While I was in NOLA, I caught wind of Ninth Ward Katrina Tours, a phenomenon so disturbing and angering to me as a person who believes, lives, and works for equality in community (especially around issues of race, class, gender, within communities), that I could not imagine what the justification of such a “project” could be, especially in the face of such gross commodification of human life.
Of course, you shouldn’t listen to me bluster on about this but take it right from 2-cent, a group of college students in New Orleans who aim to make creative change in their communities: New Orleans for Sale
So I spent an amazing 6 days in New Orleans, a city of paradox and the beauty of entropy.
I could wax poetic on how inspiring the city is but really, I don’t know if mere words do it justice.
Check my photojournal on flickr. And please, if you want to lift one of the pics, do let me know and link back here. It’s only polite. 
To New Orleans to read my poetry at the 2009 Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association Conference.
I won’t have computer access while there (I know, I know…you don’t really believe I won’t be jacked in to the interwebs…I will have my iPhone but updating the blog from there is kinda a hassle…) so I leave you with this:
Enjoy!
If you’re this refugee heart, you go hear Suheir Hammad 
bust it out spoken word style. The energy of the jazz club turned hip-hop/spoken word/slam space was alive–not only breathing like a humanimal but jumpin’ like the electricity that jolts through the sockets of beautiful eyes and hips and outlets that hold all the stories of revolution, love, and redemption. Hammad was one of a host of performers hittin’ it for the Gaza Mental Health Foundation and the Boston Palestine Film Festival and while they all had something unique to offer, Hammad had the crowd. From the moment she stepped into the mic, the 250+ bodies in the house went silent; not dim or wavering but anticipatory and awe-filled. Her voice broke the crowd, calling us to rise, to speak, to rejoice in one another. It is rare to be in the presence of such a voice.
The charge Hammad built was answered by DAM (hip hop straight from Palestine) and if you haven’t heard them, you best get out and buy it up quick. They rap it in Arabic and inspired a revolution of song and spirit, hands in the air and Bob Marley ware, reminding us that we need to “start a revolution to get to a solution.”
Nuff said.
As an artist taking my material directly from the world around me (whether I am writing directly from my experiences or transcribing and interpreting the experiences of others), I find that I am often most interested in how other artists translate/interpret what they find in the world. I go to as many art openings, films, and plays as I can (read: afford. I take copious advantage of free days at local museums!) to see how other artists are engaging with the world, what they find there, and how they connect these to their own experiences; I try to immerse myself in these other worlds to get much needed food for thought and food for creation.
So I was excited when my lovely friend J (who never ceases to inspire and challenge me) invited me to a production of Christine Evans’ Trojan Barbie, billed as an adaptation of Euripides’ The Trojan Women.
Yet this production was so much more than an adaptation. It was a creation of the collision of two worlds on the edge of very real apocalypse. As Christine Evans says in the playwright’s note: “…we live in a time where past and present co-exist in violent collision. …The violent simultaneity of past and present is our everyday white noise. How then do we witness the enforced spectacles of others’ suffering, given their omnipresence and lack of context?”
This play is devastating and unforgiving in its depiction of both Western arrogance and our brittle illusions of separation from both the sufferings of the past, present, and future (particularly the sufferings that we create in the name of our own bloody, outdated, and deadly delusions of grandeur).
If you are in the Boston area, be sure to check this out (tickets are sliding-scale): Trojan Barbie
It’s a lazy, rainy day here in Boston. I’ve got a chai and a cat on my lap and a do-to list a mile long, but first let’s get to what’s going on in the world shall we?
A note on the first two posts:
The first post, courtesy of BBC News regards male contraception, a topic that I, as a proponent of equity in responsibility in reproductive and sexual health, find exciting. The article discusses how a gene defect has clued scientists in to possible safe and reversible contraceptives for men. From the beginning though, one sentence caught me: “Condoms or a vasectomy are still the only male contraceptive choices.” Had me wondering: why is so much time is spent on female contraception while there are myriad ways for a woman to ensure she does not conceive, and yet there are only two for men? (It’s quite rhetorical people, I know the answer and it stinks of gender bias and sexist science).
The second post is a website I found detailing experimental methods of male contraceptives (most of which I’ve never heard of). Pretty interesting stuff. Pass along to any interested parties.
Genes defect clue to male pill
Suheir Hammad and the Boston Palestine Film Fest
Ahh…Contraceptives, gendered disparities, sleeper cars, and Palestinian Poets….all the news that’s floating around my brain.
