We don't even get to personality until we are impeccable with our word... How can you attain the right to be a person if you constantly make mistakes? Needless to say, I am my mistakes and do not call them that. I am secure in my awareness until I am proven wrong and am just as secure in my new awareness, and appreaciate your proofs and the attention you gave me. Thank you! Now what am I doing, I'm making a motion to amend pleadings to add a cause of action. We even don't get into the courtroom unless the papers are in order.

I have kitty-cat visitors for the weekend.

The fundraiser at the neighborhood playhouse went well, thanks to the great talent involved... I'd especially like the thank THE STEPPE DOGGES!

How about assuming full responsibility? oh to live up to it...

When it comes to my actions, I am self-insured...

Insurance companies have been in the film business. there's transamerica for united artists, american international is aig... and now, The CVII Insurance Company.

Insurance creates a disproportion in risk assumption... I am seriously suggesting here being

self-insured.

The Center for Holographic Arts downstairs is closing. They gave me a hologram of mezzo-soprano Betty Allen, in case you're looking for it. Oh, she just passed away at 82... young...She's on a 1970's recording of Virgil Thomson's Four Saints in Three Acts...

Ariadne's Thread: I have considered insanity as a method of decision-making... insanity is repeating the same action and expecting a different result. In the alternative, there is the thread leading from where we are to the desired result. In laying that thread we establish the choices along the way as failures (not worth repeating) with the one success becoming a lengthening of the thread. We'll get to the goal, to the solution of the problem... if it's a problem we're having the other alternative in time is to ignore it and let it join the other problems that will eventually undo us... Or rather we can perceive that problem as part of the human condition. http://www.cinemavii.com/images/washdc/4.htm

General acknowledgement... well, there are classic films out there... I so enjoyed the James Whale film with uh... it was in vienna... great wizard of oz and Ms. Caroll... and then last night I turned on uh, hard eight? Sydney... Mr. PT Anderson's film... seamlessly scripted cinema... slept after 40 minutes with more to come the only relief being that what was coming was somehow an offshoot of bob le flambeur. The feeling that All fits into place follows now with regard to There Will Be Blood... It's looking like a very likeable film for which affection will only grow... I don't think I've fully explored my capability for flakey self-expression. The other amazing awareness and I thank you for it, is... There is a pre-life; there is an after-life; but to achieve affectuation, there is no better time to do so than during This Life.

Oh yes, I am grateful to have the music set tonight. I've been active with various matters over the month of April and I'm always grateful to see the end of April. No, I never set music to The Wasteland, but here's the page with my 1970's interpretation of TS Eliot's Four Preludes: http://www.cinemavii.com/projects/TSEliot.htm

The performance tonight introduces to my songs the sound of the sitar...

SideWalk Waltz (Back to the Simple Days)Two Cranes

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNpvHeBdmKo

I Love the Law

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZCrjy3gcOw

Love Them Both

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lP3xn2iU2cA

Question of Solitude Theme Song with SitarVision Quest 1 -- Peaceful Day

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSR6QbpQBFs

alternate version:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1KTH-49G0U

Vision Quest 2 -- That Much Better

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSO8989sXyA

Vision Quest 3 -- Give This Chant a Chance

Along the Highway in B

My Defenses are Down (Cover of a Song by Irving Berlin

Anything else? Electronica is a major timewaster... I buy something and getting it up and running takes time... That time must be factored in... how about buying something out of an open box, something that's tested and used... Good. I want something old that works. Now, I bought a toy video camera with an SD card attachment, I got a mini sd card... 4 gig... anyway, this storage system is very small and there are no moving parts... is the disappearance of the info only a magnet away? There's not that much space, or there's a limitless amount of space in the universe... what else? I was sick over the month and there was advice from Tyr Throne... we're not really carnivores, maybe we're omnivores but with the length of the digestive tract... we're absorbing over a period of time well beyond cats and dogs and other carnivores... and over that 24 hours the stuff has to be pretty stable... it can't be overly fermentible... as for anything packaged for shelf life... maybe salt is ok... other creative consultant bombshells from Tyr... revealing concealed estros... It's all part of A Question of Solitude now... thank you.

