Misery Loves Comedy

I saw Caryl Churchill's update of August Strindberg's "A Dream Play" at Source Theatre. Spent much of the play laughing despite the overarching theme of the play being how miserable life is. Agnes, daughter of the gods, is essentially shown what life is like on Earth until even she has nearly lost hope and wants to get the hell out. The play really does capture the essense of a dream in many ways. Like a dream it is surreal and nearly absurd while still being completely comprehensible. One theme is how the people want the gods to know about their suffering and fix it. Reminded me of the sentiments in Ani DiFranco's song "Coming Up" which ends:

and whoever's in charge up there
had better take the elevator down
and put more than change in our cup
or else we
are coming
up

Another consistent theme is how it is possible to know something but to be incapable of expressing it in words (a point which is consistent with Steven Pinker's Language Instinct which I'm currently reading). I find myself in that position with this blog entry, and will take the dreamy way out...

The Officer waits for his love Victoria to come down from the theatre year after year while his roses fade from red to black.

What is time?

Time flies by while I speak. You are speaking now and we are flying (kids with airplane arms) so we are time. No.

2 times 2 is 2. I will prove it by analogy: 1 times 1 is 1. 1 goes into 1 once, therefore 2 goes into 2 twice. No.

That's logical, but wrong.

The sign poster with his green fishing net and green bucket appears happiest of all, but even he admits the fishing net is green, but it's not exactly the green I expected.

Other than the sign poster, the only happy characters are those newly in love, and that love always burns out.
I'm so happy I could die. Why would you want to die? Because our love can't last.

We'll have a baby to bring us closer.

I don't mind so much being poor, it's the dirt I mind. Being poor can lead to dirt.

I hate lentils. I hate your untidiness. We'll both have to change a little. I'll eat lentil soup. I'll stop tidying up after you. We'll both live the rest of our lives doing what we hate...

PASTING... PASTING... PASTING... pasting up the cracks

But I can't breathe. All the cracks let the heat out. If heaven cracked open you would paste it shut.

The Good and the Grand, the law-abiding citizens and the hardworking families.

The ocean is salty from all the sailors tears, all the sailors cry because they are so far away.

Why is this world so screwed up. Why's everything wrong way round? There was a problem with the copying. A copy! I always felt there was an original out there where things are right way right.

A petition to the gods: Why is it so painful to give birth? Why does being happy make someone else sad, but being sad doesn't make someone else happy?

Characters holding a meeting on whether to open the chained door that no one had ever seen opened. Truth is hidden behind the door. The lawyer (truth is what I can prove beyond a reasonable doubt), scientist (truth is what I can see in my microscope), bishop (truth is what I believe), and psychologist (truth is what you discover about yourself after all those hours of talking) all wind up in a hilarious slow-motion brawl while the glazer opens the chained door behind them. It is empty.

Like a dream, I remember bits and pieces because I just saw it. Even now some of these memories are flawed and important connections are missing. I know what I saw but I can't express it. I hope this helps me remember what I can.

Family Tree-dition

Continued the Father's Day tradition of heading to Skyline Drive with the family. Although the food at Big Meadows was well below what we've come to expect, the rest of the trip was good fun. We visited my grandparents, who I can neither confirm nor deny are scattered at Crescent Rock overlook. Revisited an old friend (90 degree tree as seen in 2007 and 1984) at the Big Meadows lodge. And because it was Father's Day and dad always adds a bear to his deer prediction, we did of course see a bear.

Mimsi won the deer count, though there was some controversy whether we count the deer we saw outside of the park (we don't). I once again picked too low. Since we went earlier and the solstice is in a few days I thought we'd be leaving Big Meadows well before dusk. We didn't and we saw more than my guess of 20 deer just in the meadow.

Deer predictions:
Jon: 20
Dad: 28 (and a bear)
Mimsi: 30
Mom: 50 (and a fox)
Actual: 39 deer, 1 bear

Right to Remain Silent

Got a chance to check out Brett Morgen's documentary Chicago 10 at the AFI Silverdocs festival tonight. It was even better than I expected, extremely powerful. I felt it created a sense of what it was like living in that era (although how would I know right?). But the updated soundtrack and the events of today make it feel much more relevant than a historical piece. I get the sense that the political and anti-war tensions were much more extreme then than they are now, which causes my initial reaction to be "well maybe everything isn't so bad right now" but actually deeper down I'm afraid that what's really happened is that this time there just aren't the people willing to stand up against the slide into a police state and a culture of perpetual war.

What's interesting is that after watching the film it wasn't any image of police beating rioters etc. that came across as the most powerful, it was hearing Bobby Seale ordered by judge Hoffman to be taken into an adjoining room and dealt with by the bailiffs. The film portrayed that the disruptions he caused were primarily his attempts to be allowed to defend himself in the trial. He was returned into a U.S. courtroom bound to his chair and gagged. I was stunned. While the entire court proceedings were recreated through animation, the transcript was taken from the court record and clearly recorded the judge referring to the bound and gagged defendant. According to the film, Bobby Seale was removed from the Chicago 8 trial at that point and received 4 years in prison for contempt of court (2 years of which were served before he was acquitted of all charges). I definitely need to do more research on these times and events.

