“I’m just going to read one of the things you said. You were talking about the evolution of science and then of physics in particular: ‘The deeper revelation’ of physics in our time — and it has just kept going in that way that was evolving right at the end of the 20th century — ‘The deeper revelation is one of undivided wholeness, in which the observer is not separable from what is observed. Or, in Heisenberg’s words, ‘‘The common division of the world into subject and object, inner world and outer world, body and soul is no longer adequate.”’ And then you said, ‘Is this physics or theology, science or religion? At the very least, it is poetry.’”
Krista Tippett, quoting her guest Barbara Brown Taylor, On Being, April 2, 2023
I haven’t written in a while. Right now, I’m busy cleaning my apartment in preparation for good company and being a sweat factory during the hottest days in the recorded history of the planet, and I’m finding it hard to get really excited about anything, and I don’t mean this meanly. I mean, we’re in the middle of the Sixth Mass Extinction, so if you, who are no doubt going about your business, have ever wondered whether or not people noticed the Roman Empire fall, we now know that the answer is, “Not really.”
As a result of this hyper awareness of planetary death, this morning I had this sudden vision of Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH)—the disrespectful wearer of shirt sleeves and insolent spewer of nonsense and censurer of Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA)—standing waste deep in a raging flood, screaming above the din, “Hunter Biden!” followed by “Abortion!” followed by “No gays!” followed by “What abuse?” just as the waters reach his chin; he is circled by small rafts of the last of the eager reporters, holding out their recording iPhones to catch his every word as the last iceberg melts completely as they are all dragged under, disappearing into the muddy current.
What in the actual hell is the matter with these people?
To open up my heart to hope, I wash my kitchen floor and outer cabinets, sink, fridge, stove, reminding myself to be oh so grateful for the relative ease of my life, remembering how hard I try not to turn on my air conditioning to try to offer this to the planet. As I stream rivulets down my face and body through this work-as-prayer, I listen to episodes of On Being with Krista Tippett and learn something.
We all need a go-to for grounding. It’s philosophy and theatre that center me. My theatre this week was seeing the ballet Giselle performed by American Ballet Theater (ABT) at the Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center. Too beautiful, and ballet is not the usual thing for me to see. I keep trying to expand my culture, so thanks to my friend Tom Miller for asking me to go. As for philosophy, On Being guests Barbara Brown Taylor and Ruth Wilson Gilmore were my philosopher activist humans for learning.
Other Ways of Seeing
Years ago, back in 2016, in the before times, I eagerly sought a documentary about one of my favorite writer-artist-critic-philosophers, John Berger, famous for this book and TV series Ways of Seeing. The film, made in part by and featuring Berger’s friend Tilda Swinton, was called The Seasons in Quincy. It was sort of not that good, as I recall, but surely made with love if not skill. (There is one sequence in particular that caused the audience at Film Forum in New York, where I saw it, to break into cascading “harumphs” and derisive chortles: Swinton, cutting and peeling apples for a pie, seems to be having a fluid conversation with Berger in his farmhouse kitchen in France, but each quick cut back to Swinton shows apples going from peeled to unpeeled, the bowl of slices one moment full, the next empty, then half full; continuity ain’t no joke to serious urban filmgoers.) Berger died shortly after it came out, aged 90, so it was good to have a love letter compendium of his greatest contributions to culture, and I’m not sorry I saw it. Possibly, too, were I watch it again, I would be less critical for that reason.
Sidebar about Tilda Swinton: her performance in Sally Potter’s Orlando is just a marvel. One of my favorite of Virginia Woolf’s novels, my gateway drug in fact, this is a singularly fascinating adaptation of Orlando (1928!). Gender is jazz now.
One moment in the documentary The Seasons in Quincy that stands out for me: Berger on music. The scene is odd, a contrived gathering of current, younger philosophers gathered seemingly to pay tribute to the old man (not that Berger sees it that way), Berger says that he sees salvation of the future happening through a surprising thing: “Maybe we live in a time when the truth is most easily told in song.” The others look at him, at each other (is it fair to say, with pity?), without assent, as I remember it. Well, their silence seems to say, the old man has finally lost it, still living in the ’60s.
I took from Berger’s comment something else, whatever he intended, which is that in song we find our truths, our joys and sorrows, and our collective experience most fully expressed and shared across generations and backgrounds—not that truth is easy, but that in genres from jazz to hip hop to rock, from protest ballads to power love ballads the truth of being human is most understandably told, making connection most universally possible, which is not to say most useful if changing the status quo legislatively is the aim of art. Sometimes you just need to dance it out.
I was reading and listening to blogs by Patti Smith on Substack, on poet musicians like Lou Reed—the innovator jazz artists like Coltrane, Pollack—all the theatrical forms, the rehearsed forms, forms she took part in with great collaborators. Smith—can I call her Patti?—is another philosopher artist who is helping me transition, I hope more gracefully than I might have, into old age.
Feeling the Rhythm
Look at our world now, our Earth—seasons are jazz—there’s a form we used to know, an expectation, an order, but depending on the results of the latest continued human interference, the changing weather patterns, daffodils can bloom in February. You know. The poems are changing, the dance, the music. Or they should.
The 20th Century was dedicated to the annihilation of man; the 21st Century to replacement of humans as a species. Might be good for the plants and animals.
The trouble with zoos.
And blogs.
And I wish I was a poet so I could stop writing long sentences about all this shit.
So much death and dying. Yet life, too. Promises of joy. The sweet Cochranes are coming from Scotland to stay for a couple of weeks. My friend Colleen wrote a play called Dickens Packs Her Bags, and I’m participating in the reading.
Jazz is life.
Why can’t I concentrate to read a book? (I did finish Harvey Fierstein’s memoir, I Was Better Last Night, and I’m rereading it. His life is inspiring art jazz.)
I can’t quite listen to The Velvet Underground this week for some reason, so I’m back to my Apple Music “Lisa O’s Ecclective Faves” Playlist. It’s pretty great.
Maybe I’ll reread Orlando. Right now, I’ll listen to Bruce.
I was tryin’ to find my way home
But all I heard was a drone
Bouncing off a satellite
Crushin’ the last lone American night
This is radio nowhere, is there anybody alive out there?
This is radio nowhere, is there anybody alive out there?
I was spinnin’ ’round a dead dial
Just another lost number in a file
Dancin’ down a dark hole
Just searchin’ for a world with some soul
This is radio nowhere, is there anybody alive out there?
This is radio nowhere, is there anybody alive out there?
Is there anybody alive out there?
I just want to hear some rhythm
I just want to hear some rhythm
I just want to hear some rhythm
I just want to hear some rhythm
I want a thousand guitars
I want pounding drums
I want a million different voices speaking in tongues
This is radio nowhere, is there anybody alive out there?
This is radio nowhere, is there anybody alive out there?
Is there anybody alive out there?
I was driving through the misty rain
Yeah searchin’ for a mystery train
Boppin’ through the wild blue
Tryin’ to make a connection with you
This is radio nowhere, is there anybody alive out there?
This is radio nowhere, is there anybody alive out there?
Is there anybody alive out there?
I just want to feel some rhythm
I just want to feel some rhythm
I just want to feel your rhythm
I just want to feel your rhythm
I just want to feel your rhythm
I just want to feel your rhythm
I just want to feel your rhythm
I just want to feel your rhythm
~ Bruce Springsteen, “Radio Nowhere,” from Magic
Here’s to whatever is giving you joy, purpose, meaning, love.
The Miss O' Show (Teacher's Edition) 