Laurie Anderson's 'Delusion' & Nowhere Boy

Friday I had the chance to catch a couple of fun things: Laurie Anderson's Delusion at EMPAC (my favourite local venue) and Sam Taylor-Wood's Nowhere Boy at the Spectrum 8 (as usual). Of course there were several other things possible that night -- among them, Nick Lowe sob! -- but one can't do everything (but two might try, but how to make two of me...?).

Nowhere Boy tells the story of John Lennon's teenage years living with his aunt Mimi (Kristen Scott Thomas) while getting reacquainted with his mother (Ann-Marie Duff)who had left him at the age of five and the emotional turmoil inherent in that situation, as well as the budding musical career he got off the ground between various hooliganish larks. Initially the film's release was overshadowed by director Taylor-Wood's relationship with her much younger lead actor, Aaron Johnson -- a disparity and relationship that would raise few eyebrows if the genders were reversed. The film has a brilliant cast all around (and not too terrible with the Liverpudlian accents for the most part) and definite emotional hooks, but the script doesn't really hang together well. Despite its basis in fact, it's not always compellingly believable, but I did enjoy it on the whole. There are plenty of little tidbits for the fans, like the drawings hanging on the wall that later show up on Lennon's Walls and Bridges LP. The visual accuracy of recreating existing photos through careful wardrobe choices: a pity the same care is seldom applied to crafting the script (cf. Sid & Nancy where the "My Way" sequence mimics the video precisely, but the filmmakers can't be bothered to find out how many siblings Nancy has).

Laurie Anderson is always an interesting performer. I had seen her talk about developing this piece at MassMOCA months ago, so I was already curious to see what had come. It was a much more visual show than some of the others I'd seen in recent years, with images and words projected on the giant screen behind her, on a sofa as well as two uniquely shaped screens on either side of the stage. The show, "a meditation on life and language", ranged widely across a wide variety of subjects in a dialogue between her own voice and the "male voice" she's been using for years that now has the name of Fenway Bergamot. Many of the themes had great resonance for me particularly her thoughts on the impact of silence and her descriptions of her travels in Iceland and how they sparked revelations about her own family. She rode Icelandic ponies at Halldór Laxness' farm (I only rode them at the farm across the way) and met a man who had a brilliant idea to turn a decrepit barn into dance club. Looking around the bleak landscape, Anderson realised at last who this man reminded her of: her own father and his enthusiasm for completely impractical notions.

In one of the most moving -- and difficult -- parts of the evening, she spoke of her mother's death and her difficulty in dealing with the loss of someone she "did not love". A priest she talked to suggested that she simply say that she had always cared about her, but she never got the chance to say those words. Anderson described her mother's delusions at the end of her life, animals she could see on the ceiling, and her gratitude, thanking everyone for coming, for all they had done. It was a really naked moment. She described a dream in which she gave birth to her dog, but also caught herself out in the dream because she had engineered the experience.

There was enthusiastic applause at the end, which continued even after she had come out for another bow, and I had just thought, "well, it's not as if she could do an encore..." when she stepped out again and did just that, picking up the electric violin and stepping to the edge of the stage where we could see her without the lighting (we were in the second row) and played a plaintive tune that held the audience spellbound.

Wonderful.

Filament @ EMPAC

Thank you, thank you, thank you, Nippertown! I was planning to see some events at Filament, the weekend long fest at EMPAC, AKA the finest performing arts center in the region, but thanks to the free pass I won, I got to see a LOT. It was a gorgeous weekend -- inside and out. Cool but sunny and the big wooden ball inside the glass case looked lovely. That's the thing about EMPAC, it's aesthetically appealing but also amazingly and intricately functional. Each performance space can be endlessly rearranged to accommodate sound, lighting, screens and so on. The small studio spaces have mobile seating as well.

