If You Don't Use Your Brain, You Might as Well Eat It: the Case for Risky Business

How the lack of danger in your life can lead to the take over of your mind by the government, by corporations, or even by a sneaky neighbor.

Author and engineer William Gurstelle, knows from risk. This is, after all, a guy who builds flamethrowers and makes gunpowder with items purchased at the Home Depot--and gives us step-by-step instructions on how to do the same.

In his latest book, Absinthe & Flamethrowers: Ruminations on the Art of Living Dangerously just released by Chicago Review Press, Gurstelle wonders, are people who take risks happier than those who do not? The answer he concludes, is yes.

My discovery of this book earlier today came in a flash of synchronicity. Just before hearing him interviewed this morning on our local NPR affiliate, I had been telling my husband that lately, I had been pondering the nature of risk. Why had I been compelled to stay in chilly ocean water the day before, without a wet suit, in order to boogie board for hours over big and fast waves at the Jersey shore? I didn't think I'd had any sparkling insights, but was curious as to why this somewhat risky adventure had left me paradoxically relaxed and invigorated. Keep in mind, when I say big, fast, waves in chilly water, it was on a gloriously sunny day when the beach was crammed with shore goers, but only a handful of us braved the water.

To think only about how to ride each wave as far, high, and quickly as I possibly could, there wasn't much time to consider anything else. As I paddled, floated, judged the waves, and then decided when to "launch" so that I would catch the swell at just the right moment was, like meditation, a way to disconnect by being fully engaged.

And it was thrilling! No wave was the same; I had to read each one and react accordingly. This meant I had to rely on the experience I had from riding the preceding waves, as well as think about the waves in spatial terms as they presented themselves in the moment. In other words, I had to develop my skill if I were going to continue enjoying myself--either because I would get bored from not really moving fast or far enough, or because I would get hurt.

At the end of the day, I felt like I had accomplished something. Huh? Yeah--I felt this weird, crazy, mixed up peace of mind like when you get the hormone high of a runner whose just made her best time, combined with the way a run in the snow feels prickly-great on your skin, combined with knowing you just aced a really tough physics exam and you're getting an A for the semester. And I don't think it was just the cold water either (65 degrees to a girl who grew up swimming the Atlantic beaches of southern Florida is nippy!).

It was that my brain felt exercised.

And here's where, without even realizing it, I had dovetailed with the carefully researched findings of Gurstelle: by "goofing off" in a risky way--in a sense, disconnecting from the norm, I was actually growing my brain, and experiencing a deeper connection to life itself.

It was this "connection" thing I had been discussing with my husband. I had been intrigued with how I had felt peace and a sense of mattering, of aliveness, after steering myself through those waters. Why? I wasn't sure. And do we all have the capacity to feel this way, or am I just wired differently, considering that I often take on bigger risks than others, including my husband, who, content to sit in his beach chair reading a Robert Ludlum novel, didn't get in the water at all. ("Too cold," he'd said.)

According to Gurstelle, the thrill-seeking impulse does vary from person to person, but it can be either activated and encouraged, or thwarted and discouraged, depending upon the messages society and our communities give. Currently, says the self-professed danger lover Gurstelle, we're not living enough on the edge. Not the mondo bizarro edge of Hunter S Thomspon, which with his shotguns and LSD was more like chaos than risk, but the edge that comes from a healthy day of wave-riding, for example.

This riskless world is not good for our brains.

Gurstell points to research done on sea squirts as proof. When the sea squirt is done reproducing, it attaches to a sea rock, and then eats its own brain. Why? Because it's done its job, and is therefore no longer in danger of anything. In other words, whether he lives or dies just doesn't matter anymore. This means dumping the brain because that's the organ of mattering and meaning. Says Gurstelle, "If you don't have any danger in your life, you don't need a brain."

As for growing our brains through vicarious dangers, such as in a Ludlum novel, Gurstelle says that's not good enough. To him, living dangerously is an art, and does require skill, and so can only be learned by doing. But, to be fair to my husband, as a retired opera singer, he already knows what it's like to live on the edge, where you must sing on cue, on pitch, and on stage in front of hundreds or thousands of people, in a foreign language and loud enough to be heard over 150 musicians. He's earned the right to sit on the sand.

Nevertheless, if as Gurstelle intimates, we're living in a society filled with more namby-pambies than kamikazis, I have a new question:

Who among us are the ones willing to take risks that grow us up, or just grow us at all? I am having difficulty reconciling advancement as a nation to one where we are fixated on making the world "safe" our single governing principal. This worries me especially when the ones I observe as having all the plans to make us "safe" tend to be the ones whose own interests seem far more "safe"once the rest of us pay a small cost for this improved security. That small cost inevitably ends up as the surrender of control over a portion of our life.

Here's a general example of what I mean (I'm not giving specifics this time, read on to find out why) : if you're represented by politicians who've told you all the reasons why you still need a tax hike, i.e., why you must suffer for the greater good, while they up their own pay at your own expense, you know what I am talking about. If you take ten seconds to think about it, I am sure you can easily identify something in your local community that mirrors this kind of power grab at your expense.

We like to say our actions when it comes to things like negotiating peace treaties or nuclear disarmament talks, ensuring equal access to healthcare, or regulating comestibles and other ingestibles, is all about removing citizens from harm's way. And while there is a valid argument to be made that government's chief responsibility is to keep its citizens secure from attack, that doesn't mean government is supposed to keep individual citizens safe from themselves. After all, there is a little thing called personal responsibility. It goes hand in hand with freedom. It certainly goes hand in hand with maturity.

And besides, isn't all this jabberwocky really more about making things "fair"? That's the obvious conclusion when all rhetoric is couched in terms of "equality" and "apportionment." The problem is that when you think everyone wants to be equal, you ignore that not everyone is "wired" the same. Some of us are willing to take risks others might not take.

