Mel and I like this little tiny independent theater off Broadway in San Francisco where we're now living. We've seen some great experimental films there, funny and not so funny. From where we live it's only a few blocks to walk, they only show films on weekends, and they don't charge a lot because it's not a tourist attraction, so it's not a big expense or far to go. Many of the movies we see are shorts, as is the one I discuss here.
I just have to tell you about a film we saw there. They show films from Canyon Cinema and other experimental shorts and foreign films. We haven't been to a mass-production movie theater I think since we met. It's been live theater, foreign films, experimental films, or nothing. Neither of us is fond of Doris Day.
The other Castro Street
Anyway, the film is called "Castro Street." Like the music of John Cage, it changed my life. Whereas Cage taught me to listen, Bruce Baillie, the filmmaker of this wonder and founder of Canyon Cinema, taught me how to look *and* listen together, immersing myself in my environment and watching it cinematically, listening to the music life makes (or whatever is in my head). There is music in "Castro Street," bits of Erik Satie, one of my favorite composers, often in my head.
Just in case you're wondering, "Castro Street" has nothing to do with the Castro Street neighborhood in San Francisco, famous home to differently sexed people whose lifestyle is still not legal and still excoriated. This Castro Street is one in Richmond, home to oil refineries and railroads.
Another still from "Castro Street"
Musique Concrete means "Found Sound"
That is what we see and hear in "Castro Street," trains and industrial facilities, but not as in a documentary. There is no narrative, no story, no voices at all, not even anything to hang a story on. Even Canyon Cinema member Stan Brakhage's 1959 film "Window, Water, Baby, Moving," at least has a birth as a bit of a narrative. This particular thing is happening. Whereas, with Baillie, nothing is happening, or, as Cage said in his "Lecture on Nothing," "I have nothing to say (pause) and I am saying it." I like nothing.
It's only 10 minutes. See if you can find "Castro Street" and watch, listen to it. How many stars for this movie? All there are. There's a new one of Baillie's out, "All My Life," and the Ella Fitzgerald soundtrack is fine, but the visuals stand alone without it.
Bruce Baillie
"24 realities per second"
About another one of his films made this year, the 2-minute "Still, Life," Baillie is reported to have written to Brakhage, "The film manages, I think, to suggest how light itself is movement, how color is movement, and how the combined play of light and color reveal that this tableau represents not only a single reality but 24 realities per second. Being is seen as transitory; everything is in the infinite process of becoming." Yes. Oh, yes.
Live long, Bruce Baillie. I'm sure you have a lot more films in you.
Last time I visited this journal, I mentioned Pacifica Radio and how their broadcast of stories from Vietnam via the Christian Science Monitor is influencing my thinking on Vietnam. But KPFA and KPFB aren't the only public radio stations, and others contribute (read "sell") content to them. I'm thinking particularly of that non-mainstream star Bob Fass, of WBAI (New York).
Bob Fass in the WBAI Studio, New York City
I can't get no "useless information"
I do love surprises–intellectual ones, not generally practical jokes. And Fass is full of jokes and japes and surprises. He's the kind of guy who would invite John Cage onto his show and play Cage's "Silence" (4'33") despite the rules against silence on the radio.It's no wonder his show is called "Radio Unnameable," although I had to look up the label, because I just turn on the radio and I guess it's lucky that I tend to turn it on when he's holding forth. Of course, the show is 5 hours long, emanates from the East Coast, and must be time-shifted, because he starts with "Good morning, cabal" at midnight in New York. So, for anyone tuning in from San Francisco after dinner, as I do, it's just there in the evenings weekdays starting at 9. (I miss him when he's off weekends.)
Fass with SNCC member, Abbie Hoffman
"Satisfaction"
What does he do with those 5 hours? Miracles. I think he would get LBJ on if he could. As it is, he satisfies himself with guests such as Abbie Hoffman, Paul Krassner, Richie Havens, Arlo Guthrie, Joni Mitchell, Allen Ginsberg, Frank Zappa, Country Joe, and many more, as well as random people who call in, sometimes more than one caller at once. Isn't that The Fugs playing right now as I write this? It doesn't matter how long or how short you make your song, you can sing it on his show. Someone you know having a bad acid trip? Call his show and he'll put on a psychiatrist to help you get through it unharmed (don't go outside unless you have a short walk to get help!)
FM Radio at Its Best
"He Can't Be a Man"?
