Yugen Grand: “Walt & El Grupo”@ MICA

I have been playing with yugen for months now.  I’ve looked at the troubled youth of Zeami Motokiyo and the bleak anime of Natsume Ono.  I’ve explored the surface beneficence of Arab moguls and the latest direction of religious studies.  Yugen is a notion both ancient and unstable.  Sometimes sublime, it can become a darkly disturbing force.  Here is one of its purest manifestations.

Terms

yugen:  an undercurrent of yearning, the aesthetic expression of the profundity of loss.

grand:  magnificent, of the highest rank

“Walt & El Grupo” (2008):  a documentary of the ten-week trip taken by Walt Disney and a group of Disney studio artists and filmmakers to five South American nations, under the auspices of the US Department of State in 1941.  Written and directed by Theodore Thomas; produced by Kuniko Okubo.

MICA:  founded in 1826, The Maryland Institute College of Art is the nation’s oldest continually functioning college of art, with a current enrollment of more than 1500 undergraduates and 200 graduate students.  Programs of study include animation and film arts.

Event

A screening of the documentary, with commentary by the filmmakers

Thursday, 23 September 2010, 7:00 p.m.

Falvey Hall, Brown Center

MICA, Baltimore, Maryland

free and open to the public

Context

Congratulating ourselves for finding on-street parking, husband Kit and I arrived early at the architectural showpiece that is the Brown Center on the campus of Maryland Institute College of Art.  A few meters from bustling West Mt. Royal Avenue, in the Cohen Plaza, members of the MICA community sat at outdoor tables, sipping beverages and talking with the intensity of artists everywhere.  A toddler and a dog provided comic relief.  The toddler fed the dog; the dog gobbled the food.  Adults intervened fitfully and futilely or stepped around the smaller beings, busy with their own performance magic.

We wandered into the Fox Building, which adjoins the Brown Center in a feat of conceptual construction.  The Decker Gallery to our left was showing a faculty exhibit.  I glanced at my watch.  Seven minutes.  Kit would take in most of the gallery; I could view one work of art.  I allowed myself to be pulled across the room and around a corner.  There it was:  “Wim Wenders,” a brooding electro-cinemagraph by Christopher Saah (MFA, 2006), Adjunct Professor of Photography.  I could spend a lifetime inhabiting that odd landscape.

Six minutes later, Kit pulled me through the Doris Cafe, where shaggy undergraduates served vegetarian specials and chilled bottles of Snapple.  On we went, through the door connecting Fox with Brown, and down the main staircase to Falvey Hall.  Descending the staircase in Brown is a lot like entering the Louvre through the glass pyramid:  overhead is all light and air, but below lies concrete possibility.

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America Ferrera and The Art Students: Now-ism v. Career Planning

The Ending of Ugly Betty

I read the celebrity gossip in the Baltimore Sun while eating lunch today.  Celebrity gossip not a guilty pleasure with me.  I never know when facts about Johnny Depp (he still likes working with Tim Burton) or Jessica Simpson (she’ll be eating fried cockroaches on her new television show) will be useful in my work with the student-clients here at Becker Academic.   Today’s headline from the world of the rich and famous is the cancellation of ABC’s Ugly Betty.

I’ll miss the show, although my viewing loyalty has lapsed.  I continue to admire America Ferrera, and I have liked knowing that she was there to amuse me on a dreary Thursday night or, in this fourth season, on a dull Friday night.  However, after ABC bumped Betty to Wednesdays, I stopped watching.  That’s Ghost Hunters night, and nothing short of a major crisis interferes with my seeing Jason, Grant and the gang.

On the subject of coming to terms with her show’s cancellation, Ferrera reportedly told somebody at Parade, “I haven’t really started going there yet because I still have four episodes to shoot.”  I read the sentence a couple times.  To understand it, I shoved aside the grilled cheese sandwich.  It hadn’t been tasting very good anyhow, since I learned about Jessica and the cockroaches.

Ferrera strikes me as a practical actor, who has chosen roles which allow her considerable talent to shine.  As the character of Carmen Lowell, she was the dramatic heavy-hitter of the 2005 Warner Brothers film, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.  For her performance in Betty, she won an Emmy, a Golden Globe and a SAG award, all in the year of 2007.  The US House of Representatives has honored Ferrera for being a role model to Hispanic youth.  In my opinion, she’s a role model for teens of all ethnicities and races.

Should I be surprised that an ambitious, accomplished young woman isn’t trying to grasp the dramatic changes that will soon confront her?  I’d like to answer in the affirmative–I think that highly of Ferrera, but honestly, I am not surprised.  Despite her intelligence and experience, Ferrera is not immune to the social pressures that are contracting the temporal horizons of all Americans.  These pressures dominate contemporary life, but nowhere are their effects felt more keenly than among youth and emerging adults.  I refer to the collective and systemic social pressures to orient oneself in the immediacy of the moment as nowism.

Ferrera can afford a momentary indulgence in nowism better than most emerging adults.  I don’t know her net worth, but it’s no secret that for her services as spokesmodel of Aquafresh White Trays, Lloyd’s of London has insured her smile for ten million dollars.  (For a celeb comparison, consider that the derriere of Jennifer Lopez is insured for 27 million dollars.)  Ferrera can be out of work awhile before she’ll need to apply for food stamps.

Commencing Life after Art School

I am less sanguine about the futures of the graduating seniors who served on a student panel last Sunday at one of our nation’s premier art institutes.  The event for prospective students had the usual opportunities to hear firsthand about the institution from its admissions officers, faculty and current undegraduates.  There were the typical tours, the information tables, the tasteful buffet (sans fried cockroaches).

Fifteen minutes after the appointed hour, four young people crossed the auditorium stage and glanced nervously at one another before sitting on the bare boards.  Two young men and the lone young woman dangled their legs off the side of the stage; the last student wrapped his arms around bent knees.  No one had bothered to provide chairs for the panelists.  Below her school t-shirt and boyfriend sweater, the woman wore a black mini-skirt and leggings.  Sitting on the stage boards in front of an audience made her uncomfortable.

“We don’t have chairs,” she said softly to the admissions counselor who joined them late.

Responding with silence, this particular admissions counselor–the third such youthful, stylish woman to appear during the open house–dragged a stool from the podium to center stage.  She wriggled her white pencil skirt onto the stool and smiled down at the students.  Shaking shoulder-length copper hair in a self-consciously sexy way, she stared out at a vacant seat in the dark auditorium and identified herself and her position. She then asked the student panelists to state their names, years in the program and major fields of study.  They obliged; I will preserve their anonymity.

Unbeknownst to them, the three seniors and one sophomore on the panel may have been chosen for demographic traits instead of artistic accomplishments.  Along with her gender, the young woman represented the Asian-American student population.  Dressed in black, the man sitting cross-legged on the stage boards was a Chicano from Los Angeles.  He, too, was doing double demographic duty:  for ethnicity and regional diversity.  Obligingly wearing college t-shirts like the co-ed, the other two men were non-Hispanic Caucasians.  The older had the inflections and mannerisms stereotypical of young gays.  His presentation of self lent an institutional air of alliance with GLBT individuals.  The sophomore panelist was the token “majority” student:  white, male, presumably heterosexual.  He reminded me of a young Jack Black–talented, funny, and far more inclined to take on the world than to worry about his appearance.

After the formalities, the admissions officer brushed a handful of henna hair over her right shoulder and returned her gaze to the same vacant seat.  In her last official gesture of day, she posed a question to the room.

“Now that you know who they are, what do you want to ask them?”

This was not what I had been expecting from a student panel, but it was a grand opportunity to ask the three seniors about their plans after graduation.  Because the month was (and is) February, I did not expect job offers to have been made and accepted.  I was looking for a sense of practical direction to the students’ lives after art school.  I was hoping that these promising young artists were managing to beat the odds of succumbing to nowism.  Given the power of the present moment upon the youth of this nation, the panelists would need considerable guidance.

The seniors spoke with confidence about their futures.  The first, the fine artist in the trio, planned to work in a major museum until succeeding as a painter.  This student had not yet submitted resumes to non-profit art organizations.  The second, an illustrator, planned to relocate to New York, pick up freelance work and eventually attend a graduate program.  The middle student had made no professional contacts in the world’s most competitive commercial art market.  The third, a video documentarian, planned to continue working on the senior project after graduation, sustained by grant monies for travel, production costs and living expenses.  The last student had not begun to investigate granting sources.

Commencement at the art institute was three months away, longer than Ferrera has until her show winds down, but not time to initiate a launch into independent living.  If they’re fortunate, the parents of the artist, the illustrator and the videographer will allow them to move back into their childhood bedrooms, rent free.  If not, well…I suppose there are still a few job openings for restaurant servers and taxi drivers even in a bad economy.

I was not the only mature adult in the audience to be disturbed by the pronouncements of plans that ranged from unlikely to unrealistic.  A middle-aged man followed up with a question about career counseling services at the art institute.  His question went straight to the heart of the matter of student preparedness for life after college.  I turned in my seat identify the interlocutor.

Indeed, the art institute offered career counseling.  The aspiring curator cum famous artist described the friendliness of a career counselor.  Whether there was more than one such staffer remained unclear.  This career counselor–no doubt attractive and fashion-forward like her colleagues in admissions–knew the senior artist by name.  The two often greeted one another with small talk and smiles in the hallway.  The illustrator and the videographer concurred on the pleasantness of this career counselor.

