BUREAU : BOOKS New York City
T. C. BOYLE: A Piece of FICTION
by BUREAU Editor Joshua TRILIEGI for BUREAU of ARTS and CULTURE Magazine
There are fewer more solitary career paths than that of the painter, the musical composer or the fictional writer. Seldom do we see a collaborative experience in these particular practices and even rarer, a career of such bold variation and experimentation. The journey is singular, the pitfalls are many, the rewards are difficult to list or fathom and suddenly decades pass and the world suddenly knows your work, discusses your choices, often misunderstands your creativity or the entire goal of such a career path and yet, you go on, steadily, marching toward the next project, with bravado, with discipline and with a steadfast curiosity for what will happen on the next page, canvas or sonata. In the case of T. C. Boyle, the rewards have been numerous, a professor emeritus position at The University of Southern California, film adaptions, awards that include the Pen/Faulkner & Henry David Thoreau and an international readership that have included invitational festivals such as, One City One Book wherein an entire city such as Vienna is publicly given 100,000 copies of, in this case, his novel, The Tortilla Curtain, distributed freely citywide. T. C. Boyle's work is broadly fearless in its choices of subject matter, though, at the same time, it is racked with details of the psychological variety that take us directly into the experience of his characters. His stream of consciousness includes the type of minutiae that assumes for the reader and emulates in direct communication a mind at work attempting to deal with those very bold choices he has conjured for our entertainment. T. C. Boyle is of the school of artists that understand clearly that ART is entertainment and if indeed we are entertained, scared, troubled, thrilled, embarrassed, shamed, turned on, turned off, nervous, and some where in all of that — educated, by what we read, see, hear: than it is good art and it will last forever, or at least, a very long time.
"The journey is singular, the pitfalls are many, the rewards are difficult to list or fathom and suddenly decades pass and the world suddenly knows your work, discusses your choices, often misunderstands your creativity or the entire goal of such a career path and yet, you go on, steadily, marching toward the next project, with bravado, with discipline and with a steadfast curiosity for what will happen on the next page, canvas or sonata."
Because Mr. Boyle was once a musician, there is a rock and roll aspect to his show, one can easily picture him getting out of the shower singing the lyrics to a Rolling Stones song and making it his own with, " I know, its only Fiction Writing, but I like IT… " There is something very pugnacious about the man that immediately strikes me as likable. He has, what I call, the big fuck you, built into much of his work and definitely in his readings and performances which he professes to enjoy entirely and I believe him. Thats another thing I enjoy about T. C. Boyle, he knows his job is to write, present, tour and then repeat entirely. I must confess, he has written countless novels that I have yet to read and I indeed look forward to doing so, as I suggest for my readers to do the same. Discovering a novelist is a once in a lifetime experience, reading that writer is an ongoing engagement of a very special variety. Once a reader has gone on a journey and enjoyed it, there is always a chance that there will be a new book or an earlier work to read. Mr. Boyle has a method and practice that goes like this, write a novel, promote it, write short stories, promote them, teach, get an award, make a speech, drive home, read the paper, write a novel, promote it: repeat. One can imagine that there is some sex and food and booze and reflection as well. He is unabashedly honest about the process of writing and his philosophy is entirely in tune with ours at the magazine, which is to lift the veil of creativity. He is a teacher and yet professes that, "No one can teach you how to be an artist." When it comes to rules, he throws them out, "There are no rules, whatsoever. Any textbook, you throw it right out. The way you learn how to do it is reading stories and finding a mentor." T. C. Boyle's own influences include Vonnegut, Cheever, Flannery O’Connor, F. Scott Fitzgerald and especially John Updike. He is currently on tour with is 25th book: The Harder They Come.
Joshua TRILIEGI: You have written fictional novels with a wide variety of characters and scenarios. Tell us about your own personal process of research and developement.
T.C. BOYLE: Some novels (and stories) are pure inventions, while others rely on factual/historical material. With regard to The Women, for instance, I read a number of Frank Lloyd Wright bios and visited many of the houses he designed (I’m visiting one of them right now, since I live in it), as well as his own house at Talisien. Then I jammed up a story. At the other end of the spectrum is a book like 2000’s A Friend of the Earth, about global warming and its consequences, which just flew on its own. A more recent example would be the story, “The Relive Box,” which appeared in The New Yorker earlier this year. It’s a lovely, lively fantasy about gaming, which just came to me while I was tinkering with my many mechanical and electronic inventions in my basement lab.
Joshua TRILIEGI: One gets the feeling that if someone showed up at a party and something occured: a conversation, a scene, an argument, that it could end up in one of your short stories.
T.C. BOYLE: Absolutely. Never make friends with a novelist, as your life will be dissected, pinned up and laid out for the delectation of the public. Dirty, embarrassing secrets especially.
Joshua TRILIEGI: You rely on music while writing, describe your music collection and any other anecdotes that relate to this relationship.
T.C. BOYLE: My love is rock and roll, but I can’t listen to it while composing (though I’m listening now to a mix created by my new best friend, Party Shuffle). Classical and jazz are what ballast me while writing—and that extends to opera, as long as it’s not in English.
Joshua TRILIEGI: " The Tortilla Curtain " was chosen as part of Vienna, Austria's 'One City One Novel' Literature project, wherein a 100,000 copies are freely distributed throughout the city for all to read. Tell us about this experience and your travel schedule in general.
T.C. BOYLE: Best part of it? Going into a bar or cafe and seeing a pile of free copies sitting on the counter and surreptitiously watching people come by and take one, then think better of it and take several. This is Part III of the Writer’s Dream.
Joshua TRILIEGI: Besides creating interesting stories, a writer in todays world must understand and adhere to the basic rythms of the career, write the work, read the work, sell the work, repeat process.Share with our readers how this will work for you an visa versa, say over several years.
T.C. BOYLE: I would have had six books in the last six years, but we decided to hold back The Harder They Come till March of 2015 to give everybody a break. I seem to write in a rhythm: longer historical novel, shorter contemporary novel, book of stories. Bing, bing and bang. That’s just the way it is. Last year was T.C. Boyle Stories II. Right now I’m 45 pp. into the next novel, The Terranauts, and have not yet seen the place where the book is set. I’ll make a trip there shortly. In fact, as soon as I say goodbye to you, I will be booking airfare.
Joshua TRILIEGI: You published "Budding Prospects" way back in 1984, these days it could be read as a sort of manual for how to grow medical marijuana and avoid the basic pitfalls along the way. Does it ever surprise you when a work like this or more future leaning works like "Farenheit 451" or Orwells "1984" speak to a certain time and a place.
T.C. BOYLE: I suppose it’s the job of a novelist to be something of a seer. By the way, The Harder They Come returns to the scene of the crime with regard to Budding Prospects. The latter was set in Willits, CA, and the former has a number of scenes set there, as well as a sly reference to the lineage of one of the earlier novel’s characters. THTC examines American anti-authoritarianism and gun violence. It’s just burning hot.
Joshua TRILIEGI: You famously have not watched TV since the early seventies. Do you watch films?
T.C. BOYLE: I love movies and watch a whole lot of them, not only current but classic. And TV has changed radically, given the freedom cable allows filmmakers. I have avoided the usual network lineup, as my tolerance for idiocy is very, very low.
Joshua TRILIEGI: Because the world is full of so many different types of people, each with a different way of speaking, each living by their own rules, each with a different code of ethics, being a fictional writer with any sense of truth in the work means being brutally honest and allowing each character to speak its mind without filtering what is politically, socially or morally acceptable. Describe or discuss how that fact has ever caused the public, reviewers or detractors to criticize you as a writer, as opposed to the character in the book.
T.C. BOYLE: I try to avoid reviews, except for the good ones. And yes, many shallow types (I won’t name them here) seem to confuse my public persona with the personae of my books. I will dance on their graves, then let the hyenas loose.
Joshua TRILIEGI: You have taught at USC for decades and still go it alone in many ways, avoiding panel discussions, retaining your singular voice.
T.C. BOYLE: Aw, shucks, I’m only doing what comes natural. That is, because I am a semi-sane egomaniac control freak despiser of authority, I work alone. And I don’t really give a shit (or even half a shit) about what anybody might think about that.
Joshua TRILIEGI: Share with us a list of writers both new and old whom have influenced, entertained and educated you.
T.C. BOYLE: Since I’ve got to get to work, let me name just a few: Dana Spiotta’s Stone Arabia, Denis Johnson’s Fiskadoro, Kent Haruf’s Plainsong, Ian McEwan’s On Chesil Beach. If people want a fuller picture, go to the video interview I did with Tom Lutz at the L.A. Times Book Fair back in April of this year. T.C. Boyle LARB interview ought to bring it up for you. Till then, adios, amigos.
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WELCOME to The SUMMER Music 2016 Edition BUREAU of ARTS and CULTURE MAGAZINE. The BUREAU Guest ARTIST INTERVIEW Realist Painter CHRISTOPHER STOTT . This New Edition Contains The BUREAU MUSIC ICON Essay: HANK WILLIAMS . PHOTOGRAPHIC ESSAYS and ARTICLES BY THE INFAMOUS MR. ART SHAY . MATHEW BARNEY at MOCA LA Plus BUREAU PROFILE : ANDREW HOLDER . The BUREAU PHOTOGRAPHIC INTERVIEW with LAURA STEVENS in PARIS . BUREAU FILM : BLUE VELVET at THIRTY . ART of MILES DAVIS "The SHAMAN" . PRINCE TRIBUTE plus MUSIC INTERVIEW with Singer-Songwriter: JOSHUA TATE . SOUND ARTIST : CÉLESTE BOURSIER - MOUGENOT with CHRISTOPH COX . DESIGN : ITS ABOUT WALLPAPER . COMEDY INTERVIEW with Andre HYLAND . John DOE . Aimee MANN . Chris STAPLETON . BLACK IS BEAUTIFUL : KWAME BRATHWAITE'S New HARLEM RENAISSANCE . DANNY LYON at THE WHITNEY MUSEUM + R. CRUMB at SEATTLE MUSEUM . Reviews & New Online Articles All Year Round at The New BUREAU CITY SITES RAP MUSIC'S : TUPAC and ICE CUBE with PHOTOGRAPHER Mr. Mike MILLER . BUREAU TRIBUTE TO " LEGENDS OF THE FALL'S," WRITER : JIM HARRISON . Plus BUREAU ORIGINAL PHOTOGRAPHIC ESSAYS, REVIEWS and ARTICLES
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The LITERATURE INTERVIEW
LUIS VALDEZ: WRITER
By Joshua TRILIEGI
Luis VALDEZ changed The Entire Literature Landscape with his Fierce Hit Play, "ZOOT SUIT". Here in Southern California, The Play is much more than words. It is a personal and positive Idea that gave many people the inspiration to do something with the things they saw, not only in their homes and neighborhoods , but to reclaim what was happening in the media, to own the stories that they were being told and to simply reclaim what was rightfully theirs to begin with:Their Own Family Stories. In This Interview Bureau Editor Joshua TRILIEGI and Luis VALDEZ discuss his career, his working process and the development of a powerful force that continues to inspire millions of Indigenous People around the World and teaches everybody else.
Mr Valdez went on to create The Film "LA BAMBA", which told the very important story of Latin Musician & Songwriter, Ritchie Valens. Fueled by the proliferation of 1950's Retro Nostalgic Films such as American Graffiti and its follow up Happy Days, as well as The Musical Biographical genre's popularity of projects like The Buddy Holly Story, Elvis and the like: LA BAMBA was the perfect project that entirely launched the energy and force of ZOOT SUIT into the stratosphere of popular media and culture, finally a story that rightfully claimed, explained and honored The Latino Experience, or as Luis Valdez might put it, "The Chicano Experience" in popular music history. The film itself touches on the family paradigm in both mythical and real
circumstances. A beautiful & entertaining film that holds up today just as it originally did upon its creation. In the same way that Zoot Suit gave us the career of Edward James Olmos, 'The Chicano Bogart', La Bamba gave us a multitude of talent in front of and behind the scenes: Lou Diamond Phillips, Esai Morales, Los Lobos & Others. Since then, Mr Valdez has continued his influence as The Worlds Leading Latino and Chicano Playwright traveling everywhere, all the time, sharing his great wealth of knowledge and experience with a world thirsty for truth, experience & entertainment.
We are proud to bring you Luis VALDEZ, unexpurgated, uninhibited and unbeaten.
Joshua TRILIEGI: First of all, It is a pleasure to share your experience with our readers. We attended the Los Angeles Anniversary screening of Zoot Suit and later bought and re read the play. There is so much in it: reality, folklore and a fierce power as well as a genuinely hip musical element, could you share with us how that piece originally formed in your mind and how you developed it into the groundbreaking Broadway play ?
Luis VALDEZ: In the Fall of 1977, I was commissioned by Gordon Davidson, artistic director of the Center Theatre Group/Mark Taper Forum in LA, to write a play based on an infamous chapter of Los Angeles history, specifically the Sleepy Lagoon Case of 1942 and the subsequent Zoot Suit Riots of 1943. Although hardly forgotten in the Chicano barrios, the Pachuco Era had been buried in the dust bins of oblivion by Anglo officialdom which preferred not to commemorate painful past embarrassments. An entire new generation born after World War II hardly knew anything about the pachucos, though inevitably, in the mid 60s, young Mexican Americans began to call themselves Chicanos, as the legacy of their zoot-suited barrio forbearers kicked in, inheriting their racial pride, urban slang and cultural defiance.
The generational difference was that many of these Chicano(a)s were now speaking their patois in colleges or universities. But the painful sting of the Zoot Suit Riots and the Sleepy Lagoon Case still persisted in the barrios, like an old suppurating wound that was taking decades to heal. My play thus inadvertently became a way to deal directly with the psychic damage inflicted on the East LA barrios by the Zoot Suit Riots by opening up the old racist wound and airing it in the public arena of the theater. The truth of this became evident when the play sold out at the Mark Taper even before it opened, and when the public followed the play to the Aquarius Theater in Hollywood. It ran there for eleven months, and in the end, more than 400,000 people came to see it. Half of them were Chicanos, most of whom had never seen a play before. This then motivated the move to the Winter Garden Theatre in New York City in 1979, where Zoot Suit became the first Chicano play to make it to Broadway.
The roots of the play, however, lie far from the Great White Way. I was born in a farm labor camp in Delano, California in 1940. In those days Delano was a hot spot in the San Joaquin Valley, and we had our own pachucos in the “Chinatown” barrio on the westside. One of them was my cousin Billy; another was his running partner C.C.. Billy spoke a fluid pachuco patois, so he taught me to call myself “Chicano” even thought I was only six. I learned a lot about the pachucos, including their slang and style of being, in this most intimate and familial way. Tragically, Billy died a violent death in Phoenix, eighteen knife wounds to the chest. But his running partner C.C. survived, joined the Navy and came home one day to marry and settle down. In 1965, when I told my mother in San Jose that I was returning to Delano to form a farm workers theater with the grape strikers, my Mom said: “Oh, you’re going to work with C.C.?” “C.C.?” I said, “Is that vato still around?” “Mijo,” my mother responded, “Don’t you know who C.C. is? He’s Cesar Chavez.”
In 1970, El Teatro Campesino, the Farm Workers Theater born on the picket lines of the Great Delano Grape Strike, produced my first full length play since college. It was called “Bernabe,” with a character called “La Luna” appearing in a bit part as a mythical Pachuco in a suit of lights. The character was so intriguing, I knew right away that he deserved a play of his own. Seven years later, when Gordon Davidson asked me to write about the Sleepy Lagoon, I chose to make El Pachuco the mythical central figure, both as master of ceremonies and alter ego of Henry “Hank” Reyna, the protagonist and leader of the 38 Street Gang. Above all, El Pachuco became the guide, the storyteller, so that the history of the Sleepy Lagoon Case and the Zoot Suit Riots could be told through a Chicano POV. The rest, as the saying goes, is American theater history.
Joshua TRILIEGI: Something about your work is so very true, genuine and original, at the same time, you speak for a good many individuals in the community. Would you talk a bit about staying true to one's vision and at the same time tapping into a larger truth, for not only our own communities, but for the world.
Luis VALDEZ: I wrote my first plays at San Jose State, graduating in ’64 with a BA in English with an emphasis in playwriting. It was not the most practical choice for a son of migrant farm workers, much less a Chicano, but I was determined to follow my heart. I had gotten hooked on theatre in the first grade in 1946, when I was cast in the Christmas school play. I was to play a monkey wearing a mask my teacher made, turning my brown taco bag into paper maché. I was exhilarated. Then the week of my great debut, my migrant family was evicted from the labor camp where we had overstayed our welcome. I was never in the play. A great hole of despair opened up in my chest. It could have destroyed me. But I learned early on that negatives can always be turned into positives. I took with me two things: one, the secret of paper maché, which allowed to make my own masks and puppets; and two, a deep, residual anger for my family’s eviction from the labor camp. Twenty years later, I went to Cesar Chavez and pitched him my idea for a theater of, by and for farm workers. And so the hole in my chest became the hungry mouth of my creativity, into which I have been pouring plays, poems, essays, screenplays, books, etc. for almost 70 years.
Joshua TRILIEGI: The Los Angeles and California scene has changed, grown and developed into a much stronger unification than ever before, [ Since the 1970's ] when ZOOT SUIT made it's initial impression. Your work is a big part of that growth.Tell us about your humble beginnings making plays and skits locally, before unveiling some of your opus masterworks.
Luis VALDEZ: The challenge of creating theater with striking campesinos was a humbling experience. Cesar had warned me from the start: “There’s no money to do theatre in Delano,” he told me. “There’s no actors, no stage, no time even to rehearse. We’re on the picket line night day. Do you still want to take a crack at it?” “Absolutely, Cesar!” I responded. “What an opportunity!” I was, of course, thinking about spirit of the movement he had started. But he was absolutely right. By necessity, El Teatro Campesino was born on the picket line. In time, we began to perform at the NFWA’S Friday night meetings. The National Farm Workers Association may have been rich in spirit but it was dead broke. After college, I had joined the San Francisco Mime Troupe for a year, performing in city parks, learning the improvisational techniques of Commedia dell Arte. This knowledge proved to be more useful in Delano than all the theater history I had learned at SJS. But my greatest revelation came from the campesinos themselves. As actors and audience, they taught me to stay down to earth; to stay away from all the pretentious artsy crap and to get to the point with actos that were clear and hard hitting. Above all, to stay positive and hopeful. “Don’t talk about it, do it!” became an essential Teatro precept. Later when we began to stage Actos about the Chicano Movement, the Vietnam War and racism in the schools, we found our audiences in LA, Chicano and New York no less responsive to our basic simplicity than the original grape strikers. “Zoot Suit” came about a dozen years after the birth of El Teatro, but the roots of my musical play like those of the original pachucos reach deep into the barrio earth.
Joshua TRILIEGI: I attended the auditions for LA BAMBA at Los Angeles Theater Complex in the Nineteen - Eighties. The excitement around the project was, and still is, very much alive and entirely current. Tell us a bit about that experience.
Luis VALDEZ: Before it was a film, LA BAMBA was originally going to be a stage musical by me and my brother Daniel. It was actually conceived on the Opening Night of Zoot Suit in New York. We were at the Winter Garden Theater on Broadway, and as I made my final rounds before curtain time, I dropped into my brother’s dressing room on the second floor. As the lead actor in the play with Edward James Olmos, Daniel was in high spirits. We both were. We had came a long way from Delano. Celebrating our success, we pledged that now that we had brought the 40s to Broadway, we should bring the 50s. But how, with what? At that exact moment, we heard mariachi music. Looking out the dressing room window, down toward Seventh Avenue, we spotted a gilded, fully suited band of mariachis playing up toward us. We didn’t know it at that moment but the President of Mexico had sent mariachis to serenade us on opening night. Daniel and I recognized the tune immediately. It was the answer to the question we had just posed to each other about our next musical. We simultaneously
laughed and said the words to each other: LA BAMBA!
