Dancing with Myself

The Bush Curse

C'mon, Dubya, it's like Bill Maher said:  you're just unlucky.  Haven't you noticed all the shit's that's happened since you were elected?  First, we should have taken  9/11as an omen of what was to come.  Y'see, the Sky Fairie doesn't lilke people to steal elections.  What happened in Florida was wrong.   9/11 was to get our attention.  Then the Asian tsunami.  John Kerry should of, would of, could of, but didn't.  The Sky Fairie was still angry.   Next comes the three sisters of grief, Katrina, Rita, and Wilma.  Then your nominee to the SCOTUS is rejected by your own party, and to add insult to injury, the White Sox dominated the Houston Astros in the World Series.  Dubya, Dubya, Dubya.  I didn't mention Iraq, did I?  I have now.   You're so unlucky  that you're going to drag us all down with you.

G.W., you're going to be remembered in American history as the time we, the people of the United States, stepped in dog shit, then walked around with it on our shoes for 8 long, fucking years.  Everywhere we went, we smelled like dog shit, all the while leaving our shit smeared prints for others to smell and clean. 

All that bad luck in the first paragraph?  Hold on, folks.  We've got three more years of this unlucky clown in the White House.  We are so fucked.  Our kharma is going to be so dark that it's going to take ten or twelve generations to lighten it. 

Two Thousand and Counting

Here's how my neighborhood observed this very sombering statistic.  This hauntingly beautiful observation took place by Lake Merritt in Oakland, about a mile from my home.

I've been curious myself

A letter to the editor of the San Francisco Chronicle.

Editor -- In response to your Oct. 24 article, "White House allies prepare for indictments'': I find it troubling. President Bush keeps reminding us that we're at war. Then why are the White House and the Republican Party engaged in a concerted campaign to make treason acceptable during a time of war?

On numerous Sunday news shows, Republican surrogates issued variations of the following talking points concerning White House political adviser Karl Rove's and Scooter Libby's alleged outing of a covert CIA agent as part of a political vendetta:

It's the criminalization of politics. Is this "minor" leak really worth all this? Political payback is common and should not be criminalized; mis-speaking or mis-remembering is not a crime.

The Republican Party's gift to the American people, and the Bush administration's legacy, will be the normalization of treason, duplicity and deceit.  It is truly a sad day when the Republican Party minimizes treason in a selfish attempt to defend a traitor.

RICHARD SUTHERLAND
Los Altos

More Opera

Saw Bellini's Norma last night at the San Francisco Opera.   It was the final dress rehearsal before  opening this week-end.  Norma is the exact opposite to Dr. Atomic.   It's very Italian, very traditional, and it's all about the singing, whereas Dr. Atomic is about the spectacle which includes singing.  Norma is one of the operas people like to make fun of.  One comedian summarized it as two fat women on stage for three hours screaming at each other.  That is so unkind.  They weren't fat.  In fact, they were gorgeous, these two women who were screaming at each other for three hours.  Joking aside, most of the first act is the two sopranos singing some beautiful music together.  I'm fond of Norma (the opera) for two reasons.  My first recording of it was with Maria Callas singing the role of Norma.  Unfuckingbelieveable.  It was also the first live performances of an opera I ever saw.  Renata Scotto sang Norma.  That was sometime in the last century.  It must have been sometime in the 70s, I just can't remember for sure.  I was living pretty fast in those days.

I run in circles that require you to explain exactly what you mean or feel.  And because I come from such a country background, I'm easily embarrassed by what I don't know about so many things.  It's a good thing I'm cute and funny, because if I weren't, I'd be called a lot of less flattering names.  I do overly qualify any remarks I make about well, just about everything.  Some of that is cultural as well.  Southerners just hate to say nasty things about people we don't know all that well. No, that's not entirely true.  We just hate going on record and being held accountable, so we just add a "Bless your heart," when we do.   Now, about tonight's opera.  Bless their hearts.   I thought the singing spectacular.  Now I qualify it.  I can't tell when they're on key, on time, or what.  If I'm into it, I just soak it all in.  How good or bad something is depends totally on whether or not I'm entertained.