The man who posed the question raised his eyebrows and met my glance across a row of empty seats.  We understood the thoughts of each other.  An Aquafresh white smile and a sunny disposition were not crucial factors in career planning.  For our money, competent job performance trumped social niceties.  There was, however, nothing to be gained from telling the articulate seniors that their undergraduate institution was failing them.

Here’s my tip for the week.  Unless your monetary assets match those of America Ferrera,  scrutinize the resources at the career counseling office of each college on your list of candidate institutions.  You’ll need more than competence in your area of undergraduate study and a ten million dollar smile to prepare for emerging adulthood.

And, as my last advice of the day, skip the fried cockroaches,

dkb

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Children @ Play, Part III: Bach and the Kids

In the days between posts in this series, Halloween Frank and his Green Lady have been carted to the landfill for their eternal repose. In my mind’s eye, I see Great-uncle Auggie shaking his head at my wastefulness. The Thanksgiving weekend and my banjo-playing Texan nephew, Barry, have come and gone. On Saturday after Spanikopita Day–as we refer to the celebration in our vegetarian household–Barry, husband Kit, and I went downtown to the landmark Zion Church for the annual Christkindlmarkt. We drank Gluhwein mit Schnapps in the sunny courtyard, loaded up on Hannover stollen and enjoyed the brass band playing holiday favorites in the loft of the Aldersaal.

I’d like to believe that my great-uncle would have approved, but I can’t recall him drinking mulled wine–with or without cherry brandy. The thousands of boxes of imported candies and baked goods spilling across the upper floor of the Aldersaal would have offended his sense of proper proportion. The band, however, would have struck a chord. Auggie would have loved the band.

Auggie knew his German music and his Lutheran composers. He knew Schutz from Schein. He sniffed at the tainted commercialism of the gadabout, Handel. He had a passion for Praetorius. Above all, in Auggie’s esteem, stood J.S. Bach. The works of Bach were his divine inspiration, and over the years they have become mine.

THE SILVERMAN YOUNG ARTISTS

There was no Bach this past Saturday, but I did think of my great-uncle the last time I heard a fugue. That was back in summer, and the piece was Fugue and Prelude in B-flat Minor, from The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 1 (1722). It was performed at Hood College, in Frederick, Maryland. The date was July sixteenth, the Thursday evening before the Baltimore County 4-H Fair and Otakon 2009. The occasion was the annual concert of The Sidney Silverman Young Artists. This year’s young artists were David Conway, Justin Furnia and Jeremy Rosenberg.

A rising junior at Hood, Furnia opened with the sublime Bach. I could have spent the evening in the eighteenth century, but Furnia jumped into the nineteenth via the Chopin barcarolle and Liszt’s sixth Hungarian rhapsody, the one in D-flat major. His selections were canonical, and his playing had an uncommon purity. The young man’s slender build, precision and preference for the left hand reminded me of Luke Gillespie at that age. Gillespie is on the faculty of The Jacobs School of Music, Indiana University; he’s an accomplished performer of jazz and classical piano. Youngest of the 2009 Silverman pianists, Furnia is on the path to an equally rewarding career.

The second young artist, Conway, reminded me of no one. He is a sui generus kind of guy. A Hood alumnus (2008) who double majored in music and computer science, he pursues classical composition and performance. Before playing two original works, he favored us with a couple Kapustin etudes, the Prelude and Toccatina from 1984. Kapustin writes quirky contemporary classical music. Conway is crafting his own distinctive sound, encoding jazz idioms and rock riffs within classical structures. There are moments of brilliance here, along with a bravura that could be worked into Hollywood movie magic, should Conway wish to go down that road.

After intermission, it was Rosenberg’s turn. This rising senior at The Boston Conservatory reminded me of another established pianist and composer. That man is Keith Jarrett, who needs no introduction for listeners of jazz or classical. More than technique, the resemblance was one of personal style in the concert hall. Rosenberg gave a muscular interpretation of Chopin’s Fantasy in F-minor, Op. 49. He followed with another muscular interpretation of another fantasy–de Falla’s Fantasia Betica.

The de Falla had the heft to match Rosenburg’s fingering, but the work may have been chosen on other grounds. I later learned that the Andalusian composer had dedicated Betica (1919) to the piano virtuoso Arthur Rubinstein, whom he met in Spain during the First World War. Rubinstein was the great-great-uncle of Rosenburg, on his father’s side. With his parents and paternal grandparents in the audience of the Hodson Theater, the performance became an insider’s tribute to family history.

The evening ended on a blustery note, with five brief works by Rachmaninoff. In round-robin pairs, the artists performed three of Six Pieces for Piano Duet. They then elbowed one another through two selections for piano, six hands. Few are the pieces for one piano and three pianists. If the reason for this scarcity was in doubt, the Hood performance clarified the matter. I imagined Great-uncle Auggie up there in a child’s heaven, stubbing out his cigar on a cloud in a fit of pique.

Other than this blogger, no one actually present seemed to mind the Rachmaninoff folly. Afterwards, the performers took their bows, as the audience of family, college friends and Silverman supporters applauded pridefully. Noel Lester joined the young men on stage to more hearty appreciation. For non-cognoscenti, Lester is the faculty member who coordinates the annual festival and mentors the young artists. He radiated intelligence and unflagging good humor on that sultry summer evening.

PRO MUSICA RARA @ THE WALTERS

The last time my banjo-playing nephew came to town was in late May. We attended a matinee of Biber’s Mystery Sonatas (1676), performed by Pro Musica Rara at the Walters Art Museum. The Biber was part of the grand finale for the exhibit of the St. John’s Bible. The group bills itself as “Baltimore’s premier early music ensemble,” and I’ve never known anyone to quibble with the billing.

Pro Musica Rara is permanently based at Towson University, as artists-in-residence of the Center for the Arts. (Kudos to Towson!) The ensemble is ably led by artistic director and cellist Allen Whear. Whear was one of three performers at the Walters on May twenty-fourth. The featured soloist was Cynthia Roberts (violin), and Yale University’s Avi Stein (harpsichord) was the accomplished guest artist.

I had only a passing familiarity with Heinrich Biber (1644–1704). His works were not part of my great-uncle’s legacy. Auggie was an upright German-American Lutheran, and his church defined his musical tastes. Recordings of the Bohemian-Austrian Catholic were not played on the gramophone by the horsehair sofa in his parlor. It’s a pity that Auggie didn’t live to appreciate the majesties of our ecumenical age.

The heart of the Mystery Sonatas is the stunning passacalgia for solo violin, and Robert’s interpretation was breathtaking. During her solo, everything fell away from me in the narrow hall known as the Jacob and Muriel Blaustein Gallery of Italian sixteenth century art. The gilt-framed masterpieces on dark velvet walls, the men of my family seated beside me, the performers themselves dissolved in a meditation of sublime sound. Applause and shouts of “Brava,” brought me back.

I took note of the hundred people in the gallery. There was a sprinkling of the curious and a double handful of museum elite, but the majority were serious musicians. Many, no doubt, came from the other side of Mount Vernon Place, from The Peabody Institute of Music of The Johns Hopkins University.

The longer I watched the men and women around me watching Whear, Stein and especially Roberts, the clearer it became that these folks knew Biber inside out. I could see them anticipating each note, each chord. With every masterful fingering of string or key, I could feel their immense satisfaction. Emphatically, the collective response of the musicians in the audience was satisfaction. It was the satisfaction an insider derives from a peer’s accomplishments, when they redound to all within the sphere of knowledge. A sense of professional satisfaction is immeasurably far from the uncritical pleasure I took in the passacalgia. It is equally remote from the aura of familial pride pervasive among the audience of The Sidney Silverman Young Artists.

On our way out the door, nephew Barry turned and said with a grin, “You don’t hear that down at Emo’s Austin, Ltd!”

cheers,
dkb

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Children @ Play, Part II: The Family Sleigh, Zenki and Other Magical Things

This past July marked the fortieth anniversary of the moon landing. My Great-uncle Auggie didn’t lived to watch Armstrong and Aldrin make their famous moonwalk, but had he been with us, he would have been slow to comment. Auggie was a “wait and see” man. He was the sort who said, “Let’s wait and see if the horseless carriage amounts to anything.” When it did, Auggie bought his first automobile. More cars and trucks, too, followed with the decades, but my great-uncle never trusted his vehicles to run properly during Wisconsin winters. He kept the old sleigh ready and waiting in the stable. How magical was that sleigh in my childhood!

Every so often, I regret not having been able to tell Auggie about my first adventures in Japan, five years after the lunar landing. We never had a chance to speak about my homestay family. I never got to tell him about Megumi, my o-imoto-san (little sister), or about the cartoons that she and I watched before dinner on week nights.

Actually, Megumi and I didn’t watch cartoons as much as interact in response to them. We giggled nervously until Majingā Zetto finally triumphed over the forces of evil (for that episode). We cheered when Luna (no relation to Sailor Moon’s cat) helped Tetsuya repel the latest invading space monster. The marvels of Japanese animation became a vehicle for integrating into my host family, and into a strange society.

With her vast five-year old vocabulary, Megumi taught me many words and more than a bit about her culture. As it has been for subsequent generations of young Americans with a passion for Japan, the magic of anime was accessible to me when other avenues were closed. Great-uncle Auggie would have approved. A native speaker of German who taught school in English, he would have relished my learning a second language from mechas like Mazinger Z and cyborgs such as Casshan.