It took five years to bring the project to fruition. The biggest problem turned out to be the lack of biographical material about Ritchie Valens, born Richard Valenzuela, in 1941 Los Angeles. There were a few articles in old magazines, but no published book or biography. What’s worse, Daniel had no success at all in finding surviving members of Ritchie’s family. They were long gone from Pacoima in the San Fernando Valley, where they lived in the 50s, 60s and 70s, and in the early 80s, before the internet, there was no social network to tap into. Without direct contact with the family, LA BAMBA was turning into a pipe dream. Somewhat dispirited, Daniel came back from Los Angeles to San Juan Bautista, home base of El Teatro Campesino, vowing nonetheless to keep on searching. Then one night, as life’s ironies would have it, he finally met Ritchie’s older half brother, Bob Morales. He met him in San Juan Bautista in Daisy’s Saloon! It turned out that Bob and most of Ritchie’s family now lived fifteen miles away in Watsonville, and he occasionally frequented Daisy’s with his biker friends. One thing quickly led to another. Bob took Daniel to meet Connie Valenzuela,Ritchie’s mom, then Daniel took me to meet the entire family. Within days, we took the story to our old friend Taylor Hackford in Hollywood, who agreed to option Ritchie’s story as a biopic for the big screen with Columbia Pictures. I wrote the screenplay over the winter and once we got a green light, I directed the picture the following summer, with my brother as associate producer. In the end, our biopic ended up grossing more than 100 million world wide. Very few movies come into being quite so precipitously. But there were twists of fate. We had originally intended the part of Ritchie Valens as a vehicle for my bro, But by the time we got the green light, Daniel graciously conceded that at 37 he could no longer pass as 17. So for all of his efforts, he generously created an opportunity to make a star out of Lou Diamond Phillips.
Joshua TRILIEGI: A writers experience with his or her collaborators is rather important, in your case: Los Lobos, Edward James Olmos, Lou Diamond Phillips to name a few. Will you talk about how much input you had at the time these projects were in development in choosing these fellow artists.
Luis VALDEZ: During the casting of Zoot Suit at the Mark Taper Forum in ’78, our greatest dilemma turned out to be the part of El Pachuco. I wrote the script with my brother Daniel in mind, though I saw him as both Henry Reyna and El Pachuco. The issue of nepotism aside, we had been collaborating within El Teatro Campesino for a dozen years before Zoot Suit came along. So it was only natural for him to serve as my unique role model for the play. Unfortunately,unlike film, he could not play two roles onstage simultaneously. So we set out on our quest to find one or the other. After an exhausting two weeks in LA, unable to find an alternate Henry or Pachuco among hundreds of actors, I took the weekend to be with my wife Lupe back in San Juan, where she was recuperating after giving birth to our third son Lakin on the very day I finished the script. Daniel continued with the auditions. A day or so later, he called me with subdued excitement: “Guess what?” he said, “I found El Pachuco!”
It turned out that after another disappointing day in LA, my bro met a a trim Chicano actor with a Bogart face strolling down the halls of the Mark Taper Annex across from the Music Center. Daniel asked him if he was there for the auditions. The Chicano Bogie responded: “What auditions?” Apparently, he knew nothing about Zoot Suit, but he was willing to read for a part. So Daniel read him. I had given my brother the option to play either of the two leads, but once he saw and heard Edward James Olmos read, he knew he had found El Pachuco.
A spirit of creative collaboration is always a necessity in the theater, but given my experience with El Teatro, “Zoot Suit” could not have come about any other way. Eddie Olmos created El Pachuco, as surely as El Pachuco helped to create Edward James Olmos the movie star. The fierce intensity of his stage presence no doubt came from his very being, but Eddie had a “killer instinct” that captured the essence of the pachuco phenomenon in the 40s. Oddly, in a similar way, Lou Diamond Phillips captured the killer instinct that made Ritchie Valens a rock star; though in Ritchie’s case, it was mixed with the residual innocence of a 17 year old. This innocence is the key to the enduring poignancy of “Donna,” a classic teenage lament of long lost love if there ever was one. Finding this mix of guilelessness with ferocity was the challenge in casting the star of LA BAMBA. We literally auditioned over 600 actors from Los Angeles to New York. Finally in Dallas, Texas, we found an actor who had been making Christian films. He came in with a certain intensity to read for Bob, the role he obviously coveted. But under all that bravado was an unmistakably poignant heart. So Lou Diamond Phillips became Ritchie Valens, and Ritchie became Lou, with all the innocent ferocity that made him reach for the stars.
None of this, of course, would have been possible without my musical collaborators. In the case of “Zoot Suit,” I owe a debt of gratitude to Lalo Guerrero, the Godfather and Gran Maestro de la Musica Chicana. With his permission, I tapped directly into five of his classics from the 1940s to turn my play into a kick-ass form of cabaret theater, if not into a full fledged musical. Lalo’s music is unquestionably the Pachuco soul of “Zoot Suit.” Similarly, Ritchie’s music is the soul of LA BAMBA, but it could never have come back to life without Los Lobos. We were friends long before their first album, “Just Another Band from East LA”launched their remarkable career. But working on the film’s sound track with Los Lobos, featuring the voice of David Hidalgo as Ritchie’s, was a collaborative joy. LA BAMBA took them to the top of the charts for the first time, but they’ve been up there many times since then. So has the great Carlos Santana, another of my collaborators on the movie. It is his subtle, penetrating guitar solos that follow Ritchie’s emotional trajectory throughout the film. Let’s face it. Genius in the barrio is genius everywhere. ¡Ajua!
Joshua TRILIEGI: In the neighborhood that I grew up in, at that time, there were several different camps and schools of thought that became represented by imagery and eventually posters in the rooms of our friends: Farah Fawcett, Bruce Lee, Led Zeppelin, Gerry Lopez, David Partridge and of course the Incredible Image of Artist IGNACIO GOMEZ who designed the image for ZOOT SUIT. That particular Image always has and always will mean something very special to many of us. Talk with us about IMAGE and TEXT and that very important relationship between artist and writer.
Luis VALDEZ: The first poster for ZOOT SUIT was created from a drawing by José Montoya, the late great Chicano poet, muralista, and maestro from the Sacramento barrios. With both paint and ink, José had been capturing the Pachuco Image for decades, in poems, lithographs and silk screen posters. In 1973, he and his homies at the R.C.A.F. (the Rebel Chicano Artists Front that playfully dubbed themselves the Royal Chicano Air Force ) even staged a piece at the Third Teatro Festival in San José called “Recuerdos del Palomar.” Decked out as pachucos in zoot suits with their huisas in mini skirts, José and his cronies did not pretend to present a play as much as offer a form of performance art. Characteristically, José’s pachuco images were always imbued with a tinge of self-deprecating humor; which was exactly the quality of the first ZOOT SUIT poster. This image represented the play in its first draft, a two week workshop production run as part of the “New Theatre For Now” series at the Taper in Spring ‘78.
When I rewrote the play to open the main season that Fall, the Center Theatre Group hired Ignacio Gomez to create a new image more in concert with the growing impact of the production. More or less styled on Edward James Olmos’ interpretation of the role, El Pachuco now became a towering figure straddling City Hall. More in line with the mythical dimensions of the lead character in my play, the image was elegant, stark and grand. Almost immediately, thanks to Nacho’s brilliant skill as an artist, El Pachuco became iconic. As seen in newspapers, magazines and on the sides of municipal buses, the image seemed to burrow its way into the public’s consciousness, especially in the Chicano community. With all due respect and modesty, it remains a perfect example of how an artist and a playwright coming together can create a powerful symbol that speaks across multiple generations, perhaps even helping to heal some old psychic wounds in the City of the Angels.
Joshua TRILIEGI: The trajectory of a career has its own pulse and arc. You have continued to stay busy with collaborations of all sorts: El Teatro Campesino, San Diego Repertory Projects, PBS great Performances and so on. Tell us about the recent Ancient Goddess Project and the role that Kinan Valdez has taken on since 2006.
Luis VALDEZ: El Teatro Campesino will celebrate its 50th anniversary in 2015. After a half century of uninterrupted artistic and cultural activism, we are proud to declare ourselves a multi-generational theater family. We could not have survived any other way. My beloved wife, Lupe Trujillo Valdez, joined El Teatro in 1968. As an activist at Fresno State University, she was the daughter of campesinos, a supporter of the United Farm Workers, and the first college-educated Chicana to “run away with the circus.” We were married in ’69, as much for love as for our shared political beliefs. We have three sons – Anahuac (’71), Kinan (’73) and Lakin (’78) – all born into the Teatro family, all artists and activists in their own right, all devoted to the betterment of the world around them through social justice and the arts. Other 40 year plus members and founders of the Teatro, such as my biological brother Daniel and spiritual brother Phil Esparza, have also raised their children and grandchildren within our family of families.
Cesar Chavez died in 1993, signaling the beginning of an organizational change in the Chicano Movement that El Teatro Campesino began to naturally undergo in the mid nineties. It was nothing more or less than the passing of leadership from one generation to the next. The older generation continued to serve on the Board of Directors, but the younger Generation took the reins of day to day operations. In this regard, my son Anahuac was the first the serve as the new General Manager of the company. In due time both Kinan and Lakin became associate artistic directors, until Kinan assumed full leadership as Producing Artistic Director in 2007. During all this time, they continued to write, direct, produce and act in new plays of their own creation. They staged Teatro classics such as “La Gran Carpa de los Rasquachis” and took full responsibility for the Christmas plays in Mission San Juan Bautista. Working with other young artists in the company, they staged world theater classics like Alfred Jarry’s “Ubu Roi” and Bertolt Brecht’s “The Measures Taken.” Experimenting with musical forms, Kinan also wrote and directed a goddess play called “The Fascinatrix” and another quasi-satirical work called “I Love You, Sam Burguesa.” Their objective was obviously to expand the range of El Teatro’s work, but with other works they consciously stuck to the political core. To wit, in 2010 Lakin wrote and directed a piece called “Victor in Shadow,” about the martyred Chilean folksinger Victor Jara. The three brothers then collaborated on three plays based on Mayan CreationMyths, including “Popul Vuh – Parts One and Two” written and directed by Kinan; and “Popul Vuh – Part Three, the Magic Twins” written and directed by Lakin. More recently, this summer in 2014, Kinan and Lakin collaborated with the La Jolla Playhouse/San Diego REP, playing the leads in “El Henry,” Herbert Siguenza’s raucous adaptation of Shakespeare’s Henry IV part one.
Joshua TRILIEGI: You are considered The Godfather of Latin Theater Worldwide. Has there been pressure to create a certain type of work with that mantle attached ? And how do we as writers, as artists, as performers retain that same vitality and spontaneity in our work, after the fame and notoriety ?
Luis VALDEZ: In 2010, I was invited to Mexico City by the CNT ( Compania Nacional de Teatro) to translate and direct the world premiere of ZOOT SUIT in Spanish. As far as I know, no other Chicano playwright/director had ever been offered such an honor, so I accepted with the humility of a long lost orphan given the chance to finally come home. Ironically, I was not born in Mexico. Neither were my Mom and Dad, who were born in Arizona early in the Twentieth century. The real immigrants in my family were my abuelos – my grandparents and great grandparents - who crossed the border from the northern state of Sonora before the Mexican Revolution over a century ago. Why then did I feel like an orphan? Because all my life, despite myAmerican birth, I had been treated like a Mexican. Here then is another example of how negatives can always be turned into positives. As an indio-looking, hyphenated Mexican American, I had no choice but to declare myself a Chicano; which if you see it my way is a Twenty-first century New American with a hemispheric identity. I did not buy into that fictitious line drawn in the desert called the border that separates rich from impoverished, white from brown, “America” from “Latin” America. So despite all the fame and notoriety my career has brought me, I remain brown and indio-looking. I feel no more pressure to remain Latino than to be an Anglo. I just am who I am, and that’s all there is to it. In the final analysis, assimilation is hardly a one way street. The world’s cultures have been assimilating each other for centuries. Sooner or later, most people in this hemisphere will realize that we are all New Americans. Until then, I rely on the struggle for social justice to keep my work spontaneous and vital.
Joshua TRILIEGI: Your public appearances are totally off the cuff, unrehearsed and down right bold. I love that about you, there is no lie. Not unlike The Zoot Suiter finding his power once he actually takes off the suit and finds himself underneath the costume. To whom would you attribute that particular trait in your earliest influences ?
Luis VALDEZ: My earliest influences no doubt came from my immediate family – my parent, aunts and uncles, grandparents, and their compadres. They were a vital, crusty, earthy lot. But as a kid I couldn’t help but notice right away that something was not right. Life was rigged somehow. Despite all our sweat and back breaking labor in the fields, we were always jodidos, poor as hell and out of gas, with nothing to do but move on to the next menial job. I hated stoop labor, not because it was unbearably hard but because it was humiliating. All the more because wages were dirt cheap. My folks kept their spirits up by developing a wicked sense of ironic humor, but I quickly realized that this was the only way they could tolerate the shit pies in the face that fate was giving them. Despite the constant looming despair, they kept me and my siblings in school, knowing it was our only way out. In due time I discovered that working with my hands did not prevent me from using my imagination. So even though I was picking cotton, potatoes, cherries, prunes and apricots as fast as I could, my mind was automatically running riot with ideas for bilingual stories, jokes and songs. With this kind of daily mental exercise, my school lessons became easy, a way to prove my worth to my teachers and myself in the face of discrimination. Like my uncles and cousins, I learned to defend myself with stinging ironic humor using the Pachuco slang of the barrio, but I also developed a proficiency in English.Mentally code-switching back and forth between Spanish and English, I eventually developed a spontaneous fluidity of expression that can only come from a well-exercised brain. Like I say, any negative can always be turned into a positive. I won a scholarship to attend San Jose State College in 1958, as a Math and Physics major my first year. By my second year, I knew what I really had to do. I had to set my imagination free by releasing all those stories, jokes and songs still zinging in my head. I had to admit to myself that I was an actor and a playwright, despite the fact that a career in the theater was totally impractical. So I switched majors to English, and never looked back. I became what I always wanted to be – a Chicano playwright.
Joshua TRILIEGI: Thank You so much for taking the time to share your experience with our readers. How can the public support current and developing projects and productions by ETC ?
Luis VALDEZ: This summer El Teatro Campesino is producing my latest full-length play, VALLEY OF THE HEART, in our playhouse in San Juan Bautista. It runs from August thru September, before moving on to other venues as part of our Fiftieth Anniversary celebration. If you come on Labor Day weekend, you can see both VALLEY in our theater and POPUL VUH outdoors in the park. If you can’t make it to San Juan, you can help us by donating online through our website at elteatrocampesino.com. But please support any of the Latino theater productions in your area. We fervently continue to believe that “Theater is the Creator of Community, and Community is the Creator of Theater.” For as our ancient Mayan ancestors believed: CREER ES CREAR. ¡Si Se Puede!
JACK KEROUAC & The Waiting Game
In Nineteen Ninety-Nine, while living in and researching the history of Milwaukee and the Italian immigrant experience, Mr Hijuelos was being interviewed on national public radio. I called into the show and we spoke about his book and how it had inspired me. I was elated to speak publicly to one of my mentors. The show moderator asked me what it was that I liked about Mr Hijuelos' work and I tried my best to describe it. Mr Hijuelos, upon hearing that I too had a new story in development, wanted to know what it was that made my own story so special and we talked at length about our families. It was a pinnacle moment for me and I recorded it for future posterity. Now, sadly, we have lost Oscar Hijuelos to the other world. The world where people go when they leave this one. In the Mambo Kings novel, the loss and death of a brother stings the life of another, leaving a giant absence, where there once was partnership, friendship, collaboration, union. For an entire page and a half, Oscar describes a drum solo that precedes the death of his character's heart beat ending. It is a fabulous description of a crucial moment in a man's life that is indulgent, detailed, imaginative & glorious. Mr Hijuelos's prose style is so in tune with his culture, that of the immigrant experience: the food, the music, the fashion, the passion, the way of talking, walking, thinking. His sentences are way beyond what writing school teachers would describe as ' run - ons '. Hijuelos breaks all the rules and it works. Like a drum solo that goes on and on and on, he had a way of keeping us on the dance floor late into the night. I often stayed up late into the early hours reading the Mambo Kings. I am still working on my novel about the early italian immigrants of the mid west and am still in debt to Mr Hijuelos. He would have been the perfect author to provide a proverbial book cover commentary. Am I sad that he is gone from this world ? No. Why not ? Well, when a man reaches his goals, when he stretches beyond his wildest imagination and achieves a certain level of professionalism, we can only know that through that expression, that work, that craft, that art, that all is well, in this world and the next.
Mr, Hijuelos went on to write about other situations, but for me, and for many, his masterpiece, with which he received a Pulitzer prize in the early Nineteen Eighties, was absolute. It describes the life of Cubans, the life of musicians, the inner lives of men, passion and growing old in such a way that it is a living document of a time and a place. That is what a writer needs to do: tell it to us in a way that we can see, hear, feel, taste, smell, touch. Take us there, bring us back, help us understand where you are and get us to join you there. Mr Hijuelos' The Mambo Kings Sing Songs of Love is indeed a classic novel that achieve's all of this and more. His style is detailed, abundant and even indulgent, as if he is sitting at the table and can't help but heap upon his plate more of the great cuban food and rum, or play the album one more time or tell the story of a long lost love just one more time. It is a painful story of leaving those you love behind you, to, ' Make it ' in America. The price we pay for love, success, expression. An aching world of yearning for possibilities in the big city and finding that the politics of success are just as important as the talent it takes to get you there. There is a major motion picture that hints at the characters & may help to familiarize the situations, but it should lead you directly to the prose.I recently interviewed Miles Perlich, a radio host aficionado of latin jazz & couldn't help but mention Oscar Hijuelos and Mambo Kings during the interview, as it is a great reference to the period, the art, the world of latin jazz.
If you have not read Mambo Kings, put it on your list. Mr Hijuelos's use or employment of the asterisk is used so often and so indulgently, that it probably surprised publishers and readers. Not unlike the way that Cubans, in a heated conversation, will often digress into an explanation of a term, an idea or a phrase. The asterisk does just that, with a side story peppered here and there throughout. I found the device to be clever, funny and spot-on regarding the immigrant experience, where, just about every cultural detail needs a bit of explaining to whoever is listening. I have learned directly from my contemporary mentors in literature: Raymond Carver for honesty, Richard Russo for overall structure, Joyce Carol Oates for descriptive detail, Jack Kerouac for spiritual inspiration, George Sand for a sort of defiance, Hunter S. Thompson for insanity, Sherman Alexie for heritage, William Kennedy for cultural truth, Charles Bukowski for simplicity, Alice Walker for patient plotting, but no one artist has taught me more about passion on the page, than Mr. Hijuelos & Mambo Kings Sing Songs of Love. As a writer, as a reader, I can honestly say that I love the afore mentioned writers. There is a long list of performers, writers, directors, artists, architects, photographers and philosophers that I could compose, but these are the writers that come to mind. While recently creating a new novel, by simply writing a chapter a day for three weeks straight and publishing each chapter, each day, these were the writers that came to mind. The project is entitled, " They Call it The City of Angels ". I owe a simple thank you to them all. As for my longterm project, inspired by Mr Hijuelos, that is an altogether different type of work and there will be a thank you within the pages of its publication. Until then, Gracias* Oscar Hijuelos.
image: Guest Artist Irby Pace Courtesy of Gallerie Urbane
SO MANY ROADS: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF THE GRATEFUL DEAD
By Joshua TRILIEGI
David Browne has written a grand opus of a book on, of all things, the greatest rock & roll accident that has ever occurred: The Grateful Dead. No other band in Rock & Roll history can be compared to 'The Dead,' as they have been commonly known by fans and professionals alike. From the early days in Palo Alto California to the later days across the entire world, Mr. Browne has fashioned an exhaustively researched book into an easily readable tome of sorts. The writer for Rolling Stone magazine has taken an original and interesting approach and given us a portrait of the band through a very straight forward concept that fits well with his style, his experience and his day job, writing about music in digestible amounts. Mr. Browne breaks down the careers and characters that make up the Dead, from start to finish, by simply creating complete and utter portraits of various days in the life of The Grateful Dead. Days in which Mr Browne felt that a significant window into the soul of the band could be glimpsed. It is a smart concept considering that Mr. Browne was not an insider. He did not tour with the band, so he was well aware that this book would not compare, nor did he wish to compete with the previous books which have preceded this fine piece of history. Through his research methods, which seem to be exemplary, without all the show off style that can sometimes leave a bitter taste in the reader, and his experience at Rolling Stone magazine, Browne takes us into the forming of the band, their many transformations and delivers portraits of each member with the greatest care and delicacy available. Its a complex story, told with an exacting style.