Tonight I was entertained.  I loved part of it and hated parts of it.  I thought the set was unimaginative, tacky and inappropriate.  Nor did I care much for the orchestra, but I had just seen Dr. Atomic and that's mostly about the orchestra.  I thought this one sounded like a village um-pah band when they started.  I have no idea who the principle singers were, but they were good.  The San Francisco Opera Chorus is usually better known than most of the principals.  They were great tonight.

I especially liked the scene tonight where the Druid warriors wearing thongs painted themselves blue in preparation for going to war against the Romans.  They were wearing thongs, and I'm not talking about shoes.  The high school students around me were absolutely titillated.  So much so that I was self-conscious when I took my opera glasses out of my pocket to facilitate getting a better look.

Did I not mention that it was high school night at the opera?  This is not my favorite age group.  I accompanied a bunch of kids from S.F. Art and Film.   Can you believe that at one time in my life I imagined myself teaching this particular age group about the wonderful and rich story that is American history?  That was before I found out that I don't like high school students.  I warmed to them quite a bit when they laughed at an inappropriate moment in the first act.  We lost quite a few after intermission, but the ones that stayed totally got into it during the second act.  It was cute to watch their transformation as they got "hooked" by the drama.

Despite my enthusiasm for opera, I'm not really one of those big-city opera queens.  Believe me, I know opera queens, and I'm not one--not that there's anything wrong with it.  A real opera queen lives for opera.  They're in the chorus.  They work as supers.  They volunteer to usher.  They follow the careers of favorite singers.  (Uh oh.  That symptom feels familiar.)  My best buddy, Lisa, was a supernumerator (or whateverthefuck that word is) at the San Francisco Opera.  Supernumerary?  We just call them supers.  Supers are the ultimate opera groupies.   Lisa has been in so many productions of Madame Butterfly that sometimes she awakes wondering if she's dreamed about being in Madame Butterfly, or whether she's in Madame Butterfly dreaming about being Lisa.  I think her last count was that she had been in 45 performances.  That's dedication.

I was out surfing in the blogosphere last night after the performance when I stumbled onto a blog by one of the supers in tonight's performance.  He writes Civic Center as SFMike.  I can't wait to go back and read more stuff.  Having seen three performances there this season already, I have a point of reference.  SF Mike is a good story teller with a good eye for rich detail.  It was too much fun reading the behind the scenes story.  Say hi if you stop by.

That's four operas in the past month for me.  I'm sure that's a record.  And I've got one more to go:  Beethoven's Fidelio.  And I didn't even buy season tickets.  I've always fancied myself more of a symphony kind of guy.  Afterall, I'm a first line groupie for Michael Tilson Thomas, but he now has competition for my culturally romantic fantasies.  I've been listening to a lot of William Burden's singing this past week or two.  I interspersed Bill's songs with Michael Feinstein singing Cole Porter's "I can dream, can't I?" 

You bet the fuck I can.  I can and I do.
 

Dr. Atomic

On Sunday,  a friend and I saw Dr. Atomic, one of the biggest cultural events to occur this year.  Parts of it were phenomenal.  Dr. Atomic is a new opera commissioned by the S.F. Opera, written by John Adams and Peter Sellars. I'm not sure what credit to give Mr. Sellars. He didn't really write the libretto as much as he selected certain poetry and Congressional testimony to be set to music. Closing the first act was Canadian Baritone Gerald Finley singing an aria based on John Donne's Holy Sonnet XIV.  If only the rest of the opera were as good.  This number, though, moved me to tears.  That was pretty much it for the first act.  The second act belonged to the overall production, i.e., the symphonic music, the theatrics, the dancers.  Oh yeah, the dancers.  Eight dancers were used to create the illusion of intensity, emotion, activity. 

The evening belonged to John Adams, even if the opera was disappointing.  The critic down in L.A. said, and I paraphrase his politeness to make the point more quickly, he said he couldn't wait until he could see the opera done by a proper opera house, like the Met or maybe even the L.A. Opera.  I'd go see it again in an instant just to hear Finley sing Donne's sonnet again.

Holy Sonnet XIV by John Donne

Holy Sonnet XIV: Batter My Heart, Three-Personed God

John Donne

Batter my heart, three-personed God; for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurped town, to another due,
Labor to admit you, but O, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
but is captived, and proves weak or untrue.
yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betrothed unto your enemy.
Divorce me, untie or break that knot again;
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor even chaste, except you ravish me.