When I was struggling to memorize those barbarous katakana, I had no idea that anime were as new to my homestay sister as to me. Japanese popular culture of the 1970s was a wave that engulfed me. Struggling to swim rather than sink, I had neither the opportunity nor inclination to explore its history. Although I adored anime, I didn’t stop to ponder whether J-Pop would someday swell into a tsunami and inundate the US marketplace.

Like Auggie buying motor cars but keeping the trustworthy sleigh, I’ve adopted a pragmatic approach to the japanization of America. In the 1980s, I reluctantly abandoned the notion of conducting doctoral research on the social-psychological significance of Hello Kitty. In the 1990’s, I avoided saccharine Sailor Moon, despite the path-breaking yuri between Haruka and Michiru. In those years I preferred working out to videos of Zenki, possibly, the most undervalued anime of all time. Since the millennium, I’ve been loyally reading Nana, the best-selling shojo manga by Yazawa Ai. I’ve also been observing the attraction of J-Pop for the teen clients who come to Becker Academic for assistance with college selection.

CON AND CORP

On the Saturday in July before the 4-H fair, I took my interest in anime and manga to the next level. I convinced my husband, Kit, to accompany me downtown to the Convention Center for the fifteenth annual Otakon. The word Otakon is a clever contraction of the Japanese slang, otaku, an avid fan, and convention. Why Baltimore is home to America’s second largest gathering of East Asian pop culture fanatics is more a matter of happenstance than design.

However, the conference has become big business for the city. Last year, for example, 26,262 Otaku booked over 4,500 hotel rooms and contributed more than $27 million to the local economy. Attendance this summer exceeded last by 88 dues-paying members, so it’s safe to assume a continuing if flattening impact.

Otakon isn’t only an entertaining enterprise; it is also the annual meeting of Otakorp, Inc., a Pennsylvania-based non-profit organization. Unlike professional groups such as the Association of Asian Studies, which have non-member rates for annual meetings, it is necessary to join Otakorp in order to attend the conference. Kit and I joined at the door for an eye-popping $65.00 apiece, but better planners can save ten dollars by signing up early online.

The stated aim of Otakorp, Inc. is to use “Asian popular culture to increase understanding of Asian culture.” The synecdoche was probably lost on the average Otaku–the official member as distinct from the lower-case “otaku,” the fan who may or may not join up. From what I could glean, most youthful Otaku just wanted to attend a few workshops, watch anime, listen to the live music, take in the fan art and enjoy their cosplay (costumed role play).

Because we didn’t have three days to devote to Otakon and, frankly, because we are decades older than the target demographic, Kit and I only sampled the activities. We arrived after the Saturday morning game show, and we left before the evening masquerade. We didn’t dress in costume. (I considered going as Grandma Saki but knew that Kit would never agree to appear as Abbot Jukai.) By not booking a room at the adjoining Hilton, we missed the after-party scene. More geezer than geek, we opted out of the most festive of festivities. Our choices, no doubt, colored our impressions of the con.

We were left with panels, workshops, and anime screenings. Our other activities included standing in long lines for over-priced food, browsing the booths of artist/vendors and watching people wander the hallways, escalators and other public spaces. Keeping track of events was as easy as looking at the digital activities board. This was fortunate, because the font size of the pocket guide was indecipherable by middle-aged eyes.

PANELS GALORE

Later, when I could read the pocket guide, I was impressed. The number of panels was daunting–more than 150 from Friday morning until Sunday noon. Their variety was astonishing. To take examples with “anime” in the title, offerings ranged from the silly (“Anime’s Craziest Deaths”) to the serious (“Anime Lost in Translation”) and the outright studious (“Anime and Manga Studies”). There were panels to acculturate the neophyte (“Cover Your Bases” summarizing key anime) and to inspire the insolvent (“Cosplay Solutions for Any Budget”).

Aspiring artists could learn to create digital comics, make anime at home, build gundam models, compose manga or write fan fiction. Hard core otaku (lower case) could discuss their favorite series with others who shared their passion, be that for Evangelion, Negima or Full Metal Alchemist. (Alas, no Zenki.) For ordinary guys, there were panels on Japanese role play games (JRPG); for extraordinary girls, there were fashion tips on becoming American Lolitas.

The con organizers took seriously their mission to promote understanding of other aspects of Asian culture. A couple panels discussed Japanese music. (I hope they mentioned Sawada Kenji.) One panel covered the traditional board game, go. Another introduced the making of oishii (yummy) snacks.

In the realms of anime and manga fandom, facility in Japanese language seems to confer a singular cachet. The linguistic aspirant could choose between panels of the real (“Maryland Japanese and English Language Club”) and the virtual (“Intro to Learning Japanese for Otaku” emphasized online resources). Neither option conveyed the systematic drudgery that I escaped by watching cartoons with my homestay sister, but Otakon isn’t really about second language acquisition.

The prevailing dilettante cum ninja fantasy was nowhere more evident than in the sessions for surviving Tokyo. With titles like “Gaijin in Japan: A Real Taste of Tokyo,” “Budget Tokyo Travel,” and “Host Club Culture in Japan,” they approximated live-action Lonely Planet Guides geared to young, inexperienced students. Flying to Tokyo with little more preparation than an Otakon workshop would be as sensible as selling the family sleigh during a blizzard. However, Otakon isn’t really about intercultural communication.

Because I believed then that Otakon was about enjoying East Asian popular culture, I had one regret. I regretted not attending the panel, “How to Survive a Zombie Apocalypse.” I regretted missing the “history hilarity and essential survival tips.” Without attending, I won’t forget that knives don’t require reloading. All by itself, the print description in the pocket guide offered creepy, good fun (once I put on my reading glasses).

RANDOM SELECTIONS

We missed the zombie apocalypse, but we did manage the next best thing. We attended the panel on Nishizaki Yoshinobu. The “Nish,” as the three panelists called him, is the pervert who came to fame producing Space Battleship Yamato (1974) and stayed in the spotlight for sketchy, extra-textual reasons. He’s a genuine spooky character, and the panelists succeeded in conveying his genius and his weirdness.

Because the Nishizaki session was astute and entertaining, Kit and I decided to follow one panelist–whose name I have regrettably forgotten–to his next presentation. The man and his new set of co-presenters had agreed to explain how to “Review Anime the Right Way.” They didn’t explain reviewing, right or wrong. They talked about the tactics needed to get and keep their jobs as reviewers. (Having a job and doing it well are not the same.)

One caustic panelist launched a tirade on the stupidity of numerical rankings. He insisted that his reviews were worth reading in their entirety, and for this reason he refused to assign grades, stars, starships or other icons to anime under review. Whoever the man was, he certainly was not David Denby. The guy should have appreciated that his readership isn’t the demographic of The New Yorker.

During the Q&A, members of the audience asked heartfelt questions with a voracious intensity that surprised me. Expectation filled the room, as most of the fifty-odd people waited for the panelists to drop a hint, provide a clue, or offer up a talisman for opening the gates to the magical kingdom of profitable, freelance anime criticism. Unsurprising to us geezers, their hunger went unfed.

For the price of my membership dues, this panel was a bad buy. I’d rate it one star out of five. The panelists’ self-aggrandizing annoyed me. Their poor preparation annoyed me. The dumb configuration of the chairs annoyed me. The rude dude yelling in my ear instead of his cell phone annoyed me. The voracious audience filled me with pity, which, in turn, annoyed me. (Pity isn’t playful.)

That voracious hunger was palpable again in the fan art exhibit. For the uninformed, Wikipedia defines fan art (or fanart, no space) as being “based on a character, costume, item, or story that was created by someone other than the artist. The term…is usually used to refer to art derived from visual media such as comics, movies or video games.” The antecedent of fan art is the dojinshi of Japan, the wicked pop parodies by underground artists, some of which have acquired cult status and considerable monetary value.

In the fan art exhibit, you could forget budget cosplay. Expensively decked-out Otaku in their teens and early twenties circled tables laden with visual works. Most were reproductions of pricer, original fan art. Older, on average, by a decade, the fan artists sat serenely behind their wares, seldom speaking to the kids across the tables, to the kids staring hungrily into the charmed inner circle of J-pop fandom.

As a geezer, I’m more accustomed to crafts shows at the Maryland State Fairgrounds than to fan art on the con circuit. Over at the cow palace, folks meander up and down the aisles, peruse the wares, eat a greasy snack, and maybe buy a trinket for a favorite great-uncle. With settled lives and stable jobs, shoppers at craft fairs have no interest in becoming itinerant vendors of pottery or jewelry. In sharp contrast, many Otaku on the lower level of the convention center were impressed, if not awed by fan artists. More than one Otakorp member clearly aspired to the status of exhibitor. I heard a telling exchange between a bearded young man and a cat-eared young woman.

M: I hear (X) is making a living off his art.

W: He’s making money, but not enough to live on. His girlfriend’s paying the rent.

M: Yeah, okay, but can you imagine…getting here? [Gestures to the vendor in front of them.]

W: We’ll get here. We will. Just believe and keep working.

BEYOND THE CON

The beginnings of anime were modest. The meteoric rise of space operas like Mazinger Z and Space Battleship Yamato came after the fact of Armstrong and Aldrin walking on the moon. Anime took off about the time that my little homestay sister was teaching me useful words. For the last thirty-five years, I’ve been consuming J-pop stuff. I’ve never felt compelled to reach a conclusion about the enterprise as a whole, anymore than I’ve thought it necessary to make a pronouncement about American pop culture. This is my wait-and-see legacy from Great-uncle Auggie.