I’m reading one of the best things ever: a re-telling of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice with (wait for it…) ZOMBIES!!!!
I think someone made this book just for me. Seriously. Not only does this fabulously tongue-in-cheek and at times just plain silly tome begin “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains” it professes to be just what this girl always wanted (but hardly ever found): The Classic Regency Romance–Now With Ultraviolent Zombie Mayhem!!!
I always thought Elizabeth Bennet kicked some pretty hard ass before but now, she a WARRIOR!!!! Not only is she sworn the slay the sorry stricken (aka-undead brain munchers) she’s bound to the warrior code, which ALMOST spells certain doom for Mr. Darcy after his initial dismissal of her at the opening ball. To quote: “As Mr. Darcy walked off, Elizabeth felt her blood turn cold. She had never in her life been so insulted. The warrior code demanded she avenge her honor. Elizabeth reached down to her ankle, taking care not to draw attention. There, her hand met the dagger concealed beneath her dress. She meant to follow this proud Mr. Darcy outside and open his throat.”
To the reader’s delight (and dismay), Mr. Darcy is for the moment saved, if only by an influx of zombies!
When asked later if she is dismayed at her sister’s good fortune of “landing” Mr. Bingley (this is just before the whole Darcy-Bingley-Bingley’s sisters snafu that leads our dear Mr. Bingley to leave Netherfield in haste for the winter), Elizabeth answers: “Thank you, sir, but I am perfectly content being the bride of death.”
Um….yeah. I’m only about a third of the way through the book and I both want to be this new Elizabeth Bennet and am in love with her. Go out and buy it (or borrow it from a friend or local library!). If you love blood, carnage, zombies, and romance you will not be disappointed.
I check various news sites when I finally haul my carcass out of bed in the morning and I’m always struck by how superfluous, poorly written, and bone- dry so much of the prose on these sites remains even when they’ve got an interesting story. As a writer, I am (and probably always will be) obsessed with the story. So I’ve decided to inculcate a little tradition on this here blog o’mine. I’d like to present you, dear reader, with the stories that I came across this morning that tickled, twittered, flumoxed, horrified or otherwise entertained me. Think of this as not a comprehensive overview by any means; more a sociological exploration. Of what, you ask? Well, probably my brain.
Without further ado:
Baby Chicks Do Basic Arithmatic
Amanda Palmer’s Suburban Dispatch
Ok. Time to get my butt over the RMV and get a State ID! Whoooo!
PS-Thanks for J for the R. Crumb link!
Just finished watching Blue Velvet.
The first time I saw this movie I was in college. I remember sitting in the movie theatre on campus (we had two; Bardies are big on film) and afterward being so disturbed I wouldn’t sleep alone. I couldn’t listen to Roy Orbison without being almost physically reminded (by goosebumps) of the disparity and sheer creepiness of the scenes at Ben’s house and after the car ride. To this day, David Lynch’s films and television show remain the only pieces of art that can evoke such a primal fear response from me (not for lack of my trying; I love the dark, the strange, and insanely screwed up).
So tonight I decided to treat myself and settle down to an old favorite. While the film remained as visceral as ever and my favorite scenes (including Dean Stockwell’s masterfully wiggy lip-syncing into the lightbulb hanger) and my favorite line: “Heinekin?! Fuck that shit! PABST. BLUE. RIBBON!!!!” remained as strange and wonderful, something changed for me, particularly in the rape scene. It is still one of the most unsettling scenes of sexual violence I’ve ever seen. But it made me think more deeply about the power dynamics at play and how these are mirrored throughout the film. For example, was the scene directly before the rape scene (the one where Dorothy forces Jeffrey to strip at knife-point after she finds him in her apartment uninvited) a rape scene? It was certainly about violation. The mirroring relationships between Dorothy/Frank and Dorothy/Jeffrey and the violence and s/m of all of it had me thinking about sexual violence in this film in a whole different way (particularly towards Angela Carter’s Sadeian Woman). In another vein on the same topic, Laura Mulvey (feminist film scholar extraordinaire) has written about the Oedipal complexes in these scenes but there is something more, something about the power dynamics in the acts of sex and violence and yearning here that has me thinking about this film in a way that is less cut and dried and more intersectingly (I just made it up, folks) complex. Anyone wanna help me parse this?
Oh, NIN. That’s the bestest April Fool’s present EVA.
http://www.nin.com/strobelight/
My favorite track title gotta be “coffin on the dancefloor”….oh, such fun!