Did I forget to mention that we're talking FM radio here? I recently went into a store to buy a new radio when my old one bit the dust. The salesperson who sprang upon me while I was innocently browsing among the machines wanted to sell me an AM/FM radio. I said no, that I intend to never move out of the range of an FM radio station. (And I almost never listen to AM radio.) Of course, like all the best laid plans of mice and men, who knows what will happen. For now, Mel and I are eating the occasional bit of shark meat on our hibachi that we put outside on our tiny porch, with some vegetables & rice cooked inside on the stove where he sometimes has to warm up his head when his pseudomigraines start. And going to see Carol Doda on Broadway, the occasional experimental movie, play and so on. There is so very much to do here in SF besides radio! But yes, I can get "Satisfaction," on the radio and elsewhere.
Speaking of radio, Bob Fass would be right at home at KGJ, our radio revolution!
I will never forget that afternoon when I first saw Lawrence Ferlinghetti.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
It might have been a weekend, but I spent many evenings after work in North Beach, either going to see The Committee (improv) at 622 Broadway, a movie at an independent moviehouse, or volunteer at the Playhouse theater. So I would often pass his bookstore, walking from my apartment (now at Army and 25th) or taking the cable car. It was still light, in any case. He was surrounded by a crowd, but I had a height advantage from the lay of the land at the off-grid intersection of Columbus and Broadway, and he could see me and I him. It seemed to me that our eyes locked and my world changed. (Cue romantic music.)
Cary Grant, Deborah Kerr in "Affair to Remember"
But not for long. (Music stops abruptly with the sound of a needle scratching a record.) He went off with some people and that was that. End of story. My affair to remember (thank you very much, Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr, but no thanks) was with the bookstore and not with the poet. (In any case, I'm now seeing someone, and we're moving in together.)
As for the books, I should admit that I was a virgin when it came to political bookstores. This was my very first time coming into contact with leftist publications and ideas beyond Ramparts Magazine and Stop-the-War demonstrations. That was only foreplay to the heavy breathing of anarchism and leftward utopianism, and the airy sparkle (or existential wail) of life among the poets.
One of Ferlinghetti's books from City Lights Publishers
This is particularly heavy for me since I'm currently working for a band of lawyers who are creating this type of bank card like the Diner's Club or gasoline or department store cards. (They call it "MasterCard," including Crocker Bank.) I am learning far too much about both how lawyers operate (meetings for which I type minutes but that never happened) and how Xerox machines work (some days I'm just all over black plastic dust that doesn't come off easily–one has to stir the stuff occasionally, you see) and how the frequent repairmen do too.
I'm not entirely sure which is the real me, the junior legal secretary or the beatnik-in-waiting. But I'm pretty sure it's the beatnik; like the Zen koan of the man dreaming he's a butterfly vs. the butterfly dreaming he's a man, I think I'm the butterfly.
So walking into that bookstore is an experience both warm and scary, both imaginary and real, the lights glinting off the windows, the chairs all occupied before I get there, the discussions I hear, and the erotic feel of the books themselves. I've learned it's the only all-paperback bookstore, that City Lights became a publisher 2 years after Ferlinghetti opened the bookstore, and that (with the help of the ACLU) Ferlinghetti beat a rap after publishing Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" for the first time ("obscenity"–when even I know it's the government that's the obscenity). (Oops, sorry, did I just violate a norm? It must be the butterfly fluttering inside me.)
The "obscene" book
My affair will only end (and maybe only temporarily?) when I leave San Francisco. I keep coming back to California: born in LA, move to Tucson, move to San Francisco. What's next? Only time will tell.
I digress. I love North Beach. I wander around there every weekend. I think my new boyfriend and I will settle here for a spell close by. And then maybe I can spend even more time wandering from the Spaghetti Factory to City Lights to the Playhouse to The Committee and beyond.
The "obscene" bookstore
In the meantime, I sometimes take the cable car (and/or I walk) to City Lights. After seeing that there was no pressure to buy (an important part of the experience, given my still impecunious state), I take advantage of what appears to be a policy that no one bothers people who read the books or even the magazines. They also have great bulletin boards with notices of readings, concerts, plays, everything that's Going On. The more people inside the windows in the brightly lit store, reading, the more come in from outside–and maybe buy something. I don't buy very much at City Lights, but I am becoming familiar with a lot of titles, a lot of poetry, and a lot of polemics, politics, Asian and Indian religions, new ideas.
As I caress the new ideas, and they sweet-talk me, I still find an analytical spirit within me that doubts that their ideas of the future are any more valid than other promises I've heard. I resist the temptation to embrace them fully, even though I am also pushed into the arms of the left by Pacifica Radio (KPFA/KPFB with studios in SF & Berkeley) and its reports from the Vietnam front sent by intrepid reporters from the Christian Science Monitor who manage to elude the US government and find out what's really happening there. I try to be clear-eyed about what I swallow, but sometimes it's not so easy to avoid becoming emotional about the fate of the human species.