Like Auggie holding on to his sleigh, I appreciate the tried and true. I keep of copy of Royall Tyler’s translation of Tale of Genji (2001), Shikibu Murasaki’s eleventh century epic, on my nightstand. I’m confident about the quality of this rendering of a classic that has endured for a thousand years.

Again, like Auggie buying new cars and trucks, I function in the present. After Otakon, I purchased the seventeenth English volume of Nana, published by Shojo Beat. My Nanas are stacked neatly in numerical order, in a corner. Someday I may make a place for them on a bookcase. I’ll have to wait and see whether I truly treasure Yawaza’s opus or merely have a passing infatuation with her linework.

Without assessing the entirety of popular Japanese culture, I have reached a conclusion about Otakon. It is not positive. I regret this fact, because on the Saturday in July when I cajoled Kit into driving downtown, it hadn’t occurred to me that I would disapprove of anything as light-hearted as I imagined Otakon to be.

No doubt, thousands of cosplaying Otaku had fun frolicking at the masquerade. However, fun and frolic weren’t what I found. I found a disturbingly high level of need, of voraciousness. Far too many Otaku are spending thousands of hours and hundreds of dollars in their search for insider status, for subcultural identity, and for an income stream that is, for the vast majority, a mirage.

Otakon isn’t really about having a good time. The non-profit Otakorp, Inc. isn’t really about increasing understanding of Asian culture. Actually, the con and its parent corporation are a strategic global business appearing as entertaining, intercultural exchange. They sustain a select circle of American entrepreneurs, at the expense of “members” whom they only seem to amuse. In a semblance of fanspeak, Otakon/Otakorp, Inc. is a zombie apocalypse masquerading as a Halloween party for kids who’ve decided they’re too old to trick or treat.

Ironically, in the vast culturally imperialistic venture that is contemporary Japanese export production, the inner circle of Otakon/Otakorp, Inc., is positioned precariously at the margin. Baltimore may care if Otakon decides to move elsewhere. Tokyo wouldn’t blink if the corporation and its annual convention were vaporized tomorrow.

Skip the zombie apocalypse. Find another venue for exploring J-pop. For a genuine Japanese adventure, consider investing in a study abroad program. College students literally have dozens of opportunities to live and learn throughout East Asia, and several reputable companies run summer programs for teens. My favorite for secondary students is Experiment in International Living, the organization which pioneered the practice of homestays in 1932.

This past summer, as Otakon came and went from Baltimore, Experiment in International Living offered a four-week program on the northern Japanese island of Hokkadio. It was open to American secondary students, who had successfully completed one year of language training. The Hokkaido program combined homestays in Japanese families with classes at a local anime school. I can’t imagine a better immersion experience for the serious otaku.

cheering authenticity,
dkb

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Children @ Play, Part I: Scarecrows, Imported & Homegrown

It’s that time of year again: the time when the Chinese scarecrows return to Cockeysville, and, perhaps, to suburban lawns across America. Maybe the culprit is climate change–of an unspecified meteorological or economic variety, but there is no doubt that the scarecrows arrive earlier each year. Time was when they came after the frightfully carved pumpkins and the tacky synthetic cobwebs. Now, they’re twirling on their bamboo stakes in the cold wind weeks before All Hallows Eve. They’ve been corralled into doing double duty as outdoor decorations for both super-sized celebrations to the harvest, to overindulgence and to high blood sugar.

Like my good neighbors, I, too, got hooked by their $4.95 sale price over at the JoAnn Fabrics in the plaza by the Corner Stable Restaurant. At that rate, I figured I could afford a pair. Besides, one four-foot tall, dressed-in-polyester, made-in-China scarecrow struck me as lonely, being so far from home and all. Yes, I bought a pair, but mine are holiday-specific. One is a grinning, green-faced witch; her mate, a matching Frankenstein. There will be no double duty for imported scarecrows in this front yard!

On Sunday afternoon, when I’m finished raking candy wrappers from the lawn, I’ll yank the bamboo poles of my green friends from the flower bed and stash them in the garage. There, they’ll jostle against other Halloween stuff: the broken pirates’ chest, the black wreathes and the plastic ghoul with the batteries that will once again probably have burned out before all of the excitement of compulsory candy collecting. Some Saturday before Chanukah my husband will decide Franky and his Green Lady are not worth saving. Off they’ll go to the landfill, where their styrofoam heads will outlast all of us. Next year, I’ll buy another pair of Chinese scarecrows and my little contribution to the US trade imbalance will keep on churning.

INDIGENOUS SCARECROWS

How much better it would have been for me to take a lesson from the winner of the scarecrow-making contest at the Baltimore County 4-H Fair last July! An obvious charmer with a mop of blond hair, the kid turned out to be more than the Scarecrow King. He totally dominated the challenges in the Clover Program for five to seven-year olds, taking home half a dozen blue ribbons. We didn’t see it, but I’m sure that boy’s scarecrow was the real McCoy, with straw limbs, worn overalls, maybe a red cotton bandana and nary a smidgeon of polystyrene.

None of the moms, dads and sibs sitting on metal folding chairs in the cow palace at the Maryland State Fairgrounds appeared to resent the Scarecrow King. But, to be honest, they had no reason for resentment. One of the great aspects of 4-H is the abundance of project categories. Any child from five to eighteen can garner a ribbon and the satisfaction of community recognition for an earnest undertaking. Granted, it may not be a first place ribbon, but a ribbon it will be, and if not this year, then certainly the next. A hearty populism thrives in the 4-H.

Most projects emphasize plant and environmental sciences, animal husbandry, personal health and development, or household consumerism. I don’t know where scarecrow-making falls, but I wouldn’t expect to find many Chinese Frankensteins sticking out of the shrubbery of 4-H homes. That 4-H populism fosters a Do-It-Yourself spirit.

FAMILY TIES

And, that spirit can be seen in all of the homegrown effort that goes into 4-H programming. Here in Baltimore County, 4-H is the youth education arm of the Maryland Cooperative Extension Service, and it is sponsored by the county government, the University of Maryland and the USDA. With respect to funding, my local 4-H differs little from chapters in other counties and states. All 4-H chapters function because many dedicated adult volunteers and a couple Extension staffers provide structure for the youth activities.

Across the nation, 4-H has a reputation as an intergenerational organization. Passing down the tradition of parent involvement was evident at the my local fair. When a healthy-looking guy of thirty-odd years finished announcing contest winners, he handed the mic to an older, equally healthy-looking man, whom he proudly introduced as his own father. Looking very much like my Great-uncle Auggie, the sixty-something farmer stepped up and called out the names of the next round of winning contestants. His grandson was among the ribbon-recipients happily high-fiving friends and family in the audience.

The 4-H families were as diverse as the rural residents of this county. There were plenty of fair-haired kids like the Scarecrow King, but there were also Hispanic and African-Americans families. Three boys, their father and grandfather all wore yarmulkes. I didn’t see girls or women in headscarves, but it wouldn’t have surprised me. Maybe they’ll be enjoying the fun when I go back next July.

The commonality that these folks share isn’t race or religion or political orientation. It’s a commitment to small-scale agricultural production, to healthy families, and, increasingly, to environmental sustainability. To the upscale urbanite, 4-H might appear as the quaint token of an earlier century. The four “H’s” do stand for old-time, time-tested values: Heads for thinking critically, Hands for serving others, Hearts filled with respect, and Health in the choices one makes in a changing world.

My Great-uncle Auggie was a wise and kind man. Were he living, he would have enjoyed the local 4-H summer fair as much as I did. I’m afraid those Chinese scarecrows in my front yard would be another matter.

Cheers to all for a safe Halloween,
dkb

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What I Did for Winter Solstice: Helicon at Goucher

Helicon’s 23rd Annual Winter Solstice Reunion Concert

2:30 and 8:00 p.m., December 20, 2008  

Kraushaar Auditorium, 

Goucher College; Towson, Maryland

Price: $25.00/person with group discounts

Let’s start with a confession.  I’ve been avoiding bluegrass for a long time.  When I was living in gentle, gray-skied Ithaca, New York, it wasn’t always easy to do, but I managed.  I’ve done better in the intervening decades.  There was one lapse:  a Helicon performance several years ago when the guys were still doing their annual show at The Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall in Baltimore.  

This was before Ken Kolodner quit his day job in health research, when he and my husband, Kit, worked together.  Showing up for Kolodner’s gig with Helicon bandmates Chris Norman and Robin Bullock seemed the seasonal thing to do.  Their performance was good, probably great (I’m no judge of the genre), but I shivered constantly in the cavernous hall.  Afterwards, Kit and I waited for the Light Rail through the gloaming–nice old English word, that–and into the pitch black (think Vin Diesel).  It’s good that I, unlike Ken, never aspired to the hammered dulcimer, because my fingers had frostbite by the time I got home. 

Apart from a fit of masochism, I can’t fully explain what possessed me to convince Kit and a couple of our friends to attend the evening performance of Helicon’s winter solstice concert this year at Goucher College.  The change of venue may have had something to do with it.  As we pulled into the icy parking lot, I hoped that Kraushaar Auditorium in the Dorsey College Center would be an improvement over the Meyerhoff.  