By the fifth page of The Prologue, the reader is hooked. I personally cannot think of a more easy reading style, chocked with so many actual facts, insights and observations in a very long, long time. Sometimes his acuity is just as strange and off the cuff as the formulas and elements that make up The Grateful Dead's original and one of a kind style of music. For instance, Jerry Garcia's early concerns and fears regarding the Cuban missile crisis in America is a real eye opener, which on first impression seems slightly heavy handed, but upon consideration of Garcia's age and experience, entirely fitting. Browne interviewed surviving members, had access to The Grateful Dead Archive in Santa Cruz as well as a multitude of interviews directly from his office job at Rolling Stone magazine. But he didn't stop there, apparently there has been more literature in connection with the Grateful Dead than one would ever imagine. From sources as diverse as Tom Wolf'e, Electric Kool - Aid Acid Test, written in 1968 to the source that broke Watergate, The Washington Post. Everyone has seemingly spent some time ruminating on the indescribable elements that make up the iconic sound that originated such classic pillars of Rock & Roll History like, Truckin', Casey Jones & Uncle John's Band. Mr. Browne has received attention previously for writing about, brace yourself: The 'Importance' of John Tesch. Lets not hold that against him, maybe, like The Grateful Dead, he was intoxicated or simply mixing and matching inspiration and improvisation. Either way, this author has delved deep down into the facts, the myths and the fiction surrounding Garcia and his band of bad boy compadre's and has surfaced with a nice read that newcomers as well as hardcore fans will surely dig. Mr. Brown has also written about: Sonic Youth, Jeff Buckley and James Taylor. As a writer who occasionally hitchhiked to and from preschool in Northern California, with my mom, and on more than one occasion received rides home from members of The Dead: I wholeheartedly approve of this book. Now available on Da Capo Press. Worth every dollar spent on the 482 pages it offers readers.
JACK KEROUAC & The Waiting Game
By Joshua A. TRILIEGI / BUREAU of ARTS and CULTURE MAGAZINE LITERARY EDITION
In The Spring of 1951, Jack Kerouac began the final scroll version of On The Road with the now famous opener, "I first met Neal not long after my father died …" It would be another six years before the public would even read that line & while waiting for his big break, he almost went insane. When it finally did happen in 1957, the book transformed writing style forever and for twelve years straight : Jack never stopped. Jack's frustrations started early on and strained many of his relationships with his life long pals and gals. On many occasions, the angst was actually justified. Kerouac knew he had pierced the veil with the new style used in On The Road. He saw it happening all around him, the Arts in America were changing and a whole new WAY of seeing and expressing was happening everywhere. Marlon Brando was screaming from the stages of New York City and Jackson Pollock was on the cover of LIFE. But it would still be too early for the likes of the public to catch up with trailblazers that included both mid - century and mid - decade breakthroughs such as James Dean, Elvis Presley and Jack Kerouac, who would all have major public notoriety by the mid to late 1950s. James Dean with three films back to back: Rebel Without a Cause, East of Eden and Giant. Elvis Presley with a groundbreaking performance on the Ed Sullivan Show, that did indeed eventually lead to an entire sexual revolution. And of course, Mr. Jack Kerouac with the eventual publishing of On The Road and a lifelong respect and notoriety to originality and love of life.
The writer describes in a letter, dated Oct 8, 1952, scribed to his life long friend, contemporary and sometimes foe, Allen Ginsberg, " This is to notify you and the rest of the whole lot what I think of you. Can you tell me even for an instance … with all this talk about pocket book styles and the new trend in writing about drugs and sex, why my On The Road written in 1951 wasn't ever published ?" He goes on to describe his basic frustrations at more inferior books that were published and admonishes many of his friends and associates for being jealous: Which was most likely true. In fact, even Ginsberg himself was learning from the new Kerouac style. On the one hand, Ginsberg had helped to liberate Kerouac's formalities with his free form poetry. Later Kerouac was also informed by the letters of his inspiration for On The Road : Neal Cassady. On the other hand, each were dearly close to Neal and an unofficial contest began between the two writers. It was not only about who could lay down the best descriptions and who could out do the other in words, Ginsberg stepped up the competition with physical acts that Kerouac could never compete with, nor did he care to. But when Jack sat down to write the scrolled version of On The Road in the Spring of 1951, all the lessons were over and he became the leader of the so called Beat Writers and Movement. Kerouac had yet to be crowned publicly, but everyone in his circle knew he had ascended gracefully. Versions of the novel were being read all over the publishing world, it became a sensation and a point of derogatory conversation among the academics. One such comment, by a writer nobody even remembers anymore was, "That's not writing, that's typing." Kerouac had outdone them all and none could admit it. He was & still is the king of the beat writers. If he were alive today, he might simply ask, had you read his work ? What did you think ? Kerouac believed that Writing was Everything .
Not long after scribing one of his darkest letters to Allen Ginsberg, Kerouac visited William Burroughs at his Rooftop Studio in Mexico City. Burroughs was going through a particularly rough patch himself. The thing to remember and indeed to learn from the Letters of Kerouac, Ginsberg and Burroughs, all of which are now available to the public, is that life as an artist is messy, troublesome, challenged. We often like to picture our celebrities, our icons, our hero's in some state of forever coolness. Well, the fact of the matter is that everybody has the ups & the downs. Life On The Road had its excitement, its entertainment and it's education, but there was always the other side of that coin. The letters provide a very real glimpse into the challenging aspects, the in-fighting, the quarrels and the very difficulty of actually writing, living, publishing and retaining and or losing friends in the battle. In a letter dated Jan 10 1953, Kerouac writes to Neal Cassady and his wife Caroline from William Burrough's flat. "Bill just finally left Mexico, last night, how sad. They were asking for more bond money… I feel like … I will never see him again … And I'm completely alone on the roof. Now or never with a great new novel long anticipated from me in N.Y. - day & night lonesome toil. "
In another letter, written the same week, addressed to John Clellon Holmes, author of the first novel to be published by the beat writers entitled, "GO", Jack describes further Burrough's dilemma. " Burroughs is gone at last - 3 years in Mexico - lost everything, his wife, his children, his patrimony - I saw him pack in his moldy room … Sad moldy leather cases … medicines, drugs - the last of Joan's spices … all lost, dust, & thin tragic Bill hurries off into the night solitaire - Ah Soul - throwing in his bag, at last, picture of Lucien [ Carr ] & Allen [ Ginsberg ] - Smiled, & left. " Burroughs who had shot his wife, in a game of 'William Tell ' had been dealing with legal issues and a court case that went sour when his own lawyer actually shot someone and had to flee the scene. All of this is represented best in David Cronenberg's film entitled, "Naked Lunch." Possibly the best film to capture the nightmarish qualities that dogged William Burroughs and his life.
By this time, Kerouac had already patched up friendship with Ginsberg after the recent afore mentioned letter and was now moving ahead with another project. He sometimes worked on several works at any one time. In the same letter to Neal Cassady, Jack mentions a piece he wrote over a 5 day period, in french, that describes a fictional meeting in 1935 between him, Neal and Burroughs in Chinatown: "… And some sexy blondes in a bedroom with a French Canadian rake and an old Model T. You'll read it in print someday and laugh. It's the solution to the "On The Road" plots, all of 'em and I will hand it in soon as I finish the translating and typing." This story written in French over a 5 day period in January of 1953 is most likely the work that is currently in the news. Apparently a canadian publishing house has bought the rights to publish, so the world will finally get a chance to posthumously read yet another 'new' work by Mr. Jack Kerouac.
Jack Kerouac did make several breakthroughs prior to publishing On The Road , and then he knew it was just a matter of time. Finally the cultural malaise that had clogged mainstream America with conservative values of the early Fifties were dissipating. By 1956, in a letter to his agent, Sterling Lord, dated Sept. 17, 1956, Jack describes being photographed by a high profile magazine with Poets Gregory Corso and Allen Ginsberg. " The other night Mademoiselle magazine took our pictures … for a spread … title : Flaming Cool Youth of San Francisco Poetry. Life magazine also wants to take my picture in a few weeks at Corso's reading … Two of my pieces are to be published in Black Mountain Review … I think I'll finally make some money for you finally, so that makes me feel better, all the time and faith you put into me. As the years go by I realize how nice you've been Sterling, and I welcome it with a feeling of warmth, coming as it does from the 'brrr' world of New York Publishing."
A year earlier Kerouac had stayed in the Berkeley Cottage of Allen Ginsberg after hitchhiking from Santa Barbara to San Francisco, living on California red wine and commiserating with the poets who would eventually open the floodgates at the now famous, SIX Gallery Poetry Readings in the Bay Area. The poets included : Michael McClure, Philip Whalen, Gary Snyder, Philip Lamentia & Kenneth Rexroth. Jack would have varying degrees of friendship with this group of poets and plenty of personal opinions and misunderstandings as well. His friendship with both Lawrence Ferlnghetti and Gary Snyder would lead to the writing of The Dharma Bums and Big Sur. The latter also the subject of a recent film of the same name produced by Bureau of Arts and Culture friend and associate, Mr. Orion Williams. In a letter written to Philip Whalen dated Nov 22, 1955 Kerouac describes his stay in Berkeley, " Dear Phil, Thank You for the needed hospitality - Now I know that the hidden reason for my coming to California again when I really didn't want to, was to meet you & Gary - The two best men I ever met - I'll drop you a card from where I'll be next week - Yours forever in the Dharma, Jack "
Kerouac writes to Gary Snyder in a letter dated Jan 15 1956, thanking him for suggesting to apply as a look out in The Washington State Cascade Mountains. "Just finished [writing] a long novel … Visions of Gerard, my best. most serious, sad & true book yet … If I should ever make big money with my books, count on seeing me in Japan for sure… Me, my letters are like this, long and confused, because that's my mind, long and confused, I'm writing a dozen things and typing all the time and all fucked up & enthusiastic and shooting baskets in the yard and running in the woods with kids & dogs and so this letter has distraught look." A year away from publishing On The Road and at an all time low, Kerouac writes to Malcolm Cowley in May of 1956, " I'm in a real straits now, my jeans are all torn, I'm living in a shack with a woodstove, rent free, have no money whatever, don't care (much), and am waiting day after day for word from you concerning … On The Road … it breaks my heart to be neglected so." But within weeks Kerouac headed up to Washington State and renewed his work & attitude.
Although, the relationship between Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac was a contentious one, it was also a very true friendship. In the spring of 1957, Allen loaned Jack enough money to travel abroad to visit Bill Burroughs in Tangier. Burroughs had recently taken the cure in England and was bent on gathering his various writings and creating a novel with the help of his friends. Kerouac writes to Edie Parker on Jan 28, 1957 from New York, just before the trip abroad, describing Burroughs, "He is a great gentlemen and as you may know has become a great writer, in fact all the big wigs are afraid of him (W.H. Auden. etc…) Allen never loses track of me even when I try to hide. He does me many favors publicizing my name. Well, we're old friends anyway. But I can't keep up with the hectic fame life he wants and so, I won't stay with them long in Tangier."
While in Tangiers Kerouac received edited versions of recent works and was aghast at the hack job. Rather than have his work butchered by the publishers, Kerouac holds firm to his belief in his work and writes to Sterling Lord on March 4, 1957, " I'd rather die than betray my faith in my work which is inseparable from my life, without this faith any kind of money is mockery…" Still in Tangier with Burroughs, he follows this up on March 25 1957 with another letter to Mr. Lord, " I feel like I definitely did the right thing… that it will definitely bear fruit in the end. Hemingway went through the same trouble in early 1920s and had he succumbed to the ideas of the editors, there would have been no 'Hemingway Style' at all and nothing great about The Lost Generation. Ditto Faulkner in 30s." Meanwhile, Jack made a living typing up Burroughs' manuscripts in trade for meals and took long hikes around Tangiers, absorbing the culture & the scenery.
Two things happened in early April of 1957 that changed the face of literature. The first was notification from Kerouac's agent that On The Road had been sold & the second was that Allen Ginsberg's epic poem entitled, "Howl," had been banned and deemed unfit for children to read. Finally, exactly what the two authors had been working on all their lives, for Jack, it was acceptance, for Allen, it was a defiant chance to challenge the establishment. Both had succeeded in their goals.
To this day, both works are taught, studied and read just about everywhere with fine film adaptions of each. In a letter to his agent, dated April 3, 1957, Kerouac describes his appreciation and plans for the future. " It's wonderful, Sterling, the way you have been making things hum. I am going to take advantage of this apparently prosperous year and come right home and set up my abode proper. I have an idea for a wonderful follow up for On The Road … Meanwhile I have been digging Morocco… last night Ramadan, the annual Mohammedan fast, started here, with a blast of cannon shot in the bay and then, like smoke over rooftops at 2AM came the lonely sweet flutes … the saddest sound in the world." Within a month Kerouac had returned to America, had gathered all his belongings and moved to Berkeley California. Within a week, Lawrence Ferlinghetti of City Lights Books was arrested for selling HOWL. One of the most celebrated court cases in history followed. Is it Art or Is it Obscene ? Eventually Allen Ginsberg triumphed and it became a victory for intellectuals, artists & writers who push the envelope.
Jack Keruoac had finally gone public. Neal Cassady, Jacks inspiration for the novel, On The Road, had become a character in another man's work of art. He had been a drifter for years, a wayward and wandering soul. Neal would go on to be an influential part of the American subculture with writers such as Ken Kesey, who penned, "One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest'. One of the few novels that Jack Kerouac, not only appreciated, but deservedly so, wrote an introductory blurb. Neal himself would be dogged by bad luck from the law, eventually doing time in prison for an entrapment drug deal with a substance that is now used by doctors throughout the world: marijuana. Neal Cassday's letters of this period are available in the book untitled, "Grace Beats Karma: Letters from Prison.' Even to this day, he is the target of lesser than human beings, who have no idea what living is even about. In the final lines of the newly published Original Scroll version of On The Road, Jack Kerouac writes, "I know by now the evening - star must be drooping and shedding her sparkler dims on the prairie, which is just before the coming of complete night that blesses the earth, darkens all rivers, cups the peaks in the west and folds the last and final shore in, and nobody, just nobody knows what's going to happen to anybody besides the forlorn rags of growing old, I think of Neal Cassady, I even think of the Old Neal Cassady the father we never found, I think of Neal Cassady, I think of Neal Cassady. " The End.
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Pink Chamber, Sicily © Andrew Moore, Courtesy of the Artist + Yancey Richardson Gallery
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BUREAU BOOKS OSCAR HIJUELOS
An Appreciation: The Pulitzer Prize Winning Cuban Author of "Mambo Kings Sings Songs of Love" has completed his last Conga Solo
by Joshua Triliegi April 2014 Edition of Bureau of Arts and Culture Magazine
The day that I first came across a copy of Oscar Hijuelos' s Novel "Mambo Kings Sing Song's of Love" was the day I had decided that I wanted to become a novelist. I had published poems, written songs, created short stories and had a screenplay considered as a finalist at the Sundance Writers workshop. I had never written a novel, but upon reading Mambo Kings, there was a passion, an honesty, a very real & raw intensity that described a world, an experience, a view into a private and personal history that, to me, is absolutely perfect. It was as if his story about latin jazz musicians from Cuba, spoke directly to me. It said, this is a world of men and women, music and silence, love and hate, loss and gain, pain and pleasure, rejection and acceptance, power and peasants, talent and ownership, life and death. I changed the direction of my entire life because of Oscar Hijuelos. While working comfortably as an artist, furniture designer, interior designer and sometime art department assistant for film, I left it all behind and moved to Milwaukee Wisconsin to research my own novel based on real life events in my own family heritage. I had been conducting interviews with family members for over a decade, but until I had found Mambo Kings, I had no idea ' how ' to go about compiling, expressing and telling the stories I was being told. Mr Hijuelos' broad, colorful, expansive and passionate storytelling style became a road map for me. I must have read and re read his novel several times a year for several years. Whenever, I got stuck, lost inspiration or needed that extra boost, it always pushed me ahead.
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| Pink Chamber, Sicily © Andrew Moore, Courtesy of the Artist + Yancey Richardson Gallery |
In Nineteen Ninety-Nine, while living in and researching the history of Milwaukee and the Italian immigrant experience, Mr Hijuelos was being interviewed on national public radio. I called into the show and we spoke about his book and how it had inspired me. I was elated to speak publicly to one of my mentors. The show moderator asked me what it was that I liked about Mr Hijuelos' work and I tried my best to describe it. Mr Hijuelos, upon hearing that I too had a new story in development, wanted to know what it was that made my own story so special and we talked at length about our families. It was a pinnacle moment for me and I recorded it for future posterity. Now, sadly, we have lost Oscar Hijuelos to the other world. The world where people go when they leave this one. In the Mambo Kings novel, the loss and death of a brother stings the life of another, leaving a giant absence, where there once was partnership, friendship, collaboration, union. For an entire page and a half, Oscar describes a drum solo that precedes the death of his character's heart beat ending. It is a fabulous description of a crucial moment in a man's life that is indulgent, detailed, imaginative & glorious. Mr Hijuelos's prose style is so in tune with his culture, that of the immigrant experience: the food, the music, the fashion, the passion, the way of talking, walking, thinking. His sentences are way beyond what writing school teachers would describe as ' run - ons '. Hijuelos breaks all the rules and it works. Like a drum solo that goes on and on and on, he had a way of keeping us on the dance floor late into the night. I often stayed up late into the early hours reading the Mambo Kings. I am still working on my novel about the early italian immigrants of the mid west and am still in debt to Mr Hijuelos. He would have been the perfect author to provide a proverbial book cover commentary. Am I sad that he is gone from this world ? No. Why not ? Well, when a man reaches his goals, when he stretches beyond his wildest imagination and achieves a certain level of professionalism, we can only know that through that expression, that work, that craft, that art, that all is well, in this world and the next.
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| Detroit Series © Andrew Moore, Courtesy of the Artist + Yancey Richardson Gallery |
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© Andrew Moore, Courtesy of the Artist and Yancey Richardson Gallery ANTON'S BOOKS
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If you have not read Mambo Kings, put it on your list. Mr Hijuelos's use or employment of the asterisk is used so often and so indulgently, that it probably surprised publishers and readers. Not unlike the way that Cubans, in a heated conversation, will often digress into an explanation of a term, an idea or a phrase. The asterisk does just that, with a side story peppered here and there throughout. I found the device to be clever, funny and spot-on regarding the immigrant experience, where, just about every cultural detail needs a bit of explaining to whoever is listening. I have learned directly from my contemporary mentors in literature: Raymond Carver for honesty, Richard Russo for overall structure, Joyce Carol Oates for descriptive detail, Jack Kerouac for spiritual inspiration, George Sand for a sort of defiance, Hunter S. Thompson for insanity, Sherman Alexie for heritage, William Kennedy for cultural truth, Charles Bukowski for simplicity, Alice Walker for patient plotting, but no one artist has taught me more about passion on the page, than Mr. Hijuelos & Mambo Kings Sing Songs of Love. As a writer, as a reader, I can honestly say that I love the afore mentioned writers. There is a long list of performers, writers, directors, artists, architects, photographers and philosophers that I could compose, but these are the writers that come to mind. While recently creating a new novel, by simply writing a chapter a day for three weeks straight and publishing each chapter, each day, these were the writers that came to mind. The project is entitled, " They Call it The City of Angels ". I owe a simple thank you to them all. As for my longterm project, inspired by Mr Hijuelos, that is an altogether different type of work and there will be a thank you within the pages of its publication. Until then, Gracias* Oscar Hijuelos.
