In my one brief shining moment at graduate school, I had to read about the male gaze. Or, more precisely, read about the disquisition about the male gaze. "In feminist theory, the male gaze expresses an asymmetric (unequal) power relationship, between viewer and viewed, gazer and gazed" (thank you, Wikipedia). I also had to write about what I had read, distilling others' opinions but never venturing my own. This last constraint probably accounted for the brevity of the shining moment. Outside the ivy'd towers, any woman who has walked past a construction site in the city already knows pretty much all she needs to know about that gaze.
It would have been much more interesting to me to read and write about the feline gaze, as has poet Jean L'Heureux. L'Heureux means the happy one, and perhaps some of that happiness resulted from observing and being observed by cats, rather than reading up on the scholarly disquisition, and from writing poems rather than graduate theses. Just an opinion, folks. Here's the poem:
The Thing About Cats
Cats hang out with witches quite a lot:
that's not it.
The thing about cats is
they're always looking at you.
Especially when you're asleep.
Some cats pretend they're not looking
until you're not looking.
They are not to be trusted.
Some cats scowl because they're wearing
imitation fur. they feel inferior.
Some other cats look at you straight on
so that you can't drink your drink
or make love
but keep thinking
that cat's looking at me straight on.
But all cat's do the same:
they look at you
and you look out
and in.
What I'm saying is
why are they looking?
Jean L'Heureux
Grammy awards were given out last night, and I didn't watch. Anything I want to see from that event will be on YouTube; this freed up my evening considerably for practicing and chatting with friends and Thinking About Things. I do want to make one comment on this year's music biz love-fest: Esperanza Spalding is very good, and I am very happy that a female jazz musician/singer of her caliber also has the good looks and the good industry support to take the award in the Best New Artist category. This meant, among other things, that an actual living jazz artist was on the televised part of the show, and not relegated to the pre-ceremony announcements. I can't think when a jazz artist - jazz, not jazz-y, jazz-like, or jazz-lite - won that award, and I find it quite remarkable. Let's hear it for the girl! None of the other awards surprise me.
Because of Esperanza's Grammy, I predict a surge in enrollments at Berklee College of Music and in high school jazz programs (if any are left after the horrifying cuts in education that seem to be on the way). Several years hence, the surgers will graduate with jazz degrees and impressive tuition-induced debt. But there aren't now, and won't be then, enough venues in which to play. Wait - there are venues, but most of them don't pay enough to bring musicians within riffing distance of the poverty line, much less allow them to crawl over that low bar. Same thing is going on in theater education: more and more graduates, fewer and fewer theaters.
Nevertheless, we are going to be singing songs forever, whether we are paid or not, and therefore I have something important on my mind, something I think about every time I teach a master class, or attend a singer's performance. Coaches and critics talk often about the necessity of commitment when singing (and acting. Non-singing actors reading this can substitute "scene" for "song", and "line" for "lyric", because they're the same). No matter how beautifully or convincingly it is done, when a someone sings a song, or even a single word in a lyric, that he or she does not completely understand, I can tell.
Furthermore, the whole audience can tell. We can tell that you don't know what you're talking about. Even though your listeners might not be able to put their fingers on how they know this, and what exactly is amiss, their exquisitely sensitive bull-detectors will ring a tiny alarm. Ring that alarm often enough during your performance and, though your audience members may be sitting in their seats, they will be emotionally and intellectually gone, thinking about the laundry, or the events in Egypt, or the likelihood of being downsized, all of which they could be doing at home in a much more comfortable chair.
We singers especially can be a lazy lot, but don't be lazy about this. Get help. If it's a word you don't understand, look it up. In an ideal world of my designing, I would send you to your personal copy of the Oxford English Dictionary, but for heaven's sake, who can even lift the thing, much less afford it? You all have computers. Google away. Type "distingué: define", and discover what Strayhorn really meant in Lush Life, and why he chose that word over others that mean roughly, but not exactly, the same thing. Learn how to pronounce it, too. And if it's the meaning of the whole song that's eluding you, do some homework. Dig deep into it. Ask a director. Ask a coach. Ask an elder. FIgure it out. If none of that helps, and you have the choice, put it on the shelf and live a little longer, and then try it again. Meanings matter. If you know what lyrics mean, your audience will, too, even if they didn't before you sang them. Until you have experienced this a few times, just trust me on this. It's magic. And it's true.
When I run for president - in my next life, of course - I will have a very short agenda. If you are serving black tea, use boiling water when you make it. Simple, yes?
Apparently not. Unless I go to a dedicated tea room, like the slice of sassy British heaven that is Tea and Sympathy here in Manhattan, the aromatic, magical potion that results from pouring boiling water into Yorkshire Gold and letting it steep for the proper amount of time is not what I am going to see coming toward me when I order tea at a restaurant.
I have been a drinker of the sacred beverage since I was ten, and I cut my tea-teeth in Solihull, England, at the daily afternoon break at St. Martin's School for Girls. It was a strong black brew, whitened with whole milk, and sweetened, if you liked it that way. "If you are cold, tea will warm you," said William Gladstone. "If you are too heated, it will cool you; if you are depressed, it will cheer you; if you are exhausted, it will calm you." Tea at St. Martin's did all that, and set the imprint for what I expect from a cuppa: flavour, heat, energy, and something a little more intangible: gentling.