I was not disappointed.  Dorsey is casual and inviting in the way that the hub of a fine liberal arts college should be.  Kit and I entered the building forty-five minutes before the show to find, much to our surprise, that a couple hundred people were lined up in the hall outside the auditorium.  Most of these folks had the look of ’60’s anti-war protesters, grown prosperous and mellow with the years, but still disinclined to convert to the overripe aesthetic of American Idol. 

I was glad to spot our friends standing second to last in the queue:  glad to see them and glad that they were near the end of the line.  (I detest dodging the dagger stares deservedly flung at line-cutters.)  The hallway was abuzz with happy chatter.  It was obvious that this audience has been turning out to see Helicon for years.  People talked of past performances and greeted friends with hippie hugs.  They milled about the display tables staffed by high schoolers selling c.d.’s, t-shirts, and posters of the bandmates in their individual and collective endeavors.  

Wearing a scarlet shirt and a pained expression, Kolodner darted down the hall, waving to a person here and shaking a hand there, as he hurried to perform some vital, last-minute task.  All the while, the line of concert-goers continued to grow.  It grew and grew until the hallway was filled.  More people kept coming through the doors of Dorsey.  

At a quarter to 8:00, volunteers opened the auditorium doors and began collecting tickets.  Talking and laughing, everyone filed into Kraushaar and sat at will in the continental pattern of seats around the stage.  Plunking our coats onto the empty chairs between our spouses, my woman friend and I headed to the bathroom.  But, would we be allowed back into the auditorium?  We had handed over our tickets, stubs and all, and we had no proof of having paid the modest price for admission.  We posed the re-admittance question to a volunteer at the door.    

“Don’t worry,” she said with a laugh, “I’ll remember you!”

Ten minutes and another hundred people later, she waved us back into Kraushaar, sans ticket stubs.  By now the auditorium was packed almost to its capacity of 995 people, and we were lucky to find our seats before the lights dimmed.  I leaned back in the comfortable chair and squeezed Kit’s hand.  Anticipation is its own kind of delight.

Helicon put on a good show.  The play list balanced lively Appalachian tunes and gentler Celtic melodies.  Added spice came from a sampling of other world musics–Scottish, Hebrew, Bolivian, Kenyan, and, new for this trio, Chinese.  There was hand-clapping and toe-tapping aplenty by the fans.  Most people forgot their inhibitions and joined Norman in singing the merry ole English tune, “The Malts Came Down,” and the French carol, “In Those Twelve Days”. 

This cornucopia of sound was possible because the Helicon performers have mastered multiple instruments.  Kolodner plays fiddle and hammered dulcimer.  He has recently taken to experimenting with a hybrid instrument called the hammered mbira.  It’s inspired by the African thumb piano and akin to a hammered dulcimer but with metal rods instead of strings.  Kolodner’s exposition of the history and development of his latest find was cut short by a quip from Norman.

Norman, himself, is probably best known for playing the wooden flute.  He also performs on the tin whistle, the piano (not at this show), and the Scottish smallpipes.  In addition to the piano, Bullock is a master of the guitar and several other string instruments including the cittern.  According to a source not Bullock, the Germans have a fondness for the cittern. They call it the Lutherzither, although the instrument is not the zither familiar to English speakers and the connection to fifteenth-century theologian Martin Luther is tenuous at best.  

The multi-instrumental virtuosity made for a first rate performance, even for listeners like this blogger, who are not major fans of bluegrass.  The format was the concert standard of two sets, with the de rigeur solos after intermission.  Two encore selections, “Round the Horn” and “Two White Nickles” wrapped up a delightful show.  As for technical aspects, the sound mixing by Doc and Jean Russell of Wire Knot Productions was nicely nuanced, and with this range of instruments, it must have been challenging as well.  There was only one song for which I would have liked to have heard more of Norman’s flute above the hammering by Kolodner.  

The performance becomes more remarkable with the knowledge that Helicon, like the winter solstice it celebrates, lasts but for a day and a night.  In the world of contemporary world musics, Helicon is an episodic entity.  Based in Baltimore, Ken Kolodner shoulders the responsibility of staging the annual engagement, relying on in-kind donations and volunteers like the high school kids at the display tables.  Robin Bullock flies across “the pond” from the French hamlet of Tripleval for the show.  Chris Norman comes from his home in Nova Scotia, or from Australia or Idaho or wherever he happens to be performing since he soared to superstardom on the soundtrack for Titanic (1997).  Nowadays, the winter solstice concert is the only time that the three men are certain to play together in a given year.  

Twenty years ago, Kolodner, Norman and Bullock may have started on the same musical journey, but their professional and personal paths have diverged.  Blond, boyish Norman went the way of the showman.  He’s a suave master of the quick repartee; a man who works the room with a flourish of his midnight blue velvet jacket.  Kolodner, intensely intelligent and a tad testy, took the on-ramp to conventional family life and–until five years ago–corporate employment, relegating his music to an avocation.  Towering over his comrades, his thick gray hair cascading in waves below his shoulders, Bullock chose to follow Polyhymnia, Greek muse of sacred song.  With his Buddhist salutations, his resolute calm and a French cat for a housemate, he is the image of the pure artist. 

These differences in personalities and life choices became as sharp and clear as stars on a cold winter’s night during the solo performances.  Norman gave the audience the choice of hearing him play the flute, the whistle or the smallpipes.  Despite my hoots and howls for the first option, the smallpipes won by a wave of applause.  I endured a few miserable minutes of bellows-blown bagpiping, wondering all the while if it would be rude to cover my ears.  Everyone around me loved it.  

When it came time for his solo, Kolodner reappeared with his teenage son, Bradley.  Before intermission, the young man had joined Helicon as they generously performed his eponymous “Bradley’s Tune.”  Proud father Ken noted that Brad’s been playing the banjo for a couple of years.  To my untutored ear, the lad isn’t half bad, but he’s nowhere near as adept as my nephew down in Austin, Texas.  

Bullock walked on stage without uttering a word, picked up his guitar, sat on a stool and played “Silent Night.”  No fanfare; no family schmaltz.  Simple, pure, beautiful sound, reminiscent of early John Fahey.  I was stunned.  I doubt that most of the audience shared my response.  

Along with a grounding in world musics, the contesting styles and interpersonal tensions are what make Helicon so fascinating, and so necessary as an antidote to the mainstream music industry.  These factors are also what make Helicon wrong for the Meyerhoff:  a space of perfected performance under the direction of one baton. Fortunately for a trio that delights in experiments–with quirky instruments, new cultural influences and at least one promising young musician–Goucher College is the right venue.  

Private, co-educational Goucher is a vital academic community, a place where debates and differences are aired in the surety of respect. Here, students can develop their aptitudes, explore their interests and arrive at a Heliconesque appreciation for the dynamics of change.  Also like the musicians whom I heard in Kraushaar Auditorium on the twentieth of December, Goucher has a strong international bent.  All undergraduates either study abroad or pursue a domestic internship.  

Regrettably but understandably, there were few undergraduates at the Helicon concert.  Goucher is a small community, which attracts three-quarters of its student body from out-of-state.  Classes were not in session, and most people at the residential college had gone home for the holidays.  

But, there will be other opportunities, if not next year on the longest night, then elsewhere at other times.  In their overseas travels, a Goucher student or two may catch up with Norman while he’s directing the Boxwood Festival in New Zealand or with Bullock when he’s ensconced in his French village.  In this hemisphere, they may be fortunate to meet Kolodner on one of his visits to Ithaca–a place where the hammered dulcimer, bluegrass and mindful living never go out of fashion.  

cheers,

dkb

 

 

  

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Forgotten Treasures of University Museums, Part I: The Carroll Collection, Secret 59 and Other Cool Mysteries

The Johnson:  A Cool Reception

Truth be told, the Ivy League perpetuates a certain aloofness.  If such be needed, support for this claim came when husband Kit and I paid a summer visit to the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art on the campus of Cornell University.  Despite our status as Cornell alumni, I’ve never developed an emotional attachment to the Johnson.  I don’t hurry back there, as I do to the Heard Museum, The Frick Collection or Musee Rodin.  Those art spaces began as family homes, and they retain the scale of the human body.  Not so, the Johnson.

The Johnson opened thirty-five years ago, as a controversial addition to Old Stone Row.  The existing buildings on the row–three Second Empire beauties–were crafted from Cayuga bluestone, hewn from the very ridge where they stand.  Poured into place with yellowish concrete, the Johnson makes me think that a drunken giant tried to build a packing crate with really big Legos.  Actually, the museum is the brainchild of modernist architect I.M. Pei, and it extends a cool welcome at the best of times.  

I realized how chilly that welcome can be, when Kit and I passed through the towering glass doors one Saturday morning.  A lone woman sat at a circular desk on the far side of the entry hall.  We approached, smiled.  Her initial greeting was a demand that I surrender my purse.  Kit and I exchanged glances.  Why?  It was too big; it could damage the collection.  I had a flashback of holding the same bag in the West Gallery of The Frick–not an institution known for being cavalier about security. 

Like a tape recorder on continual replay, the demand was repeated.  More glances were exchanged.  Ill at ease but acquiescent, I tried to surrender my bag to the woman.  She recoiled and refused to touch it, gesturing behind her chair to a wooden box.  Presumably, I was to stuff the purse into an open cubby hole in the box, much like a kindergardener might stow a plush rabbit in a classroom toy bin.  This was Cornellian reserve (and disdain for personal security) taken to a new low.  