There are two basic categories of this:

Some of us are risk takers with a conscience. Others of us don't give a damn about how our risks impact anyone else.

As for the first category, you might consider them self-centered or eccentric, but they're the ones like Albert Einstein or Thomas Edison, who willingly hang outside the standard mean in order to pursue something "risky," i.e., something that might fail, something which might make them look foolish, but which might also deliver enormous returns. Take another ten seconds and think about anyone in your community who risks this way: the artist, the entrepreneur, or in the case of a person I know--the steeple jack. They're certainly people who have been a topic of conversation in your community, right? But they go ahead with their plans anyway. And if they fail, what's it to you? But if they succeed--then you have electricity and a fairly comprehensive explanation of the universe. In other words, you have progress.

As for the second category, consider the dictators among us. Easy examples include North Korea's Kim Jong Il, the mullahs of Iran, or whomever else in your community who has been a topic of conversation, probably because they want something you don't, but if they get it, you're going to somehow have to pay for it. They're probably looking for a way to push their agenda past you, right? Because they don't think you know what's best for yourself and the community, but they do. If they fail--they'll try again, and you'll need to stay vigilant. If they succeed, you'll be the one at risk somehow, and you'll need to adjust. Maybe that's no big deal. But maybe, as in the case of nuclear war or healthcare, it's a very big deal.

The point is this: the consequences of believing that we all want exactly the same thing is not risky, it's stupidly dangerous. In the U.S., our Constitution says we're all created equal. It doesn't say we're all created the same.

Gursteller's research indicates that to assume we're all predisposed to agree about anything that involves risk, like oh, I don't know--living a life--is to run the unnecessary risk that we'll miss opportunities to arrive at very real solutions to very real problems. Think about it: one group's perceived danger can be used to manipulate others into thinking they are also in danger, even if that is not actually true. But once you give away your power, well, just try and get it back.

Put another way: if the world is fair, on whose terms is "fair" decided? What matters to me might not matter to you. What matters to one group--say religious fanatics who also happen to be despots and dictators--might not matter to others in power. But if the despots get their way because we willingly ceded our power to them, we're all in their thrall.

This is not to say our nation's policies should be one thing or another. Clearly, global nuclear immolation is a threat I take seriously. Lack of proper healthcare is a threat I take seriously. Poisonous drugs, food, or other things we might swallow, I take seriously.

What I am asking you to consider is how happy a nation of individuals will we be, and thus effective as a unified country, if we allow our thinking to be done by others, to outsource it in corporations, or to centralize it in government, all in an effort to eradicate danger and risk.

At what point will we citizens no longer need our brains?

I am not going to take a side on this. That would defeat the entire purpose of your having graciously read all the way to the end. I am much happier taking the risk that you will be the one to engage your brain, consider what matters to you, and so arrive at your own conclusion about what poses the greatest danger to you--I just hope that it's not thinking for yourself that scares you the most. But if it does, then surf's up, dude. It's time you catch the wave, or else get swept up in someone else's tide.

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Philadelphia Magazine Asks the Wrong Question About Smerconish

Philadelphia Magazine wants to know,"Can a man succeed in the rabidly partisan world of talk radio by reaching out to moderates and channeling his inner Larry David?"

Wrong question.
Right question: Can Smerconish be exciting again by returning to his own center, and channeling his inner Michael Smerconish?
Let's hope so.

Next question: why does it matter?

Moderate vs. mediocre
For over a year now, I haven't been able to brook more than five minutes of the Michael Smerconish Program heard daily from 5-9AM on 1210AM WPHT, here in metro-Philadelphia. That's sad: I never used to miss it. For this review, I tuned in for several days, but failed to get past its accretion of off-putting habits for more than twenty minutes each time before being irritated enough to snap off the radio. Even so, there were glimmers of hope that Smerconish might still step fully into the role he himself created--that of American talk radio's un-pigeon-holed passionate man of discourse.

Philly Mag's May 2009 issue suggests Smerconish's success depends upon whether listeners care that he's only a Republican in name; he did after all, endorse Obama before last year's election. True, Smerconish grew up in the GOP, but that's irrelevant. Now that he's earned national syndication of his show, whether he bombs out or builds a solid stake in the nation's chattering class is not a question of him being a so-called moderate, but of him being mediocre. That's because despite an amazing instinct for making good choices, he's made at least three bad ones that are now gumming up the rocket he should otherwise be riding to the top of his profession.

The good
Excellent instincts
That Smerconish clearly appreciates the gray areas in between the polarizations of the Left and the Right was always his niche--his gift, really. He was unusual because he was willing to explore topics in-depth as a genuinely curious seeker of knowledge, not a ratings-driven polemicist. He is clearly intelligent, but not an intellectual, which made him accessible. His gift for seeing the irony in situations--such as how the US's efforts to thwart terrorism has itself become a sort of terror campaign against its own citizens--meant he could humanize the news, and make it relevant and personal to each of us.

Formatting brilliance
His many excellent format choices included: an on-air book club featuring interviews with a wide variety of authors, complete with remote broadcasts from venues where they give live readings; his frequent British guests who always seemed to bring fresh insights to any topic (and who doesn't love their accents?); his frequent--and often courageous--conversations about a variety of touchy subjects with ethicist Arthur Caplan, PhD; his features on area family and tourist attractions; his Eagles report with ESPN's Sal Paolantonio; these are just a few of plenty.

His ability to attract some of the most articulate callers on talk radio was significant, and a clear testament to his claim that there are plenty of Americans who want a reasoned discussion, not a shrill one. His once respectful and witty engagement with them at one point was a highlight of his Philly-local show.

