Tag: Culture

Am I the man you wanted me to be?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

The question is asked by Zorro in the opera by Hector Armienta recently premiered in Albuquerque and Fort Worth. This version of the story is much more subversive than the one I encountered as a kid. And the musical drama is, from what I heard on the radio, very much worthy of retelling.

What stunned me in the question that it’s directed toward the father. How often in today’s Western culture does a son turn toward his father that way, rather than his mother? Not in my experience.

It is making me look toward Dad anew and suspect I hadn’t failed him that much, after all. But the question remains disturbing and enriching, all the same.

How do we males find this working as well in terms of our wives – or lovers? Or our children?

This really gets serious – and unending.

Does every act of creation begin with demolition?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Or at least making a mess?

The observation here originates with an artist’s amazement at the mess at the beginning of the book of Genesis in the Bible. As panelist on the Bill Moyers’ PBS series, he picked up on the matter of chaos at the outset. Not the blank canvas but rather all the surrounding disarray, probably including thinking.

More recently, I’ve been seeing that in our own home renovation project. For a while, there was a lot less of our house than when we began. How quickly the Dumpster got filled and another delivered!

As for a film society’s choices

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

The Eastport Arts Center was a major factor in my decision to relocate here. Quoddy Voices is one of its constituent groups.

Another was the Northern Lights film society, which only recently resurfaced but greatly diminished after the Covid hiatus.

I’ve found its offerings invigorating and sometimes disturbing. The deep discussions that follow the showings are especially valued, even for the recent Carnival of Souls and Night of the Living Dead horror vein.

What was perplexing was that the society was essentially two people, one a veteran of its 47-year history, give or take a few seasons.

They were asking those of us who kept coming each week for our input regarding possible selections from the two vendors available to us. Learning of the licensing hurdles for presenting movies even at a nonprofit arts venue was daunting. I’ll spare you the details.

I will, though, share my response to the possibilities and the situation we’re facing.

~*~

As I wrote:

Seems to me our thinking about the film society comes down to building a larger audience. That, in turn, adds considerations of “branding” – the image the public has – as well as the types of films we air and even our geographic range of appeal.

What do we show this week that will bring people back for our next film? That is, what’s our continuity or identity? What has them awaiting the next round? Are we an “art” films circle, an awards-driven following, a sensual experience sharing group? Do our screenings enhance or compete with other arts ventures in the region?

If we’re limiting ourselves to two showings a month, let me suggest making those the second and third Sunday evenings of the month. I’m feeling there might be a “bounce” in favor of that second showing, perhaps even with some common thread for the month. Let me also push for 6 pm so more viewers from throughout Washington County can readily attend. (Note, too, the problems of getting anyone out on a Sunday night, plus the competition with the winter Sunday afternoon series at the arts center and Stage East matinees.)

My thinking is that we might get some synergy and energy that way, especially in getting the word out. The Tides comes out on the second Friday (we might have occasions when the showing falls a week before that).

Orchestras and live theater companies have long relied on season subscribers but have been finding, even a few decades before Covid, that the model was eroding. Festival programming – a cluster – has been one alternative that’s created excitement and ticket sales. I’m seeing that as something that might work with the second/third Sundays model, perhaps even giving us the option of adding a fourth Sunday for a suitable extension.

That said, we are also shaped by the collections of our two distributors.

At the first, I’m steering clear of the traditional art films for now – the Italian, French, German, Japanese, etc.

Instead, I’d look at the USA (not Hollywood, for the most part, which is the global conglomerate movie center) and three Canadian films, many of them documentaries, and at the Latin films – Mexico, Cuba, Spain, Portugal, Brazil. Viridiana stands out on that front. Washington County has a large and largely overlooked Hispanic population.

Cluster options here: Orson Welles, Robert Downey Sr., Chaplin and Harold Lloyd, silents The Freshmen, The Kid Brother, The Most Dangerous Game, and King of Kings (if we can keep a straight face), Norman Mailer, John Huston (Under the Volcano and Wise Blood).

Among the docudramas etc.: A Brief History of Time (Stephen Hawking), Burroughs: the Movie, Don’t Look Back (Dylan), For All Mankind (astronauts), Gimme Shelter, God’s Country (Louis Malle), Jimi Plays Monterey or Monterey Pop, Louie Bluie, Multiple Maniacs (John Waters), Eating Raoul (Warhol).

Titles that catch my attention: The Baron of Arizona, The Beales of Grey Gardens, Border Radio, Buena Vista Social Club, Cameraperson, Carnival of Souls, Chop Shop, Clean Shaven, Desert Hearts, Detour (possibly anchoring an international film noir survey), Dillinger Is Dead (OK, it’s Italian but still), possibly with I Shot Jesse James, Drylongso, The Honeymoon Killers, Push Cart Man, Paris Texas (yeah, it’s French), A Poem Is a Naked Person, Poto and Cabengo, Routine Pleasures, Smooth Talker, Slacker, Sweet Sweetback’s Badass Song, Symbiopsychotaxism, Twin Peaks, Thank You and Good Night, and The Watermelon Woman.

Looking way ahead, sometime it might be fun to do a festival based on Japanese Godzilla fixation.