* Gracias means Thank You in Spanish a Derivation of Gracious / gracious |ˈgrāSHəs| adjective 1. courteous, kind, and pleasant: 2. showing divine grace: 3. a polite epithet used of royalty or their acts: the accession of Her gracious Majesty.
WELCOME to FALL 2015 Edition BUREAU of ARTS and CULTURE MAGAZINE. This Edition contains The BUREAU ICON Essay: BOB DYLAN. Interviews + Photographic Essays with Alex HARRIS on The INUIT, Kanayo ADIBE in Baltimore, Lynn SAVILLE in New York City, Mike MILLER on West Coast Style, Ryan SCHIERLING in AUSTIN and BUREAU GUEST Artist: Melissa Ann PINNEY ART Interview with David BURKE in Bay Area. Plus: Michelle HANDELMAN. New FICTION: THEY CALL IT THE CITY of ANGELS Part III MUSIC Contributor: Sarah Rose PERRY on The Femme PUNK Scene. MUSIC Interview with JAHI. Plus US MUSEUMS: Detroit's 30 ARTISTS Exhibit, Milwaukee's Larry SULTAN, Photo LA, BOOK Stores Across US: BookPeople, Anderson's, City Lights, Book Reviews from STRAND NYC. Classical MUSIC and Rock & Roll: Not So Different After All. Elliott Landy and The BAND. Edward Hopper at The Cantor. All This and More Plus BUREAU On Line Links to The ART Fairs in MIAMI 2015 with Exclusive Audio Interviews, Reviews & New Online Articles All Year Round at The New BUREAU CITY SITES Across America an The World Through Internet. BUREAU is MEDIA Partner for PHOTO LA . RED NATION FILM FEST + MORE...
BUREAU of ARTS and CULTURE IS EDITED BY J. A. TRILIEGI
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BOB DYLAN
By BUREAU OF ARTS AND CULTURE MAGAZINE EDITOR J. A. TRILIEGI
Bob Dylan transformed the idea of what it is to be hip, deep, cool, sexy, funny, ironic and intelligent, all the while, retaining a purist style that remained true to himself. Each step of the way, each level of transcendence, each pitfall, each breakthrough moment has it's challenges, it's problems, its rewards. Success in the creative field can mean as many things to as many performers, songwriters and those who fall in the center of the American spotlight of popularity. Few can survive it, even fewer are able to retain a sense of self and even protect that idea publicly. Dylan took the name of a poet, hopped on a bus, looked at America and told the world truths, that have to this day, remain truer and truer as time passes. The songs he wrote fifty years ago are more relevant now than ever, they will be more relevant in 100 years. The international press corp came at Dylan with the headlights on high beam. Instead of stare like a deer, he treated the alliance like a musketeer might approach a formal fencing match: Touché. The American Poet & wordsmith extraordinaire had become The Folkie, The Beatnik, The Rocker, The Philosopher, The Historian, The Cowboy, The Hermit, The Leader, The Champion of Underdogs, The Christian, The Anonymous, The Legend, The Icon and through it all, he's still Bob Dylan. An American guy from The Midwest who started with nothing but a blank piece of paper and a few ideas.
"For every title, there also came a group of admirers and detractors, who wanted something. They wanted more than the music, more than the lyrics, more than the concert, more than the records, they wanted a symbol they could use for their own parade, their own arcade, their own charade and Dylan denied the puppet strings, denied the sacrificial position, denied the groups that had latched onto him and he remained true to the only thing a human has from the very beginning to the very end: Oneself."
For every title, there also came a group of admirers and detractors, who wanted something. They wanted more than the music, more than the lyrics, more than the concert, more than the records, they wanted a symbol they could use for their own parade, their own arcade, their own charade and Dylan denied the puppet strings, denied the sacrificial position, denied the groups that had latched onto him and he remained true to the only thing a human has from the very beginning to the very end: Oneself. He has understood that selling albums, performing, having a contract to support the self expression is where it's at, and all the while, Dylan has offered us what he has. Critics through the years have expressions and titles and adjectives that glibly describe the various stages of Dylan's career: A Major Album, A Minor Album, Etc… His voice was laughable, compared to entertainers like Frank Sinatra, his stage presence was stiff, compared to singers such as Elvis Presley, his looks were nerdy, compared to performers like Johnny Cash and yet, he competed, sold millions of albums, and wrote anthems that have defined, to it's very core, what it is to Be : American. Bob Dylan is incomparable to other performers in the industry, he is an anomaly, he is the exception to the rule, there is no parallel story that can live up to Bob Dylan, so, please, don't even try. Today, we honor Bob Dylan, not for who you wanted him to be, not for what might have been, not for any ideas outside the realm of his oeuvre but, we honor him for what he actually is : The Great Independent American Artist.
"For every title, there also came a group of admirers and detractors, who wanted something. They wanted more than the music, more than the lyrics, more than the concert, more than the records, they wanted a symbol they could use for their own parade, their own arcade, their own charade and Dylan denied the puppet strings, denied the sacrificial position, denied the groups that had latched onto him and he remained true to the only thing a human has from the very beginning to the very end: Oneself."
For every title, there also came a group of admirers and detractors, who wanted something. They wanted more than the music, more than the lyrics, more than the concert, more than the records, they wanted a symbol they could use for their own parade, their own arcade, their own charade and Dylan denied the puppet strings, denied the sacrificial position, denied the groups that had latched onto him and he remained true to the only thing a human has from the very beginning to the very end: Oneself. He has understood that selling albums, performing, having a contract to support the self expression is where it's at, and all the while, Dylan has offered us what he has. Critics through the years have expressions and titles and adjectives that glibly describe the various stages of Dylan's career: A Major Album, A Minor Album, Etc… His voice was laughable, compared to entertainers like Frank Sinatra, his stage presence was stiff, compared to singers such as Elvis Presley, his looks were nerdy, compared to performers like Johnny Cash and yet, he competed, sold millions of albums, and wrote anthems that have defined, to it's very core, what it is to Be : American. Bob Dylan is incomparable to other performers in the industry, he is an anomaly, he is the exception to the rule, there is no parallel story that can live up to Bob Dylan, so, please, don't even try. Today, we honor Bob Dylan, not for who you wanted him to be, not for what might have been, not for any ideas outside the realm of his oeuvre but, we honor him for what he actually is : The Great Independent American Artist.
CATHERINE OPIE Untitled #5 (Elizabeth Taylor's Closet) 2012 Pigment Print 40 x 30 inches (101.6 x 76.2 cm)
Edition of 3, 1 AP Courtesy of REGEN PROJECTS / BUREAU PICK for PHOTO LA INSTALLATION / TBA
DIRECT LINKS TO THE [ 6 ] ALTERNATE COVERS FOR FALL 2015 EDITION
FALL 2015 Edition BUREAU of ARTS and CULTURE MAGAZINE : The BUREAU ICON Essay: BOB DYLAN. Interviews + Photographic Essays with Alex HARRIS on The INUIT, Kanayo ADIBE in Baltimore, Lynn SAVILLE in New York City, Mike MILLER on West Coast Style, Ryan SCHIERLING in AUSTIN and BUREAU GUEST Artist: Melissa Ann PINNEY ART Interview with David BURKE in Bay Area. Plus: Michelle HANDELMAN. New FICTION: THEY CALL IT THE CITY of ANGELS Part III MUSIC Contributor: Sarah Rose PERRY on The Femme PUNK Scene. MUSIC Interview with JAHI. Plus US MUSEUMS: Detroit's 30 ARTISTS Exhibit, Milwaukee's Larry SULTAN, Photo LA, BOOK Stores Across US: BookPeople, Anderson's, City Lights, Book Reviews from STRAND NYC. Classical MUSIC and Rock & Roll: Not So Different After All. Elliott Landy and The BAND. Edward Hopper at The Cantor. All This and More Plus BUREAU On Line Links to The ART Fairs in MIAMI 2015 with Exclusive Audio Interviews, Reviews & New Online Articles All Year Round at The New BUREAU CITY SITES Across America an The World Through Internet. BUREAU is MEDIA Partner for PHOTO LA . RED NATION FILM FEST + MORE...
Ryan SCHIERILING THE LOS ANGELES and THE SOUTH US EDITIONS
Melissa Ann PINNEY THE MID WEST EDITION :
Lynn SAVILLE THE NEW YORK EDITION :
Mike MILLER THE SAN DIEGO + SANTA BARBARA EDITION :
Alex HARRIS THE SEATTLE EDITION :
Kanayo ADIBE THE LITERARY EDITION :
David BURKE THE SAN FRANCISCO EDITION :
After You Have Downloaded The FREE Magazine Edition of Your Choice: We suggest you view the pdf in the [ Two Page with Cover ] and [ Full Screen Mode ] Options which are Provided at the Top of your Menu Bar under the VIEW section. Simply choose Two Page Layout & Full Screen to enjoy. This format allows for The Magazine to be read as a Paper Edition. Displaying images and Text in Center-folds. When reading on a computer, utilize the Arrows on your keyboard to turn the pages. Be Sure To Download A High Resolution Version at BUREAU of Arts And Culture's Official Magazine Website
READ ALL OF SEASON THREE Plus The Final CHAPTER in
THE FALL EDITION OF BUREAU of ARTS and CULTURE
The Original Fiction Series: " THEY CALL IT THE CITY OF ANGELS," began in 2013 with Season One. A Literary experiment that originally introduced five fictional families, through dozens of characters that came to life before our readers eyes, when Editor Joshua Triliegi, improvised an entire novel on a daily basis and publicly published each chapter on-line. Season Two was an entire smash hit with readers in Los Angeles, where the novel is set and quickly spread to communities around the world through translations. Season III began in August 2015 and the same rules applied. The entire Final season was Improvised without Any Notes : A Chapter a Day.
THE BUREAU EXCLUSIVE ART INTERVIEW
DAVID BURKE : PAINTER
Joshua TRILIEGI : The New Work has both architectural as well as figural conflagrations with a seriously organic feel. What happened to you between the previous target series and the new work?
David BURKE : In graduate school I had a professor look at my paintings and say, “You’re not an architect, your belongs in a world that is more organic. Stay away from that other stuff.” It took me almost ten years to paint anything that was remotely architectural after that. It’s funny the things that stick with us, the grad school ghosts that haunt us and eventually need to exorcised. In 2011, I was a visiting lecturer at Chiang Mai University in Northern Thailand and I spent almost the entire year painting landscapes that were spawned by my inability to reconcile the tension between the beauty of the pristine Thai landscape and the destruction of this landscape driven by an increased surge towards westernization and development. When I returned to Bay Area, where I grew up, I was shocked at how a place so known to me could feel almost completely foreign. The intensity of the urban landscape was arresting. In order to get reacquainted with my environment I started painting what I call “fractured landscapes” that tapped into the disorientation I was experiencing upon my return.
"When I’m painting, once the first mark hits the surface, this stuff flies out the window and it’s all about making the work. A painting should never shake its finger at the viewer; nobody wants to live with a work of art that appears to be judging them."
In these paintings pools of ink recede like oil-saturated waters at low tide. Trees emerge from a tangled field of structures, gears, and wires. My process involves equal parts control and chaos, and echoes tenuous socio-ecological relationships depicted in the imagery. The use of synthetic material reinforces the commentary on man’s impulse to consume, contain and modify the earth’s resources in order to accommodate our own needs and desires. Contrary to some of the jaded ideas around the work, the paintings are actually quite optimistic in the sense that I am continually awestruck by the resilience of the natural world in the face of such heinous destruction. This relationship between man and nature has all of the trappings of a dysfunctional marriage that has lasted thousands of years. It’s filled with lover’s quarrels, abuse, comedy and beauty. When I’m painting, once the first mark hits the surface, this stuff flies out the window and it’s all about making the work. A painting should never shake its finger at the viewer; nobody wants to live with a work of art that appears to be judging them.
[ Entire Interview Continues in The FREE FALL Edition ]
Links to David BURKE At The Vessel Gallery Exhibit : http://bit.ly/1NxWCH7
Founded in 1953 by poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Peter D. Martin, City Lights is one of the few truly great independent bookstores in the United States, a place where booklovers from across the country and around the world come to browse, read, and just soak in the ambiance of alternative culture's only "Literary Landmark." Although it has been more than fifty years since tour buses with passengers eager to sight "beatniks" began pulling up in front of City Lights, the Beats' legacy of anti-authoritarian politics and insurgent thinking continues to be a strong influence in the store, most evident in the selection of titles. The nation's first all-paperback bookstore, City Lights has expanded several times over the years; we now offer three floors of both new-release hardcovers and quality paperbacks from all of the major publishing houses, along with an impressive range of titles from smaller, harder-to-find, specialty publishers. The store features an extensive and in-depth selection of poetry, fiction, translations, politics, history, philosophy, music, spirituality, and more, with a staff whose special book interests in many fields contribute to the hand-picked quality of what you see on the shelves. The City Lights masthead says A Literary Meeting place since 1953, and this concept includes publishing books as well as selling them. In 1955, Ferlinghetti launched City Lights Publishers with the now-famous Pocket Poets Series; since then the press has gone on to publish a wide range of titles, both poetry and prose, fiction and nonfiction, international and local authors.
Visit The Store: CityLights.com
261 Columbus Avenue San Francisco, CA 94133 (415) 362-8193
The BUREAU Guest Artist Melissa Ann PINNEY
Joshua Triliegi : How Did The New Book "TWO" Come To Fruition ?
Melissa Ann Pinney : In a funny way, you could say that TWO came about because I finally organized my work, cleaned up my studio and pinned up dozens of prints on the walls. In the spring of 2013, I had been working on the project for a while but this was the first time the images were collected all together. Ann Patchett happened to visit, loved the photographs and proposed that we make a book together. Ann is a an award-winning, best-selling author with a gift for friendship and the ability to make big things happen. Ann is also a bookseller and she wanted to get the book out to an larger audience. To do so, Ann’s thought was to invite ten of our most distinguished contemporary writers ( aka, her friends) to contribute a short essay on the idea of two. HarperCollins loved the idea as did the writers. The images and text are meant to inform one another rather than illustrate in the usual way we think of words and images. For instance, there are no photographs opposite a page of text. Ann wrote the introduction and also is the editor.
"I am looking for pictures – everywhere and always, with or without my camera. The pictures I want most are those I see in passing; the unexpected ways light, people and objects come together. If I am ready and quick it’s sometimes possible to get the picture; if I had to approach, explain and ask permission the picture I wanted would be already gone. It’s the unstudied, uninterrupted sense of theater in the everyday that drew me to make the image in the first place."
- Melissa Ann PINNEY
[ Entire Interview Continues in The FREE FALL Edition ]
The Artist: http://www.melissaannpinney.com
The Gallery: http://www.schneidergallerychicago.com
BUREAU MUSIC INTERVIEW: JAHI
Joshua TRILIEGI : When I first discovered Rap at The Radio Club in 1982, I was still in High school, when did You first hear a Live MC and Did you ever think the Music would have such a long staying power ?
JAHI : 1982 was also an important year for me because of Sucker MC's by Run- DMC and Jam Master Jay and in my neighborhood of East Cleveland, Ohio we had DJ's on our block and had community block parties just like NYC. I remember my sister bringing home the vinyl to "Rappers Delight" in 1979 and it marks a time where I felt like I heard the term "rappers" more frequently. There was no doubt in my mind that Hip Hop music would have staying power. Deeper than the music, it was the building of culture.
Joshua TRILIEGI : Lets discuss The Newest Project: Whats It all About ?
JAHI : insPirEd is the second album from PE 2.0. I said to a friend yesterday that if I became an ancestor today I would leave happy knowing I was able to do this album. Its simply social commentary over boombap. It features my other mentor and friend KRS-One, and has incredible production from Divided Souls from Baton Rouge, the legendary Easy Mo Bee, and DJ Pain 1. It is a call of action. It's BLACK in scope and presentation. We've always know that Black Lives Matter, but this album is also about Black LOVE in a conscious kind a way. The love of my people who still stand strong in the face of tyranny by crooked police and judicial systems, out ability as Black people to still stand firm, grow, love, and live. Music is universal so everyone in Hip Hop will attach to insPirEd if they dig lyricism and hard beats, but its dedicated to my people on the front lines all over the world.
[ Entire Interview Continues in The FREE FALL Edition ]
THE BUREAU BOOK Reviews
By The Staff of Strand Books in New York New York U S A
My Lunches with Orson: Conversations between Henry Jaglom & Orson Welles
by Peter Biskind / Review by Jim at Strand Books NYC
My Lunches With Orson is a unique and hilarious peek at one of America's greatest and most notorious film directors and actors, Orson Welles. Forty years since his legendary debut film, Citizen Kane, and nearly a decade since audiences had seen a finished film of his, Welles sat at the Ma Maison in Los Angeles, treating the Parisian-themed restaurant as a pseudo-office while meeting with filmmaker Henry Jaglom for lunch to discuss business and various other topics. Taken from Jaglom's recordings long thought lost forever, Peter Biskind (famed film writer of Easy Riders, Raging Bulls and Down and Dirty Pictures) compiles this collection of lunch conversations between the two directors. In between discussing his own infamous career, Jaglom and Welles discuss nearly every major figure in American film between 1930 and 1975 - and Welles hates nearly all of them. Katherine Hepburn, John Ford, Pauline Kael, and Charlie Chaplan are amongst the many who are brought up and few survive his wrath. The candid conversations are a brilliant form of performance, as Welles was aware of the recorder but asked Jaglom simply to make it unseen. The legendary filmmaker vacillates often between showboating for his young friend with uproarious speeches, and speaking with the honest desperation of a man at his advanced age being unable to work, and the financial trouble that that situation places him in. All in all, Biskind's framing of the transcripts displays Welles as a dastardly charming man, bursting at the seams with knowledge while posing for his one-man audience as a charlatan. My Lunches With Orson may not be the most informative book there is to read about Welles, but it is one of the most entertaining - and it's all in his words.
Inside the Dream Palace
by Sherill Tippins / Review by Maya at Strand Books NYC
Inside the Dream Palace is an in-depth look at a New York institution full of great mini-biographies and quirky histories. From Mark Twain to Sid and Nancy, the Chelsea Hotel has hosted a wide variety of creative characters (Jack the Ripper may have even stayed in the Chelsea). It’s a great read if you want a book about New York that isn’t too dry or too gossipy. In fact it has very little gossip at all, but lots of interesting facts about the behavior of, mainly famous, creatives. It is a perfect beach book but also a great read for the historian looking to read something light that still has a great deal to say about New York history. I personally enjoyed the way that New York is shown through the eyes of writers, artists and musicians such as Dylan Thomas, Harry Smith, and Patti Smith. Sherill Tippins seamlessly weaves these separate stories together creating a biography of a building, a neighborhood and a city. It’s important to know the history of New York and specifically the history of it’s communities so that we can continue their work. In Dream Palace, Sherill Tippins exposes how creative havens can be fostered but also how they are often destroyed by non-creatives. Dream Palace joins the dialogue and the struggle of the book Black Mountain: An Exploration in Community, and the film The Art of the Steal. We need more voices to tell these histories of how spaces for artists, writers and musicians are being turned into money making schemes.