Free thinking
Philly Mag expresses agita over how his mixture of left- and right-sided opinions make it hard to pin Smerconish to the Republican Party map, and so they color-code him moderate. But that's not quite right. Smerconish's track record is really more aligned with thinkers geared towards free inquiry. This is not moderate so much as individualist. It is a frame of mind that acknowledges that at some point in each of our adult lives, what once made sense for us will no longer apply. To deny it is to deny our authenticity.

In any case, he has ratings to consider, which is why it's important to remember that regardless of his stake in the ground being about politics, and the question of whether he is "Republican enough" notwithstanding, Smerconish's success-to-date correlates to his knack for uncovering and presenting what is interesting to others.

The bad
Going ensemble
The morning--was it two years ago?--I heard Smerconish's twenty-something engineer Greg Stocker refer to, in his patently unattractive voice, someone being admitted into their group's "circle of trust" I knew then that I should give up hope that the sudden annoyance of having all the show's crew members--producer TC Scornavacchi, then newscaster Joan Jones, and Stocker--talking on air would end. Instead, it was the new format, and it explained why the show had ceased to be the tightly honed, genuinely funny, entertaining, and informative masterpiece it had once been.

Now it was a clique. Smerconish began to occasionally pick on callers, Stocker began to play insulting, Howard Stern-esque sound effects during their calls, and a general nastiness crept in. The boss would berate Stocker on air, and fail to mask his annoyance with him and other members of his team if he felt it.

Philly Mag notes Smerconish's "sizeable ego." This is essential--and I think forgivable--for big success in talk radio. Even if Smerconish did always have a mean streak, it wasn't a distraction; in fact he'd hid it fairly well. To get where he's gotten, how could he not have a willingness to crack heads? But to do it publicly--that is Don Imus's shtick, and not how Smerconish built his following. His on-air "brand" of affability was disrupted.

There were times when guests turned on him, specifically Paolantonio and Pulitzer Prize-winning author and journalist Buzz Bissinger. Their respective gripes turned into them suddenly picking fights. It made for white knuckle listening, but Smerconish each time offered the men an opportunity to recover their dignity if they chose, even while being quite clear that he was offended and would not duck out of the fracas by way of a commercial break. He showed himself capable of walking the line between brawler and diplomat. And it made for excellent radio! Just as remarkable was that while both men did take a hiatus from the show, each eventually returned, as though nothing had happened. Very classy.

But now, the phalanx of raucous voices surrounding Smerconish, often egged on by the host himself, had the air of a slightly out of control keg party. As a listener, I began to distrust him. Someone might get hurt. Who would it be--a caller, a guest? And for what reason? And when would he stop wasting precious minutes on solipsistic blather between himself and the others who weren't saying anything remotely interesting?

I remarked to a friend and fellow listener at the time that it seemed Smerconish had unleashed his inner frat boy, that he was no longer being Michael Smerconish but performing Michael Smerconish. He'd stopped being entirely focused on his guests and had turned instead to getting an immediate reaction from his on-air coterie. The show had gone from Smerconish choosing the topics, to him being the topic. Ho hum. If we were lucky, I'd said, his ratings would go down, shaking the adult Smerconish back to his senses. (My friend agreed--and says he has yet to listen to the show with regularity any more.)

Mistaking a show offering nothing for a show about nothing
Instead, the dysfunction grew. The line up of snappy segments with "you'll-only-find-it-here" discussions between Smerconish and his guests-- fascinating, funny, or often feral people whom Smerconish seemed always game to let upstage him if it made for good listening (imagine Cybill Shepherd in the eight o'clock hour, most likely inebriated, speaking uncensored about her "irregularity"), gave way to increasingly more boring (and wince-inducing) banter between the big man and his underlings. Why would he want Stocker fawning over him? Not classy. Why publicly embarrass your employees? More bully than brawler.

If Smerconish's new team format actually had equated with the soulful, albeit cynical, introspection on dysfunction that is the hallmark of Smerconish's hero, Larry David, whose shows "about nothing" have made him an icon, it might have worked. But too often, Smerconish offered barely more than a litany of self-centered, banal ramblings to his posse, such as what he did over the week end, a là the kind of Facebook entries he excoriated in his Philadelphia Inquirer column (he has since created a Facebook fan page for himself).

Meanwhile, rather than reign Smerconish in, as an effective wing man will, Stocker swabbed his boss with obsequious inanities, while Scornavacchi routinely tut-tutted him for his immaturity, but not his lack of focus.

So, was I right? Philly Mag reports a stunning 43% recent dip in Smerconish's ratings. The article attributes it to listeners possibly having presidential election fatigue. But, since other national politically based talkers such as Rush Limbaugh have not been hit by this, I don't buy it as the only reason. More likely, many listeners like myself just got bored, period.

Being insecure, not introspective
If there is any attempt now on Smerconish's part to be introspective, instead it telegraphs insecurity. Philly Mag portrays Smerconish as a Nervous Nell ("on tenterhooks" and "worried")--sounding apologetic ahead of time, just in case he blows it.

While preparing for this review, including reading various tweets by Smerconish et al, and listening to the host and his entourage repeatedly reference how America needs a voice like his, that he is not alone, that he knows others want this, that the suburbs must be heard, that...etc., a troubling impression formed. With each fidgety reassurance that tuning in to his program is not a mistake, Smerconish sounds worried we are in fact making a dreadful mistake. He seems to have lost touch with the very thing that makes him so appealing: his unquenchable curiosity, which is really more like a gusto bordering on recklessness--the kind that makes people tune in.

Philly Mag's statement that Smerconish's national success depends on new listeners abandoning their "ideological bunkers" is imprecise. The typical profile of a Smerconish listener, as evidenced by the consistent type of caller he's attracted over the past decade, is not that of a True Believer, but of a person who has more questions than answers. If Smerconish is authentically interested in learning and sharing, his listeners have proven they're willing to follow. He should just trust himself when he says, "If I'm into it, I think I can get you into it." Otherwise, his self doubt will crowd out his passion and his show will assuredly go flat.