And then there's my new boy friend. Mel is an insurance inspector (steam boiler) who has spent much of his life at sea, a graduate of the Merchant Marine Academy. While having a girl in every port, he became seriously leftist and went to meetings of the Communist Party at one time. (He finally rejected the Party as being too reactionary.) We have both decided, I think, that the only hopeful politics are radical, but nonviolent and seriously sexual.
Sometimes I feel like the City Lights logo
We met because he is a sometime actor and poet who wants to make films. So do I, and we met in such a group–but I want to write for them. In the group we met a filmmaker who only lacked a camera. Marks that we were, we bought him a camera, believing that we would be working together. Guess who absconded with the camera–it wasn't us. So we bonded over the loss and resolved to be less gullible. But we still believe in each other and try not to believe everything we read or hear (or everyone who asks for money).
So Mel has had to put up with my affair with the bookstore–after all, we aren't married (yet). He reads, but he's not in love with print as I am. Meanwhile, please excuse me while I get back to my copy of The Berkeley Barb, for which I occasionally write.
[Six years ago, Daniel Keyes made science fiction history with his revolutionary novelette, Flowers for Algernon. The very height of his triumph was the author's undoing; though he has produced several stories since then, none have had the impact as that first great piece. It was perhaps inevitable that he would revisit the well in pursuit of the success that eluded him. Vicki Lucas, a relatively nufan who had not previously encountered Keyes' work, gives her take on the novelization of the original story.]
current edition of Flowers for Algernon
Try as I might, I have great difficulty thinking of this novel as a science-fiction story. It could be conceived of as a psychological thriller, but no one dies except a mouse. It is deeply psychological and delves as far into the brain as anyone can get right now, accepting Freudian analysis as routine, while it is Jung's "individuation" that the main character, Charlie Gordon, seeks without a guide except for his reading.
Epistolary writing rare in science fiction
As far as I can tell from the short biography I was able to get hold of the author's background is steeped in science fiction, horror, and comic-book-hero writing and editing for publishers. Keyes writes in a style unusual in science fiction but more well known in the horror genre, in which the narrative unfolds in a series of letters ("epistles") or reports. His knowledge and expertise in styles may be why he teaches creative writing at Wayne State University now. The epistolary style is perfect for this story, in which so much of the action takes place in Charlie's brain.
Sometimes the brain is a maze
The Experimental as Science Fiction
The reports are "Progress reports" from Charlie, who begins with an IQ of 68, seeks knowledge beginning with reading and writing, and early in the novel undergoes experimental surgery that rapidly increases his IQ to 185. In the 7 months from his surgery to, well, the ultimate failure of the experiment, he traverses a lifetime of knowledge, emotional turmoil, and sexual longing and finally fulfillment (which is why the book is banned in places). The theory and practice of the experiment of which he becomes a part is currently science fiction, although who knows what the future of biochemistry and neurosurgery will bring?
"Pulling a Charlie Gordon"
Charlie struggles with his anger, his longing, his need to be respected, and his lack of discipline that inevitably get in the way of his accomplishing what he finally wishes he had been able to do. His anger is the biggest hurdle, and he never conquers it, despite the therapy in which he participates. At first he is angry because a mouse who has also undergone the surgery, Algernon, beats him at solving a maze. Then he is angry because he does not like the way Algernon is treated and eventually absconds with him. And the list goes on, as he executes a more intelligent version of what the men who worked with him called "pulling a Charlie Gordon," in which he makes a fool of himself. It is the treatment of Charlie by his mother, little sister, other children, people he thought were his friends, and quacks who flim-flam his mother that has earned his anger. And I really can't blame him. Much of the novel details the kind of thing that happens to "morons," who are perceived as less than human and locked away, often in institutions. Late in the book we go along as he tours such an institution, and it is treated sympathetically, with recognition of those who devote their lives to people rejected and ill-used by society. Again and again he is faced by the need to stop being selfish and focus on others, but his emotional maturation cannot keep pace with his too-rapidly growing intelligence quotient.
Algernon at his most intelligent
From "Exceptional" to "Exceptional"
In an early progress report after his intelligence begins to increase, Charlie complains that, "Before, they had laughed at me, despising me for my ignorance and dullness. Now, they hated me for my knowledge and understanding." As he nears the peak of his intelligence, he has spiritual experiences that he describes with elegance: "It's as if all the things I've learned have fused into a crystal universe spinning before me, so that I can see all the facets of it reflected in gorgeous bursts of light," so that Charlie is "living at a peak of clarity and beauty I never knew existed." Unfortunately, these experiences are brief and he cannot learn from them any more than he can quell his anger to prolong a love affair that brings him great joy for a short time.