It's looking to me like each of Bernard Shaw's plays, preceded by its essay of coalesced elements, is a gift to the world. There's a good review of the Bible's New Testament in the 100 pages that precede his script for Androcles and the Lion. (I returned to it for a quote that I have yet to find about the audience at a roman colleseum that will appear in a nursing home in "A Question of Solitude" a new script with a reading at La Mama on March 31st.)

I thought that the silencing from martyrdom at calvary produced a worldwide backlash still felt 2000 years later, but Shaw's critique suggests that the silencing was successful. The teaching of a brilliant thinker (deluded, perhaps by a chance suggestion of one of his apostles, namely Peter) was usurped by ... well, to quote the words that seem particularly worthwhile...

"Paul succeeded in stealing the image of Christ crucified for the figure-head of his salvationist vessel, with its Adam posing as the natural man, its doctrine of original sin, and its damnation avoidable only by faith in the sacrifice of the cross. No sooner had Jesus knocked over the dragon of superstition than Paul boldly set it on its legs again in the name of Jesus."

This is of double concern for me since I applied the genesis story in a recent piece, Paradise Found. I thought I was resonating the original biblical book, when I was mouthing an interpretation of it by Paul, which I have never read.

Anyway, the simply stated conclusion of Shaw is "There has really never been a more monstrous imposition perpetrated than the imposition of the limitations of Paul's soul upon the soul of Jesus."

Saying that sounds radical, and I am drawn toward radical statements... however Shaw offers a thoughtful argument before making it.

While there may be a physical decline processing within us as we travel through time, technology is advancing, supplementing, perhaps also supplanting what we lose. Eyesight is one diminishment; general awareness is another. Is this even worth saying? Today I'm better than I ever was, which suggests I was deep within a rut. It was one of my own making, arising out of my desire for AVOIDANCE. Tomorrow, again I awaken to go to a deposition in Queens for a car accident case that requires translators for all deposed, just to get a record in English of testimony that translates into a contingency fee of money for the firm, which means I get my salary in this game of legal work. I can't imagine doing anything else right now, as time indents into my hours of elyseum. I just returned from the Mac Roger Robots play, a meditation on humans supplanted by their improvements, still stumped by predicaments inherent in human nature, and they, the new race, take precautions, lest they forget, by annually conducting a religiously ritualistic history lesson. They remember how they got there, how they arrived that place. An artist created them. The new race is no better than the one it replaced.
My relationship with machines has not translated into humanizing them, because it wouldn't matter if I did. I go to bed crying that the cry for help that goes unheeded is my own.

If you're bothering to read your horoscope chances are you are alone. Safe bet the horoscope acknowledging that is going to the right person. No one can keep up with you so keep going and accept that. Kick up your heels in automobiles, it's Jimmy Durante, Laurel and Hardy, and Baron Munchausen back from the Congo, all in same sentence description for Hollywood Party.

Jury duty consisted of 3 days at 111 Centre Street. This visit as a juror was considerably less friendly than prior because everyone is wired to the ears. Even I, without the latest technology, could walk into an internet room and send email on one of the connected dell laptops. I wandered around downtown, one visit to J&R, another to the County Clerk... if you want to change something on your dba certificate it costs the same as filing a new one, 120. As for a flat screen to replace my tube challenged sony for this anemic cable service... no. I feel like I have to buy something valuable but the merchandise and what it actually is (disposable) is failing to tip the scales. Yes, the scales of justice. The first day I joined 65 others in the opportunity to sit on a case of a lifetime, requiring a 4 week commitment. I should have sat there but in good conscience could not say I was available given my employment in an office of less than 10 employees, although the opportunity to sit there and be spoken to, and to hear words spoken for the benefit of... I went to the office after dismissal at 4, then the next day made another trip to drop off papers at 100 church street, oh, that lobby design is humid, these spraying globes create a steam room atmosphere, and of course the usual detailed security approval. The colors, too, at 100 Church are veering toward genius. I visited the great chinatown so near by, our stage manager was able to find the chosen New Yeah Shanghai and we had a good lunch. at the last minute in the morning we as jurors, another 65 of us, were sent to another shorter potentially criminal trial not involving murder but rather single witness victim beyond a reasonable doubt attempted maybe armed gas station robbery and the accused wandering the hallway saying on his cel phone the da has to prove his case, in the presence of his 65 attendants. How about giving him the cost of the trial, 10 employees, 65 people... no the process is good but the number of people attending to the accusation... anyway, the detailed questions included my favorite, hobbies? Songwriting and music theatre production.

itch mites?
I want to document a complicated mystery where one thing leads to another, and I begin the lyric to "vision quest one."