The Carroll Collection

Kit returned from locking my purse in the trunk of the car.  We made our way, without the assistance of the purse police, to a special exhibition in the lower gallery.  “A New World:  Pre-Columbian Art from the Carroll Collection” ran from March 29th through June 15th of this year. The complete collection contains four hundred pieces, roughly half of which were on display.  With nothing on our agenda until a family reunion in the afternoon, we passed the morning hours by moving from one pristine display case to the next.  

The Carroll impressed us more than expected.  The artifacts ranged from cylinder stamps to gold breast plates, but figurines and functional pottery made up the bulk of the collection.  Assistant curator Andrew Weislogel organized the exhibit by place, period and culture.  The periods span more than four millennia, from the Valdivian (circa 2700 BCE) to the Incan (circa 1500 CE).  South American cultures are most strongly represented, with the holdings growing thinner for Central America and Mexico.  Archeological sites stretch from Nayarit, northwest of Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, down the Pacific Coast to the geoglyphic Nazca lines in Peru.  

Sci-fi, lawn ornaments and psychedelics

Befitting a serious archeological exhibit, signage for the Nasca/Nazca artifacts made no mention of the lines.  If you’re unfamiliar with Nazca lines, ask a young person enamored by anime or video gaming.  You’ll discover that these patterns–geometric, zoomorphic, anthropomorphic, abstract–scratched and scored in the rusty gravel of a Peruvian plateau have been transported across a galaxy of youth-oriented products.  Or, for an introduction to Nazca iconography, see the summer blockbuster, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008).  

Before their incorporation into international pop culture, Nazca lines were enlisted as pseudo-scientific “evidence” for prehistoric human contact with extraterrestrials.  They have an important place in the cult classic, Chariots of the Gods?  Unsolved Mysteries of the Past (1968), written by Swiss author, Erick von Daniken.  In turn, Daniken’s work is one source for the American film, Stargate (1994) and its two spinoff television series, along with another sci-fi series, Battlestar Galatica (BSG).  

I doubt that collectors Dr. Thomas Carroll and Charlotte Jones-Carroll pass the evenings at their charming suburban home in Chevy Chase, Maryland, in the exploration of pop culture.  For me, however, a working knowledge of these matters is a job requirements.  I made contemporary connections aplenty as I looked at one ceramic figurine after another.  

Most of my pop culture associations were amusing or at least benign. In the ceramic effigy of a Nazca cat/crop diety, I saw the world-weary features of BSG’s Admiral Bill Adama (played by Edward James Olmos).  Three hermaphroditic figurines from Manabi bespoke Spielbergian spacemen.  After several centuries, but still fifteen hundred-odd years ago, the folks in Manabi began using molds to make their clay figurines.  Their later version of the little guys/girls could have been pre-Columbian garden gnomes.  

Less amusing was my association with the slender funnel from Cara/Panzaleo.  The upper third of the funnel consists of three figures (Past, Present and Future?), joined at the shoulders like Siamese triplets.  An opening in the central figure’s head served as the mouth of the funnel.  The small faces have perfectly round, exaggerated occular cavities, as if someone repeatedly pressed the eraser end of a prehistoric pencil into wet clay.  The three pairs of hollow eyes called up images of the Gentlemen in “Hush,” an especially eerie episode of Buffy, the Vampire Slayer.  

Evidently, someone at the Johnson hoped to create a different viewer response to the Cara/Panzaleo funnel.  The caption reads, “This elongated conical vessel is crowned by a rather whimsical trio of human figures.”  I suppose one person’s warning can be another’s whimsy, but I doubt that the ancient artisan intended fun and games.  One possible function of the object was for injecting hallucinogenic enemas.  Even today, indigenous South American peoples use psychotropic agents only for serious and potentially dangerous shamanic practices.  As for enemas, well, most people just don’t see the humor. 

Polychrome pottery and poor advice

From the figurative works, Kit and I turned to polychrome pottery of the Piartal Period (600 – 1200 CE).  I was admiring a compote dish, when an involuntary memory carried me back to the early 1970s in Phoenix, Arizona.  In that time and place, I had an adolescent passion for Hohokam pottery.  In the memory I was making yet another visit to the Pueblo Grande Museum and Archeological Park.  I leaned low to study an intricate geometric design and my long hair brushed the protective glass of the display case.  

I came by my interest in anthropology honestly, living in a city where digging up backyard potsherds and spotting petroglyphs on desert mountains were the ordinary stuff of childhood.  “Everybody” in Phoenix knew that the canals bringing water from the Salt River to front lawns and cotton fields followed the network laid out by the Hohokam ancestors a thousand years earlier.  (This, of course, all happened in the years when water flowed in the Rio Salado and no one had yet conceived of inflatable rubber dams in the riverbed for a fake lake.) 

In the fall semester of my senior year of high school, I enrolled in an evening anthropology class at a local community college.  The unforgettable instructor was Donald H. Hiser, then the director of the Pueblo Grande Museum.  In taking the course, I was only following my aesthetic penchant and intellectual interest.  It was a simpler time.

In the contemporary feeding frenzy for admission to elite institutions of higher education, college courses for high school students have taken on new meaning.  In What High Schools Don’t Tell You:  300+ Secrets to Make Your Kid Irresistible to Colleges by Senior Year (2007), “educational strategist” Elizabeth Wissner-Gross lists the community college option as Secret 59.  It is, she claims without evidence, more prestigious than AP or IB courses.  

Wissner-Gross makes the ethically-challenged observation, “I’ve seen high school students who were struggling with AP Biology drop the high school course to ace community college Biology instead” (52).  On the off-chance that the college course proves too tough, the student, she argues, is under no obligation to report a poor college grade.  Her advice ignores the requirement that students attest to the full and complete truth of their statements on The Common Application for Undergraduate Admission. 

Stone clothespins with faces

It would appear that individuals donating collections to university museums are not bound by the requirements for full disclosure that are placed upon college aspirants.  Or, if they are, then the members of the public who view their munificence are not privy to the information.  The different requirements for disclosure struck me forcefully when I returned for the last time to the artifacts at the beginning of “A New World:  Pre-Columbian Art from the Carroll Collection.”  

Between pop culture associations for clay figurines and reveries over polychrome pottery, I had returned repeatedly to the first display.  I went back so often that Kit gave up accompanying me–which says volumes, if you happen to know my husband.  I simply couldn’t get enough of the Valdivian Venuses.  In an exhibit rich in beautiful, interesting artifacts, the Venuses were the most exquisite and intriguing of objects.  In a room filled with old stuff, they were ancient–almost five thousand years ancient.  

The Valdivian Venuses looked like old-fashioned wooden clothespins with etched features, but they were carved from stone.  In the pure lines of eyes and mouths, the simple curves of breasts and arms, each one of the half dozen artifacts bound an elemental power.  Fertility symbols, fetishes, totems, magick objects of purposes now unknown, the Venuses captured my imagination.  I had never seen anything like them, and I wanted one.  I didn’t want a reproduction.  I wanted a real one.  

My shameful, primal greed forced the realization about the disclosure of sources.  How could I get one?  How did Dr. Thomas Carroll, an economic specialist in South American regional development, and Charlotte Jones-Carroll, a social justice advocate with the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, come by even one Valdivian Venus, let alone half a dozen?  Neither the exhibit notes nor the catalog held the answer.

A bit of web-browsing revealed connections to the world of international high finance.  Carroll had been a senior officer with the Inter-American Development Bank in Washington.  Jones-Carroll was a senior officer with the World Bank, and she worked for a decade with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).  But, by themselves, those facts don’t explain the Valdivian acquisitions.  Among my circle of friends and acquaintances are one former World Bank officer, a handful of USAID people, and many anthropologists and development economists.  None have amassed anything like the Carroll Collection.  

Let’s face it, the average person can’t wander into a bustling marketplace in Quito, Ecuador, and strike a bargain for authentic five thousand-year old religious objects. The typically curious kid can’t dig them up in the backyard, like Hohokam potsherds in old Phoenix.  So how did the Carrolls come by their collection?  As of this posting, I have no idea.  

However, as an alumna of the university, I hope that the Cornell trustees have a good, honest answer.  We are living in the new millennium of transparency in museum acquisitions and repatriation of stolen national treasures.  Scandal swirls around Marion True, former curator of the Getty, who has been accused of looting antiquities from Italy and Greece.  It’s not science fiction to think that in the not-too-distant future, someone more important than one lone blogger may begin asking prickly questions about the Carroll Collection.  When that day comes, the staff of the Johnson may need all of the Ivy League sang froid that they can muster.   

Meanwhile, if U C a cute Valdivian knock-off on e-Bay, text me.  I’m there.

Cheers,

d.k.b.

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“…Go Forward and Find Your Life’s Work:” Two Rooms Before Commencement 2008, Haverford College

This post reflects my personal responses to Commencement 2008 at Haverford College.  It is not meant as full coverage of the event.  For an official account—with photos—of the ceremony on May 19th, please go to: 

http://news.haverford.edu/blogs/haverblog/2008/05/18/commencement-2008/

THE FIRST SETTING

It was the night before President Steve Emerson, ’74, was to utter the words of this title to the Class of 2008.  My husband and I were visiting Haverford College as the guest of our young friend, “Grant.”  We have known Grant almost forever, and he had invited us to Commencement Weekend.  His parents were due to arrive the next morning.  It was 8:45 p.m., Saturday.  