A Rorschach card
The climb is too quick after 33 years of persecution and pain. The fall, like the falls of all those who seek to climb too high in dramatic terms, is swift and complete. I recommend this book, no matter its genre, and hope that anyone who reads it finds him- or herself touched by the plight of both those who are "exceptional" on the low end and those "exceptional" on the high end.
It was a date. This guy wanted someone to go with him to a Panavision premiere of the latest Bond movie. I should not have complained so much; I should have been grateful that he paid for the movie. But every time the music came back on it singed my eardrums. I had to stick my fingers in my ears since I had not thought to bring earplugs. Next time–if I ever see another Bond film, which I hope I won't have to–I'll bring earplugs.
Shaken, Not Stirred
I know, I know, Sean Connery. He has made his name in these Bond movies. Can't say I understand why. I don't find him at all attractive, and his character's behavior toward women is disgusting. Yes, he rescues some, but he is perfectly capable of rape. In one scene in the movie he threatens a woman with exposure of a secret and exacts his blackmail in a steam room in which all you can see is her hands against the steamy glass. Frankly, I have difficulty telling the women apart in the film–they are all willowy, small, and mostly helpless.
Sharks Win
…although one of the murders (of which there are probably one per minute if you average the whole movie and count the battle at the end) is committed by the woman with whom he is rescued by a military airplane, to revenge her brother's death. Oh, good. Murder leads to murder. It should be said that there is one suicide. And is it murder if a shark eats someone? (I would say not for the shark.)
[The Villain's Villa in the Bahamas–Not Really]
Blood in the Water
I read somewhere that nearly a third of this movie was filmed underwater. The shark mentioned above? It was supposed to be at the estate shown above, but there was a real shark pool kept for filming, and Connery is said to have narrowly escaped being eaten by a shark himself.
Plot and Theme
It is a movie filled with the most murderous, discourteous, illegal, nonsensical, trivially violent and nasty behaviors that I've ever seen before in one place. Car chases, explosions, myriad guns. Not my thing. These movies are probably a young teenage boy's dream: lots of sexy women, fast cars, and fighting (successfully). As for plot, here it is: a Russian (global) villainous group steals 2 atom bombs and threatens the US & UK with them for ransom. Apparently "Thunderball" is the name of a UK national lottery, and Bond "won the lottery" when he discovered the location of the bombs and helped the military prevent their use. Ah, the good governments triumph yet again!
[Sean Connery with his rocket pack]
Summary and Fish
I'm sorry to tell you that this is a very violent film, and between the sexual assaults (by Bond) and torture (by the villain), the puerile remarks from Bond that are supposed to be funny, and the number of murders per minute (at least one), oh! and the music and sounds of a parade that were deafening as well, I cannot recommend this movie. On a scale of 10? I'd give it a 3. (There are some lovely fish and other animals in some of the underwater scenes.)
Time travel is a staple in science fiction. If the nearest planet isn't far enough, try a few hundred years ago, or a few thousand. I recently viewed a performance of Molière's play, "A Doctor in Spite of Himself," and while it does not feature time travel, for me a work of art from another era always requires time travel to appreciate it.
However, to get to the time to which I just traveled–the late Baroque era in Europe–travel in space was important in several ways. First, I had to travel from my home in San Francisco to Saratoga, an exotic kingdom nearly 50 miles south, southwest of San Jose. The object of going there was a play at the renowned Paul Masson Winery, sponsoring "Music at the Vineyards" for the summer, in particular last Sunday the 29th, for the matinee performance. I don't have the kind of money to either buy a ticket for the performances at the Winery, or to buy gasoline to feed my old Dodge car that is parked on the street most of the time, so arrangements were necessary. Travel in time for the travel in space was about an hour each way.
Processed By eBay with ImageMagick, z1.1.0. ||B2
The second type of space travel was the travel in the play I went to see itself. In "A Doctor in Spite of Himself," the French actor and playwright known as Molière takes us to "the countryside" of France. This travel engaged mental faculties only, no gasoline necessary. The transition was made easier by the presence of the Woodwind Arts Quintet of Los Angeles, who had had to do some traveling themselves to get to Saratoga and set up no later than 3:30 pm. Focusing on the late Baroque period in France, when the play was written, the music was mostly by Jean Philippe Rameau, with a little help from Francois Couperin and Christoph W. Gluck. (The originals were heavy on harpsichord, not a feature of wind quintets, so some arrangement was necessary and mentioned in the program, below.)