Fear factor
To assign Smerconish to the partisan ranks of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Rachel Maddow, and Al Franken, as Philly Mag does by suggesting that Smerconish has entered the realm of partisan talk radio is yet again not quite accurate. Smerconish's format has always been more closely aligned with Don Imus in that neither tend to dedicate an entire show to eviscerating the opposite political party. And lucky for Smerconish, Imus is a cranky bastard who's always "right", rarely sincere, always insulting, and long ago--even before his run-in with the Rutgers women's basketball team--began sounding bored to death. He has become irrelevant. The time is ripe for Smerconish to move in and become the nation's morning man.

Maybe sitting on the precipice of what he says he's wanted much of his life--a nationally syndicated radio program--Smerconish has gotten just a little freaked out. Perhaps fear pushed him back into his adolescent comfort zone of fraternal head butting and general silliness. Whatever the reason, we need him to snap out of it.

Signs of hope
For the few days I did listen recently, the kindness and respect with which Smerconish addressed his callers--now calling from places far beyond his familiar Delaware Valley--was reassuring. His topics and guests were intriguing--the ethics of a donkey basketball game as discussed by a noted ethicist and law professor; the former FDA Chairman David Kessler's crusade to deconstruct faux-foods served in chain restaurants; whether the Delaware Department of Transportation's diversity training is stupid or stupendous all kept me tuned in. And Smerconish approached his topics with the even-handedness, albeit with a sense of humor, that the general news media is supposed to exhibit, but often forgets. But the vapid chitchat, puzzling sound effects, and other amatuerish ticks remain, especially the six minutes at the top of the hour when the show is only broadcast locally in Philadelphia.

Still, despite the show's weaknesses, it's unlike anything else in national syndication, and for that reason, I suspect a combination of the curiosity factor along with there genuinely being people who recognize something of themselves in Smerconish will equal a nice spike in his ratings--at first. But, particularly in the Philadelphia metro area, where listeners remember the old Smerconish days, if the show doesn't tighten up, I think his ratings will drop and what's "different" will be left to the Dennis Millers and Bill O'Reilleys of the airwaves, with their comedy monologues and full-out verbal butt-kickings--even if they trend more towards raging at than engaging with the audience.

Why does Smerconish's success even matter?

News flash: we're at a pivotal point in American history. There is a dawning of consciousness in our post-Christian, Socialist-leaning times that no one group has all the answers. But, it's hard to have a meaningful conversation about the implications of this if the only ones talking are people convinced they are correct, perfect even (Limbaugh, Hannity, Maddow, Franken, etc.).

Smerconish has demonstrated he not only knows how to ford the narrows between partisan groups, he is willing to--it's his nature, in fact, to want to. We need this kind of grounded discourse in America more than ever. If we're to keep from turning on each other, we should be asking questions about everything and of everyone--and then listening, which Smerconish has handily demsontrated he can do.

Does this kind of give-and-take talk have a place on radio? Smerconish has already proven that it does. But if he doesn't continue to expand and fill that need, it won't be long before someone else will. That's why he needs to pull it together and get his head out of his, well, you know...

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Waiting for Godot: When "Nothing" is Funny or Sad, or Is It?

Perhaps one reason Samuel Beckett's play, Waiting for Godot, endures is that it is a play about nothing and therefore can serve as a commentary about anything.

Is the Godot of the title meant as a play on the word God? Beckett once said it was not, but later admitted that it could be an unconscious allusion. There certainly is enough dickering by the play's main characters Vladimir, played by by Bill Irwin, and Estragon, played by Nathan Lane, over whether they will be saved once the elusive Godot appears. As well, there are numerous Biblical references and posturing over whether the Savior saved one of his co-crucified companions.

Speaking of which, the need for companionship is another theme that one might say is central. Anthony Page, director of The Roundabout Theatre Company's production of Godot at Studio 54, believes that it is. "I was lonely," replies Vladimir when Estragon asks why he has woken him up--again.

And yet, maybe it is about the benefits of leaving corrosive relationships behind. John Goodman stars as Pozzo (pronounced "pot-so", which sounds quite similar to the Italian word for demented or crazy, "pazzo"), a man of mystery who is tethered by a rope to a man named Lucky, played by John Glover. But just who's leading whom? Of course, we think, it is the man in fine clothes, Pozzo, who has the upper hand, until we are given a counterintuitive--and disturbing--look at how the victim often is the one in charge. But who is the victim, and how can we be sure?

And if we are unsure of whether we are the victim or the victor, the loner or the lover, the saved or the savior, how will we know for certain what to separate that which matters and that which is of no consequence? How will we carve something--anything--from the No Thing that surrounds us? Are we even sure we are separate and distinct?

Indeed, entering Studio 54, a sign hangs above, asking, "You're not dreaming...or are you?"

If you are a fan of Goodman's goosepimple-giving Charlie Meadows in the Coen Brothers' Barton Fink, or hothead Walter in The Big Lebowski, then you will likely not be startled by Goodman's rendition of Pozzo, who is by turns gracious and terrifying. If you've not seen Goodman in a while, however, you might be startled by his heaving girth--reportedly now to be over 300 pounds. And yet--his enormity feels so appropriate to the role, I wondered if he padded it on, on purpose. Regardless, Goodman's rendered electrifying, vulnerable even, by his sincere effort to understand and nail his part--a welcome relief, since Broadway has recently adopted an annoying habit of stunt casting its dramas with bland Hollywood types who are clueless on a stage, but whose names nevertheless have marquis appeal.

Nathan Lane, I worried, would be too over the top with his tendency to mug the audience. Well he does, and thank goodness for that because it is brilliant. This is a script crammed with patter and verse--the sheer volume of words alone can leave an audience on edge. You'll either be riveted in an attempt to keep up, or you will simply give up. Lane's crafty comedic touches are excellently timed, and serve to help keep the audience in the game. And while exaggerated, his eye rolls and Yiddishy "meh's" and "bleh's" are also sensitive to the role's melancholy search for meaning.

