"clive." dana lyn. ethan hawke.

we saw the new ethan hawke project clive last week.  it officially opened yesterday.  our friend dana is in the cast and comped us tickets.  we got great second row seats, and talked with the star/director briefly, when he dropped by dana's table after the show.

we knew dana was in the production but it was still a funny / fun surprise to open the sunday times arts a couple weeks ago and see her.

i really dig the play.  evocative atmosphere- squalid urban underbelly, three penny opera. because it's, in fact, based on an early brecht play- baal. but the new group version has a very american, almost southern gothic feel.

rewritten by jonathan marc sherman, the script has a cool back and forth rhythm between rude explicit dirty or just plain bad stuff, and poignant allusions to nature, punctuated by humor. perfectly chosen americana music. intense energy.  at points, very funny!  dynamic chemistry between hawke, who plays a hedonistic rocker of vile raunchy charm, and vincent d'onofrio, who opens the play alluding to the devil but who ends up in a very different place. brooks ashmanskas is just super in several roles, including a swishy (east village?) landlord and even one of a jocular pair of canadian mounties - yes, mounties(!)- who appear unexpectedly, like two shakespearian buffoons! 

to me the production had one shortcoming- the author apparently constrained himself to stick to brecht scene for scene. there's no real story arc, just a spectacular downward vortex.  this makes it hard to get emotionally hooked anywhere.  mike says i have to explain this further so i will, later.

wondered if this could work on screen- the story would have to be fleshed out and probably less stylized?  or maybe totally stylized like baz luhrmann's moulin rouge? i'm imagining club scenes- limelight?  the club in a church would be a great setting for this pilgrimage of depravity!

another thing that makes it fun- the show has a really hip downtowny / brooklyny quality- the music choices, the groovy outsider art set design, the german cabaret theater connection and the vintagey costumes all have a williamsburgish aesthetic.  dana said the guys who designed the sonic sculptures, which are a big element of the set, also picked the tunes. link- grimes.  music plays a big role in the production and dana performs much of it, both on the sonic set furniture, which i'll describe in a later post, and also on violin and piano.  

dana is the last character on stage at the end of the play and she mournfully fiddles the lights down with whatever tune feels right.  we found out later that last week she played an irish air because she knew mike, who's an irish fiddler himself, was in the audience. i love dana's chamber music group yeti camp which i tried to describe here. apparently she also leads a 13 piece burt bacharach cover band- dionne werewolf- looking forward to that! dana lyn link.

i hope to see clive again before it closes- it offers a lot to chew on!

pasta a la bodega!

i made pasta sauce with things from the bodega next door. and special sugar meg gave me.

rare violins of new york and "a late quartet"

rare violins of new york celebrated the new year this month at landmark at the time warner center.

many of the world's most important stringed instruments pass through the rare violins workshop, run by michael bourassa and tatsuo imaishi.

rare violins provided instruments and location for scenes in the recent movie a late quartet. philip seymour hoffman, christopher walken, and catherine keener   starred.  mike spent a lot of time on the set (as official valuable violin chaperone) and i got to catch a glimpse of it myself.  rare violins partners bruno price and ziv arazi helped teach the actors to "play" the instruments.  mike said catherine keener is very nice!

i just missed the wrap.  if i'd arrived a few minutes earlier i could have had a glass of champagne with the cast and crew.  we did attend the wrap party at the chelsea hotel, though.  but i got a bit too excited about the open bar.  mike had to take (um... carry?) me home.  sad.

the moth grand slam winner tara clancy

someone whose star is rising!  our bud tara telling her moth grand slam winning story.  i wrote about that show, link, and posted another tara video here.  

tara's on the story collider podcast this week, link, a bartender from queens learns theoretical physics.

evolution now moth shirt.

nautical and industrial things.

the horseshoe crab pillow and the tiny antique pen knife, revolver, and padlock necklaces are available or recently sold pieces from evolution now & five mile road.  as is the vintage plastic fish- it turns purple in sunlight!  on an antique gun metal chain.

swedish sea salt soap from love adorned.

old european navy blanket.

chesapeake bay sloops by family friend tom gilmer.

happy martin luther king day!

and what a happy mlk day it is!

yes,  many of king's hopes for america remain unfulfilled, but the primary aspiration of his famous great dream is realized, once again. for the second time, americans have judged our top man by the content of his character and not by the color of his skin.  america's 400 year national curse is lifting. thank god i'm alive to see it.

this tells the story of dr. king and many others who made that possible- both breathtaking adventure story and scholarly footnoted history, one of the best books i've ever read.

i went to bill clinton's inaugural ball...

when i was in my late teens i was the hostess at a jazz club in annapolis. the king of france tavern in the maryland inn.  i met some legendary artists, milt jackson, moze allison, earl hines, teddy wilson, ellis marsalis... and i was friendly with some washington dc musicians who performed with them.  like bassist paul langosch who later joined tony bennett's band.

fifteen years later i was at bill clinton's first inaugural ball; tony bennet was the master of ceremonies.  i was there with my friend mark stietz and it turned out we both knew paul, though neither of us had seen him recently. a weird small world thing. they'd been close friends since high school together near washington.

mark, who was the director of opposition research at the democratic national committee, had given me a last minute ticket to the vip ball. i just happened to be in washington overnight and had nothing appropriate to wear, but i wasn't going to miss it so i ended up being the only woman attending the historic black tie ball in a black velvet minidress!

actually, there were 7 inaugural balls that night.  the clintons made the rounds of them, dancing on the stage at each.  mark was making his own rounds of the parties. the vip ball sounds glamorous, but the event everyone really wanted to get into was the mtv ball. while the vip ball was attended by politicians and venerable democratic party supporters like harry belafonte..., the mtv scene had hip young celebrities.

mark was off to mtv, but we decided to to go down to the stage and get paul's attention first.  and paul looked really happy to see his high school friend waving at him from the edge of the stage!  then, really surprised- he did a double take, noticing the old jazz club girl from annapolis, somehow here at the ball with his bud! ha ha!  he shook his head and laughed, of course without missing a beat.

the clintons arrived and the brand new president played saxophone with the band while we and the crowd danced.  everyone was euphoric after 12 years of reagan and bush.  8 great years for america lay ahead.

for anyone curious about paul langosch there's interesting info here.

friday night

an opening at an east village gallery. paintings with a fin de siecle aesthetic.

the after party at 2A.  two stories of uninterrupted glass windows wrap around the corner of 2nd street and avenue a, natch.  2A sometimes shows movies projected on he the brick wall across the street. last night they were projecting slides of the art from the show.

steve mccurry. portrait of an afghan girl

a few of steve mccurry's images-

photojournalist steve mccurry lectured at the international center of photography last december.  i took some snapshots. his awe inspiring life's endeavor i can only describe as a quest; though he talked about it in in a very down to earth manner. mccury is most famous for his portrait of an afghan girl for national geographic.  recently he returned to afganistan to try to find her.  in his lecture he tells what happened, and much more.  you can watch steve mccurry's talk at the icp here: link

though the content of his photos ranges from portrait to conflict, landscape to beauty, the shots share breathtaking color and composition.
  

carefully framed to eliminate extraneous color and information, whether in war photography, street photography or portrait, the structures tend to rely on one or two heavily saturated hues, vivid against neutral tones.

the compositions and palette have a classical feel; reminded me of da vinci and della francesca.  perhaps mccurry, like cartier-bresson, spent a great deal of time in art galleries, absorbing the pictorial techniques of the masters.


after the lecture there was a feeding frenzy of book and poster signing.