Program for "The Doctor in Spite of Himself"
The third type of space travel is entangled in time travel in that understanding the late Baroque period requires some adjustment in attitude. In thinking about the play I realized why space and time were so important. Like England's Shakespeare, France's Molière was well-known in his time and changed his language forever. Unlike England's Shakespeare, Molière was condemned by the Catholic Church and shunned by the aristocracy and saw one of his now best known plays, "Tartuffe," banned. When he died, priests refused him the last rites. Molière, around 1658, as depicted by Pierre Mignard
The difference? I think it was that Molière did not, like Shakespeare, change the space or time of his plays to make it seem that he was not talking about the present or the nearby. Consider "Hamlet"; it was set in Denmark. Consider "Othello"; it was set in Italy. "Henry IV" was set nearly 200 years in the past from the year he wrote it. I am not advocating such subterfuge, I am just opining that it could save your bacon if you are criticizing a current dictator or monarch and/or his/her politics, mores, or religion, or those of the ruling classes. Molière was a favorite of the king and court, but not of the church or the ruling classes outside Paris. Fortunately, in my own space and time, we are allowed to not take Molière seriously, and, as he has his "doctor" say, "When a doctor makes a patient laugh, it’s the best sign in the world." Are we not all patients at some time or other?
Where the Goat is Tied, There It Must Graze
"The goat" is the wet-nurse Jacqueline's image of herself: tied to an ignorant and jealous husband who helps the steward Valere find a doctor who will treat his mute daughter. In my case, no one has gotten my goat, but I am tied to San Francisco. The back story here is that my arrival in Saratoga was associated with a performance by actors and a director (Kermit Sheets) who usually work at The Playhouse in San Francisco. My fortune is such at this time that not only am I a volunteer at The Playhouse, but I know Cyril Clayton, who is an amateur actor associated with the Playhouse, and who was driving anyway to Saratoga to play Valere, so I rode along. In the play, in the process of recruiting the "doctor," Sganarelle (actually "a woodcutter"), Valere and Jacqueline's husband Lucas (no relation, thanks be) beat and kidnap him. Rather a rough recruitment, no?
But this is all a result of the scheme of Sganarelle's wife Martine, whom he beat, and who wanted him to be beaten since she couldn't manage it herself. Sound a little like Punch and Judy? Molière spent 13 years with an itinerant commedia dell'arte group, and of course elements of that raucous and popular tradition are incorporated into his art. Think R. G. Davis and the San Francisco Mime Troupe.
I am not disturbed by the roughness, but I am, as usual, bothered by stereotypes of women, funny as they may be. In this case, women and men share being the objects of a cultural prejudice that it is not a good idea to intervene in fights or bullying, because both sides may turn on the do-gooder. After chasing away an interloper, along with her husband, Martine begins to figure out how to have her husband beaten. Oddly enough, she thinks the best way to do it is to make people believe he is really a wonderful doctor and might have to be beaten to admit that he is.
You may enjoy the play, and I don't want to give anything away, so I won't reveal more of the plot now. I felt very privileged to be in the beautiful surroundings of the Winery's outdoor stage, sampling the wine, and walking among well-dressed and genteel people, enjoying the music.
This performance is over, but watch for more summer fare at this venue. If you cannot find another performance of this play, remember that San Francisco, the surrounding area, and many if not most major cities are engorged with libraries. Molière's work is not hard to find in translation–even this least frequently performed of his plays.
I think, in fact, that this play is exactly what the doctor ordered if you could use some laughs.
[Dn't miss your chance to see Kris, Cora, and Katie Heffner talk about the state of fandom in 1965, right on the heels of Worldcon! Register now!]
This review is late. The performance of "The Exception and the Rule" happened on May 7, 1965, produced by Bill Graham at the Gate Theater. However, I was too stunned to write earlier. Not only did the San Francisco Mime Troupe appear in one of Bertolt Brecht's Lehrstücke or dramatic exercises, but journalist and publisher Robert Scheer was featured after intermission. Also, as you can see from the program, Pauline Oliveros of the San Francisco Tape Music Center provided the music, so that was an attraction for me.
Program for "The Exception and the Rule"
In the play, the "exception" was a "coolie" who tried to give his master a drink of water. The rule was the master's fear of his abused underling that led him to see the flask as a "stone" and believe the coolie was trying to kill him. The results were the death of the coolie, shot by his master, the absolution by a judge of the master's actions (which were underlain by his need for "self defense"), and the protest of those who saw things otherwise.
No Exceptions to the Rule of White Masters
In the Mime Troupe's version, of course, the actors wore masks (in the tradition of the commedia del' arte in which they place themselves) and updated the 1929 work by Brecht, whom they outed as a "Communist." Whereas the results could be expected, the conclusions were disturbingly thought provoking. Here are some bits of dialog I wrote down: "The police fire out of pure fear." "One must go by the rule [the master's fear], not the exception [the coolie acts on fear of his master's dying of thirst while he was dehydrated]." "Dehumanized humanity" is a description of the coolie-master relationship that creates fear on both sides. "Sick men die but strong men fight" is the war cry of social Darwinism (not invented by Darwin). "He [the coolie] can't make us believe that he'll put up with it all," therefore he is "dangerous."