Bill Irwin's Vladimir is a compelling, charming, principled man. It is his heart that seems to thump at the center of this production--he is needy, while also brimming with generosity in all his gestures. Irwin manages to make Vladimir someone you want to comfort--and even, if he would agree, to be comforted by.

Glover is on record as saying he did not want the role of Lucky, fearful he would not be able to live up to it. He needn't have worried. Glover's Lucky is like an accident on the Turnpike: you know the horror that hides behind that twisted wreck, you know that it will turn your stomach to look, but you can't turn away. You must know: what is the extent of the damage? And, will anyone survive?

These actors are working hard to make this work, which is hard, it's clear. That is just a taste of the sort of dialogue this all-star ensemble must set to rhythm as Godot is still in previews. This show is an exercise, not a trifle. But like that sweet treat, you might just continue to think about it after it's over, it's that good.

Waiting for Godot is in previews at Studio 54 through July 5, 2009. For more information:

http://www.godotonbroadway.com/

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The Barrow Street Theatre's "Our Town": It Won't Be the Same Without You

It goes so fast, this play about how life goes so fast; this play about how, despite the inevitability of death, life endures; this play about how puny is our participation in this life that is ending and beginning all at once.

But that the show, The Barrow Street Theatre's production of Thornton Wilder's Our Town, seemed over nearly as soon as it began is a testament to the brilliance of director and stage manager David Cromer.

Cromer is not perfectly true to Wilder's text and stage direction, yet his choices make him Wilder's most perfect collaborator. Unchanged, the text deftly poses the eternal question, Do I matter?, and suggests we will discover the answer for ourselves by focusing not on the grand gestures, but upon the most banal of details--the ones which, however mundane, connect us to every civilization, past and present.

Cromer's changes resound with this chorus of humanity, beginning with what his own performance as the stage manager makes possible. Cromer's brisk, all-business delivery shucks any tendency to become sloppy with sentiment. Cromer is our camera, not our interpreter. This allows each audience member to decide what the meaning of each scene is; in a sense, to add one's own voice to the experience of the show, rather than have us accept, de facto, that Wilder intended us to feel nostalgic about days gone by.

Cromer and set designer Michele Spadaro underscore this participation of ours in the show--as well as in a life lived among others whom we might, or might not even know--in a number of ways. The first is to leave the lights on throughout the entire performance. There is nary a moment to allow the dark to cover us if our attention slips from the details unfolding before us. And, because the show is presented almost entirely in the round, we audience members are always facing one another. This smashes our anonymity, making it plain to others if we are affected, outwardly anyway, by what we are witnessing "on stage."

Whether this is a deliberate nod to Shakespeare and his notion that all the world's a stage, and we are but actors upon it, I have no idea, but it certainly is powerful because it is authentic. Cromer's disinterest as the stage manager, combined with the particular staging of Our Town casts the "our" over all of "us" like a net, binding us to him and the entire ensemble. Yet, where they carry us is simultaneously to our respective, private interior landscapes, while also to a point in time we all see as a group, unfolding before our very eyes. Who we are is who we are, we cannot hide it, and like it or not, we are a part of the show.

There is no threat in this. It's what we do every day of our lives. Cromer's Our Town makes it possible for us to consider just how extraordinary this is.

The entire cast, both as individuals and as an ensemble, resonates with the grace of truth, but one player in particular stands out. James McMenamin's conflicted, soulful young George Gibbs is a revelation. As the mother of a teen aged son myself, I was terribly moved by his performance, every bit of it.

Please go see this show, this version of it.

Our Town at The Barrow Street Theatre has been extended until September 2009.
For tickets:
http://www.ourtownoffbroadway.com/

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Beautiful and Blessed Obama: What's in a Name?

When fiction writers make this stuff up it's almost too precious to be read as anything other than allegorical satire...but when it happens in real life...well, it's almost too precious to be read as anything other than allegorical satire.

The Washington Times is reporting on a movement within the RNC (Republican National Committee) to smack down anyone in the party who trends Socialist, beginning with President Bush 41. It's unclear, at least to me, if the Wash Ti pushed its tongue squarely into its cheek when it referred to the movement's founders, James Bopp, Jr. and Simon Yue, as the Bopp-Yue vanguard, but does it really matter?

Hundreds of years from now, if there remains a human race and a planet left for us to race upon, what will the myths and metaphors of our time say about humanity's struggle to be free and self-determined? What lessons will our era offer future philosophers and rulers seeking ancient wisdom?

Well, given today's headlines, it seems they will learn that we staged a Gilbert and Sullivan-esque revue complete with the, ahem, thrust and parry, of play actors named Mr. Bopp who was after a certain Mr. Bush. Gone, apparently, are the days of Caesar Augustus and Brutus, names that today indicate profound honor (august) and rapacious cruelty (brutality).

In other words, American Democracy, which for the purposes of this tale I suggest is the Holy Grail of Freedom, a structure by which one can choose who and what one will be, is being sought by questers named Bopp and Yue, and they are seeking to wrest it from a Bush.

Meanwhile, arguably setting out to build upon a tale spun last century by a man named Roosevelt, Dutch for what is essentially a rosie valley, we have a new hero on the American political landscape...Barack Hussein Obama, which according to the Greek Chorus of our age, aka "wiki", means Blessed and Beautiful. He is attended by a man named Rahm Emanuel, which wikis into something along the lines of "God, the merciful and compassionate one, is with us." (And, which, according to the wiki link provided, in some cases, is considered to be the name of the next messiah).