A Game of Thrones
by George R. R. Martin / Reviewed by Toni at Strand Books NYC
One of the most used cliches in all of high fantasy is that of the farm boy (or other "simpleton") turned hero. Since Tolkien penned his Middle Earth stories, this trope has been wildly popular in the genre. One of the reasons I love Game of Thrones so much is that it completely ditches this typical cliche. Martin writes his story in such a way that it grabs readers immediately. More than once I found myself unable to put the book down until I found out what had happened to the characters I had so quickly become taken by. With each chapter told from the viewpoint of a different character, it easy to pick favorites at the start. It also ditches the typical cliche of the fantasy trope, focusing instead on the individuals functioning as a part of the whole, with each character bringing something to the dilemma. And the dilemma is, what else in a medieval setting, a clash for power. Game of Thrones, for me, reinvented the genre more than any other fantasy series. With five books and counting, I grow more and more attached to the Seven Kingdoms, and root for my favorite characters each time I pick up a book. Of course, there are downsides to the series. Most noteable and really the only negative of substance is that he doesn't write fast enough. For those who have seen the HBO series, I urge you to pick up the books. While the series is phenomenal, the books bring so much more to light. There is so much that you miss simply from watching it on TV. You won't be disappointed.
Canned
By Franklin Schneider / Reviewed by Uzodinma at Strand Books NYC
A down-dirty, grit-covered gem of a book. Mislabeled as humor. Franklin is the pal we all have stories about, like a correspondent on the front lines of a war many of us are afraid to fight. I'd go so far as to say that even if you don't agree with the way he sloughs off society's rules, you've at least wondered about it. You, like me, we've all crunched through pointless jobs, or ones we may even like, and still something's missing. But something's always missing. And this, I'd argue, is what Schneider, would like us to laugh at and understand. Not the evils of culture, or the modern work-week, not necessarily. You can seize up if you want to on the bits about laziness and unemployment checks, but that's the light-hearted, topical fluff. Think about it this way, and it's true: the gifts of the culture we live in were created by thinkers, dreamers, that is, by completely different hands than the ones that use those same dreams to lock us down and enslave us . . . Or maybe that's too far out there. What I like about this guy Franklin though, is that there's no real dogma, no ten-step revolution, nor should there be. He wanted off the 9-to-5 treadmill to become a writer, and thus the book, this book, is the proof that we can create the life we want to live, or go down trying. Thus the saga. Sex romps in unfinished basements. Inter-office pranks. Ten-day benders. The arcade chapter. The dead man in the Porto-Potty. More sex. The sex chapter. More racing, full sprint, down moonlit streets. The lawn mower through the window thing. This is Franklin's saga. Like we each have our own, and it's up to us to stay awake .
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IMAGE: Edward Hopper (U.S.A., 1882–1967), New York Corner (Corner Saloon), 1913. Oil on canvas.
Edward Hopper: New York Corner
Through February 8, 2016 The exhibition showcases the painting New York Corner and contextualizes it by grouping works from the museum’s collection into several art-object-based “conversations.” These constellations point to the kinds of artistic practice that preceded the painting’s creation; showcase concurrent work, both similar and different, by Hopper’s contemporaries; and present the kinds of practice that followed.
The Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University 328 Lomita Drive at Museum Way Stanford, CA 94305
image: Elliott Landy Courtesy of The Artist and LandyVision.com
THE PHOTOGRAPHER ELLIOT LANDY
This Fall a New Book by Photographer Elliot Landy with Exclusive Images of Bob Dylan and The BAND will be available. Recent Documentaries and New releases on Audio of BOB DYLAN's Famed Basement Tapes Sessions have been celebrated with the participation of T. Bone Burnett, Mumford & Sons and a Showtime Series that included the participation of Elvis Costello have cast a new re-look at this important period in the life of one of America's most important songwriters. Elliott Landy took many of the pinnacle images that defined Robbie Robertson and The Band's Big Pink album as well as Dylan's retreat from the public eye in Woodstock NY. This much anticipated original publication is a must for music lover's, Dylan fans and Rock & Roll Historians.
Check your Local Bookstores November 2015 and for more information visit: LandyVision.com
FIRE + ICE By ALEX HARRIS
Three parka-clad men, their backs to the camera, stand on an ice–covered field. Their body language – what we can see of it – implies rest, perhaps resignation, as they watch a building burn. Minutes earlier, inside a Quaker church in the Alaskan Inuit village of Selawik, these same men heard screams of “fire!” Outside, there was nothing to be done. The burning building, a schoolhouse, contained the only running water in the village, and regardless, the blaze was too far-gone to be fought.
On that April day of 1974, I was part of the crowd watching the schoolhouse burn. I was also a photographer with one roll of film in my camera, eight exposures left, trying quickly to make sense of the moment. Instinctively, I used my lens to see the fire and smoke through the bodies of the men in front of me, the way someone in the crowd would see the fire, the way the men themselves might be experiencing this moment. My instincts were to break most of the rules being taught in photojournalism school at the time. No faces are evident. No action is depicted. People standing in front of my camera mostly obscure the event itself. Yet this same photograph manages to suggest something larger than the moment, hints at the Inuit’s relationship to their environment; implies their acceptance of the power of nature.
Between 1973 and 1978 I made five trips to Alaska, living cumulatively for over a year in several Inuit villages above the Arctic Circle along the Kobuk River as well as other villages on the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta of the southern Bering Sea coast. I often arrived on a single engine weekly mail plane, and if visiting a village for the first time, would be greeted by a small group eager to see relatives who might be on the flight, or anxious to retrieve mail and supplies from the outside. Invariably someone would ask, “Why are you here?” When I said I was there to take pictures, a second question followed. “Where are you staying?” I would respond that I didn’t know. “Then stay with us.”
I learned that there was nothing naïve about the invitation. The Inuit were hospitable and trusting in this sense: they gave me time and a chance to prove myself to be a person they wanted to have around. And I wanted very much to be that person. I believe I became that person. At the time, I was a few years out of college and beginning my second education. For one thing, I was learning the craft of photography, and starting to have control of the medium. I had studied Adams’s zone system for film exposure and development, and knew how to compact into visible detail the range of light in Alaska – from bright sun on snow to deep shadow on parkas – falling on my film. Still, I had quite a distance to go to master the medium technically.
Mostly what I had to offer was my eagerness to get to know the people and places I photographed. I hoped that my familiarity would be reflected in the pictures I made. I was shooting black–and–white film, some 35mm but primarily medium format, and storing my exposed rolls under my bed inside a red tin coffee can with a plastic top. But in another sense, I had to store the photographs in my mind, as I wouldn’t see any of my pictures until I returned to the “lower 48” and developed my film. So I often brought with me a couple of photographic books for inspiration, looking not so much to answer questions about technique, framing, or exposure, but to try to understand what a photographer’s work could tell me about how to get inside another world with a camera.
In 1975 one book I brought with me was Koudelka’s The Gypsies. Whether the Gypsies looked back at Koudelka with recognition, or ignored him entirely, I was enormously drawn to the implied intimacy of the pictures he made. Koudelka was absolutely present in his own pictures, yet his own likeness never appears. He made photographs full of life and also full of mystery. Though I didn’t take on Koudelka’s high–contrast, wide–angle style, I did begin to understand from him how to get inside another world with a camera. In Alaska I came know people in a way that allowed me to participate in their lives. On each successive trip to the villages, I saw it was possible to immerse myself in a world and at the same time to observe it, to step back from the moment I was experiencing and take a photograph. I learned to make pictures – like those I’d seen in The Gypsies – pictures that hinted at more than I saw, more than I knew, more than we can ever know about another person, place or culture.
Alex Harris
Alex Harris is a photographer and writer teaching at Duke University. He is one of the founders of DoubleTake Magazine, of the Lewis Hine Documentary Fellows Program http://documentarystudies.duke.edu/projects/hine, and of the Center for Documentary Studies (CDS) http://documentarystudies.duke.edu . This fall CDS celebrates its twenty-fifth anniversary http://www.cdsfirst25.com/ with a number of events in Durham North Carolina including a November 20th-22nd Documentary Forum http://www.cdsfirst25.com/docforum2015/
[ Entire PHOTO ESSAY Continues in The FREE FALL Edition ]
The NOCTURNE
A Photographic Essay & Interview
With LYNN SAVILLE
Joshua TRILIEGI : What draws you to Night Photography?
Lynn SAVILLE : When I was five years old, two keys things happened. I looked out of the window at night into my back yard in Durham, North Carolina and noticed that the grass, tool shed, wheelbarrow and trees appeared scary at night. Illuminated by the single floodlight behind our house, the very familiar terrain became mysterious and dangerous during the night. It had looked normal and calm during the daytime. This very familiar place took on a new dimension at night. The second key occurrence was that my family boarded a steam ship in New York City’s harbor and traveled across the Atlantic Ocean to Italy. This experience created in me, a dramatic appreciation for New York City, and an awe of the night, the stars, water, the rare sight of the occasional ship at sea.
Joshua TRILIEGI : Take us on a shoot with you: Location, Number of Images, Time invested in The Walk about, Choosing the work, Printing and Exhibiting.
Lynn SAVILLE : When working in my own city [ New York ], I walk during different times of day and evening making mental notes and cell phone snapshots of places that attract my interest. Later I return when it’s dawn or twilight and look again at the way these chosen “locations” appear in the shifting light. I might return to a location three or four times to see what I find…always bringing my camera and tripod and any other items such as velvet to minimize reflections if I’m photographing into a window and a small flashlight or headlamp to use if I want to paint some light.
I edit on my computer and make contact sheets or small 4” x 6” proof prints through inexpensive online printing labs or with Xerox. These I put on my magnetic board in my apartment – to “live with them”. I find that seeing photographs at different times of day and night helps me select the best ones.
When preparing for an exhibition, I print the photographs 8 x 10 or 11 x 14 as “match prints” – fine tuning the files. I generally print on a paper size of 20” x 24” or 30” x 40” and occasionally 40“ x 50”. These are printed with archival inkjet process.
[ Entire Interview Continues in The FREE FALL Edition ]
Dark City Exhibition October 2nd - November 28th, 2015
Lynn Saville explores what she refers to as “limbo regions” in her series Dark City. These regions are undeveloped and overlooked spaces across major cities’ in the United States. Although Saville initially associated these vacant spaces with the economic turmoil of the recession, she came to realize that they also resulted from a natural cycle of decay and renewal in the urban landscape. She photographs at either dawn or dusk so that the place itself is lighting the scene with streetlight, window light, advertisements and surveillance lighting. Saville has been able to transform these spaces into lively and inviting places even with the absence of people and the cities usual attractions. She regards such places as “empty skeletal sets in which objects can dream, and light and shadow can dance uninterrupted.”
Visit The Gallery and The Artist for Sizes, Specifications and Available Photographs at:
SCHNEIDER GALLERY 770 North LaSalle Dr. Suite 401, Chicago, IL 60654
BUREAU BEST BOOKS : ANDERSONS
In 1964 they opened the first official bookstore: Paperback Paradise. Since then they have expanded and moved several times, opening Downers Grove store in 1980 and a children’s wholesale warehouse bookfair company, Anderson’s Bookfair Company (ABCFairs), in 1982. Bookfair company has grown and moved 5 times from being in the basement of Downers Grove store. Last November they opened Two Doors East, an eclectic and unique gift store, just two doors down from the Naperville bookshop. The members 5th generation that own and run the businesses today all started to work at a very young age in the family’s Business. " Working along side with your grandfather, parents, brothers, sister, and children is a family tradition that creates community within your family, and reaches your employees, your customers, and beyond your brick and mortar location." Each generation of their family has offered new touches and ideas to keep it innovative, fresh and exciting.
5112 Main St, Downers Grove, IL 60515 (630) 963-2665
Unidentified photographer, American, 20th century Circa 1950s Gift of Peter J. Cohen Courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Museum of Fine Arts Boston
presents
Unfinished Stories: Snapshots
from the Peter J. Cohen Collection Now Through to February 21, 2016
Unfinished Stories celebrates a century of snapshots from the Peter J. Cohen Collection of amateur photographs. An avid collector, Cohen rescued more than 50,000 lost, discarded, or disowned personal photographs, culled from flea markets, antique shops, galleries, eBay, and private dealers. As he sifted and sorted through his finds, Cohen discovered mesmerizing, often humorous, shots removed from their original context: People at Play, Photographers’ Shadows, Double Exposure, Couples, Oddities, and Hula Madness. These pictures reveal the lives of strangers through intimate exposures, telling a story, or as Cohen puts it, “a teeny part of a story that remains unfinished.”
KANAYO ADIBE
The BALTIMORE PHOTO ESSAY
From The Street Scene Photographs of Everyday Life in Baltimore to The Weddings & Parties of Washington DC, Kanayo Adibe has gone from utilizing a cell phone to a professional camera and launched an unexpected career in less than a few years. He has a bold eye for balance, time and place. His subjects inhabit their city with a flare for life. His images capture the goings on in a way that is alive and well. He has a growing catalogue that is both valuable and interesting. We discovered his work through a special program at The Baltimore Sun Newspaper and have become a solid part of his growing audience. Today, we give you Five Questions, a Photo Essay from Mr. Kanayo Adibe's Black & White Images and a glimpse inside Baltimore.
Joshua TRILIEGI : Discuss how you approach photographing a Wedding versus a Street Shoot ?
Kanayo ADIBE : Photographing a wedding is pretty straightforward, there is a storyline, all the characters are present and all you have to do is work the timeline and capture the moments as they unfold. You are able to help shape the story, you are able to enhance it through great imagery or manipulate it by adding in poses. With street you are forced to find order in variability and chaos. You rely on variables beyond your control to tell a story as you see it. You have to act quickly when you find a moment unfolding or anticipate something occurring and hold your composition till it does.
Despite the differences between wedding and street photography a lot of the skills carry over, there is an unscripted part of weddings that remain naturally occurring and random. The difference is they occur frequently and the more attentive you are the more of them you capture. In the streets it’s a lot harder to find those moments because there are no predetermined characters to follow or a defined storyline, you have to pick and choose your subjects and hope that the right elements come together to give you that image you are looking for.
Joshua TRILIEGI : How important is representing our communities in America today and give us some examples in dealing with your subjects, creating relationships and being a strong part of the diAspora in America's culture today ?
Kanayo ADIBE : I think it’s really important to represent our communities accurately, not leaning towards what is more popular or less favorable just to get a rise out of people. As we know the traditional media is skewed in it's representation of certain demographics and usually just say and show things for higher ratings. As for my street work, I honestly photograph anything that stands out to me, good or bad. I’m not in constant search of that angle that will draw more attention to my work; I just shoot from the heart. It could be a special moment between strangers, amazing architecture, a homeless person on the street, it doesn’t matter. As long as it gives me that feeling, I will create that image. Relationship building is important, I have formed lots of bonds with other creatives, some of which have helped me grow creatively and as a business, I have also made new friends in my commercial subjects, my street subject still remain anonymous to me. As a Nigerian living in America and having to deal with the culture as it stands today is pretty interesting, I’m no different from any African American in the eyes of everyone else, so whatever they experience, I experience.
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CRAFTED: Beth Lipman Cut Table Courtesy of Museum of Fine Arts Boston © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Museum of Fine Arts Boston presents Crafted Objects in Flux
Now Through to January 10, 2016
“Crafted” explores this moment of “flux” in the field, focusing on contemporary craft-based artists who bridge cutting-edge concepts and traditional skills as they embrace and explore the increasingly blurred boundaries between art, craft, and design. Featuring a selection of works from across the landscape of contemporary craft, the exhibition includes more than 30 emerging and established international artists. Looking to a broad range of materials and practices, the exhibition explores the connections between craft and performance; the opportunities provided by new technologies and materials; and the power of rethinking craft’s interactions with architecture and space. This exhibition is the first of its kind within an encyclopedic museum to explore the broad possibilities of contemporary artistic engagement with craft. By examining these interactions in proximity to historical examples in the MFA’s collection, “Crafted” demonstrates the vitality, viability, and variety inherent in choosing craft as a foundation for contemporary artistic practice. Tap: mfa.org
THE BUREAU PHOTO INTERVIEW
Ryan SCHIERLING
The How, The What and The Why of Taking Photographs for a Living . The Austin Based Photographer Discusses His Work in Seattle Washington +More
Joshua TRILIEGI : There is a real diversity in your catalogue, explain what draws you to a subject, how you approach it and where you decide to frame it?
Ryan SCHIERLING : I’m drawn to anything that’s visually and aesthetically pleasing, but I think that describes most photographers. The process of translating what I’m seeing into a photograph using a mechanical process of adjusting this and that is what, my style? Visually, I like clean images. I like to fill the frame with precisely what I want, because I don’t crop much. I want exactly what I want to see, and it’s done in camera, zooming a lens, or moving the legs here and there.
Shooting portraits, specifically environmental portraits, is what I worked the hardest on. Photojournalism is documenting a scene unfolding around you. You’re not supposed to be part of it, you’re an external, impartial observer. That’s easy. To engage someone before the camera even comes out of the bag and have them be comfortable with you, enough to give you a piece of themselves in a photograph, is difficult. There have been people I’ve wanted to take a photo of, but it just didn’t feel right emotionally, or they weren’t in the right frame of mind to be physically and mentally present for the camera. I was never good with the whole “Alright, you have five minutes to shoot Mr. Famous Person” because there’s no connection. You’re just making a visually-accurate representation of what Mr. Famous Person looked like in that 1/60 of a second. I’d rather genuinely talk to them for five minutes, as a real person, and take one frame before I leave.
I did that the last time I photographed John Vanderslice, and I’ve shot so many photos of him - live and portraits - over the years. I shot a few songs of a show at The Mohawk in Austin, and I just wanted to watch and listen for the rest. Throngs of people were looking to talk to him after the set. It was after 1 a.m., and I didn’t want to intrude. I only wanted to let him know that he’d played a wonderful show - as always - and shake his hand. I asked him if I could just take two frames, and he looked a little surprised, but graciously agreed. I said, “Close your eyes. Take a deep breath, exhale.” Click. “Turn around, relax.” Click. Those are some of my favorite images of him.
Faces interest me, body language interests me. How people relate to their environments. Things that happen to people, moments that they will never forget, moments that might seem small, or large, or insignificant. They all make a difference in our lives. I can’t be everywhere I’d like to be, so i just try to capture what I can, when I can. it’s all important in some manner, whether it’s politics, music, dinner, a first date or a death in the family.
There's a photograph in just about every situation you'll ever come across. Sometimes it's just a matter of stopping and looking a little harder. In some photos there are stories that need to be told, in others there might just be a feeling. One quote I remember from photographer Windy Osborne really stuck with me, and it's been probably 25-plus years. "Fill the frame with exactly what you want to see." I try to get all of the important elements in there, without making anything cluttered. And that tends to be my style in whatever I shoot, whether it's music or portraits or landscapes or anything that’s in front of me.
Ryan SCHIERLING : I don’t have a lot of photo books. There are no collections I keep other than cookbooks and old skateboards. The few photography books I do have are by Glen E. Friedman, Charles Peterson, Richard Avedon, Jim Brandenburg. I have all issues of “Loose Lips Sink Ships” from Steve Gullick and Stevie Chick. Gullick is incredible. He and Peterson certainly influenced my music photography initially. Both had a dirty, grainy style, but Steve did some lovely lighting for portraits and Charles captured a Pacific Northwest live music epoch with a camera and a strobe attached to a motorcycle battery. I dig Danny Clinch and his aesthetic. Old school? Windy Osborne and Spike Jonze - shooting for Freestylin’ Magazine in the late 80s - were huge for me, riding, shooting and working on a craft. Dan Sturt and J. Grant Brittain were massive talents at Transworld Skateboarding Magazine. Sturt’s mid-lens artistry and framing in a fisheye-lens dominated industry was incredibly inspirational. Brittain’s 1987 TWS cover of Tod Swank still makes me shake my head and smile every time I see it. At a young age, there were no finer photographers to emulate. New School? I love William Anthony, Dan Winters, Jonathan Saunders, Penny De Los Santos. I don’t shoot for a living anymore, so there’s no pressure to push the button for nonsense. I just try to stay true to the subject and the image, whatever it may be.