Scheer Opinion
After this disturbing performance with its comments on "class" and murder, Robert Scheer gave what the program called "a morality talk" on "The U.S. War in Vietnam." Scheer is now managing editor and editor-in-chief of Ramparts Magazine, a new left voice since 1962, produced here in San Francisco. He is also their Vietnam War correspondent.
Report from the Front
So how is the war going, you ask? Badly, my friend, badly, for both sides. It's like reporting on a journey that is uphill both ways. While that is a common trajectory in San Diego, which is all mesas and canyons, it's usually thought that if a war is going badly for one side it's going well for the other. Not so this war.
Violation of Geneva Accords
Scheer points out that the Geneva Accords of 1954 that ended the French war in Indochina mandated elections within 2 years to reunite Vietnam, with the present border meant to be temporary until elections could be held. In Vietnam, though, political battles have been fought on a literal battlefield rather than via the ballot box, and the US has been obstructing holding such elections precisely because the belief among US government officials is that Ho Chi Minh would win. Scheer compares and contrasts the situation of Negros in the South, whose voting rights have been interfered with, to the "n*gg*rs" of Southeast Asia, who are not allowed to vote at all in the present conflict.
Voting Rights and Human Rights
Deeper than that political comment, Scheer calls President Johnson's "voting rights" bill window dressing, and the lack of elections in Vietnam an avoidance of obstructing what he calls the "colonial ambitions" of the US in Asia. Scheer does not share the fear of Communist takeover as a form of political suppression of democracy, defining American "democracy" as suppressive in itself. According to him, in the US "white makes right," and in Vietnam "might makes right." He makes the point that as we slowly wake up to Negro rights in the US, we should also wake up to human rights in other parts of the world, particularly now in Vietnam, where both sides are clearly losing.
Suppressed Reporting
I've been listening to National Public Radio (NPR), reporting mainly by Christian Science Monitor correspondents, since NPR has little to no foreign-correspondent budget. They actually visit American troops and talk with the leaders, and their home editorial desks do not suppress their stories. So instead of publishing the US government press releases as the mainstream press does, the Monitor and NPR report what they see to the public. Scheer's commentary is in line with what I've been hearing. In March the US began systematic bombing of North Vietnam and the so-called Ho Chi Minh Trail–the supply route from North to South Vietnam. This began with the first landing of US Marines at Da Nang. Stories of atrocities persist but are not reported by the mainstream news.
As the World Turns
In short, I think I hear the noise of the world whizzing by, but I'm usually too scared or tired to lift my head, get up, and look over the ramparts of our middle-class consciousness. The Mime Troupe always provides such a view (while being raucous and funny), but what I saw this time was uncommonly scary. If you want to take a peek over the ramparts, buy the June edition of Scheer's magazine, at newsstands in the larger urban environments.
[The current "in" thing is Op Art, the manipulation of our visual sense in the two-dimensional plane. Perhaps no artist is more representative of this movement than M. C. Escher, and no day is more appropriate for a love letter to said artist than Valentine's Day…]
by Victoria Lucas
A Fine Romance
It was simple. I walked into a room and there was this man. Well, not exactly the man himself, but there are self portraits. It was still love at first sight.
Maurits Cornelis Escher
I think I wrote about working on Battery Street in San Francisco, 633, as a matter of fact, for the capitalist taskmasters U.S. Leasing Corp. (I'm kidding–I'm not that far left. But I don't like what they do to people who can't make payments on their rented cash registers.) From that debt factory, just a 7-minute walk up (north on) Battery takes me to 1168 and a little gallery established in 1962.
The Vorpal Gallery
Named after the "vorpal" blade in Lewis Carroll's poem "Jabberwocky," Vorpal Gallery represents many artists, but I have eyes only for M. C. Escher. Well, maybe I do glance at the other artists represented–occasionally, after I've had my fill of the master after work or at lunch break. I pounce on any new work and gulp it in, forgetting about food.
Another Kind of Relativity
To introduce you to this man's work, here, for instance, is "Relativity," about which the artist wrote, "In this picture three gravitational forces operate perpendicularly to one another. Men are walking crisscross together on the floor and the stairs. Some of them, though belonging to different worlds, come very close together but can't be aware of each other's existence."
Relativity, by M. C,. Escher
Going Dutch
Born in the Netherlands, Escher became a graphic artist who made mainly lithographs, mezzotints, and woodcuts, but also carved three-dimensional objects. (See below.)
