pair from Israel--they share only their single-minded passion. The work involved consumes their whole lives, not to mention the lives of their family. Quote aside from the incredible expense involved, it's mercilessly demanding on their young bodies. It also requires a dedication that is little short of obsessive, and given the relatively low "demand" for this art form in the contemporary world, the chances for success in the field are slimmer even than in most others.
You have to admire the tenacity of these young people, along with their superlative physical agility and their boundless aspiration. Their physical work is harder and longer than anything I have had to do in my life, and they devote themselves to it in the spirit of a passionate pursuit of perfection. There is something about the exercise of such discipline, I believe, that gives them a special quality as human beings: a sense of purpose, a respect for others, a gracefulness and charm, and--I'm reaching for a word that has the ring of "wholesomeness" without being quite so condescending. They must be very much in touch with themselves, acutely conscious, their awareness honed to a fine point by suffering gladly accepted and daily experienced for the sake of their art. Unusual, too, in youngsters of this age, is their emotional maturity in the sense that they are clearly able to register their feelings and, at the same time, to subordinate them to their goals. They are certainly very special people.
I was impressed, too, by the adults in their lives. Certainly, there was at least one "tiger mom" amongst them, but for the most part the parents seemed genuinely supportive, following along with their children's hopes and dreams with a certain sense of awe. Required to make enormous sacrifices, they do so for the most part with good cheer and without reservation. The film offered glimpses of the relationship between young student and adult coach, whose work seemed to require a fine balance between patience and demand, supportive love and standards that to many of us would seem overly exacting. Missing, perhaps, was a closer look at the role of the competition's judges, responsible at the end for the hard decisions as to who would triumph and who would go home disappointed.
I was left wondering about the sheer physical torture--there's no other word for it--inflicted by this art form on its practitioners. Injuries among dancers are as common and as debilitating as those caused on the playing fields of professional sports and, like professionals in sports, dancers are so highly motivated that they will ignore the pain and get on with the work, causing themselves still further damage. Watching this film you can only wince at the images of the abrasions of sore feet and the contortions of human bodies forced into positions for which they were not designed. And the obvious, external injuries are matched by the internal ones, the expectation of perfection and the intolerance of failure, the pain of disappointment and the rigors of self-judgment.
Still, as my friend Stuart pointed out as we drove home, these youngsters do seem to engage in their passion willingly. It is their choice that brings them back to the dance studio every day and to embrace the pain and the discipline that choice entails. If it is a form of torture, it can only be described as exquisite--both in the experiencing of it and in the results. Now, if writers had to go through the same, maybe there would be fewer of us vying for the attention of a dwindling supply of readers! We sit comfortably enough at our computers and risk growing plump as we exercise our fingers only at the keyboard. I am not, however, tempted to get up and dance!
You have to admire the tenacity of these young people, along with their superlative physical agility and their boundless aspiration. Their physical work is harder and longer than anything I have had to do in my life, and they devote themselves to it in the spirit of a passionate pursuit of perfection. There is something about the exercise of such discipline, I believe, that gives them a special quality as human beings: a sense of purpose, a respect for others, a gracefulness and charm, and--I'm reaching for a word that has the ring of "wholesomeness" without being quite so condescending. They must be very much in touch with themselves, acutely conscious, their awareness honed to a fine point by suffering gladly accepted and daily experienced for the sake of their art. Unusual, too, in youngsters of this age, is their emotional maturity in the sense that they are clearly able to register their feelings and, at the same time, to subordinate them to their goals. They are certainly very special people.
I was impressed, too, by the adults in their lives. Certainly, there was at least one "tiger mom" amongst them, but for the most part the parents seemed genuinely supportive, following along with their children's hopes and dreams with a certain sense of awe. Required to make enormous sacrifices, they do so for the most part with good cheer and without reservation. The film offered glimpses of the relationship between young student and adult coach, whose work seemed to require a fine balance between patience and demand, supportive love and standards that to many of us would seem overly exacting. Missing, perhaps, was a closer look at the role of the competition's judges, responsible at the end for the hard decisions as to who would triumph and who would go home disappointed.
I was left wondering about the sheer physical torture--there's no other word for it--inflicted by this art form on its practitioners. Injuries among dancers are as common and as debilitating as those caused on the playing fields of professional sports and, like professionals in sports, dancers are so highly motivated that they will ignore the pain and get on with the work, causing themselves still further damage. Watching this film you can only wince at the images of the abrasions of sore feet and the contortions of human bodies forced into positions for which they were not designed. And the obvious, external injuries are matched by the internal ones, the expectation of perfection and the intolerance of failure, the pain of disappointment and the rigors of self-judgment.
Still, as my friend Stuart pointed out as we drove home, these youngsters do seem to engage in their passion willingly. It is their choice that brings them back to the dance studio every day and to embrace the pain and the discipline that choice entails. If it is a form of torture, it can only be described as exquisite--both in the experiencing of it and in the results. Now, if writers had to go through the same, maybe there would be fewer of us vying for the attention of a dwindling supply of readers! We sit comfortably enough at our computers and risk growing plump as we exercise our fingers only at the keyboard. I am not, however, tempted to get up and dance!