I had some hours alone, a taste of a peaceful day.
I saw a tree full of crows that followed a hawk of prey.
From one tree to another this hawk carried his meal.
To the next tree they’d follow.
Like stool pigeons they’d squeal


A few weeks later I found a tortoise carcas cleaned out under one of the trees.
The leaf shading it had these strange nipple growths. The other leaves were clear.
I've had an extended contemplation of this condition and extending itching since then because...
The mites that cleaned out the tortoise shell laid eggs in the leaf. The nipples are called "galls."
The hawk dropped the tortoise.

Today is the day this blog's been waiting for. I was thinking how life in the jungle is an ongoing challenge with perhaps even less moments to relax then we have here in civilization. The cats are probably relaxing now, but they're in the apartment and when they're not relaxing they seem restless. I've been rebelling against peace within myself, as a rebellion against complacency, but maybe it's not a sell out at all.

Pin the Crime on the Dead Man is a game from -- Witchfinders, by Peter Dizozza

Oh, I get it now. I have no emotional memory because for 35 years the daily companion medication to my 324 mg quinaglute duratabs was...80 LA Inderal (the trademark word for propranalol, which is a trademark word for...). Write now before you forget. (How to erase a mental hard drive; it's like spoliation of evidence... interesting. Oh, yes, Inderal...) These blogs are helpful. Free public access means I also get unlocked access.

We speak or write because we want something. According to the book I'm reading if we wanted for nothing we would not speak. Perhaps we speak because we want to hear ourselves speak. Another observation of the book, which is about how to read plays, backwards and forwards by david ball, is that we have obstacles in front of us blocking or, optimistically speaking, offering us access to what we want when we overcome them, whether ewith charm or force. Why must you be so obstacle? It makes the prize that much more sweet, or so I'm told, the overcoming of the obstacle. It's not the prize, it's the attaining it... On the other hand, I do enjoy what I have and less concerned with how I got it, although the attaining is something to be proud of... I'm kidding, it's not. I think I'm becoming a bit more savy about what my own writing is about. It is something of a one note sound. I obviously want something... pd

Schrodinger's Cat.

Our perception of reality is an oft innaccurate assembly of our senses; reality exists apart from our perception of it.

The person who put the cat in the box (with the radium isotope 440 or whatever) is the murderer, not the person who opens the box.

What would a magic lantern be without its light source? Now, if we're going for the best, we have a plasma screen as a light source for imagery. The glowing light must be evenly dispersed upon a flat surface, as impulses flex its spectrum through a process called Plasmosis... very photosynthetic.

All right, given the question I'll provide answers to anything. Answering questions help us discover not just more questions but sometimes actual answers.... but for now...

Moving past the medium to the message, anything can happen on that flat surface.

In another mindset, the light projects from a far off source landing flat upon a surface to read as a movie!

Anthology film archives let me have a look in the back for a bulb to put into the movie projector used in the La Mama stage production of TentagatneT. While I was at Anthology one of the TentagatneT actors had a film running there in the Barney Oldfield series, New Filmmakers. They let me watch some and I caught the last 10 minutes. From what I saw, the 30 minute video film, Sequel, was a montage of movies, news clips and silent film titles assembled from library materials and given an ambient wordless sound design by Christopher Zorker (all right, I also spoke with Chris tonight. He was simplifying the motives behind current events).

A film by Janice Ahn called Stutter followed and that took me by surprise. It was a sad character study in 13 minutes, remarkable in its compressed achievement of a harrowing encounter somewhat unstuck in time.

The theme for the evening: New Filmmakers Explore the New American Unreality.