Liking Opera

I'm from deep East Texas.  So deep I thought I was from Louisiana most of my life.  My people are a mix of Redneck Ridgerunners and Bayou Redbones.  The only music we made, so to speak, was our singing at church which was pentecostal or baptist.  On Saturday nights we listened to the Grand Ol' Opry coming live out of Nashville, Tennessee.  When I was 8, I tried to learn to play the trombone.  It didn't take.  Once television came along, my musical experience widened to include Perry Como and Judy Garland. 

By high school we all had radios--in our cars, in our rooms, wherever we were.  I have vague recollections of many songs and styles.  I was largely indifferent to it, although for some strange reasons I know every word to some very strange songs, like Johnny Horton's Battle of New Orleans.  That changed in my senior year when I started listening to folk music.  As folk music became politicized, so did I.  I taught myself to play the guitar well enough to accompany myself singing.  My favorite singer was Joan Baez.  That's probably why all of my arrangements sound like hers.  But while I was singing folk music, most of my peers were listening to the Beatles, a group I never paid much attention to until late 1968.

The first time I listened to opera was in 1976.  I was in love.  My lover and I were intoxicated with love and champagne, and probably cocaine.  He had the most incredible apartment with a very professionalyl engineered sound system.  We made love for about three hours while listening to Madame Butterfly being sung by Maria Callas.  To this day when I hear a Butterfly sing Un bel dì, vedremo levarsi un fil di fumo dall'estremo confin del mare,  I get a rush.

I was hooked on opera from that moment on.  Saturday mornings became centered around listening to the live broadcast from the Metropolitan Opera in New York.  The discussions between acts helped me to understand the art of opera as well as the play.  Once, about 1984, I was doing my laundry in a public laundromat around the corner from my flat listening to Placido Domingo singing Samson while I folded my clothes.  I became so aroused, the next thing I knew I had seduced the guy doing his laundry next to mine.  Another afternoon lost to passion and opera.

Then there was the time I saw Norma in Houston.  Well, no reason to get too explicit, but if you catch my drift, opera turns me on, literally.  It's a very passionate art form.  You have to give yourself to it completely.  It's not background music.

It is not the only kind of music I enjoy, though.  Once I began getting connected to music, my appetite was voracious.   The folk music led me to the Blues, to Yiddish music, bluegrass, and cabaret.  Back in the mid-80s, I had an affaire with a conductor of a small chamber orchestra.  He helped me to understand classical music and started me on a journey of understanding and experiencing different composers. 

I also enjoy the music of silence.  Since I live in a major city next to a freeway, I seldom experience silence.  It's a rare symphony, enjoyed all the more on that infrequent occasion.  That's one of the reasons I enjoy the Canadian Rockies as much as I do.  I had a teacher once who believed that if you can find a quiet place, then it is possible to hear the roar of the earth as it whirls on its axis.  That's why it can sometimes be said that "silence is deafening."

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Kicking into High Gear

Saw two operas this past week-end.  The first one on Friday was The Italian Girl in Algiers, by Rossini, produced by the San Francisco Opera.  It's a fun little piece of fluff with a real boring second half act.  (I'm trying to stop using sports terminology at the opera.  Not everyone thinks it's cute.)  The highlight of the evening was William Burden.  Oh-my-god! What a hunk.  How come I never noticed him before?  I am totally infatuated.  I think he's singing at the Met later this year.  I know he's singing in Paris in February.  I am so  there. 

Is he seriously cute, or what?  He can sing, too.

Sunday night I saw the S.F. Lyric Opera's production of Carmen, starring Barnaby Palmer as Mickey Rooney.  The Lyric Opera has that "let's put on a show!" feel to it.  It's productions have not been slick, but they have been honest and talent-borne.  This is not intended as criticism, just an observation.  The stage was too small for as many people as needed to be on it for Carmen.  The musical values of the production, however,  were incredible.  Barnaby knows some very talented singers.  Singing Carmen is this production was Ariela Morgenstern.  She is HOT!  HOT!  HOT!  Matching her note for note, passion for passion, was Christopher Campbell singing Don Jose.

Next up is Dr. Atomic, a new production by the San Francisco Opera.  It's getting quite a bit of buzz.  I got my tickets early. 

Tax the Bastards

If they want to play politics in violation of church and state, then let's tax the low-life sons-of-a-bitch.