Things we saw: Early Morning Opera's ABACUS performance in the main concert hall, presented by Early Morning Opera, directed by Lars Jan and performed by Paul Abacus. It was inspired by R. Buckminster Fuller, he of the geodesic dome, whom I learned about from the inner sleeves of Harry Nilsson albums. The multimedia presentation, was a combination of Abacus' exhortations, video screens, music, the steadicam dancers and -- briefly -- a giant panda. It was meant to be a melding of Powerpoint business lectures, stadium church preaching and genuine appeal. Much of it worked well, although I thought the final shooting in the hallway tried too hard to connect the radical notion of a world without borders to the fates of leaders who had been assassinated for their radical views. The Q&A after was hampered by Abacus appearing in one of the studios in another performance and for me, because Jan looks disconcertingly like David Baddiel but talks Californian. We went to the installation afterward, which happened in the same space but for one person at a time. We each went in for our encounter with Dr. Hieronymus Yang, "the world's first accredited giant panda" which involved touch screen control of images projected on the six giant screens (although not all the bugs had been worked out).

By far my favourite pieces were the live shorts, which were in Studio 1 (in various configurations). Standouts included "The Golden Veil: A Cautionary Entertainment" by the National Theater of the United States of America who offered a spookily creepy, fairytale-like narrative. "Sheepspace" by Sue-C and Laetitia Sonami offered a video projection into the secret world of sheepwomen who live between the boundaries of known worlds. "Intervention #2" by Wally Cardona + Heidi Jo Newberg, professor of Physics, Applied Physics and Astronomy at RPI, featured an interview with Newberg to which Cardona creates a choreography. Items that seemed like random things strewn across the space
ended up being part of the tools by which Newberg helped students understand infinity and the vastness of space. Cardona's amazing movements created an extra layer of wonder. It's been so long since I've seen a dance performance, I had forgotten just how amazing the human body can be.

MTAA did a twitter performance called "You Don't Know What You're Talking About" which allowed the audience to tweet things that they would read. Of course I was pleased that several of my tweets got read :-) It was great to see people tweeting ways to involve the whole audience, too. Despite the short time (10 minutes) it was wonderful to see how the performance innovated. I liked the ideas behind Trouble's performance "A Narrow Vehicle" but their attempt to utilize ritual elements for a kind of spiritual performance fell a little flat because the ritual didn't go anywhere, it certainly wasn't (as they claimed) shamanistic in any way and wow, people are not observant. A lot of people just walked off the path. The ballet-centric piece "Another Circle" by Jen DeNike and Rose Kallal likewise tried to call on the power of ritual magic, but didn't quite come together. The hypnotic pirouettes of the dancer on screen and live did offer a sort of abstract meditative energy, but the assaultive soundscape undercut any meditative impulse. A real crowd-pleaser was "Amazingland in Troy EMagicPAC" by Steve Cuiffo, Trey Lyford and Geoff Sobelle, which used the practices of popular magic and showmanship.

We finished Saturday night with BalletLab's Miracle, "a triumphant onslaught of choreographic hysteria performed against repetitive mantra, movement, and hym-like voices." It was cathartic, emotional -- I think I felt exhausted just watching the dancers perform. It was remarkable how they evoked scenes of religious and social hysteria, cult behaviour and terrible emotional suffering. Near the end the sound became almost too much for me to bear (high sharp tones at high volume always bother me), but it was an arresting performance that left the audience simply limp by the end.

There was more -- installations, performances, the crowds roosting in the trees surrounding the site, lots of conversation and a gorgeous weekend of weather. I'm exhausted just typing all this and it's taken me all day to finally sit down to do it, so this will have to do for now. But if you haven't got yourself up to EMPAC, you need to do so with all due speed. Amazing and beautiful. My head is humming with ideas and inspirations -- and that's what it's all about.

Review: The Social Network

Why not spend a couple of hours with really unpleasant people? No? Well, I did so you don't have to do so. Yes, intrepid movie pal Peg and I headed over to the Spectrum, fortified by a good lunch at the Fountain. As many of you know, I am a happy user of "The Facebook" and have written about it once or twice -- or maybe a lot. So I had to see if for professional reasons.