Stutter reveals the sordidity of the date that almost didn't happen. It began well, with the man and woman enjoying the music from the beautiful turntable, the man taking pictures of the woman, but he's loathe to let her go.... He's a big hurt boy in his first floor lair, his grandmother listening from above.

Never again to be trusted. The cycle of abuse progresses...overpowering immaturity, convincing on all levels, his, hers, his grandmother's... The violation, the unpleasantness, the feeling of irrefutable wrongness, selfish brute strength, disturbed and dangerous, feminine strength subdued, the grandmother pulls herself down to the first floor level, apologizes to the woman, just a girl, really, the boy, under his grandmother's supervision, on good behaviour, spent, allowing her to leave. It didn't have to be that way between them, but the boy's damaged mind destroyed the interaction, making it pathetically one-sided, and, yes, angering.

My new play will consider how people can treasure and trust one another.

ROFL Contestant!

My incentive for writing something, I know it's all been done before, is that it will contain what's never been done before. The idea should be radical. My recent piece arises from a feeling, too, the feeling of polarity dividing the oneness of the world. In 2.2.2, Hermaphroditism Through the Ages, describing which had me booed off the stage last night at Joe's Pub -- I really should have shown that youtube post of cute pussycats... In fact, I was up against and lost against Pussycat Mosh Pit -- anyway, it was worth it to introduce the radical idea, as propounded by Dr. Fricassee, that there's a conspiracy against evolution in the medical profession, that obstetricians confronted at births with ambiguous genitalia conspire against hermaphroditism , delivering to parents males and females, by surgically maintaining, for the stability of our bodies, The Two Sex System. Tyr Throne, my regular advisor in these matters (he considers many of my projects tantric explorations.) related that man is the mutant strain and woman is perfection. Yoga is the practice of becoming hermaphroditic. If nothing else, this begins an interesting science fiction story.

The college humor fellows had a funny moment -- are some of their employees really robots? during a meeting with the new stooges that I believe was about establishing an employee benefits program.

KLARA: Wait. We have the treasure from our international arms deal but no local currency. Before we get settled in at a house of roadside pyschotherapy, I think we'd better find gainful employment. Did you notice, on the car chase, a help wanted sign at the local alehouse? It said "Tuesday Psychic Needed."

JIM (Not fully on board, "You're the boss"): You're "psychic"; why don't you go check it out?

KLARA: Wait in the car.
(Klara exits)

JIM (alone, seated in car)
Where did you go; what did you do while I was out?

(repeat those 4 bars instrumentally, maybe 1 octave higher under following dialog)

KLARA: I got the job.
JIM: One day a week?
KLARA (gets back in car): Yes. They're covered for the other days.
JIM: Was it crowded?
KLARA (applying lipstick): For a Monday, yes.

JIM
When you were small, when I was tall we had no doubt.

KLARA: I'll get us a room (exits).

JIM
For in a summer wind as seeds took flight within
The finches long and we may long
Till nature lets us join her throng
as petals lift away, where's our wind to sail today?

(next 6 bars instrumental only under following dialog)

(Klara re-enters, mission accomplished)

JIM (confused; how did she even get the room?): We still don't have any money.
KLARA: Just hold your head up high. When they asked for a deposit, I told them I'm a visiting psychic at the alehouse and that money will be coming in soon. Besides, they said they'll pay us to have sex with their staff.

(Klara gets out, busily unpacks and prepares to go inside, not hearing Jim as he sings from the car)

JIM
Where did you go; what did you do while I was out?
When you were small, when I was tall we had no doubt.
In our four car garage, when we were living large
the muskrats docked; the tree swings rocked
the geese and fowl, high they flocked
(On next line, he gets out and catches her by the arm, getting her attention to ask...)
As box kites drift away, where's our wind to sail today?

JIM and KLARA
Reading the words can make them confusing
Listen and use the words of our choosing
When air is still, send them

(Klara, impatient, tries to extract herself. Jim doesn't let her go and calmly pleads...)

JIM
Arms open, sails out wide
We need the wind to rise
Remember when it did?

KLARA (encouraging)
And watch it rise again!
Swirling like shrouds, the trees will be veering!