[ Entire Interview Continues in The FREE FALL Edition ]
BUREAU INTERVIEW : MICHELLE HANDELMAN ARTIST
Cyphers from Irma Vep, The Last Breath, 2013, digital c-print on archival paper, 18” x 24”, courtesy Participant, Inc., New York City
BUREAU : Let’s discuss video art. Who are your earliest influences.
Michelle HANDELMAN : If by influences you mean cultural artifacts that absolutely transfixed my imagination, both visually and mentally, things that totally rocked my world, then without a doubt it was: horror films. In fact probably the earliest memories I have revolve around my brothers and I dressing up as vampires and watching old black and white horror films. We would put white powder on our faces, throw towels around our shoulders like capes, light candles and watch Creature Features every weekend—Tod Browning’s Dracula, Edgar Ulmer’s The Black Cat—all the 1930s classics starring Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi. And so, from a very early age I had this interest in the macabre and the supernatural, and the symbolic language of monsters. Two films that thoroughly imprinted themselves on me back then were Mario Bava’s Black Sunday and Hitchcock’s The Birds. I mean, when Barbara Steele emerges from that iron maiden in Black Sunday with holes all over her face that was just the coolest thing I ever saw. It was deep. I mean, we’re all riddled with holes, metaphorically, and its all one can do to keep the tatters together and move forward. But to get back to your original question about video or experimental avant-garde film, the first moving image artists who rocked my world were Charles Atlas and Ulrike Ottinger.
BUREAU : Do you believe art can change policy? Acceptance and progress?
Michelle HANDELMAN : I look at the world of humans as one large dysfunctional family that has the ability to evolve and transcend hatred, but the cards are still out as to whether or not that will ever happen. I do feel I’m a realistic optimist, which means I believe in transformation, but I also know destruction is inevitable, and in fact necessary for change. But to specifically address your question, yes, I do believe some art can lead to a change in policy. I don’t think it can actually change policy, but it can open dialogue, that can lead to a change. My piece at Eastern State Penitentiary has been on display for three years now, and periodically I receive emails from people telling me how it changed them. Last year I received a call from the federal Bureau Of Prisons inviting me to present my piece to their corrections officers. That was the first time I actually felt my work was effecting change in a very direct way. I met with the head of the BOP, as well as an assortment of bureaucrats, guards and officers and they wanted to know….they knew they had to change the way they’ve been dealing with trans inmates. They didn’t understand it, probably didn’t like it, but still, they knew they needed to change and they asked questions, lots of questions. In fact just today I was reading in the New York Times about how police officers are now receiving mandatory training on interacting with trans people. I’d like to think that in some small way my piece played a part in this change.
[ Entire Interview Continues in The FREE FALL Edition ]
CINDY SHERMAN UNTITLED FILM STILL # 7 The BROAD MUSEUM
The NEW BROAD MUSEUM in L. A.
PHOTO : Iwan Baan THE BROAD MUSEUM
The Broad makes its collection of contemporary art from the 1950s to the present accessible to the widest possible audience by presenting exhibitions and operating a lending program to art museums and galleries worldwide.The Broad is a new contemporary art museum built by philanthropists Eli and Edythe Broad on Grand Avenue in downtown Los Angeles. The museum, which is designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro in collaboration with Gensler will offer free general admission. The museum will be home to the nearly 2,000 works of art in the Broad collection, which is among the most prominent holdings of postwar and contemporary art worldwide. With its innovative “veil-and-vault” concept, the 120,000-square-foot, $140-million building will feature two floors of gallery space to showcase The Broad’s comprehensive collection and will be the headquarters of The Broad Art Foundation’s worldwide lending library. The Broad is home to the 2,000-work Broad collection, one of the most prominent holdings of postwar and contemporary art worldwide. With in-depth representations of influential contemporary artists like Jean-Michel Basquiat, Barbara Kruger, Cy Twombly, Ed Ruscha, Kara Walker, Christopher Wool, Jeff Koons, Joseph Beuys, Jasper Johns, Cindy Sherman, Robert Rauschenberg, and more, plus an ever-growing representation of younger artists.
from BURDEN to BALDESSARI
from FISCHL to FRANCIS
from WALKER to WARHOL
221 S. Grand Avenue Los Angeles CA USA 90012 TheBroad.org
Larry Sulton Oranges on Fire 1975 LarrySulton.com
Milwaukee Art Museum
presents
The Photographic Works of Photographer Larry Sultan
October 23, 2015 – January 24, 2016
The exhibition includes more than 200 photographs ranging from Sultan’s conceptual and collaborative works of the 1970s to his solo works in the decades following. Sultan never stopped challenging the conventions of photographic documentation, exploring themes of family, home, and façade throughout his career. Larry Sultan grew up in California’s San Fernando Valley, which became a source of inspiration for a number of his projects. His work blends documentary and staged photography to create images of the psychological as well as physical landscape of suburban family life.
Sultan’s pioneering book and exhibition Pictures From Home (1992) was a decade long project that features his own mother and father as its primary subjects, exploring photography’s role in creating familial mythologies. Using this same suburban setting, his book, The Valley (2004) examined the adult film industry and the area’s middle-class tract homes that serve as pornographic film sets. Katherine Avenue, (2010) the exhibition and book, explored Sultan’s three main series, Pictures From Home, The Valley, and Homeland along side each other to further examine how Sultan’s images negotiate between reality and fantasy, domesticity and desire, as the mundane qualities of the domestic surroundings become loaded cultural symbols.
In 2012, the monograph, Larry Sultan and Mike Mandel was published to examine in depth the thirty plus year collaboration between these artists as they tackled numerous conceptual projects together that includes Billboards, How to Read Music In One Evening, Newsroom, and the seminal photography book Evidence, a collection of found institutional photographs, first published in 1977. Larry Sultan’s work has been exhibited and published widely and is included in the collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Solomon Guggenheim Museum, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, where he was also recognized with the Bay Area Treasure Award in 2005. Sultan served as a Distinguished Professor of Photography at California College of the Arts in San Francisco. Born in Brooklyn, New York in 1946, Larry Sultan passed away at his home in Greenbrae, California in 2009.
The Artist: LarrySultan.com The Museum : MAM.org
Kehinde Wiley / 30 Americans : Detroit Institute of Arts Oct. 18, 2015–Jan. 18, 2016
30 Americans : Detroit Institute of Arts
Oct. 18, 2015–Jan. 18, 2016
30 Americans is a dynamic exhibition of contemporary art by African American artists, on view Oct. 18, 2015–Jan. 18, 2016. “30 Americans” includes 55 paintings, sculptures, installations, photographs and videos by many of the most important artists who rose to prominence during recent decades by exploring racial, gender, political and historical identity in contemporary culture. Organized around several artistic approaches used by the artists to explore identity: defying Western art traditions; portraying black subjects as real people as opposed to types; sampling multiple sources of inspiration, from historical material to found objects; freestyling by adopting improvisational and expressionistic styles to demonstrate creative and technical virtuosity; signifying through the use of symbols, materials and images that imply or trigger associations about gender, race, religion, class and sexuality; transforming the body’s appearance to examine the relationship between societal assumptions and identity; and confronting American history regarding race, racism and power in the United States. VISIT THE LINK AT: www.dia.org
Photo Image: : Melissa Ann PINNEY Courtesy SCHNEIDER GALLERY Chicago USA
The Underground Punk Music Scene : A Feminists View
By Bureau Music Contributor Sarah Rose Perry
Young people from far and near come line up in a Downtown LA alley outside of The Smell -- an all ages, self sustained “community oriented art and music space” waiting to see The Groans Joel Jerome, Sloppy Jane and Peach Kelli Pop. These bands collectively, along with countless more, make up a fresh and new underground music scene. Concentrated in the Inland Empire, but spread about Los Angeles and Riverside counties, the Groups range from garage rock to punk pop. The bands and their fans are something like that of a large family, with many distant relatives; you might not know each person there, but everyone is friendly and glad to see you. The Groans were the opening band at Friday’s show and when asked about why the scene is so important to us young people, they explained that the scene is very much a community and it’s exciting to be a part of, because “it gives people who are different or outsiders a sense of home.” It also provides a space for women empowerment. Whether they are deliberately taking a political stance, or simply being badass women, the message from these leading female musicians is clear and powerful.
As I myself can testify, being a young woman, and seeing these other ladies on stage, confidently doing traditionally male dominated work, can be a catalyst for a dose of adrenaline and self approval. The Groans first got together because the lead singer, Amanda, and the bassist, Annie, thought there weren’t enough women in the local music scene. They explain, “we wanted a band that represented women of color and women in general.” They have achieved this thoroughly and many of their song’s lyrics make that statement loud and clear. One of their more popular songs entitled “The Perks of Being a Girl” (“perks” being used rather sardonically) begins with fast paced music, sing - songy vocals and features a very catchy build up stating, “I can be pretty. I can be skinny. I can be everything, BUT I. Don’t. Owe. You. Anything.” The band states, “It’s about the shit all women go through on a daily basis… It’s us saying ‘fuck you’ to society’s beauty standards; I’m beautiful no matter what.” This turned out to be a highly relatable concept among the young adults at the show, boys and girls alike. During their performance of the song on Friday, a sweaty mosh pit opened up in the middle of the crowd and everyone screamed along, “I’m just another girl in this fucked up world.”
Of course, this is nothing new to punk rock. As writer, Rock Hall explains, “The anti-establishment philosophy of the punk rock movement was the perfect fit for those female musicians who still felt like outsiders in the male dominated music industry” Though this particular comment was in reference to the seventies, some sentiments have remained the same. Amanda, the lead Singer of The Groans states that, “It’s a bit of a boy’s club, but [ they ] are glad to see more women in the scene.” Women throughout history have made significant, empowering gains using punk and all its sub-genres as a facilitator to bring serious female issues to the media, and by making waves in punk in the past. The female gender today are able to make the ‘fuck you, society’ statement, and be critical of authority or social norms, more safely -- which was not always the case and in some parts of the world, still is not.
Like nearly everything else, punk rock began as an all male genre, but with questioning authority and social norms as their main agenda, it was natural for women to step in and take a piece of the spotlight. Inspired by the Sex Pistols, Poly Styrene decided to form her own punk band, X-Ray Spex. Although they only lasted about three years, producing only one album, the band will be remembered by their lead singer screaming, “some people think little girls should be seen and not heard… Oh Bondage Up Yours!” Before the start of their debut single. Chris Salewicz of The Independent says, “As a dumpy, frumpy,almost willfully unsexual girl from Brixton, with braces on her teeth, Poly Styrene was a perfect candidate to find herself through punk; turning this persona on its head into an art form, she became one of the movement's principal female figures, her song ‘Oh Bondage, Up Yours!’ a feminist rallying cry.” Also formed in 1976, The Slits were the first all women punk band. Their song “Typical Girls” includes commentary on the social pressure women receive along with the negative misconceptions upheld about them by society, “typical girls worry about spots, fat, and natural smells… typical girls are emotional / typical girls are cruel and bewitching.”
[ Entire Article Continues in The FREE Downloadable FALL 2015 Edition ]
ART FAIR REVIEWS, AUDIO AND VISUAL PRESENTATIONS ON LINE DECEMBER 2015 UNTITLED . MIAMI . RED DOT . LA ART FAIR . PHOTO LA . MIAMI PROJECT + MORE
LOS ANGELES BUREAU http://BUREAUofARTSandCULTURELosAngeles.blogspot.com
SAN FRANCISCO BUREAU
SAN DIEGO BUREAU
SANTA BARBARA BUREAU http://BUREAUofARTSandCULTURESantaBarbara.blogspot.com
SEATTLE BUREAU
MID - WEST BUREAU
SOUTH BUREAU
BUREAU LITERARY
BUREAU NEWS
The PORTRAIT : LANGSTON HUGHES
AMERICANS WHO TELL THE TRUTH By Robert SHETTERLY
We Thank: Da Capo Press, Cantor Arts Center, Stanford University, Pace/MacGill Gallery, National Gallery of Art, Georgia O'Keefe Museum of Art, Fine Arts Center Colorado Springs, Duke University, Andy Warhol Museum, Phoenix Art Museum, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Art Institute of Chicago, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Crystal Bridges, United Artists, Spot Photo Works, Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Art Huston Texas, Gallerie Urbane, Mary Boone Gallery, Pace Gallery, Asian Art Museum, Magnum Photo, Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art, Fahey/Klein, Tobey C. Moss, Sandra Gehring, George Billis, Martin - Gropius - Bau Berlin, San Jose Museum of Art, First Run Features, Downtown Records, Koplin Del Rio, Robert Berman, Indie Printing, American Film Institute, SFMOMA, Palm Beverly Hills, KM Fine Arts, LA Art Show, Photo LA, Jewish Contemporary Museum, Cultural Affairs, Yale Collection of Rare Books & Manuscript and Richard Levy.
Contributing Photographers: Norman Seef, Herb Ritts, Jack English, Alex Harris, Gered Mankowitz, Bohnchang Koo, Natsumi Hayashi, Raymond Depardon, T. Enami, Dennis Stock, Dina Litovsky, Guillermo Cervera, Moises Saman, Cathleen Naundorf, Terry Richardson, Phil Stern, Dennis Morris, Henry Diltz, Steve Schapiro, Yousuf Karsh, Ellen Von Unwerth, William Claxton, Robin Holland, Andrew Moore, James Gabbard, Mary Ellen Mark, John Robert Rowlands, Brian Duffy, Robert Frank, Jon Lewis, Sven Hans, David Levinthal, Joshua White, Brian Forrest, Lorna Stovall, Elliott Erwitt, Rene Burri, Susan Wright, David Leventhal, Peter Van Agtmael & The Bureau Editor Joshua Triliegi.
Contributing Guest Artists: Irby Pace, Jon Swihart, F. Scott Hess, Ho Ryon Lee, Andy Moses, Kahn & Selesnick, Jules Engel, Patrick Lee, David Palumbo, Tom Gregg, Tony Fitzpatrick, Gary Lang, Fabrizio Casetta, DJ Hall, David FeBland, Eric Zener, Seeroon Yeretzian, Dawn Jackson, Charles Dickson, Ernesto DeLaLoza, Diana Wong, Gustavo Godoy, John Weston, Kris Kuksi, Bomonster, Hiroshi Ariyama, Linda Stark, Kota Ezawa, Russell Nachman, Katsushika Hokusai and Xuan Chen
Contributing Writers: Robin Holland, Jamar Mar(s) Tucker, Linda Toch, Sarah Rose Perry
Welcome to The SUMMER 2015 Edition of BUREAU of ARTS and CULTURE MAGAZINE. This Edition contains The BUREAU ICON Essay on Georgia O'KEEFFE, A Photographic Profile on Robert FRANK's Classic Book The Americans, INTERVIEWS with Photographer Alex HARRIS, The Portrait Painter Jon SWIHART, The Legendary SURF Photographer Jack ENGLISH and The BUREAU Summer Guest Artist: Irby PACE. CINEMA: On The Set of The Classic Film RAGING BULL. CUISINE: PALMS Beverly Hills & Pedro INOSCENCIO, Heir to The Throne: Jamie WYETH, BOOKS: David BROWNE's Opus on The Grateful Dead. Herb RITTS in Boston, Charles RAY in Chicago, Andy WARHOL in Phoenix, Peter BLUME in Hartford, FASHION: The Dandy LIONS Photography and New FICTION by Linda TOCH. +An Interview with The Bureau Editor's Mom, Maria Francesca TRILIEGI on her New Book. We are pleased to have New Readers in The SOUTH: Texas, Arizona, New Mexico and Louisiana at our Newest Community Site, BUREAU OF ARTS AND CULTURE: THE SOUTH. Links to Summer Events across the USA including, The CHICAGO Blues Festival, AUSTIN Biker Festival, Scorsese Collects in NEW YORK, 4TH of July Celebrations + so much more. The BUREAU EDITORIAL DIS - Organizations: Are Groups in America Abusing Power ?MUSIC: Lets ROCK at Fahey / Klein Gallery in MIAMI, MUSEUMS: National Gallery of Art, PORTRAITS: Native American Portraits from The YALE Collection of Western Americana. Plus Links to Our Eight Different Community Sites Celebrating The ARTS Across AMERICA . The Social Media Sites serve More as a look back at Previous BUREAU Editions + Features
We Thank: Da Capo Press, Cantor Arts Center, Stanford University, Pace/MacGill Gallery, National Gallery of Art, Georgia O'Keefe Museum of Art, Fine Arts Center Colorado Springs, Duke University, Andy Warhol Museum, Phoenix Art Museum, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Art Institute of Chicago, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Crystal Bridges, United Artists, Spot Photo Works, Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Art Huston Texas, Gallerie Urbane, Mary Boone Gallery, Pace Gallery, Asian Art Museum, Magnum Photo, Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art, Fahey/Klein, Tobey C. Moss, Sandra Gehring, George Billis, Martin - Gropius - Bau Berlin, San Jose Museum of Art, First Run Features, Downtown Records, Koplin Del Rio, Robert Berman, Indie Printing, American Film Institute, SFMOMA, Palm Beverly Hills, KM Fine Arts, LA Art Show, Photo LA, Jewish Contemporary Museum, Cultural Affairs, Yale Collection of Rare Books & Manuscript and Richard Levy.
Contributing Photographers: Norman Seef, Herb Ritts, Jack English, Alex Harris, Gered Mankowitz, Bohnchang Koo, Natsumi Hayashi, Raymond Depardon, T. Enami, Dennis Stock, Dina Litovsky, Guillermo Cervera, Moises Saman, Cathleen Naundorf, Terry Richardson, Phil Stern, Dennis Morris, Henry Diltz, Steve Schapiro, Yousuf Karsh, Ellen Von Unwerth, William Claxton, Robin Holland, Andrew Moore, James Gabbard, Mary Ellen Mark, John Robert Rowlands, Brian Duffy, Robert Frank, Jon Lewis, Sven Hans, David Levinthal, Joshua White, Brian Forrest, Lorna Stovall, Elliott Erwitt, Rene Burri, Susan Wright, David Leventhal, Peter Van Agtmael & The Bureau Editor Joshua Triliegi.
Contributing Guest Artists: Irby Pace, Jon Swihart, F. Scott Hess, Ho Ryon Lee, Andy Moses, Kahn & Selesnick, Jules Engel, Patrick Lee, David Palumbo, Tom Gregg, Tony Fitzpatrick, Gary Lang, Fabrizio Casetta, DJ Hall, David FeBland, Eric Zener, Seeroon Yeretzian, Dawn Jackson, Charles Dickson, Ernesto DeLaLoza, Diana Wong, Gustavo Godoy, John Weston, Kris Kuksi, Bomonster, Hiroshi Ariyama, Linda Stark, Kota Ezawa, Russell Nachman, Katsushika Hokusai and Xuan Chen Contributing Writers: Robin Holland, Jamar Mar(s) Tucker, Linda Toch, Maria (Mom) Triliegi
BUREAU: BOOKS IN REVIEW
THE HOUSE THAT TRANE BUILT :
THE STORY OF IMPULSE RECORDS
By ASHLEY KAHN on W.W. NORTON PUBLICATIONS
Review By Joshua A. TRILIEGI / BUREAU of ARTS and CULTURE Magazine
Most music fans know who John Coltrane is and what he did for jazz music, for saxophone players and new music spirituality . What you may not be aware of is that John Coltrane & his version of ' My Favorite Things ' in Nineteen-Sixty-Five helped to create an entire label that went onto reinvent and support a bevy of new jazz artists . The impulse label, which was originally fueled by funds from ABC & hits by Ray Charles, such as, One Mint Julep, went on to become a leading label with an original look, style and feel. Album covers that opened up & told a story with extended liner notes, helping to create a dialogue and intellectual take on a lot of great new music that helped to fuel new jazz movements.