Friday, May 25, 2012
"BALANCE OF SHADOWS"
."One Hour/One Painting" proved its worth again yesterday evening, this time at the studio of my friend Gregg Chadwick. The studio is located in a former airplane hanger at the Santa Monica Airport, so we had a good deal of aviation noises to contend with--planes flying low overhead, landing and taking off. And the sight lines were not as good for some as I would have wished: we had a full house, and the two rows were necessarily stretched rather widely across the studio, leaving some participants viewing the picture at too steep an angle. Still, to judge by the response cards and the conversation afterwards, most people managed to compensate for this and were fully engaged.
Gregg is not only a painter but also a big reader--his bookshelves in the studio crammed with a great diversity of interesting books--and a fellow-blogger at Speed of Life. If you have not visited there, I hope you will. He brings an artist's vision to everything he writes about. For the occasion, he had used the biggest studio wall to hang this picture...
... "Balance of Shadows." (Great title, by the way!) It's a fine, large painting, ideally suited to the purposes of "One Hour/One Painting" in its rich combination of color and light, surface texture and underpainting, image and abstraction. The central figure, balancing on a slack rope that loops across the canvas, seems to levitate, dancing on pure light. The color of his robes suggest a Southeast Asian monk. Closely observed, the brushwork to left and right reveals subtle landscape elements--rocks and trees--suggesting a blend between the spiritual traditions of the far east and the aesthetic traditions of the West as far back as the Renaissance. Buried in the picture, some of them barely discernible, are other figures, marching soldiers, Gregg told us later--a reminder of one of those disastrous and eventually futile US military misadventures in Asia. The painting's title reminds us that light, indeed, proceeds from darkness, and that the search for the middle path is always a balancing act.
An enthusiastic response, then, to an hour of guided meditation and contemplation. It's a great way to come to know a painting. The discussion that followed the silent sit was lively and profound. The experience went deep. The talk could have gone on much longer, I think, but I chose to bring it to a close, fearing that the memory of the event might become too wordy. It is not often, when I do these sessions, that the artist joins us. In this case, Gregg was clearly gratified by the response to his work--and I was grateful to him for providing not only the great painting for us to look at, but also for the studio space and, afterwards, generously, a supply of snacks and beverages. By the time I left for the drive home, there were still a good number of participants left, deep in conversation.
This session marked the first time "One Hour/One Painting" has been videotaped. I had submitted an article about the experience to Tricycle magazine and, while they declined the article itself, they inquired about a video for possible inclusion on their online meditation site. Gregg's cousin, David, a professional in the field, kindly volunteered to do the job, so I'll be interested to see how it turned out. I suggested that he tape my introduction first--I stand at the front to explain something of the history and the process of the event--and then follow my guidance through the painting for the remainder of the hour. If nothing else, it should be a great exploration of "Balance of Shadows." I'll let you know if and when it appears on Tricycle.
Thanks to Gregg, thanks to David, and thanks to a great group of participants. I have the feeling that I'll be seeing some of them again at future sessions. The next one, by the way, is on Tuesday, June 5 in the William Turner Gallery at Bergamot Station. The artist is Ned Evans. I'll be putting out more information shortly.
Gregg is not only a painter but also a big reader--his bookshelves in the studio crammed with a great diversity of interesting books--and a fellow-blogger at Speed of Life. If you have not visited there, I hope you will. He brings an artist's vision to everything he writes about. For the occasion, he had used the biggest studio wall to hang this picture...
An enthusiastic response, then, to an hour of guided meditation and contemplation. It's a great way to come to know a painting. The discussion that followed the silent sit was lively and profound. The experience went deep. The talk could have gone on much longer, I think, but I chose to bring it to a close, fearing that the memory of the event might become too wordy. It is not often, when I do these sessions, that the artist joins us. In this case, Gregg was clearly gratified by the response to his work--and I was grateful to him for providing not only the great painting for us to look at, but also for the studio space and, afterwards, generously, a supply of snacks and beverages. By the time I left for the drive home, there were still a good number of participants left, deep in conversation.
This session marked the first time "One Hour/One Painting" has been videotaped. I had submitted an article about the experience to Tricycle magazine and, while they declined the article itself, they inquired about a video for possible inclusion on their online meditation site. Gregg's cousin, David, a professional in the field, kindly volunteered to do the job, so I'll be interested to see how it turned out. I suggested that he tape my introduction first--I stand at the front to explain something of the history and the process of the event--and then follow my guidance through the painting for the remainder of the hour. If nothing else, it should be a great exploration of "Balance of Shadows." I'll let you know if and when it appears on Tricycle.
Thanks to Gregg, thanks to David, and thanks to a great group of participants. I have the feeling that I'll be seeing some of them again at future sessions. The next one, by the way, is on Tuesday, June 5 in the William Turner Gallery at Bergamot Station. The artist is Ned Evans. I'll be putting out more information shortly.
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