JIM (doubting)
Enter the clouds, from what I'm hearing
that old black magic has slipped away.

KLARA (getting swept away, abandoning him)
Ear to the ground, the branches are swaying!
Worshiping trees, adore my playing!
(across the stage to him before exiting)
My new white magic will save the day!

JIM (alone where she has left him)
Where did you go, what did you do while I was out?









------------
Scene/song integration by Lydia Ooghe

Olive Juice Message Board Posts:

Drop everything! Top 100 AFI films...
Posted by peter on 6/21/2007, 1:17 pm
The big question is why it's such a pleasure to look through the list and drop vaguely inconsequential witicisms.s.s
?
Link: could this have taken me more than 20 minutes? ah the comfort zone...

Re: Drop everything! Top 100 AFI films...
Posted by Bollo on 6/21/2007, 1:36 pm, in reply to "Drop everything! Top 100 AFI films..."
Gone With the Wind sucks

Re: Drop everything! Top 100 AFI films...
Posted by julie on 6/21/2007, 8:43 pm, in reply to "Re: Drop everything! Top 100 AFI films..."
why do you think it sux?

Re: Drop everything! Top 100 AFI films...
Posted by Elastic No-No Band on 6/21/2007, 11:07 pm, in reply to "Drop everything! Top 100 AFI films..."
Wait. Did they redo it? Is this because they couldn't include TITANIC the first time? (god forbid)
Or because everyone was like NUH-UH! "Guess Who's Coming To Dinner" AIN'T NO GREAT MOVIE, STUPID AFI!
Some nice additions. Seems like there's more great comedies added.
I don't think SUNRISE was on there before, which is a good call as far as adding it. (What? GREED isn't good enough to include, but LORD OF THE RINGS goes on there?)
BIRTH OF A NATION got booted. I guess old-timey racism is less acceptable now than it was in the 90s. (Oh wait, why is GONE WITH THE WIND still there, then?)
I understand FARGO getting booted (great flick, but not so influential these days), but why is FANTASIA less great than TOY STORY?
I love Cagney, so it's nice to see YANKEE DOODLE DANDY sticking it out at the bottom.
DAMN YOU, DIZOZZA, FOR BRINGING OUT MY FILM NERD!

Re: Drop everything! Top 100 AFI films...
Posted by Bollo on 6/22/2007, 7:28 am, in reply to "Re: Drop everything! Top 100 AFI films..."
Why do i think the most insufferably boring movie of all time sucks?? I dunno, I'm just like that... I recently went on a date to see 'Rolling Like A Stone' at the Anthology Film Archives, but its run had ended, and instead they had a WWI newsreel and a silent Cubist film of images just being repeated over and over and over... Started freaking out about a half hour into it. It was like a psych torture test


Re: Drop everything! Top 100 AFI films...
Posted by Woodrow Wilson on 6/22/2007, 7:59 am, in reply to "Re: Drop everything! Top 100 AFI films..."
Birth of a Nation? I love Birth of a Nation!! And I would be horrified it it all weren't SO COMPLETELY TRUE. Hey I know- Let's party at my house and we'll watch that one and Triumph of the Will


Re: Drop everything! Top 100 AFI films...
Posted by Preston on 6/22/2007, 10:14 am, in reply to "Re: Drop everything! Top 100 AFI films..."
Toy Story!?!? Tootsie!?!? Yeah, OK, sure.
Also, I hate to be the guy who always craps on Star Wars, but... come on.

Re: Drop everything! Top 100 AFI films...oh...
Posted by peter on 6/22/2007, 12:26 pm, in reply to "Re: Drop everything! Top 100 AFI films..."
come on, carrie fisher was great in star wars, why, was there something else going for that film?
oh, I forgot for the godfather, see what happens when you put Pacino in a suit and ms. Keaton in a dress. those two! what a couple!
oh, and I'm playing sidewalk Wednesday, June 27th... 7PM Twilight Time... here in the twilight, dear gods, isn't it past your twilight time?

Posted by Brandon on 6/25/2007, 12:55 pm, in reply to "Re: Drop everything! Top 100 AFI films..."
I think it's awesome that Toy Story is in there.