The story of Impulse records is an interesting one. Ashley Kahn' s research, phrasing style and flashback, flash forward writing, suits the subject well. Plenty of photographs, samples of albums and an incredibly thorough discography with just about every album, release date & important phase the label went through. Mr. Kahn has written extensively on Jazz with his books on Miles Davis as well as Coltrane' s infamous Love Supreme. Sonny Rollins, Chico Hamilton, Yusuf Lateef, Elvin Jones, Tom Scott, Charlie Mingus, Coleman Hawkins and Pharoah Sanders are just a few of the artists that followed Coltrane on Impulse and also honored him with nods to his influence, musically, technically and sometimes simply naming their songs after some type of Coltrane influence. Kahn is like a cool daddy professor who simply loves the music, the vibe, the history of jazz so much, that the reader, his students, soon find themselves steeped in fun facts that make up what we call jazz. From the inception of tunes, recording, players, dates and places, all bases are covered in this comprehensive jazz companion . From the time John Coltrane came to the label and into his leaving the planet. The story reveals itself as important and informative . Alice Coltrane picks up the mantle and carries it into the present time.
As the book reveals in Chapter six, "Died" is not in Alice Coltrane' s vocabulary. You got that right. John Coltrane left. But with Impulse, his legacy, his fans, his family & books such as this one, as well as Kahn' s other works, the Coltrane legend is indeed alive and well. Highly suggested for those who wish to learn more about this great contributor to jazz music and the vocabulary of great American Arts. With titles such as A Love Supreme, Ascension, Om and Cosmic Music, Coltrane completely transformed jazz into a totally spiritual idea. From 1962, until his untimely passing , Coltrane recorded albums and songs that have yet to be resolved, understood or entirely digested by any particular critic, audience or movement. He was exorcising his demons, inviting in his angels and taking what we considered as a pastime into a full on religious experience. The jazz solo is never the same after John Coltrane, neither are we. This is a good companion to that legacy. And to a very important Jazz Music Label.
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| © ARTIST / David Palumbo |
- The Age of American Unreason, Susan Jacoby, 2008
- The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz, 2007
- The Coast of Utopia (trilogy), Tom Stoppard, 2007
- Teenage: The Creation of Youth 1875-1945, Jon Savage, 2007
- Fingersmith, Sarah Waters, 2002
- The Trial of Henry Kissinger, Christopher Hitchens, 2001
- Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder, Lawrence Weschler, 1997
- A People’s Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1890-1924, Orlando Figes, 1997
- The Insult, Rupert Thomson, 1996
- Wonder Boys, Michael Chabon, 1995
- The Bird Artist, Howard Norman, 1994
- Kafka Was The Rage: A Greenwich Village Memoir, Anatole Broyard, 1993
- Beyond the Brillo Box: The Visual Arts in Post-Historical Perspective, Arthur C. Danto, 1992
- Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson, Camille Paglia, 1990
- David Bomberg, Richard Cork, 1988
- Sweet Soul Music: Rhythm & Blues & the Southern Dream of Freedom, Peter Guralnick, 1986
- The Songlines, Bruce Chatwin, 1986
- Hawksmoor, Peter Ackroyd, 1985
- Nowhere To Run: The Story of Soul Music, Gerri Hirshey, 1984
- Nights at the Circus, Angela Carter, 1984
- Money, Martin Amis, 1984
- White Noise, Don DeLillo, 1984
- Flaubert’s Parrot, Julian Barnes, 1984
- The Life and Times of Little Richard, Charles White, 1984
- A People’s History of the United States, Howard Zinn, 1980
- A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole, 1980
- Interviews with Francis Bacon, David Sylvester, 1980
- Darkness at Noon, Arthur Koestler, 1980
- Earthly Powers, Anthony Burgess, 1980
- Raw (a ‘graphix magazine’) 1980-91
- Viz (magazine) 1979 –
- The Gnostic Gospels, Elaine Pagels, 1979
- Metropolitan Life, Fran Lebowitz, 1978
- In Between the Sheets, Ian McEwan, 1978
- Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews, ed. Malcolm Cowley, 1977
- The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, Julian Jaynes, 1976
- Tales of Beatnik Glory, Ed Saunders, 1975
- Mystery Train, Greil Marcus, 1975
- Selected Poems, Frank O’Hara, 1974
- Before the Deluge: A Portrait of Berlin in the 1920s, Otto Friedrich, 1972
- In Bluebeard’s Castle : Some Notes Towards the Re-definition of Culture, George Steiner, 1971
- Octobriana and the Russian Underground, Peter Sadecky, 1971
- The Sound of the City: The Rise of Rock and Roll, Charlie Gillete, 1970
- The Quest For Christa T, Christa Wolf, 1968
- Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom: The Golden Age of Rock, Nik Cohn, 1968
- The Master and Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov, 1967
- Journey into the Whirlwind, Eugenia Ginzburg, 1967
- Last Exit to Brooklyn, Hubert Selby Jr. , 1966
- In Cold Blood, Truman Capote, 1965
- City of Night, John Rechy, 1965
- Herzog, Saul Bellow, 1964
- Puckoon, Spike Milligan, 1963
- The American Way of Death, Jessica Mitford, 1963
- The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea, Yukio Mishima, 1963
- The Fire Next Time, James Baldwin, 1963
- A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess, 1962
- Inside the Whale and Other Essays, George Orwell, 1962
- The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Muriel Spark, 1961
- Private Eye (magazine) 1961 –
- On Having No Head: Zen and the Rediscovery of the Obvious, Douglas Harding, 1961
- Silence: Lectures and Writing, John Cage, 1961
- Strange People, Frank Edwards, 1961
- The Divided Self, R. D. Laing, 1960
- All The Emperor’s Horses, David Kidd,1960
- Billy Liar, Keith Waterhouse, 1959
- The Leopard, Giuseppe Di Lampedusa, 1958
- On The Road, Jack Kerouac, 1957
- The Hidden Persuaders, Vance Packard, 1957
- Room at the Top, John Braine, 1957
- A Grave for a Dolphin, Alberto Denti di Pirajno, 1956
- The Outsider, Colin Wilson, 1956
- Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov, 1955
- Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell, 1948
- The Street, Ann Petry, 1946
- Black Boy, Richard Wright, 1945
- The Portable Dorothy Parker, Dorothy Parker, 1944
- The Outsider, Albert Camus, 1942
- The Day of the Locust, Nathanael West, 1939
- The Beano, (comic) 1938 –
- The Road to Wigan Pier, George Orwell, 1937
- Mr. Norris Changes Trains, Christopher Isherwood, 1935
- English Journey, J.B. Priestley, 1934
- Infants of the Spring, Wallace Thurman, 1932
- The Bridge, Hart Crane, 1930
- Vile Bodies, Evelyn Waugh, 1930
- As I lay Dying, William Faulkner, 1930
- The 42nd Parallel, John Dos Passos, 1930
- Berlin Alexanderplatz, Alfred Döblin, 1929
- Passing, Nella Larsen, 1929
- Lady Chatterley’s Lover, D.H. Lawrence, 1928
- The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1925
- The Waste Land, T.S. Eliot, 1922
- BLAST, ed. Wyndham Lewis, 1914-15
- McTeague, Frank Norris, 1899
- Transcendental Magic, Its Doctrine and Ritual, Eliphas Lévi, 1896
- Les Chants de Maldoror, Lautréamont, 1869
- Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert, 1856
- Zanoni, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1842
- Inferno, from the Divine Comedy, Dante Alighieri, about 1308-1321
- The Iliad, Homer, about 800 BC
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BUREAU OF ARTS AND CULTURE MAGAZINE
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| JACK KEROUAC ©ARTIST : LAUTIR |
BUREAU BOOKS: Jack KEROUAC
The Essential Readers List
When the legend looms larger than the artistic expression, be it, Art, Music, Dance, or in this case Literature, Houston, we have a problem, as the saying goes. With Jack Kerouac, and say, Shakespeare this is one of the obstacles. Kerouac was a very real person. Just a guy, a very regular dude, who loved sports, reading the newspapers, cats, girls, America and having some fun. As many people know, he also loved Jazz, Cars, Artists & historical facts. His opus is, "On The Road." But there is so much more in the canon. For beginners, it is always safe to start at the beginning with, "The Town and The City." There are also great everyday musings in The Selected Letters Volume One and Two. These are actually my favorites because the books document the highs and lows, the everyday hustle and bustle, the championships and the defeats, the fights among outsiders and his brawls and fallouts with many of his pals such as Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Gregory Corso, Gary Snyder, Carl Soloman, Malcolm Cowley, John Clellon Holmes, Phillip Whalen, Peter Orlovsky and of course his extremely important relationship with Neil Cassady and Cassidy's extended families. Edited by Ann Charters on Penguin Books. Also by Ann Charters is The Portable Beat Reader on Penguin & The Portable Jack Kerouac. Both are fine reading and good gifts for someone curious about beats. We were so impressed with these letters, obsessed really, that it led to creating two entire feature films with thirty different directors each interpreting their own take on the Letters of interesting individuals. LETTERS of The Underground Volume One in 2002 and Volume Two in 2007. Both projects were in connection with a non profit film festival's experimental director's program. Letters are such an intimate and wonderful lost art. Many people have no idea how important the letter is and has been for writers. John Steinbeck wrote a daily letter to his Agent and or Publisher as a warmer - upper, describing the chapters he was working on for East of Eden. When he felt that the oven of creativity was preheated, he tossed in a clean sheet of paper and began the arduous work of creating the work of that day. The letter is often the work out, stretching session prior to the run. In the case of Jack Kerouac, it is also a chance to realize how messy & challenging life as an artist can be. Many of his letters to Sterling Lord, his agent, are very helpful for those intending to learn about how things were, back in the day. We also suggest, Good Blonde & Others on Grey Fox press. Its got some very basic, everyday musings that will surprise even the more conservative readers. Lots of nuggets on writers, essays to news - papers, observations, essays on writing, on sports, on the Beats & On The Road. It is edited by Donald Allen with an Introduction by Robert Creeley. Also out more recently is the Original Scroll of Kerouac's pinnacle, On The Road on Viking Press . We picked up a copy recently & plan diving into it soon. It is an unedited first draft of the opus work. The jacket sleeve tells us that it is ' rougher, wilder & more sexually explicit. It looks to be a very interesting Season.
WILLIAM KENNEDY TRILOGY
When I tell people that I am half Irish, it's a bit of a wise tale, a touch of the blarney, a tad stretching of the facts. With a name like Joshua Triliegi, you figure, Jewish - Italian and you are correct. Though, I was raised by an Irishman from the time I was 6 months old, so nobody's ever gonna tell me that I'm not a mick. What does it mean to be Irish ? Well, it means we've got a touch of the magic. We root for the underdog. We can spin a good yarn and we always go down fightin'. My old man was from The Kennedy + Flynn Tribe. He had that twinkle in his eye, the charm of a Clark Gable, the humor of a Frederick March, the soul of a Van Morrison, Yeah. He's no longer with us, but his favorite books remain. I have been rereading his favorite authors and this is as good a time as any to share with our readers the books of William Kennedy, specifically: The First three in The Albany Series: LEGS, Billy Phelans Greatest Game and the heartbreaking, Ironweed, which is also a film. My old man would sit and read these books late into the night. They are somehow crafted, not for your comfort, but to the loyalty of a historical time and place. Immediately, you are dropped into a world, that is thick with characters, situations and a pungent, living, breathing reality with a trusty narrator, often looking back upon a piece of history.
They are re-readable stories, the kind you will return to every few years. Reading LEGS at twenty one, and again at 3o and still again recently, is a different experience each time. The characters are alive with a dense color and a time and place in America that is currently being reflected on in shows like Boardwalk Empire. Kennedy's Books make you work a little to get inside, but once you are there, It is a whole world that seems much more interesting than the one your living in now. Historically colored, but not exacting in facts. He took real life characters and made them his own. It's easy to get into LEGS, a little more challenging to read Billy Phelans Best Game and, its downright heartbreaking to deal with Ironweed, which I must confess, I have never read. But I will, when I am damn good and ready. I have seen the film, which is well done: Streep and Nicholson doing their thing. Since it is St Patricks time, enjoy the good Irish literature, the good Irish music, the good Irish other stuff, theres plenty of it. A lovely people with a mythical view on life and love. Certainly, having an Irish dad has been the biggest influence on me, my literature, my style and my very, very lucky life.
THE AMERICAN ICON: ARTHUR MILLER
By Joshua A. TRILIEGI for BUREAU of Arts and Culture / LITERARY Edition SPRING 2015
Arthur Miller is turning 100 years of age this year and as it turns out: his works are more important than ever. Miller went toe to toe with mainstream ideology, with the dilemma's of war, with group thinking and paranoia, with religion, with celebrity machinery and even with the government of the United States of America during one of the worst chapters in our history: The McCarthy years. For those of you too young to remember or too old to want to remember. Senator Joe McCarthy led a witch hunt that was focused on left leaning individuals of all sorts, but specifically, those in the field of entertainment. Directors, writers, actors and producers were demanded to testify against their friends and associates publicly, privately, overtly or with discretion. Arthur Miller did no such thing, he refused to name names. He was found in contempt of court and later exonerated of all charges. Miller is a soul searching playwright who introduces ideas in the great American sagas such as, "Death of a Salesman," "All My Sons," "The Crucible," and spreads them out like a deck of cards for all to see and eventually to play with. Theater, unlike film, has a forever and ongoing growing relationship with interpretation, with the populist, with the times and with the future. Millers plays are produced all over the world, "Death of a Japanese Salesman," was extremely popular overseas. The Arthur Miller literary works are and have been interpreted and produced in dozens of languages and remain extremely relevant. Ever since the attacks of 9/11, here in America, a very similar situation surfaced, creatively and culturally speaking, we have not quite recovered. The freedom to speak out against abuses of power, against political policy or those in power is almost entirely absent.
Major news organizations have fallen to the wayside, when it comes to investigative journalism and most others march in step with the current politically correct aspects of today's society. Entertainers are afraid to speak out for fear of losing a role or a job or alienating either their audience or the advertisers. Miller's plays delve into these subject matters deeply, dramatically and with a great deal of consequence to relationships. "Salesman." deals with family deceit, the changing of American values and memory. "All my Sons," is a scorching and scathing look at the war machine, that has direct ties to rather recent political family histories here in America. "The Crucible," is a direct metaphor for the McCarthy era as well as an intensively researched project that brings to life the disturbing, but entirely factual witch hunts that happened in America and abroad : 100s of women were murdered for hysteria and paranoia. Millers plays are not overtly political, they are much more about relationship, family and community at every level. Ultimately, they are about mankind. The popularity of his catalogue has only grown through the years and deservedly so. On a personal level, Mr Miller's life had some extreme ups and downs and through it all he remained calm, elusive, focused and intelligent. Miller has always been very forthright about his works, his views and his ideas of life. To my mind, he is a true patriot, unafraid to ask the difficult questions that arise when involved in an experiment as beautiful as America. He served as the president of the PEN Organization in the mid 1960s. Miller also has the special quality that says to anyone at anytime: "Fuck You," as you can see he expresses in the image related to this article during a press conference. In the back pages of this edition you will find an extensive list with links to over fifty up and coming Miller plays around the world. And so, today we salute the man, the mind, the icon, the artist, the writer and the great and beautiful defiance of this Original American of Letters: Mr. Arthur Miller.
BUREAU LITERARY : MUSIC
THE ROLLING STONES : LITERARY BARDS ?
What is Art ? What is a Classic ? What is Literature ? When is something all of the above ? Why is Rock & Roll Music so damn powerful to us ? It could be that great music tells a narrative just as convincingly as a short story, poem or novel. Sometimes it can even tell that story better. Case in point, Mick Jagger & Keith Richards Classic 1968 song entitled, "Sympathy for the Devil." Today, we look at the song, asking the question: Can Music Be Literature ? And If so, Why ?
The title of the song is, "Sympathy for The Devil." It sounds like a Novel from World War One by Somerset Maugham or a historical piece explaining the rise of fascism in Europe during the 1930s or even a poem by T. S. Elliot. The narrator of the story is a Faustian Mephisto or as he is known in Christo-Judeo belief: The Devil. Our story opens, following a fabulous drum solo, with a grand and eloquent self-introduction, "Please allow me to introduce myself, I'm a man of wealth and taste." He continues, "I've been around for a long, long year, stole many a man's soul to waste," explaining further, "I was around when Jesus Christ had his moment of doubt and pain." It is a devastating first meeting. The very prince of darkness himself is addressing the reader or in this case the listener. Lets put this into context. In 1968, the year this song was released, the world was in turmoil: Political Assassinations, Vietnam, Uprisings in France, Czechoslovakia, The Anti War Movement in America and a rising youth culture had recognized that evil could be anywhere and clearly, these were definitely historical times.
"Jagger and Richards tapped into the moment with aclear and present evils, but instead, reminds the listener that it was here before, it is here now, it will be here after."
Jagger and Richards tapped into the moment with a diabolical diatribe that does not turn away from the clear and present evils, but instead, reminds the listener that it was here before, it is here now, it will be here after. The story continues with a historical look backward, "Stuck around St. Petersburg when I saw it was a time for a change," referring to the Russian Revolution, "I killed the Czar and his ministers, Anastasia screamed in vain." The narration swiftly moves through time to World War II, "I rode a tank, held a general's rank, when the blitzkrieg raged and the bodies stank." Then after a chorus or two, entirely demolishes a hundred years of monarchy with the single line, "I watched with glee, while your kings and queens, fought for ten decades, for the gods they made." And then it peaks with the most devastating idea of the entire work, "I shouted out, "Who killed the Kennedy's ?" When after all, it was you and me." A shattering description that accuses the listener of committing murder: Astonishing. The devise of having a narrator speaking directly to his or her audience goes back as far as The Greek Tragedies and Shakespeare.
The same literary device was used a few years earlier in John Burgess', "A Clockwork Orange" which was later turned into the classic piece of cinema by director Stanley Kubrik. But here, Jagger and Richards put us face to face with the devil himself, presenting him as a man of power, a man of manners, a man of the world and simply a man who is very proud of his many accomplishments, however destructive they may be. The song lyrics take a slightly poetic turn, even in their maniacal aspects with the following phrase,"Just as every cop is a criminal and all the sinners saints. As heads is tails, just call me Lucifer, 'cause I'm in need of some restraint." Then after several chorus' including the echoing line, "Please to meet you, hope you guessed my name," a foreboding warning statement is pressed onto the listener with the final phrase, "So if you meet me, have some courtesy, have some sympathy, and some taste. Use all your well-learned politics or I'll lay your soul to waste." The listener is literally warned to not only respect the narrator, but to have some sympathy. Demanding respect for the dark side of our very nature. The song is a time capsule , a declaration of madness and a warning of future conflicts. It is a fine example of the use of language in creating effective storytelling. It's also simply a great song. But is it Literature with a capital "L" ? If so why ?
"The song is a time capsule, a declaration of madness and a warning of future conflicts. It is a fine example of the use of language in creating effective storytelling. It's also simply : a great song."
For one, it speaks to more than one generation, the story has lasted, at least so far, as an important tragedy of not only it's time, but the song is still currently played on radios stations around the world. In other words, the book is still in print. The play is still on broadway. The public is still interested. Two, the song literally helped to define the actual times with which it was written: The 1960s. It is one of the actual anthems of the period. It may be the most important of the brave literary works to be a part of The Rock & Roll song book ever. Three, it actually speaks to a larger historical context with it's many references to world events and it's ongoing and foreboding demands of a future disaster. The song and narrator lives on in it's very description of itself. Why does this make it Literature ? Well, it doesn't. What does make it Literature ? In my estimation, it is the employment of ideas, the minimum use of narrative, the poetic turns of lyricism, the audacious accusations of the storyteller and the ability to open the imagination to world events that existed prior to the songs invention. Good literature, good fiction, good poetry, good writing, do this for the reader. Good literature will utilize history, experience, tragedy. Good literature will challenge power, normalcy, self-righteousness. Good literature will demand, entertain and sometimes even accuse the reader of the very experiences that mankind has allowed to happen. The Holocaust, Slavery, Genocide, War, Murder and Acts of Cruelty: Who would think to offer these subjects in a Song ? Sympathy For The Devil is very heavy material. Jagger and Richards use their platform to discuss important issues of modernity and history in a way that indeed transports, elevates and activates the same devices used by great writers around the world and that is why this song is ultimately a great piece of fine Literature.