Let me make it clear that I am talking about tea made from the tea plant, camelia sinensis. Herb tea is made with herbs other than real tea. Confused? Not surprising. It's a simple failure of language. In French - and perhaps in other languages, but French is the one I know - thé is made with real tea, and herb teas (infusions made with herbs, not tea) are called tisanes. It makes sense to have two different words, because most of the time the two are not prepared in quite the same way.
Flavour starts with providing a good black tea to begin with. This tea will not say Lipton on the box. Nor will it say Bigelow, Stash, or the name of an American chain supermarket (I am talking about you, Key Foods!). I'm personally not all that fond of Twinings (as sold in the States) either, because it always seems so, oh, trying hard but too weak in the end to get the job done. My current favourite is Yorkshire Gold, a rich, malty blend that helps me sit a little straighter and think a little faster, and restores my optimism. If there is a good tea and coffee purveyor in your town, you'll be able to get beyond brand names into loose teas from all over the world, and will end up knowing more than I do about the stuff.
Now, dry tea tastes like sticks and leaves (a dry tea bag tastes like sticks, leaves, and paper). You need water, boiling water, to unlock the flavours of black tea. What this means, to the weary traveler, is that one can almost never get a good cup of tea in a restaurant south of the Canadian border, because most of the time the water used has been heated by running it through the coffee maker. Coffee makers are set to heat water to just below the boiling point, because coffee is appalled by boiling water. So it's never going to be hot enough. Then the water, hot-ish and smelling faintly of coffee filters, is poured into a too-small mug, and the mug, with a tea bag (Lipton, most likely) next to it, is brought to the table. Let me recap: it wasn't hot enough to begin with, it's less hot now, and the consummation devoutly to be wished, water and tea together in cup, still hasn't happened.
One drops the tea bag into the cup and waits; the cold, weak brew that results is just plain discouraging. One may drink it, but why? In fact, why bother with anything? It's all so hopeless, really. Nothing matters.
One is hard-pressed to Get Up And Get On With It.
Furthermore, if it is a gentling of the buffeting winds of life that one was hoping for, and that same sense of being cherished that had extended from teacher Miss Waugh as she poured tea for this little newcomer to a school, a community, and a country... well, it just can't happen. None of the necessary ingredients are present: not the good tea, not the boiling water, not the trusting nature of childhood, and not Miss Waugh.
Therefore, I've resolved that henceforth I shall travel with a little electric kettle and a stash of good tea so that, when it's All Too Much, I can fill that kettle, boil the water, and, conjuring a sweet and personal past, brew some smashing tea, knowing that I wlll, no matter where I am, find therein the strength to Carry On.
photo by John C. Goodwin - Dr. MLK at Riverside Church 4/4/1967
Just about anyone reading this blog can access audio or print of Dr. Martin Luther King's I Have a Dream speech on the internet. Many media outlets are reprinting, or streaming that speech today, on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. Rightly so. It is extraordinary on so many levels: ideas, passion, preaching, theology, and rhetorical skill. I think even those who disagree with its content can appreciate its delivery.
Of course, Dr. King made many other speeches in his brief but intense lifetime that are not as well known. It is saddening to think this may be simply because they are longer. Of these, Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence is one of my favorites, for it shows the broadening of King's definition of the term "civil rights", and of his overall vision. For this he was heavily criticized even by those in the civil rights movement. The speech is both critical and hopeful.
Even more compelling, in my eyes and heart, is the sermon King preached at The National Cathedral on March 31, 1968, four days before his assassination. I listen to Staying Awake Through a Great Revolution with a measure of personal sorrow, not only because the man speaking was silenced so soon after speaking these words, but because they are still true, and because I am aware of how often I fall asleep.
By clicking on the links for each speech, you will be able to hear and read them. These are not soundbites. They are speeches. They are long. They are worth your time.
My drug of choice is a proper cup of tea. Yorkshire Gold, preferably. That, and a good book, will get me through any winter storm, as has been proven several times in the past month or so.
It is so much more pleasurable to read something good than to watch something bad that I don't at the moment have a TV. But it has to be a good book. I have no patience with poor writing, no matter how gripping the story is supposed to be, or how impressive the sales numbers. When a reader picks up a book, he or she is making a commitment of time and trust. That first page is the beginning of a conversation between the reader and the writer that can take hours, or days, or weeks to complete. When the writing makes me roll my eyes, though, that's it. "Period, paragraph, turn the page, close the book", I once heard a priest say at the end of a sermon. "Bye-bye, Dan Brown", say I.
Good writing, on the other hand, holds me like a passionate embrace. Here are a few titles I recently have found to be entrancing, challenging, inspiring, and "worth the whistling".
Blessings in Disguise by Alec Guinness. In this age of ghost-written memoirs, here is a gem of an autobiography. Guinness is an actor worth knowing more about, and a thoughtful, observant, and very witty writer. I so enjoyed getting to know him that I've just checked his A Positively Final Appearance out from the library.