Escher's Sphere with Reptiles, from 1949
Escher's work is mathematics made visible. No formulas, just breathtaking elegance, beauty, simplicity. He works with space-filling forms, like his spheres and tessellations. He loved Italy for its landscapes and warmth, lived and worked there for many years. However, although he had no politics to speak of, he felt forced to leave Italy when, after meeting and marrying a woman in Siena, and having a son, he couldn't stand the sight of his son wearing a school-mandated fascist uniform in the 1930s. (They moved to be near his wife's family in Switzerland.)
Transforming the World
No subject is too humble or too fantastic for this man. No matter how you orient this image of a puddle, it works to reflect and refract the world.
Escher's puddle, 1952
I want to continue to see the world through his eyes. I'm not sure one lifetime is enough for that.
Find Your Own Puddle
In any case, whether you want to fall in love or not, I suggest you find a room or a book or a card with images by this Maurits Cornelis Escher who was fascinated by repeating patterns and impossible views. I've found mine.
Yes, San Francisco is known for earthquakes, and perhaps I should be more careful with that word "epicenter." However, just as earthquakes start deep underground, so did the current cultural cluster of motion in this town whose underground is decidedly showing.
Free the Muses!
That's "motion" as in "motion pictures," but also as in music, which is sound in time. Music has been locked up in conservatories and other academic institutions for far too long. Time to let it loose. And lo and behold it consorts with experimental movies and finds people with electronic talent, and you get a spectrum of separateness, with pure films at one end and pure music at the other, and in the middle a fusion.
That fusion was happening at the San Francisco Tape Music Center for years before I moved to this cultural epicenter, in the collaboration of artist Anthony Martin and the composers who work and perform at the Center. I've seen some of these remarkable pieces, although when I hear them on the live broadcasts on public radio station KPFA when I can't go, the theater pieces and light shows don't really come across. (Imagine me sticking out my tongue here.) The most exciting event this year, though, has to be the one that exploded onto the music scene on November 4, by composer Terry Riley, rendered at 321 Divisidero by fellow composer and Tape Music Center performers Steve Reich, Jon Gibson, Morton Subotnik, and Pauline Oliveros.
Composer Terry Riley
In C
Here's what SF Chronicle music critic Alfred Frankenstein wrote about Riley's shaker "In C" under the headline "Music Like None Other on Earth":
"This primitivistic music goes on and on," and "At times you feel you have never done anything all your life long but listen to this music and as if that is all there is or ever will be, but it is altogether absorbing, exciting, and moving, too."
Frankenstein captured my feelings exactly as I listened to the music. Mark my words, in half a century this will look like the most influential musical event of this time period.
Sandy but not a beach
On the other end of the spectrum, there was also a VIF (Very Important Film) that debuted in September in the U.S. and somewhat later here in The City, another culture bomb that I predict will also be analyzed nearly to death in future rounds of teaching and criticism. "Woman in the Dunes" concerns a traveling entomologist (you could call him a bug catcher) and a woman who is not allowed out of her hole in sand dunes. It was made in Japan with an interesting sound track by Tôru Takemitsu, from a book by Kôbô Abe. I have been told that the Japanese title is "Suna no onna" (sand woman).
The sand woman lying in her hut covered with sand
Said to be a "new wave" film, even though it is "foreign" it might be an Oscar magnet. The performances of the two main actors have been lauded, and the story has been given different interpretations. What I find most telling about it is that of the two main actors the man is named (Niki Jumpei) but the woman is not. If she ever had a name, it is not revealed during this story, although we know that she is a widow. She is a captive of the nearby community, who keep her in the sand pit, shoveling sand for their use and sale; when the man is captured as well, her situation does not immediately improve, although Jumpei is ultimately responsible for her escape. Go see it if you can. Is this an "underground film"? No, but it's not mainstream either; you will not find it in your neighborhood movie palace.
Avant-garde films
Most of the films made in and around San Francisco are not considered to be Oscar-worthy, but they could be called "underground films." They are made, for instance, by members of the Canyon Cinema, founded by Bruce Baillie. The experimental films made by Baillie and Bruce Conner and Stan Brakhage, and many others, are played at small venues in the Bay Area. Mostly distributed on black and white 16-mm film (with some Super-8 after Brakhage's equipment was stolen), they blur and sharpen focus, play with sound and light. Some filmmakers draw or paint on the film itself, or use color sparingly. It appears that film, too, needs to be released from the movie theater, even the ones that play foreign films like "Woman in the Dunes."
Digging deeper
To find the venues for the music and movies I am coming to love (including, by the way, the beautiful "Window Water Baby Moving" by Brakhage that still gets played from time to time), I increasingly find that I have to know someone or pick up a mimeographed flyer or see a small poster tacked up.