We had dined well and merrily at a place called The Blue Horse, toasting Grant’s accomplishments with a bottle of Veuve Clicquot.  Perhaps the bubbly went to our heads, because we took a wrong turn on the ten-mile drive back to campus.  By the time we descended the marble staircase of Marshall Auditorium, we were too late to be admitted to the forum for the recipients of honorary degrees.

At that point, we had two obvious courses of action.  We could join the other latecomers listening to the forum over the outside PA system, or we could walk around campus until it was time for a reception in the Dining Center.  The night was warm; our choice to walk was unanimous.  

We strolled under tall trees, the sidewalk dappled with the light of a full moon (really).  Grant pointed out campus landmarks and explained why Magill Library looks like a church.  A pre-med student with a major in mathematics, our host understandably wanted us to see the biology department and the math lounge–with sofas so welcoming that non-majors come just to nap.  We paused in a cloistered courtyard and imagined chamber music echoing off pale stone.  We consulted our watches:  twenty minutes until the reception.  It was probably I who made the suggestion.

THE FIRST ROOM

“You’re sure you want to see this?” Grant asked, opening the white door?

“Yeah!  I know you’re in the middle of moving out.  And, it’s not like I’ve never seen a dorm room before,” I answered in reassuring tones. 

My husband stepped gingerly through the doorway, and I followed, smugly secure in my knowledge of what lay ahead.  The security was grounded in my familiarity with university residence halls, tower suites and on-campus apartments.  As for my smugness, well, it crashed and burned at Grant’s second-floor single in Leeds Hall.  

The pale blue room had an appealing austerity.  It was so small that a careless visitor, upon entering, could bruise his shin on the frame of the (unmade) twin bed.  A desk stood below the narrow, multi-lit window.  A bookcase and a stand with a microwave were the other furnishings.  A knob-less door to an adjoining room required that the respective occupants go out into the hall (and risk their shins), should they wish to converse without texting.

The door without a knob served as support for Grant’s guitar.  A Picasso poster of a similar cubist instrument (Still Life) hung on the adjacent wall.  To my young friend’s credit, he hadn’t picked that depressing guitarist print from the Blue Period.  Also to his credit, there wasn’t an aluminum can or a carton of moldering fast food to be seen or smelled.  The mess he had feared revealing was well below par for contemporary undergraduates.  

What the little, pastel room did contain were rich traces of the academic life.  Typical for a pre-med student was the oversized MCAT guide that Grant had pre-cycled into a coffee table.  Everywhere in evidence, the texts in biology and advanced mathematics were equally to be expected for one with his major interests.  

Looking closer, I took greater interest in the academic artifacts.  The door behind the guitar was plastered with lists of declensions for Greek nouns.  Being and Time, the 1927 opus of Martin Heidegger, lay beside the bed, accompanied by commentaries on “the being for whom being is in question” (Dasein) and other matters of Continental philosophy.  From the bookcase spilled illustrated volumes on the subject of seventeenth-century Dutch painting.  With unstudied irony, works in cultural anthropology vied for space with organic chemistry books by the microwave.     

Although not a habitat of the common premedicalis studentii, the room certainly befitted someone on the path to Dasein.  

THE SECOND SETTING

The sounds of mid-century jazz filled the air, and the taste of dark chocolate lingered on my tongue.  A dozen steps beyond the predictably pleasant and proper reception in the Dining Center, we were discussing plans for the morning.  Where and when to meet Grant’s parents were paramount concerns, but I had a strong inclination to attend an event before Commencement.  It was definitely I who posed the question.

“Are you sure you want to get up that early?”

“Yeah, I’m sure.  Are you guys sure?” Grant answered, checking his cell for unread texts.

“Yeah, we’re sure,” my husband said, in the resigned tone of a man who prefers to sleep late but knows he’ll be rising early.

“Okay.  See you there, then,” Grant answered a second time, his head angled downward to the message glowing on his phone.

THE SECOND ROOM

It was farther from the parking lot to the Haverford Friends Meeting House (circa 1834) than either of us had expected.  A sign at the wooden footbridge gave the distance:  two hundred-odd yards.  The paved path ran straight, passed gardens in bloom and a stately Victorian home.  It was a beautiful, peaceful walk on an early May morning.   

A gentleman in a black suit greeted newcomers at the end of the long sidewalk.  He directed us around a small graveyard and to the meeting house.  We arrived before Grant and waited on the cobblestones by the burial ground.  Lilies-of-the-valley clung to its stone wall; dark green ivy covered the graves.  Between the simple headstones, the lawn was well-tended.  I had the sense that the ancestral bodies entombed here receive personal attention in all seasons of the year, down through the centuries.  

Grant arrived wearing dark slacks, a starched white shirt and tie.  We hugged; he shut off his cell phone.  On the porch of the meeting house, we were greeted by members of the local community of Friends.  In the doorway between the foyer and the meeting hall, an attractive, middle-aged woman in a soft, floral print dress handed me a pamphlet.  The title was “An Invitation to Quaker Worship.”  The woman asked us to sit on the opposite side of the quadrangle of facing benches.  We took seats in an otherwise empty pew, with Grant between my husband and me.  

I looked around the two-story hall, which was a study in neutral hues.  Flat panels in the softest shade of granite were mounted on interior walls, tinted a pale, buttery color.  Light filtered from high windows, with clear multiple panes like the ones in Leeds Hall.  The wooden benches were worn smooth with age.  No ornaments or decorations marred the purity of this space.  Its estimated capacity was comparable to the 301 students in the graduating class.   

When the hall was half full, the woman in the floral print opened the service.  She welcomed everyone to this special Meeting for Worship for the graduating class, their families and friends and the college faculty.  She briefly explained the centering of concentration and the spoken ministries at the core of the Quaker meeting.  

The hall fell silent.  Coughs of older men could be heard at random intervals.  I recrossed my legs.  Grant shuffled his feet.  I hoped my husband was not nodding back to sleep.  The silence grew, but it was not the deep quiet of a Buddhist meditation hall.  There was a growing tension, an expectation of something about to happen.  

A man rose and spoke—his quotation memorized, his practiced message harkening back to the Quaker past.  Minutes for silent reflection passed.  I thought about the ivy growing on the graves.  A second man rose and spoke, his words, too, prepared in advance, although his message pointed to the future.  More minutes for reflection followed.  I wondered how we would manage to connect with Grant’s parents.  

Other men spoke, more candidly.  Women spoke, candidly.  One woman sang an exquisite a capella hymn.  Moments of silence surrounded each expression of worship.  I let myself feel the slow, steady rhythm of the meeting.  I stopped weaving the words of others into the fabric of my own anxieties.  I began to hear sincerity.  It was difficult at first.  Sincerity is not what I am accustomed to hearing in public places.  The balance of plain speech and receptive silence lifted me into an elusive state of calm and well-being.

The woman in the floral print closed the meeting by shaking hands with the individuals sitting beside her.  Grant and I shook hands.  Grant and my husband shook hands.  There was no one else in the pew with whom to shake hands.  People filed from the hall, through the foyer and onto the porch.  Rain was predicted for the afternoon, but I paused to put on my sunglasses before stepping into the bright light.  Grant checked his messages.  My husband waited patiently.

Back in the world again, I recalled the books on the floor by my young friend’s bed—no doubt, still unmade.  I thought about Martin Heidegger, who, to my knowledge, never made a public pronouncement on the Religious Society of Friends. Nonetheless, it struck me that Dasein may not be so very far from the Quaker quest.

THE BIGGER PICTURE

Later that morning, my husband and I sat on folding chairs beside Grant’s parents in the shade of a big tree.  A chill wind had come up, but the rain still held off.  Together, we listened as President Emerson said, “…Go forward and find your life’s work.”  He was addressing a graduating class singularly prepared for that undertaking.

 

cheers,

dkb

http://www.beckeracademic.com

 

 

 

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Reed College Prof. Worley’s Performance Impresses with Intercultural Grace

Our blogger-at-large, Ken Kinard, shares his responses to Kathleen Worley’s theatrical production at Reed College, from the perspective of a Christian ethnographer.  Hope you enjoy his comments as much as I do.

cheers
dkb

Reed College
Portland, Oregon

http://www.reed.edu
  

Event Overview: Sept. 28, 2007 at 7:30 p.m.

Theater production: Crossing the Bridge of Magpies—Journeys into China by theater professor Kathleen Worley. Based on documents left by Worley’s grandparents, who did medical and educational mission work in South China beginning in 1903, and on her own recent experiences in the same area, the play also incorporates techniques from Chinese opera and puppetry.

Location

The campus is technically in Portland, but has the feel of being nestled in a suburban nook in the trees. The modest campus seems the kind of location ideal for a person who wants the advantages of a major city without the negatives of downtown city living. The campus is a 15-minute drive to one of the most attractive cities on the West coast, so location must be among the school’s chief assets. 

Performance

Performance from 3 actors included monologue, dialogue, and small amounts of dance, singing, and puppetry. A percussionist augmented the Chinese-inspired pre-recorded music that nicely matched the play’s simplicity. A screen behind the stage displayed photographs that helped illustrate buildings and geography. The writing was at times engaging and often fairly plain.

Described as a “workshop production of a script in progress,” this play showed signs of maturity—nice narrative arc, emotional tension, helpful choreography. However, the main actress and playwright stumbled on her lines several times throughout. I wondered if she knew the original one-woman version so well that the recent adaptation was tripping her up.