And then, at the other: For the most part, these offerings strike me as highly commercial creations most people stream at home. Still, American audiences look for star-power rather than directors, so this might provide some extra punch for attendance. That said, some offerings to consider: Barbie, Oppenheimer, Gran Turismo, Joy Ride, Insidious, Tar, Asteroid City, Dear Evan Hansen, The Little Mermaid (with ArtsWalk), The Outfit, Samaritan, The Black Phone, and Cruella (if it’s not too Disney).

~*~

Well, we’ve had a second meeting and set a course for the next year, one that seems to be generating a buzz. We’re focusing on one boffo film a month, with both a matinee and evening showing, and tying the offerings into other events happening in town, when possible.

The first one is indeed Barbie on the Thanksgiving weekend.

The Metropolitan Opera broadcasts take on a new tone

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

One of the benefits of donating even a modest amount to the Metropolitan Opera’s broadcast fund is that you receive an annual schedule booklet, 36 colorful, glossy pages with the casts, broadcast times and estimated lengths, and summaries of the plots. The booklet arrives a month or two before the next season begins, and I keep mine as wonderful future references.

The upcoming Saturday matinee broadcasts, which start airing on Dec. 9, have already been controversial, due to the company’s shifting focus toward increased contemporary and sometimes realistically gritty works. The first presentation of the season, in fact, is Florencia en el Amazonas, inspired by the writings of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and only the third Spanish-language opera to be performed at the Met. (Carmen, after all, is in French and will be heard on Jan. 27.) Other works from our own era are Dead Man Walking (Jan. 20), X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X (Feb. 3), Fire Shut Up in My Bones (April 27), John Adams’ opera-oratorio El Nino (May 4), and The Hours (May 18).

That unprecedented string of operas by living composers doesn’t mean the usual masters aren’t on the menu. Mozart (3), Wagner, Verdi (4), Puccini (3), Bizet, Gounod, Donizetti, Johann Strauss Jr., and Gluck are all in the lineup, with two of the dates yet to be announced. Conspicuously absent is Richard Strauss.

Two of the archived presentations feature my favorite-ever conductor, Max Rudolf: Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro on Dec. 30, with Victoria de los Angeles and Cesare Siepi, and Donizetti’s L’Elisir d’Amore on April 6, with Luciano Pavarotti, Judith Blegen, and Ezio Flagello. As one conductor once told me, Rudolf could have been famous, if he had wanted that. At the Met, he worked largely behind the scenes as Rudolf Bing’s artistic administrator before going to Cincinnati and rebuilding that city’s great orchestra.

Also of note is that the long-running broadcast series has a new sponsor, the Robert K. Johnson Foundation, only the third in its history. The series was underwritten by Texaco from 1940 to 2003, followed by Toll Brothers luxury homebuilders (2005 to 2023).

Gee, have Texaco’s red-star gas stations been gone from the landscape 20 years already?

Even tradition changes.

The one place I’ve never wanted to live was the suburbs

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

I love big cities, even have a certificate in Urban Studies, but can’t afford them, not for long.

Internet, at least, allows me some important virtual connections that way, not that it includes strolling into ethnic restaurants or great museums.

On the other hand, I’m living in a place others consider ideal for a vacation.

And for me, it’s an ideal writer’s retreat or de facto arts colony.

The ability to walk to so much of what I want in daily life is a huge consideration.

Time in the creation of poetry and much else

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Robert Bly once said that to write a line of poetry requires two hours. Not so much for the actual writing.  Not even for the inspiration. Though certainly for the revision.  As well as compression and redistillation. And more revision.

His estimate, to me, seems quite optimistic.

I’m thinking it can be applied to many more examples of where human creative action is involved, too.

Go ahead, name one where you wish you had more time for the project.

What’s wrong with being elite?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

As an editor on newspapers where, in an attempt for excellence everyone was giving of themselves totally (many unpaid hours of overtime, etc.), I was always appalled by the charge of “elitism,” which comes to mean “give me mediocrity – not the truth, but pleasantry” – from the same people who would not accept such standards in their professional football quarterback or automobile.

In many religions, however, the “world” of common subservience and society or what some today are more accurately seeing as “empire” is ultimately a mortal trap. In spiritual practice, then, only total effort is acceptable in seeking a holy transformation of this life. If only we can rise to even a portion of it.

As an ancient New England hymn reminded, “Broad is the way that leads to death / and many trod thereupon / but Wisdom shows a narrow way / with here and there a traveler.”

I see that lyric, by the way, as the root of Robert Frost’s road less traveled.

When I ask what’s wrong with being elite, I’m not talking about social status or wealth but something more elusive – something much more humble and loving.

One of the many ways the dynamic of American society has changed in my own lifetime

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

As Dover First Parish pastor David Slater wrote in 1983: “Christianity is becoming more and more counter-cultural. In the 1950s public values were largely Christian values (even Protestant Christian values). Today we are more religiously pluralistic, but even more importantly, more secular. We can no longer assume that the values of the church will be shared by the larger society.”

How prophetic, considering where American society is today.

And how ironic, considering that his congregation embodied the common culture the Quakers in my book were countering.