If bards of the future were to pen plays about what we are now experiencing, as Shakespeare did with Julius Caesar, here's what they will have to work with so far:

Plot: a fight of words (as far as we know, these are the only weapons) over what is the best political construct for allowing self-determination, justice, and equality

Characters: James Bopp, Jr., Simon Yue, George W. Bush, Barack Hussein Obama, Rahm Emanuel (and a supporting cast of sundry other thousands)

Scene: Well...is it a rosie valley or not?

Summary: the Bopp-Yue vanguard attack Bush for having aligned himself with what B-Y considers the enemy for openly perverting the rights of the people, a group B-Y calls Socialists. For their part the Socialists do not call themselves Socialists, but in so many words, defenders of the grail (freedom, justice and equality). They largely ignore the attacks of Bopp-Yue, seeing them as cranks with ridiculous names.

Central theme: did the defenders ignore the B-Y vanguard because of their suspicious names that seemed to indicate supressed desires for sex; or did they ignore them because they thought they were riding a predeterminate wave of destiny, as indicated by their own, very much more pleasing names?

Resolution: we've not supplied that yet.

But, here's something to consider: at least in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, it is Brutus, one of the plotters of Caesar's murder, who is remembered by Caesar's man Marc Antony as "the noblest Roman of us all" for his desire to maintain the dignity of Roman rule. Yet, in our common lexicon his name is equated with animal force and even stupidity ("brute force").

In other words, while it's a fair assumption that we're all yearning to live in a blessed, beautiful, happy, rosy, compassionate open land, the names on the sign posts might not always be what they seem. But, at least this time around, I hope they are...I would much prefer that to being bopped in a bush.

Feeling a Bit Ayn Randy...

This nibblet in New York magazine a couple of weeks ago caught my attention: "Free-Market Meat Market".

Apparently, TheAtlasphere.com, a site dedicated to all things Ayn Rand, has an Internet dating service. Isn't that just the way lovers of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead should become lovers?

A Sample Fare:

"lostpainting" of MD
"Please note: If you're overweight, I won't date you. If you believe in God, I won't date you. If you vote for Democrats, I won't date you."

"Lewis" of London, UK
"I love intelligent, sassy girls, particularly those working in consulting or investment banking...nothing is hotter than an accomplished girl in a suit, as long as she is willing to settle down and have my children. I want a girl who will support my ambitions against the naysayers in society." [ed note: Well Stud, considering the current economy, which one might say has a lot to do with the puzzling policies of self-proclaimed Ayn Rand fan Alan Greenspan, your girl-in-a-suit might just shimmy up to your shiny proposal a bit faster than she might have this time last year. Cowboy up!]

"Rob", CA
"...I am interested in meeting someone that truly embodies the values and virtues of Objectivism. I have found very few women that have not already been beaten down to a flimsy, irrational, empty pulp. I have changed many girls' lives, but no one has blown me away yet...I have yet to find a girl deserving of my falling in love with her. But 'other people' are secondary values no matter what, so finding someone is not a priority for me." [ed. note: good thing!]

The WordBird says...
Ayn Rand was a clear thinker with keen insights into humanity. Her penumbra seems to be the same one that darkens the light of all thinkers on the leading edge: juvenile sycophants who get what their hero is saying without getting it at all. (Well, actually--I suppose the point here is that there are a lot of randy readers of Ayn Rand who aren't getting any, much less "it".)

Ironic, since Rand's own philosophy was that success is predicated on clear thinking.

However, I have noticed that clear thinking and the elevation of anyone to a savior/hero status is perhaps nearly, if not always, mutually exclusive. As soon as you canonize the words of someone and adhere to them at the exclusion of considering the ideas of others--especially your own, given that you are not psychotic and/or sociopathic--then you have essentially created a cult. Once entered into a cult, you have forfeited your freedom.

But, I thought these people were just looking for love...

Speaking as a Miss Know-it-All, I say they're looking to identify and be identified. They're looking for a shield of certitude against a world of "WTF?". In other words, they are looking for answers, safety, and meaning. That's why I say that they "get it", but then they don't "get it". As with any dogma, whether it is Conservatism, Liberal thinking, Green Peace activism, religion, sports team fanaticism (this would include me and my Yankees fixation), what starts out as an ideal that resonates with what you believe your core values to be, soon hardens into a short hand for identifying yourself.

Once you move from the long form to short hand, you gain convenience, but lose the nuances that pulsed just brightly enough for you to seek answers in the first place. And you get stuck. Someone has already defined freedom for you, so you don't have to think anymore. Phew.

The danger in that, is that freedom's oxygen is change. If you're not reviewing your thoughts and asking if they need to change, you're un-enlightened. I would also say that you are a pain in the butt. That's because if you're not considering what matters to you anymore, you're not living your life thoughtfully and with meaning, and so need others to do it for you. Of course, there are plenty of people willing to take your money and time and other resources to do just that, but more than likely, you end up dull and unproductive because your life is meaningless to you, and then what? You're a drag on everyone else. Your self-pity is time consuming and expensive.

Just think of poor Rob from CA--isn't it a pity he's full of so much pity that most women are so pitiful? Doesn't make you want to run into his arms, though, does it? What a pity. Imagine what fun he is to have around.

What the hell does this have to do with lonely hearts in the land of the laissez-faire?

This: These particular Ayn Rand lovers are fundamentalists. And--a glorious testament to America in all her Constitutional glory. (That goes for Lewis in the UK, too.)

Their search that apparently is not for physical contact, but for the perfect mate who thinks identical thoughts with absolutely NO deviation from the "Dogma of Ayn Rand" is a mockery of Ayn Rand's brilliance that championed individualism. But they do illustrate well her tenet that you must know human nature and accept it, not fight it.

In this case, that means understanding that fundamentalism is not the purview of religion, but of humanity. Being a fundamentalist is a choice we make when we decide to hand over to the group all our faculties for clear thinking. All of us will either have to do it at some point, such as when we are children and can't rely only on our own faculties; or will do it at some point, such as when we allow the groups we're affiliated with to become our shorthand for what we think...