A Boy Named Sheldon

Things I learned about Shel Silverstein today (thanks to NPR's All Songs Considered):

• He wrote "A Boy Named Sue" (music and lyrics) for Johnny Cash
• He wrote "The Unicorn Song" which became a hit for the Irish Rovers and is sung in Irish Pubs around the world (despite having nothing whatsoever to do with Ireland)
• He wrote (and sings?) a song about a man who gives up everything for a front row seat to hear Johnny Cash sing, eventually winding up in jail for his antics... where he gets a front row seat to hear Johnny sing one of his famous prison concerts
• He wrote "The Father of a Boy Named Sue" telling the story from the father's perspective
  

Photo 101

Took the Photo 101 "class" with Scott and Laura tonight (they even had a syllabus and illustrations). Scott gave a good overview of common features of digital cameras, and I had a chance to spend time finding them on my Canon Powershot SD630 Digital Elph (which took a self portrait of himself there on the left). Then Laura went over some of the basic principles of photography and composition as shown in the lovely illustrations below. A couple of tips that I picked up:

-You can cover the flash of your camera with a piece of paper (like a receipt from your pocket) to get a diffuse flash (using a finger will give everything a red tone and a dollar bill will make things green).

-Instead of using a digital zoom it is usually better to just crop the picture after it is uploaded, the one exception could be when the subject is in much different lighting conditions than its surroundings and the camera can't auto focus or auto meter without being digitally zoomed.

-Red eye tends to be worse the closer the flash is to the lens (or when your subject is drunk, because their eye responds to light more slowly)

-You can take a picture into the sun if your subject's head blocks the sun and it will make them look like they have an aura (otherwise there really isn't a trick to being able to take a picture of someone in front of a particular backdrop when the sun is also low in the sky behind them).

-I only get about two hours of use out of my camera when I am tinkering with it as I was for this class

Rock Slide!

Started what may become a new Memorial Day tradition this year with the White Oak Canyon/Cedar Run hike in Shenandoah National Park. I can't believe I lived here 30 years without knowing about "The Slide" on Cedar Run (AB took this shot of me on the right - as well as the video on the sidebar). The hike up White Oak Canyon, across the fire road and horse trail and back down Cedar Run was about 6.5 miles to the Rock Slide and took us from 10am to 1:30pm so it made for a late lunch. When I do the hike again I would do it exactly the same way though since the rock slide was fantastic and you can stay as long as you want and know you are nearly at the car (in case an afternoon storm moves in as it did today just as we reached the parking lot). The best swimming hole other than the slide (and the best for pure swimming) appeared to be the bottommost of the waterfalls on White Oak Canyon (the first you reach hiking up).

One of the goals of the hike (for me) was to test out Mimsi's backpack and the Keen Newport H2 Sandals (on the right with Ann's Keen hiking boats) I got as possible gear for Africa. Both passed the test.






Ann at the top of the main White Oak Canyon falls with a view down from the top on the right.










In front of the second falls on White Oak Canyon and a photo Ray took of me at the top of the main falls during our snack break.





AB hanging out on a log and Dave hanging out in the water (he ran ahead and was in the pool here at the lowermost falls when we arrived)









Ray took this sequence of shots of tandem rock sliding...







And these of a memorable run...

Enfreedoming Shakespeare

Tonight I got to see "Love's Labor's Lost" at this year's Shakespeare Free For All. This was the third year in a row I've seen it and this was easily my favorite (though I loved the past two and the free for all is one of the highlights of my year). The original director Michael Kahn set the play in 1960s India and the setting fit perfectly (with obvious adaptations). Beatle-esque rock stars have agreed to study with an Indian maharajah and forsake women for three years... until a quartet of lovely, witty women show up at their court.

The scene at the end of act one is perhaps my favorite single scene of any play I've seen. Each of the students (and the maharajah) come on stage and "secretly" express their love of a lady to the audience (and the now hidden previous players) through song (including the drummer who rolls an entire drum set out under a sheet where he ultimately hides as the next confessor arrives), and then proceed one by one to call out each other on their hypocrisy before ultimately deciding to renounce their oaths and pursue the women together. The scene finally culminates in the foursome playing a full rock concert song, complete with computer controlled rope lights scrolling around the prescenium. I'm sure you had to be there but it was spectacular.

The best thing about the free for all is that is it outdoors at the Carter Barron amphitheatre. Of course the worst thing about the free for all is that it was nearly rained out, but they build a 30 minute rain delay into their schedule and wound up seating us as the final drops fell. Some other highlights of the show were lines about the "posterior of the day" (afternoon), "remuneration" (which Costard determines to mean 3 farthings), and "enfreedoming your person" as an offer to remove his handcuffs. Michael Milligan as the hippie stoner Costard really stole the show, and I will always remember watching him sit on the bench at the side of the stage, pull out a bag of weed and roll his own joint (like the statue on the National Cathedral I suppose).

What I also want to remember is that Jeffrey mentioned that his goal was to see every one of Shakespeare's works performed and I am going to steal his suggestion and make that a life goal of my own (with this blog hopefully helping to keep track). So far I will only officially count A Midsummer Night's Dream, Pericles, and Love's Labor's Lost as crossed off the list.

Update: I enjoyed it so much I went back to see the show the next Friday. It was still good the second time although the audience was dead and the energy of the show was down. I did catch an additional favorite quote though: "Abstinence engenders maladies"...