Sigh.

There are all kinds of problems with this film; I'll get to a few of them in a moment, but let me start with the most irksome because it's a problem bigger than this picture. Sorkin's screenplay paints Zuckerberg as a pathetic misogynist whose empire is based on rejection by one woman. No, I don't have a problem with that portrayal, it looks to jibe with the facts as known. It rings a little hollow, however, coming from the same misogynist Hollywood system that cannot conceive of women as anything but sexual trophies or emotional security blankets. This is film is yet another example of the dread Movie Without Women.

Yeah, there are female actors in the film, but not a one is a character. They're just props: one to make him angry, others as trophies to demonstrate success, one to cross examine him, one to offer an emotional pat on the head. There's even a "crazy girlfriend out of left field" to ramp up the tension pointlessly -- and then immediately abandoned.

The opening scene is painful -- as intended. We need to see what a schmuck Zuckerberg is and Jesse Eisenberg makes him completely unsympathetic (while looking like Michael Cera's older cousin). But it creates problems for an audience looking for someone to connect with -- and will look in vain. The nearest we come is Andrew Garfield's Eduardo Saverin, but he becomes a character far too late in the film. Attempts to set up the Winklevoss twins as the opposition fail, too; Syracuse-grad Sorkin's loathing for the privileged Harvard elite is palpable, but ineffective (and I've dealt with the Harvard snootiness on a first hand basis while working there).

It's only with the arrival of Justin Timberlake as Napster creator Sean Parker that the film sparks a little. I admit to having never thought much of Timberlake until his stellar turn on SNL, but he did a lot with a part that was not up to much. A very flawed character, he's nonetheless compelling to watch -- and that's what's missing with Zuckerberg's character. Perhaps it's a flaw of the original model, but this ain't a documentary.

The screenplay is the biggest problem: in addition to the above problems, it also attempts to juggle two lawsuits with the unfolding historical narrative. The lawsuits however are not equal in importance, but set up as if they are. The whole Winklevoss storyline seems to focus primarily on sneering at the old money wealth and privilege (while nonetheless glamorizing it). And so clunky! As soon as Larry Summer's admin talks to the twins about how old the building is and how they need to be careful, you just count the minutes until they break something. Later, when Zuckerberg uncharacteristically asks Eduardo how his girlfriend is and he says she's acting crazy and scaring him, you count the minutes until -- shock! -- she's acting crazy for the first time.

They seem to be using Wall Street greed as a model, when that's not what this story is about; they do realise that Zuckerberg is not motivated by money, but it's clear that while they know what Facebook looks like and they know what the trajectory of the network is -- there's a pointless "dramatic" interweaving of coding at one point as if it were somehow like explaining the Dow Jones ticker -- it's clear none of the key people involved in the film have used Facebook or social media or have the slightest understanding of its significance.

I suppose this is no different than most Hollywood attempts to capitalize on a popular phenomenon. But their contempt for the public and the fact that money seems to be their only motivation blinds them to what's really going on.

To get the taste of this out of our mouths, we headed off to the Filament fest at EMPAC. Oh, how I love this space! But it will get a separate review to avoid the taint of this film. Random words to intrigue you: crows, giant panda, R. Buckminster Fuller, nations, installations, performance, studios, cheese. Intrigued? :-)

October Arrives

September was a busy blur: I'm hoping October will be more relaxed, but if this morning's madness is anything to go by, it won't be. Argh.

The first round of edits on The Mangrove Legacy have been sent off. A load off my mind; the novella "The Big Splash," Kit Marlowe's first publication is scheduled for release Monday, October 11th. Busy woman!

Of course, I have a few things to write under my own name, too. Hope to find time for that soon, although this weekend looks like it will be for filling the empty head up again because I won tickets to EMPAC's Filament Festival which ought to be really fun and exciting. It's an incredible space.

And yes, it's been raining and raining, but I find that soothing (apart from the leak that all the roof work seems not to have solved). Autumn and cool weather -- wonderful.