That's why our Constitution is so amazing, and so humane. We can express our dogmatic selves any way we want, until we want to do it in another style (ahem). All this humanity breaking out everywhere, including in horny free-market dating chat rooms, is covered under the plan. To take advantage of it, all we need do is think, clearly.

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Hey, Girl...where's your website? Ask the Quakers...

What do Quakers have to do with anything?
Hang on...let me first tell you the good news is that I have temporarily taken down my website (which is why if you were looking for it, you're here instead) because I have been so booked, I haven't had the time to re-write the content to update it. The bad news is, that could eventually mean when I am not so busy, no one will remember all the things I've done and can do, if they think of me at all!

Meanwhile, in order to take a break from writing and consulting, and to procrastinate on the website, I thought I would write and consider...Quakers...

Recently, while doing some research for a series of articles on South Jersey (US Airways Magazine 2/09), a local historian brought my attention to a remarkable book: Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America by David Hackett Fischer. It's about a million pages long, and so makes a mighty night stand all on its own, but it vindicates itself for being so darn enormous, by being so darn interesting. The book retraces American thought today back to the thoughts our British founders were thinking as they followed the trade winds west.

As I embark on the next ten years it will take me to read this book all the way through, what occurs to me as I pick out the parts that seem the tastiest, is that while they might have been hearing some funky syntax in their heads (all those ye's and thou's and double ff's and e's on the end of everything), our British forebears were not thinking anything we're not thinking.

Annoyed with elitists/rabbel rousers, angry at being silenced by political correctness/not being heard, and full of ire for the king/messiah/doofus/(insert clever moniker here)...or full of ire at some such group or person that somehow seemed to make a perfect world impossible, they knew they were right, even if misunderstood.

This could be America today!

So, they headed over here to a place where they expected to once--and--for--all--dammit, be left alone to think whatever the heck they wanted. Well, oops, okay, so there were already a few native folks living here--some of those British pioneers figured out how to make that work out well, others did not, but the larger point is that as Buckaroo Bonzai once said, "Wherever you go, there you are."

Which is why as soon as they got down to building their New Englands, New Yorks and New Jerseys, they started running into the same old, same old. (Maybe they should have been more creative with the names...)

The Puritans hated everybody while professing the love of God (alright--I actually skipped over most of that part to read about the Quakers instead, but I did study Arthur Miller's "The Crucible" in college!). The agrarian southerners liked their slaves, even if they took offense to being seen as lower than the snobs above them. The Quakers were partial to the "live and let live" frame of mind, which meant they also didn't want to fight (except with each other over who owned what land, among other issues). And all hell broke loose with the wild Scots, Irish, and poor Brits (I think I can skip most of those chapters, since these characters are all related to me anyway).

Everybody felt right at home, as though they'd never left Old England!

Eventually, of course, the English got to be a real drag, with taxes and bowing and scraping and all that, so enough of these settlers shook off their inertia (understanding that EVERYONE in this story gets points for having bothered to cross the ocean in the first place) and staged a revolution so we could finally get around to making things NEW!

Only, just as before and probably forever after, to the victors go the spoils, so"new" is a relative term. All of which brings me 'round to the point (You'd better make it good, girl!). Okay...

I would bet you dollars to doughnuts that you don't know a darn thing about the Quakers. (Wha...? I read all the way to here for this?)

We don't really learn much about them in school, since we're too busy learning about the cranky Puritans (burn, baby, burn!) and their descendants. And the reason for that is the Puritans loved the written word, and so they were, by and large, the ones who wrote the history books. On the other hand, according to Fischer, colonial Quakers were intensely ambivalent about higher education. To them, universities canonized the subjective into the Truth, which threatened the Inner Light of each individual.

Since the Quakers saw no need to cultivate a professional ministry, they didn't bother to shell out the scheckles on universities and libraries, nor did they bother to write much about their experiences (except for William Penn, for whom there is named an Ivy League school and who wrote copiously about the dangers of literacy...go figure). In fact, says Fischer, Quakers "cultivated disinterest" in education altogether.

And yet, it is upon the Quakers' iconoclastic (and to most Puritans, flat out weird) notions of pluralism and civil liberties that much of our Constitution is actually built. For example, in the colony of West Jersey, settled by Quakers in 1674, their charter allowed anyone who owned land free and clear to vote. (By the way, that's why New Jersey's legislators today are known as "freeholders.") Meanwhile, next door in Puritanical East Jersey, if you were an athiest--fugettaboutit! You weren't votin' fa nuttin', baby.

Put another way, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

Sound familiar?

This is not meant as an apologia for Quakerism. I am not, nor do I expect I ever will be a Quaker. Neither do I think Puritans were all bad. They got us here, didn't they? It is, however, meant to bring attention to the notion that whenever we think we are the ones who have all the answers, it's just as likely that we are standing on the shoulders of others--probably groups we think are really, really stupid--who thought they did too. And no matter how many liberating answers we actually do have, we're just as likely to be oppressive in other ways.

So just how smart, evolved, and full of fresh thinking are we, really? History might have a few things to teach us about that.

I'm just sayin'...

McCullough's John Adams: United and Apart is Best

I. United--while Divided--We Stand

Fortunately, in our home we share a love of American history--and a really, really good story--and so all have been positively glued to the HBO series based on David McCullough's Pulitzer Prize winning biography, John Adams. The script is true to McCullough's text--he was very involved in its treatment for the screen. As I watch, I am also aware of how much more my freedom, and the responsibility to protect it, have come to mean to me as I have aged, suffered, celebrated, and lived through 9/11 and a complex war now five years running with no resolution in sight.

The "good story" that the mini-series hinges upon, is the power and paradox inherent in compromise without surrendering integrity. In other words: how to win while losing, how to be true while allowing what you oppose to transpire.