Venue

As is expected for theaters of this sort, the walls were decorated with photos and playbills from previous performances through the years (Shakespeare and the like). It had a smallish feel that reminded me of a theater in Fells Point—Corner Theater in Maryland—intimate and comfortable.

There is not much ostentation here. Simple space with humble decoration. If you are not at the event for the actual performance, there is not much else to recommend it. If this is any indication of the school as a whole, they are much more about thoughtful reflection than impressive décor.

Audience

Reed’s intimate theater looks to hold about 120 people. About 50 people were present for this performance, which seemed like a good draw for this type of event at this size school. Most people looked to be over 50 years of age, probably faculty or friends of faculty, with a handful of students.

Reputation and Expectations

I was staying with some native Portland friends who live 20 miles from the campus. They come from a conservative Christian background. I think of them as having wholesome family values; a high degree of respect for people as God’s creation; and a love for the good, true, and beautiful.

When I asked them about the local reputation of Reed College, they commented on how liberal the school was. I mentioned that one of the events going on the same weekend was the Portland Gay Men’s Chorus, and they said that was more the type of event they would expect from Reed. 

“When my classmates and I were looking into colleges back in the 1980s, the people who were going to Reed were the hippies, the party animals, the ones into drugs and alternative lifestyles,” my friend’s wife said. She admitted to being out of touch with college life since the 1990s, having been engrossed in child rearing for the last 10 years. When asked about the school, her parents echoed her sentiments. They think of the school as being liberal, fringe, and maybe a bit on the wild side. 

We discussed the content of the play: a woman retelling the story of her missionary grandparents doing medical missionary work in a Chinese village. The play was very respectful and authentic regarding the faith of these people, how they attempted to integrate into a new and strange lifestyle in China, and the impact that the interaction had on the Chinese and the Americans. 

My host family was surprised that such a strong religious message would have a voice at Reed College. “I was pleasantly surprised,” the mother said. They seemed impressed that the college would present this material with such respect and authenticity, giving the story and characters dignity in their experience and perspective.

Summary

It’s attractive to be in a place where a work-in-progress can be presented, discussed, improved. This is an important part of learning, and it was refreshing to be in the creative space of this work and these people. We all left feeling that the evening was worthwhile.

If this short visit is indicative of the school as a whole, Reed college is a small liberal arts school with focus on learning, not campus extras. With the feel of a hidden nook in suburbia with easy access to all Portland has to offer, it seems like a good fit for the serious student who wants to dig in and go deep. It rained 3 of the 5 days I was there, and some people don’t welcome this weather. But perhaps it encourages students to play less and reflect more on the big ideas that tend to get crowded out in the busyness of later adult life, like how reaching across cultural lines in love can make a huge difference.

http://www.beckeracademic.com

 

 

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Jazz Master Brubeck in DC: Why Be an Alum??

“The Real Ambassadors:  1958 – 2008”
2008 Brubeck Festival
April 10, 2008

Coolidge Auditorium, Library of Congress
Washington, DC

(University of the Pacific)
By invitation only

When I embarked, at the age of sixteen, on the quest for the ideal college, I was interested in the present, or, at the furthest temporal horizon, the near future.  I did not know of those who had gone before me at my chosen institution of higher education.  I did not consider that I could be entering into a long-term relationship with my undergraduate alma mater.  (The mere notion of a long-term relationship was foreign to my sixteen-year old self.) 

Today, as an educational consultant, I have shown the wisdom never to encourage a teenager to pick a college based on the fame or fortune of its alumni–including Presidential candidates, Nobel laureates and rock stars.  On the other hand, I listen with envy as friends tell about the perks they enjoy from their schools. These friends are not talking about social networks or opportunities for insider trading. They mean the cultural events that make middle age just a bit easier.  I may be a perennial pessimist, but living in the mid-Atlantic region, I’ve never expected much from an alma mater which, if not exactly ocean front property, is, nonetheless, in Northern California. Oh, me of little faith!

In 2000, two graduates of the Class of ’42 decided to leave their personal papers and similar paraphernalia to the University of the Pacific (UOP).  Because the grads are Iola and Dave Brubeck, the university put their picture on the front cover of its alumni magazine.  No doubt, other gestures of appreciation were made to the Brubecks.  That was all well and good for Iola and Dave.  However, this exchange gave me, personally, none of those cultural benefits known to alleviate perennial pessimism.

Over the next several years, relations between the Brubecks and UOP warmed.  In the teen lingo of another era, they were definitely going steady.  The Brubeck Collection developed into The Brubeck Institute.  The Institute currently supports The Brubeck Archive, The Brubeck Festival, The Brubeck Fellowship Program (with The Brubeck Institute Jazz Quintet), The Summer Jazz Colony and The Brubeck Outreach Program. 

The Brubeck Institute has attracted an impressive roster of talent, and its Honorary Board of Friends reads like a Who’s Who of Jazz.  The chair is actor-director-producer-composer Clint Eastwood.  The members include Herb Alpert, David Baker, David Benoit and Ken Burns, and that’s just getting as far as the letter “B.”  Regardless of whether these talented folks appear often or ever on the Stockton campus, this is tony company for a school like UOP–which is all well and good for UOP, but….

I was introduced to the music of Dave Brubeck in my second year of college.  Along with others in UOP’s former Callison College, my BFF and I were studying and living in Tokyo.  Best friend forever (she still is) did improvisational dance to whale song under the tutelage of butoh legend, Kazuo Ohno.  I inhabited Shinjuku coffee shops, chain-smoked Seven Stars cigarettes, drew sketches of the dark interiors and pretended to memorize the Japanese characters called kanji.  I was partial to a tiny, black hole-in-the-wall with a Wild West decor called Impulse. (I recently found an old ink drawing with the name.)  Impulse was Brubeck country, and although I’ve long forgotten the kanji, I am still mesmerized by “Blue Rondo a la Turk” with its oddly disorienting 9/8 time signature.  

Last month, I heard “Blue Rondo” performed at the Library of Congress by the gifted undergraduates of The Brubeck Institute Jazz Quintet.  It’s too soon to tell if Ben Flocks will match Paul Desmond’s composing on “Take Five,” but he played the tenor sax with an understated power and mastery uncommon in one so young.  Equally adept and ardent, the other members of the ensemble are Brian Chahley trumpet; Cory Cox, drums; Javier Santiago, piano; and Christopher Smith, bass.  

“Blue Rondo” closed an evening that was part of the Washington leg of the annual Brubeck Festival.  This year, the festival commemorated the fiftieth anniversary of the first State Department tour by the Dave Brubeck Quartet.  Back in the Cold War year of 1958, Brubeck, Desmond, bassist Eugene Wright and drummer Joe Morello travelled to destinations across Western Europe and “behind the Iron Curtain” to Poland.  They continued into the lesser known lands of Turkey, India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran.  Their official mission was cultural diplomacy.  Its unintended consequence was Brubeck’s exposure to what we today call world music.  

The first hour of the performance featured selections from the musical, “The Real Ambassadors,” performed by The Greater Hartford Academy of the Arts Singers.  The vocalists and instrumentalists from this Connecticut magnet school are authentic high school musicians–talented, vibrant and more engaging than any Disney actor.  Iola Brubeck penned the lyrics to her husband’s score for the tribute to Louis Armstrong.

Hours two and three were an easy exchange between Brubeck and the esteemed journalist, Hedrick Smith.  Seated center stage at a small table, Brubeck and Smith spoke of the 1958 tour and the resultant album, Jazz Impressions of Eurasia.  Set up behind the discussants and punctuating the anecdotes, the Brubeck Institute Jazz Quintet performed selections from Eurasia.  Once or twice during the interludes, Brubeck sat in for pianist Santiago and played a few bars.  His rapport with drummer Cox was particularly lively and lovely to see.  

The thoughtfulness of the event planners made the evening more memorable.  My husband and I were seated beside my other Callison BFF and his wife. (Gender balanced friendship is a Callison trait.) To enjoy an evening with old friends but without the bother of coordinating four professional schedules was a luxury.  Second, performers from the Greater Hartford Academy presented audience members with complimentary, digitally restored CDs of Eurasia after the performance.  Third, the upstairs reception gave us ready access to the marvelous frescoes, carvings, and fretwork in the Library of Congress.

Although I remain the perennial pessimist, I recognize that this is not the space to elaborate on the geopolitics of cultural hegemony, state appropriation of the Arts or the social meanings of honors like the Benjamin Franklin Award for Public Diplomacy, which US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice presented to Dave Brubeck two nights before I enjoyed that “Blue Rondo.”  Perhaps another time.

It is the place to express thanks to my undergraduate institution for providing a gracious night of cultural enrichment.  Along with my male BFF, I have become the envy of my circle.  Few schools extend similar invitations without regard to status of alumni giving.  More ought to make the effort.

In a broader sense, this is also a place to applaud intercultural exploration, whether by listening to a jazz legend play his iconic, non-Western time signatures in an historic building of our nation’s Capitol or by hanging out in a Tokyo cowboy coffee bar chilling to  the same Istanbul-inspired American sounds.

As Iola Brubeck wrote in “The Real Ambassadors,”

“No commodity is quite so strange
as this thing called cultural exchange.”

Cheers,
dkb

http://www.beckeracademic.com

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