Scene from Brakhage's "Window Water Baby Moving"
Now that I've wormed my way to San Francisco, I seem to be digging my way further underground. Who knows how far down this rabbit hole goes!
[Don't miss your chance to get your copy of Rediscovery: Science Fiction by Women (1958-1963), some of the best science fiction of the Silver Age. If you like the Journey, you'll love this book (and you'll be helping us out, too!)
by Victoria Lucas
Life in the Big City
You'll be glad to know I've evolved a routine (haha). Weekdays: walk to 633 Battery after taking J streetcar to Market and Sansome, bus up Sansome, reading book. (I'm on Moby Dick right now.) Back same but bus goes down Battery Street to Market. Catch streetcar back to the end of Church at 30th where it turns around in front of my apartment.
Saturdays: walk to parks, sometimes all the way to North Beach. If I have any money I might drive to and shop at the Safeway at Market and 7th Street. If it's nearly Friday payday sometimes all I have left is spaghetti and margarine. Saturday nights usually a date (if it's with dinner I don't usually eat during the day). I very occasionally drive somewhere like Berkeley or San Mateo or Santa Cruz if I have money for gas and/or a show or concert. I wonder when I'm going to get a raise to a whole dollar an hour.
Sunday: mornings I pick up the Sunday Chronicle, a heavy load. I read the funnies first, then the pink section. The pink section is the entertainment section, and I eagerly devour it, looking for stuff I want to do–especially free stuff. This last weekend I found something both wonderful and free and on my usual weekend route, at the Civic Center.
A patron of the Arts
I learned they have these Arts Festivals in Civic Center Plaza in the fall. In fact, sometimes musicians play their instruments in echoing spaces under the eaves or in the lobbies of some of the Civic Center buildings, so I usually stop here on my weekend itinerary through the City.
Civic Center Plaza, San Francisco
This time the Plaza was my destination, shown here with City Hall, the building with the dome bisecting the Plaza's green areas. City Hall faces Van Ness Avenue (not visible at the bottom, a major north-south street), and the Plaza takes up two city blocks, just as City Hall does. I learned that it was the San Francisco Tape Music Center that furnished the Marantz speakers that enlivened the gathering from both ends of the Plaza. This year the Arts Festival was held on September 25 through 27. You'll notice on the program below that a misprint had September 26 as Friday, when it should have been September 25.
Friday it began with folk dancing and a "Dancer's Workshop" but at 8 pm The San Francisco Tape Music Center revved up its speakers and regaled us with contemporary music. Oh, what bliss! Then from 9-10 were experimental films, starting with Bruce Baillie. But since I was alone (and the Tenderloin is right there), I couldn't stay, so I walked to Market Street and paid my 15 cents for the J streetcar back to my apartment. As I walked away I heard the first notes of the music accompanying Baillie's "To Parsifal," and knew I wouldn't be sorry I left. I hate Wagner.
Steve Reich, with San Francisco Mime Troupe
Saturday I wasn't really interested in the folk dancing so after a leisurely breakfast and walk I arrived at the Plaza in time for the San Francisco Mime Troupe's production of Moliere's "Tartuffe," directed by R. G. Davis and with music by Steve Reich, who is sometimes featured at the Tape Music Center. Somebody told me that the Saul Landau listed in the program as responsible for "Lyrics" makes films. They cranked up those Marantzes again. Dance and poetry and dance again, and a puppet show by the Lilliputian Theater.
Lilliputian Theater puppet
Finally, at 8 pm more Tape Music Center. The Marantzes danced. Again the first film was by Bruce Baillie, and that's great, but once again I had to leave early. On Sunday more dance, more puppets, El Troupo de Mimo (as the Mime Troupe likes to call itself) performed "Tartuffe" again. I hear they performed one of my favorite plays last year; I wish I could have seen it: Jarry's Ubu Roi.
San Francisco Mime Troupe in Ubu Roi
Come on Down
After more dance the Tape Music Center was back on Sunday at 6 and only till 7, since Monday was a workday. It was still summer here, and the evenings were cool and breezes carried the smell of food cooking and being served from the carts and tents on the Plaza. People were everywhere. It was a delightful night, and I really, really hope they do this again next year–especially the Mime Troupe and the Tape Music Center. However, the Mime Troupe performs in the parks, and I'll be seeing them, and the Tape Music Center is on Divisadero right on a bus route. I'll be hearing them again soon. You should come and see them along with San Francisco's other sights. It's a happening City, and I love it!
[Come join us at Portal 55, Galactic Journey's real-time lounge! Talk about your favorite SFF, chat with the Traveler and co., relax, sit a spell…]
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