During the debate over how to deal with British King George's policy of taxation without representation in the Colonies, Pennsylvania Quaker John Dickinson made an impassioned--and impressive--case for pacifism, not insurrection. More impressive was his ultimate decision, made when he realized that he was not in the majority, to heed the advice of fellow Continental Congress delegate Ben Franklin, and "be indisposed" when it came time to vote on whether to declare war on Britain. Understanding Dickinson's anguish over what he knew would be monstrous, and perhaps useless, bloodshed--how could one not be moved?

I was. And it caused me to reflect on our current election--a process made possible by men like Dickinson and Franklin who were willing to stay with the dilemmas presented them until they had resolved them. Unlike what I keep hearing from presidential race watchers who say that we need to all just "come together" and stop the partisanship, Dickinson did not unite with his colleagues. Nor did he fight them with intimidating words or intrigue, other than to agree to be "indisposed." He also did not, at least not publicly, vilify his colleagues. He remained true to himself. He was a hero, even though he failed to stop the violence he loathed. His thoughtful maturity showed him that the world is imperfect, and that to have an open heart and mind, and to consider the views of others while still being paradoxically convicted of a Truth, was the best way to serve and protect.

Concurrent with this mini-series are the events unfolding in Tibet and one of the most arresting political moves I have ever witnessed: the Tibetan-leader-in-exile, and non-violent, Nobel Peace Prize winner, Dalai Lama, saying he will abdicate his political position (albeit, remain a Buddhist spiritual leader) if his followers in Tibet do not end their violent insurrection. These are people who have been tortured, degraded, and oppressed by the Chinese for half a century, atrocities which the Dalai Lama fully knows--probably better than anyone, and yet he is choosing NOT to unite with his people, i.e., not support their choice. What a paradox! He opposes what the Chinese have done, and yet in order to encourage his people to stay unified with him in principle, he opposes them, too! What will happen? I am riveted.

Knowing that there are guns pointed at you by merciless souls...is there a right answer for how to achieve peaceful freedom in the face of them? Is freedom worth death?

Leaders have to lead and take decisive action, even when they have misgivings. The Dalai Lama has certainly made a decisive statement--what is more powerful than an ultimatum, but the actual execution of it? As for Dickinson, he eventually did support the Declaration of Independence, and the Revolution itself. He didn't condone the violence, but he saw that it was the chosen way to freedom, even if it wasn't his choice.

These men demonstrate that we don't need to all "come together" in the sense that I hear the talking heads suggest. That's for sissies. The pacivists among us, and perhaps the warriors as well, might agree that it's much safer for us to be adults, united and apart at the same time.

II. United while Divided and Standing on Fishes
I wrote this back in November 2004, after hearing John Kerry's concession speech to George W. Bush. I think it's even more true today as we scuffle through election 2008...

The defining moment for me in this year’s presidential election was when my mother, a life-long Republican who lives in a quite un-environmentally sound “McMansion,” informed me that she had joined the Green Party and was voting for John Kerry.

It made sense.

Also an avid gardener, bird watcher and “see-the-beauty” Sunday driver who, when we were kids, taught my brother and me to survive in the woods (but never to hunt), my mother recently had challenged a developer backed by the local Republican machinery and had, against the odds, won. Her efforts resulted in the patch of land in question being declared “open space,” protected in perpetuity from development.

My mother’s subsequent change of parties seemed to me a natural progression of this victory; it was not an act of spite, but a current reflection of how protecting what she loves had changed how she defined herself.

But love in action, whether it is of ideals, of country, or of home and hearth, is a shadowy thing. Sometimes, we twine ourselves tightly around what we hold dear, wringing the very life out of it until, eventually, all that remains is our own form twisted around the memory of what once was. Sometimes we call this “tradition” when what it truly has become for us is a prison of our design.

Other times, we are inchoate and uncommitted, taking our loves for granted, either because we are arrogant or because we are truly incapable of fully understanding something or someone’s significance in our lives, until the day we are thunder-clapped with regret to find that our beloved ideal, lover, homeland, what-have-you has slipped away and we are powerless to restore it to its former place.

So that what we love does not elude us, we must commit to letting the shape of what we love shift. It is as though, as the poet Rilke wrote in his poem, “Moving Forward,” we must be willing to “stand on fishes,” letting the currents flow around us and carry us deeper, ever mindful not to let them carry us away.

Ultimately, my mother is not bound by party lines. Her seeming incongruities—her conspicuous consumption of land for her super-sized home juxtaposed against her doggedness in battle to preserve an oak grove and a fox den—merely indicate she is rooted in the land of her true self: a passionate devotee of all things beautiful. By switching parties, I see my mother as digging deeper into the earth of her soul, not careening around the political landscape looking for a slogan or a candidate to define what matters to her. Other changes in how she sees herself and what choices she makes as a result might still be to come...

Senator Kerry said that in his concessionary call to President Bush, the two, “talked about the danger of division in our country and the need - the desperate need - for unity, for finding common ground and coming together."

Perhaps that “common ground” will be easier to reach if, like my mother, we are willing to first visit the interior landscapes beyond the fences of our proscribed, public identities. Perhaps for many this is “fishy” territory: a place where we fear there are too many surprises to assimilate and so would rather not tread.

Yet, coming together as a nation seems impossible if we are not wise and patient enough as individuals to know it is that interior place that is constant and true, not the boundaries we construct around it. Our convictions might not change, the way we define them probably will. This does not mean we are fractured, simply that we are alive to the currents within and committed to letting them flow.

Which brings me back to what my tree-hugging, house-proud mother’s announcement caused me to realize: we are not a nation divided so much as a nation in-between. Our unity relies not upon resolving our differences so much as living with them.

In order to protect what we love in this nation we must learn to stand on fishes.

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