A dream, an observation, a question

I wrote the following three years ago for the now-defunct Desert Advocate and reprint it here because its subject is the roots of national culture. It ends with a question I would love you to answer in the form of posted comments.

***

I just returned from Kaua’i, the farthest west of the major Hawaiian Islands and, some would say, the most beautiful. (Don’t ask me — Kaua’i is my only experience of our 50th state.)

On the first night there, I had a disturbing dream, a nightmare vision wildly out of sync with the idyllic languor of the place.

I had fallen asleep with the smell of salt-sea breezes in my nostrils and the glow of strange, gold-and-vermilion flowers in my memory.  So, why did I dream of angry Hawaiian warriors rushing toward me in a kind of hypnotic trance? In the vision, they pushed passed me violently, and I felt their power as I fell downward into some empty place beneath them. I don’t usually remember my dreams. This one woke me up. And I remembered it.

As I discussed my nocturnal encounter the next day over lunch with my wife, our waiter felt it apt to interrupt.

“The Night Marchers,” he said.

The what?

“You saw the Night Marchers, the spirits of Hawaiian warriors killed in battle. They died too quickly to know they are dead, so they keep marching.”

Apparently, they are all over the Hawaiian Islands, a place that has seen as much violence as any other, less paradisiacal place — and not just after the white man came. There, where fruit drops freely from the trees and fish fill the warm ocean waters, where year-round tropical mildness means shelter and clothing may be minimal, and therefore cheaply provided, tribes battled bloodily against each other for centuries, over what? Never underestimate man’s ability to find excuses for war.

So, what does this have to do with the arts? Nothing, by itself, but it made me wonder just what we are doing when we talk of a country’s “culture” and by that mean its food, its crafts, and maybe some of its more pleasant music. You know: Japan is sushi, bonsai and some strains on the koto; Ireland is corned beef, step dancing, and maybe a crocheted leprechaun. Hawaii, of course, is all flower leis, kahlua pork and the ukulele (which, incidentally, is Portuguese).

We do it to ourselves, too. America is hamburgers, cool cars and rock ‘n’ roll, right? We reduce culture to things we can consume, and in doing so, we gloss over the purpose the arts have to connect us to the realities of human love, human joy and human failing. I don’t know if the Hawaiian people ever developed a theatrical or poetic form into which they might pour the saga of the Night Marchers, but if that were done, it would go far to dispel the Hallmark image of luau and the hula.

Every time a people looks at itself plainly and honestly in the mirror of art, great stuff happens. In the 19th century, a group of Italian composers, Verdi chief among them, stared down the violence and the intrigue of the Europe around them and put those elements into the music they wrote for the operatic stage. Long before that, the ancient Greeks found the rhythm of tragedy and composed dramas that live to this day as embodiments of human feeling at its most profound.

When one people oppresses another, it invariably makes the oppressed culture look “cute” through cheap art. While England beat up the Irish with one hand, they created silly music-hall ditties like “My Wild Irish Rose” with the other, songs that no more resemble real Irish music than Playboy pinups look like real women. Notoriously, the American South created blackface entertainment to keep the slaves looking less than dangerous.

The oppressed eventually get theirs back, and when they do, it’s through art. The Irish produced Joyce and Yeats, a literature that beat the English at their own game. The African-American experience compressed suffering into blues and jazz, still the most distinctive forms of American art. Some people would call this art’s “political” function, but it’s not that, really. Rather, it’s artists breaking through political (and economic and social) restraint to get to what politics and economics and society always try to guard us from: reality, in the form of unrestrained human experience. If anything, it’s anti-political.

What American art today looks past distractions to embrace the real world of feeling?

Let me know your nominations.

– Ken LaFave

Here and there in Phoenix arts

In The Next Room, or The Vibrator Play

Contrary to every review of it I’ve read, Sarah Ruhl’s In the Next Room, or The Vibrator Play, is not about Victorian mores and the treatment of women. It’s about how we – now as in the past – closet sex away and treat it, not as in integral part of our lives, but as something “in the next room” – literally in the play, figuratively in the play. The Actors Theatre production of the hit comedy, an Arizona premiere, ends its highly successful run this weekend, with last shows tonight (Nov. 13) and tomorrow.

There are many poetic moments in the script, brought out wonderfully by the production. The one that touched me most personally was when the character Mrs. Givings points out it is the “unfinished” woman, the incomplete female, who most deeply attracts a man. Exactly! (How’d she – I mean the playwright – know that?)

***

The use of surtitles for Arizona Opera’s recent production of The Pirates of Penzance prompts the question, “Do we really need to see the words as well as hear then, when the words both heard and seen are…English?” It’s standard practice, I know, for operas in English to receive sub- or surtitles, the reason supposedly being that operatic singing is not conducive to being understood. But it seemed odd-nigh-ridiculous for a Gilbert and Sullivan piece, with its emphasis on the humor of Gilbert’s clever rhymes, to have the words appear above the action in advance of their being heard.

For instance, in “A Modern Major General,” the general’s famous rhyme for “strategy” appeared a good ten seconds before the singer delivered it, stepping on the joke. (Yes, I know most of us already know what the rhyme is – that’s not the point.) I’m of a mind to try to ignore the surtitles for Arizona Opera’s upcoming production of Carmen, as I imagine many who know the opera well are also inclined to do. Would that Arizona Opera’s titles were not so IMPOSING, writ large as they are. Too bad Arizona Opera hasn’t the money to do what Santa Fe Opera does: provide titles on the back of the seat in front of you, with the option of turning them off.

***

The Balinese gamelan is one of the most mesmerizing aural experiences available on the globe. Our own Musical Instrument Museum (MIM) will present a rare opportunity to hear this consort of bells, chimes and gongs in concert Sunday and Monday, Nov. 14 and 15. If you haven’t taken the time to view the MIM yet, combine a visit with this concert. I guarantee you won’t soon forget it.

– Ken LaFave

 

 

World-class dancing, world-class philanthropy

The blogging has slowed in response to requests for articles. You remember “articles”: short pieces written for publication, containing reportage, research and interviews, as contrasted with the even shorter, subjective blasts called blog posts. The fine new magazine AZ Lifestyle asked me for two articles, one on Ballet Arizona’s 25th anniversary, and another on Rosie’s House.

Ballet Arizona you know about.  It’s an Arizona treasure that’s earned the admiration of the classical-dance world and praise from The New York Times. Rosie’s House you should know about.  It’s the only place in the United States where underprivileged children can take music lessons completely free of charge, including both teacher fees and instrument rental.

You can read these at the magazine’s website, or ask for AZ Lifestyle magazine at your nearby bookstore. If you go to the website, click on “view our current issue.” My stories are near the end of the book.

– Ken LaFave