Confessions of an Actor by Laurence Olivier. Articulate and fascinating, Olivier unfolds his story like a long conversation, with frequent digressions that give a looping timeline to the work. Reading this book, I began to understand that the bright and dark angels of the man were brighter and darker than I'd previously imagined.
Charlotte and Emily by Jude Morgan. This is an historical novel about the Brontë family. From the first sentences - Oh, my children. O, God, my poor children - I was fully engaged in the story. That the book is about three of my favorite storytellers (Anne, Emily, and Charlotte Brontë), and their brother Bramwell, made it even more compelling. I don't know, however, whether a reader unfamiliar with Agnes Grey (by Anne), Wuthering Heights(by Emily), and Jane Eyre (by Charlotte) would enjoy it quite as much .
Another book I have enjoyed that refers to an earlier work is To Say Nothing of the Dog, by Connie Willis. I found this a while ago, courtesy of my stepmother. I have read it several times, and it always makes me laugh. It weaves itself through the story line of Jerome K. Jerome's Three Men in a Boat, but it stands alone equally well. Chaos theory, time travel, romance and a carpetbag - what more could one want?
I did not link these titles to an online bookseller. Instead, I want to suggest that you look for them at your local library. If they are not on the shelves there, ask the librarians if they can get them from another library in the system. It is my understanding that part of what determines the funding any given library gets - funding that is always inadequate these days, and shrinking all the time - is the circulation numbers. That means how many books get checked out. So when we borrow books instead of buying them, we help that library stay open earlier, later, more days, with more books on the shelves, more computers in the computer room, more visiting artists.
It's as simple as that.
As I mentioned the other day, I grew up hearing that on the ninth day, my true love gave me "nine ladies waiting". This was the lyric that Fred Waring' Pennsylvanians sang, and as my grandfather was the lead baritone for that wonderful vocal ensemble, it never occurred to me to wonder if it was the right lyric. But that "waiting" bothered me. What were the ladies waiting for? Why did they have to wait? Having just experienced the yearly agonizing wait for Christmas, and then the four endless days between Christmas and my birthday, and still no pony in sight, which meant another year of waiting until maybe, just maybe, if I was good enough, if my grades were high, if I was polite, if if if, there might be a pony... after all that, I felt a kinship and solidarity with the Waiting Nine.
The men in the song, the lords of the very next verse, were allowed to be leaping: into the dance, into the future, to the top of the porch, to the top of the wall, and right on over the ding-dang walls. In my growing-up years, boys were allowed to be athletic, girls were not. But more important, boys were allowed to show that they were smart. That would have been OK, but most of the time... they weren't. No offense, gents, God knows I love you (and you know it, too), but back then, on any given day in primary, middle or high school, my girl friends and I could have made mince of you. Because teachers tended to call on you more often, we were usually denied that triumph. When you were rude, you were full of high spirits. When we were rude, we were uppity. Dire fates were predicted for smart, sassy girls, and indeed, one of those fates came early and fast: if you were smarter than a boy you liked, and showed it, especially in front of other people, he would never like you back. So you put a bridle on your mind, a bit in your mouth, and, holding a tight rein, learned to trot so slow and hide so well that for many women it is the work of a lifetime to come back out of that self-imposed hobbling.
I would like to think that times have changed, but as I see the early hyper-sexualization of little girls, I think things are the same. And worse. Even without having children of my own, I find I am sometimes awake long into the night worrying about the girls. The various ways in which our culture is failing our children (boys, too) break my heart.
Back to the song. When I learned that there were alternate lyrics for the ninth verse, that the nine ladies were not waiting, but dancing - dancing! - I was thrilled. Perhaps Waring preferred the "waiting" because he was a little bit of a sexist, perhaps becasue it is a more singable lyric, and that can be enough for the singing of a song. But not for the living of a life. Dancing our lives is what we could have been doing all along, and what we must ensure our girls have the right and the power to do.
Thanks to Paul Overton over at Dudecraft (you'll find a link to his site in my sidebar), I have just discovered 826National, a non-profit national network that exists to help students learn the skills of creative and expository writing, and to love writing. These folks are doing important, inspirational work with a positive mindset. It's not a protest against anything. It's a movement for kids: for writing, for creativity, for fun, and for lighting the flame of inspiration and keeping it lit regardless of repeated efforts to blow it out (budget cuts and mediocre teaching come to mind as two puffs of wind I have experienced. Miss Kelly, I will, alas, never forget you.)
Be sure to take a few minutes to watch the video. It's a fine introduction to the work they do.
There is a terrific article by Nicholas Carr on the subject of the brain, the Web, and memory in the most recent issue of Wired magazine. In it, he gives very good explanation of the mental process that dog trainers call "latent learning", which is the process of moving information from working memory to long-term memory, a process all too easily interrupted by distractions. He also suggests serious reasons to consider the up- and down-sides of the way the Internet is changing our brains.
He writes: The Internet is an interruption system. It seizes our attention only
to scramble it.
Interested? Go read the rest here. Before you get distracted.