JOSHUA A. TRILIEGI THE LITERARY INTERVIEWS:
MICHELLE ARBEAU . DENNIS WILLS . LUIS VALDEZ
THE AMERICAN ICON: ARTHUR MILLER
By Joshua A. TRILIEGI for BUREAU of Arts and Culture / LITERARY Edition SPRING 2015
Arthur Miller is turning 100 years of age this year and as it turns out: his works are more important than ever. Miller went toe to toe with mainstream ideology, with the dilemma's of war, with group thinking and paranoia, with religion, with celebrity machinery and even with the government of the United States of America during one of the worst chapters in our history: The McCarthy years. For those of you too young to remember or too old to want to remember. Senator Joe McCarthy led a witch hunt that was focused on left leaning individuals of all sorts, but specifically, those in the field of entertainment. Directors, writers, actors and producers were demanded to testify against their friends and associates publicly, privately, overtly or with discretion. Arthur Miller did no such thing, he refused to name names. He was found in contempt of court and later exonerated of all charges. Miller is a soul searching playwright who introduces ideas in the great American sagas such as, "Death of a Salesman," "All My Sons," "The Crucible," and spreads them out like a deck of cards for all to see and eventually to play with. Theater, unlike film, has a forever and ongoing growing relationship with interpretation, with the populist, with the times and with the future. Millers plays are produced all over the world, "Death of a Japanese Salesman," was extremely popular overseas. The Arthur Miller literary works are and have been interpreted and produced in dozens of languages and remain extremely relevant. Ever since the attacks of 9/11, here in America, a very similar situation surfaced, creatively and culturally speaking, we have not quite recovered. The freedom to speak out against abuses of power, against political policy or those in power is almost entirely absent.
Major news organizations have fallen to the wayside, when it comes to investigative journalism and most others march in step with the current politically correct aspects of today's society. Entertainers are afraid to speak out for fear of losing a role or a job or alienating either their audience or the advertisers. Miller's plays delve into these subject matters deeply, dramatically and with a great deal of consequence to relationships. "Salesman." deals with family deceit, the changing of American values and memory. "All my Sons," is a scorching and scathing look at the war machine, that has direct ties to rather recent political family histories here in America. "The Crucible," is a direct metaphor for the McCarthy era as well as an intensively researched project that brings to life the disturbing, but entirely factual witch hunts that happened in America and abroad : 100s of women were murdered for hysteria and paranoia. Millers plays are not overtly political, they are much more about relationship, family and community at every level. Ultimately, they are about mankind. The popularity of his catalogue has only grown through the years and deservedly so. On a personal level, Mr Miller's life had some extreme ups and downs and through it all he remained calm, elusive, focused and intelligent. Miller has always been very forthright about his works, his views and his ideas of life. To my mind, he is a true patriot, unafraid to ask the difficult questions that arise when involved in an experiment as beautiful as America. He served as the president of the PEN Organization in the mid 1960s. Miller also has the special quality that says to anyone at anytime: "Fuck You," as you can see he expresses in the image related to this article during a press conference. In the back pages of this edition you will find an extensive list with links to over fifty up and coming Miller plays around the world. And so, today we salute the man, the mind, the icon, the artist, the writer and the great and beautiful defiance of this Original American of Letters: Mr. Arthur Miller.
BUREAU LITERARY : MUSIC
THE ROLLING STONES : LITERARY BARDS ?
What is Art ? What is a Classic ? What is Literature ? When is something all of the above ? Why is Rock & Roll Music so damn powerful to us ? It could be that great music tells a narrative just as convincingly as a short story, poem or novel. Sometimes it can even tell that story better. Case in point, Mick Jagger & Keith Richards Classic 1968 song entitled, "Sympathy for the Devil." Today, we look at the song, asking the question: Can Music Be Literature ? And If so, Why ?
The title of the song is, "Sympathy for The Devil." It sounds like a Novel from World War One by Somerset Maugham or a historical piece explaining the rise of fascism in Europe during the 1930s or even a poem by T. S. Elliot. The narrator of the story is a Faustian Mephisto or as he is known in Christo-Judeo belief: The Devil. Our story opens, following a fabulous drum solo, with a grand and eloquent self-introduction, "Please allow me to introduce myself, I'm a man of wealth and taste." He continues, "I've been around for a long, long year, stole many a man's soul to waste," explaining further, "I was around when Jesus Christ had his moment of doubt and pain." It is a devastating first meeting. The very prince of darkness himself is addressing the reader or in this case the listener. Lets put this into context. In 1968, the year this song was released, the world was in turmoil: Political Assassinations, Vietnam, Uprisings in France, Czechoslovakia, The Anti War Movement in America and a rising youth culture had recognized that evil could be anywhere and clearly, these were definitely historical times.
"Jagger and Richards tapped into the moment with aclear and present evils, but instead, reminds the listener that it was here before, it is here now, it will be here after."
Jagger and Richards tapped into the moment with a diabolical diatribe that does not turn away from the clear and present evils, but instead, reminds the listener that it was here before, it is here now, it will be here after. The story continues with a historical look backward, "Stuck around St. Petersburg when I saw it was a time for a change," referring to the Russian Revolution, "I killed the Czar and his ministers, Anastasia screamed in vain." The narration swiftly moves through time to World War II, "I rode a tank, held a general's rank, when the blitzkrieg raged and the bodies stank." Then after a chorus or two, entirely demolishes a hundred years of monarchy with the single line, "I watched with glee, while your kings and queens, fought for ten decades, for the gods they made." And then it peaks with the most devastating idea of the entire work, "I shouted out, "Who killed the Kennedy's ?" When after all, it was you and me." A shattering description that accuses the listener of committing murder: Astonishing. The devise of having a narrator speaking directly to his or her audience goes back as far as The Greek Tragedies and Shakespeare.
The same literary device was used a few years earlier in John Burgess', "A Clockwork Orange" which was later turned into the classic piece of cinema by director Stanley Kubrik. But here, Jagger and Richards put us face to face with the devil himself, presenting him as a man of power, a man of manners, a man of the world and simply a man who is very proud of his many accomplishments, however destructive they may be. The song lyrics take a slightly poetic turn, even in their maniacal aspects with the following phrase,"Just as every cop is a criminal and all the sinners saints. As heads is tails, just call me Lucifer, 'cause I'm in need of some restraint." Then after several chorus' including the echoing line, "Please to meet you, hope you guessed my name," a foreboding warning statement is pressed onto the listener with the final phrase, "So if you meet me, have some courtesy, have some sympathy, and some taste. Use all your well-learned politics or I'll lay your soul to waste." The listener is literally warned to not only respect the narrator, but to have some sympathy. Demanding respect for the dark side of our very nature. The song is a time capsule , a declaration of madness and a warning of future conflicts. It is a fine example of the use of language in creating effective storytelling. It's also simply a great song. But is it Literature with a capital "L" ? If so why ?
"The song is a time capsule, a declaration of madness and a warning of future conflicts. It is a fine example of the use of language in creating effective storytelling. It's also simply : a great song."
For one, it speaks to more than one generation, the story has lasted, at least so far, as an important tragedy of not only it's time, but the song is still currently played on radios stations around the world. In other words, the book is still in print. The play is still on broadway. The public is still interested. Two, the song literally helped to define the actual times with which it was written: The 1960s. It is one of the actual anthems of the period. It may be the most important of the brave literary works to be a part of The Rock & Roll song book ever. Three, it actually speaks to a larger historical context with it's many references to world events and it's ongoing and foreboding demands of a future disaster. The song and narrator lives on in it's very description of itself. Why does this make it Literature ? Well, it doesn't. What does make it Literature ? In my estimation, it is the employment of ideas, the minimum use of narrative, the poetic turns of lyricism, the audacious accusations of the storyteller and the ability to open the imagination to world events that existed prior to the songs invention. Good literature, good fiction, good poetry, good writing, do this for the reader. Good literature will utilize history, experience, tragedy. Good literature will challenge power, normalcy, self-righteousness. Good literature will demand, entertain and sometimes even accuse the reader of the very experiences that mankind has allowed to happen. The Holocaust, Slavery, Genocide, War, Murder and Acts of Cruelty: Who would think to offer these subjects in a Song ? Sympathy For The Devil is very heavy material. Jagger and Richards use their platform to discuss important issues of modernity and history in a way that indeed transports, elevates and activates the same devices used by great writers around the world and that is why this song is ultimately a great piece of fine Literature.
INTERVIEW : AUTHOR MICHELLE ARBEAU
NUMEROLOGY is a rather ancient and esoteric art, but anybody who has spent time with a good Numerologist and had a reading would be hard pressed to deny the accuracy. Would you explain the history of this particular science and explain what attracted you to it ?
Numerology is the language of the universe. Everything in existence can be counted, sorted or measured using numbers. It was originally discovered by the Greek Mathematician and philosopher, Pythagoras who of course is famous for the Pythagorean Theorem. Unlike other esoteric arts like tarot and astrology, numerology is highly accurate because it's more quantum physics than metaphysics. Numbers are patterns and the world is made up of patterns. It's black and white, right or wrong. I fell in love with numbers and numerology about 12 years ago when I began dreaming in numbers out of the blue. I was a typical corporate stiff at the time, working unhappily in the field of banking for a major bank in Canada doing HR work (interviews/hiring). These dreams totally caught me off guard but in hindsight I realized numerology was my calling because I always had a photographic memory for numbers. My dreams would have numbers show up on things like doors, license plates and street signs – everywhere and on everything. The dreams lasted for about 3 weeks until I began to research the number codes and stumbled upon numerology. They number meanings were exact answers to the challenges I was facing in my life at the time. I was astounded and was immediately hooked on the ancient system. To this day (knock on wood) I have not had anyone not resonate with their numerical code. I often refer to our date of birth as spiritual DNA.
Many people see numbers and numerals as un-living entities with no significance, though others understand that everything has a vibe, a rhythm, a pulse and tone. I think musicians that compose
understand that significance, would you help our readers comprehend the concept of numerology.
Numbers are absolutely entities to me. I'm a very practical person who likes a great deal of fact with my faith but I can tell you without a doubt that numerology is a way to see the unseen world of energy. Quantum physics has really given a lot of validity to numerology over the past several years with the new string theory concept. The essence behind this theory is that at the base of an atom, which was once thought to be solid matter is actually frozen light particles (aka energy). Numerology is a tool to see the unseen, recognize the patterns that make up all things. Math is either right or wrong, there is no grey area. They are the mathematical framework of creation. Numbers appear even in biblical scriptures and in the Mayan history. Each number is building block and can be likened to a musical note within a song. Each note makes a piece of the entire melody. To know someone' s numerical makeup is to have a looking glass into what makes them tick – who they are and how to relate to them. As a numerologist, I'm always curious to find out the numbers of the people I meet because it allows me to adjust how I communicate and interact with them. I can be found scribbling numbers on a napkin at a restaurant. I know immediately what that person is all about and we have a deeper, strong connection because of it. Life boils down to the relationships we have with others and if we have a tool like numerology that can help us connect better, that's a win-win to me.
BUREAU: I was recently moving and had to pick and choose which books I would leave behind and which to keep, one of the books was a rare early numerology handbook form decades past: I kept it. Walk us through a small numerology exercise as an example. Utilize my birthday if you like.
It sounds like you're a numbers person if you felt drawn to keep the numerology book. I find that certain kinds of people are drawn more to the numbers than others. The mind plane dominate folks are usually the ones that are keen on the numbers while the more soul-centered people don't jive as much. Life is about perception. I find that it depends on whether you're predominately a thinker, feeler or doer. Spirit will speak to us and get the message across in the way we'll most pay attention and for me it's numerical patterns. Your date of birth is an interesting one because your base energy (sum of your date of birth) is a physical-based number (4) but your chart energy is very top heavy in the emotional and mental realms. Essentially you're the practical doer but you're lacking grounding energy which means you spend a good deal of your time in lost in thought or sorting through the emotional realm. If you could envision our energy as being this huge head/heart with a little, tiny stick body – that would be your energetic body. You have the Arrow of Emotional Balance which makes you the natural counselor for others but not necessarily great at navigating through your own emotional waters. You express yourself much better in writing than you do verbally because you have a single 1 (verbal self-expression number). This isn't to say you can't kick butt public speaking but when it comes to sharing of your more intimate self, that's where the disconnect happens. You are much more open and present on paper (don't close up). You also have the gift of the communication number so anything you do will center around communication and getting the message across. If you add your month and day it shows you what your gift is. It's a 10 for you, the earth guide who leads through casual conversation. This is a big year for you, a year of opportunities falling into your lap. It's starting a high change cycle for the next 3 years. You're also in an outer, longer cycle centered around career/career shifting (Peak cycle of 5). I left the corporate world to do what I do now under a double whammy 5 energy (personal year of 5, peak cycle of 5). 5 is always related to seeing more clearly our path and purpose.
BUREAU: Could you give us an example of how numerology could transform or improve a particular situation ?
Numerology has been such an incredible tool for me to understand the difficult relationships in my life. Often relationship challenges are a result of miscommunication or misunderstanding. Think of the classic nagging wife and tuned out husband who says “Yes, dear.” They are simply a case of being misunderstood. If you were to examine their situation, you would discover that the wife is simply a predominately mental or intellectual based person who tends to over-think or over-analyze. The husband on the other hand is a physical based person who doesn't put much thought into what he does, he just does it. Each thinks the other doesn't understand them or is directly trying to hurt them in some way. The truth is, it's just a matter of not speaking each others' language. Once the husband knows the wife gets caught up in her own thoughts, he can offer to go for a walk with her to help her get out of her head. Likewise, the wife, knowing the husband isn't ignoring her, he just tunes out when she gets into over-thinking mode can appreciate he feels overwhelmed by her chaotic thinking. Each has much more patience and understanding for each other once they know their inner workings by examining their spiritual DNA.
BUREAU: There have been some stigmas attached to certain ancient arts, sometimes because they have been misused, other times simply out of fear or misunderstanding the purpose of these arts. Could you talk a bit about how you see the self empowerment aspect of this ancient art ?
The best thing I ever did for my platform to take the science of numerology mainstream in the media is to keep it practical and in the realm of science. I was able to get onto national Canadian media such as CTV Morning Live and Breakfast Television which are huge conservative media outlets. They typically wouldn't even consider having someone like me on air but I was able to bridge the gap between science and spirituality. I call it practical spirituality. We live real lives and don't have time to meditate on a mountaintop. Numerology is a quick and easy way to see the unseen. I always approach numerology from the practical, scientific and logical point of view. I think I'm giving a new voice to this ancient art because people aren't afraid of how I present the numbers. I had a near death experience when I was 4 and although I'm a really practical person, I've seen both sides of life and I know without a doubt there is an energetic component to our existence. I use this knowledge and apply it to how I share the art of numerology. Most people automatically know what astrology is but when you say numerology, not everyone knows what that is. Numbers have become a hot item these days with so many people seeing random repeating number sequences. It's a phenomenon and I'm so excited to be the one to share the ancient art of numerology with the world. To be able to show them how incredibly accurate and truth-revealing it can be is very rewarding. My job is to give ah-ha moments. I'm a truth-revealer at my core. A natural scientist. The timing couldn't be more perfect for me to embrace my calling.
Illustration by Jules ENGEL Tap here: Image is Available / Provided by Tobey C. MOSS Gallery L.A. CA USA
BOOKS : DENNIS WILLS
Dennis Wills runs D.G.Wills Books in La Jolla CA USA which is having it's 35th Anniversary this year. Guest readers through the years include: Norman Mailer, Russel Means, Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, Ted Joans, Mary Woronov, Michael McClure, Mort Sahl, Ralph Nader, Lawrence Ferlinghetti & Gore Vidal. Bureau spoke to Dennis about his storied history and this local literary landmark.
Bureau: Your bookstore has a story straight out of literature history. Tell our readers a bit about the store.
DW: I opened the original D. G. Wills Books at 7527 La Jolla Blvd. in late 1979, on an outdoor wooden deck between two buildings, with a tiny adjacent office. While I eventually installed a fiberglass roof over this wooden deck, our first few poetry readings were under the open sky. Artist Francoise Gilot asked us to convert a space adjacent to the bookshop into her artist studio in the late 1980s, as the bookshop reminded her of Paris. But in l991 we moved the bookshop to 7461 Girard Avenue, where my carpenter friends and I remodeled the building and installed the redwood cathedral ceiling and spruce floor.
Bureau: In today's world, the rarity of a place like yours is on par with Shakespeare and Company in Paris and City Lights in San Francisco. How do you keep it going ?
DW: Thanks for the kind words. We were lucky that George Whitman of Shakespeare and Company spoke at the old shop on La Jolla Blvd. years ago. Then Lawrence Ferlinghetti of City Lights read poetry at the new shop on Girard Avenue. We have kept it going by working seven days a week, not minding being in constant debt, and enjoying the company of our many friends within the confines of the bookshop.
Bureau: You have had some very serious guests and events of a completely top notch variety, tell us a few stories about those experiences: Norman Mailer for instance.
DW: When poet Gary Snyder read poetry here in l992, he had such a good time that he gave us Allen Ginsberg's telephone and told us to call him. Then Allen appeared here in 1994 and drew our largest crowd, 100 people crammed inside and over 400 outside. Later Michael McClure was mystical; Lawrence Ferlinghetti was funny and wise; former U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins absolutely charming and hilarious; and playwright Edward Albee brilliantly engaging with the audience. Four different TV station satellite trucks, and a police car, showed up for Oliver Stone. We set up a bar in the back with four different kinds of whiskey for Norman Mailer, who then talked about his book on Lee Harvey Oswald. For Christopher Hitchens we happily provided Canadian Rothman Blue cigarettes and especially a fifth of his beloved Johnny Walker Black whiskey, which a group of us somehow finished. Gore Vidal, brilliant and witty, brought down the house with his wickedly funny impersonation of Truman Capote. Nobel Laureate Francis Crick was eloquently patrician discussing the wonders of science. Francoise Gilot most eloquently shared her first-hand recollections of Picasso and Matisse. Pulitzer Prize journalist Maureen Dowd and Jill Abramson, Executive Editor of the "New York Times," appeared together and shared their insider perspective on Washington politics.
Bureau: What are you currently reading ?
DW: I continue to research material pertaining to Somerset Maugham's work as a British Red Cross ambulance driver attached to the French Second Army in late 1914 during World War I, in Northern France along the Picardy Front, then later in Ypres, Belgium.
Bureau: Tell us a bit about your community and the organizations that support the store.
DW: We are most fortunate in the San Diego area to be surrounded by such universities as UCSD, SDSU and USD as well as a number of biomedical research facilities such as the Salk Institute. Thus students and faculty have enjoyed our academic and scholarly books here for thirty-five years.
Bureau: When I look at images of the store through the years, I feel like i am looking at a friends family album and parties I attended. Tells us about your family.
DW: My beloved mother and father passed away years ago. But it could indeed be argued that the bookshop, the books within and all of our beloved customers and friends have always served as my family.
Bureau: Literature, like any art form, gains popularity, wanes and then gains popularity again, where are we now in that ebb & flow ?
DW: Difficult to say; iconic works of literature which have passed the test of time continued to be studied, while new talent continues to emerge. Some new works enjoy a hot spell, then fade; others endure which only the passage of time may determine.
Bureau: Who else has read at the store and what will be your upcoming events ?
USD Literature Professor Halina Duraj will read from her new short story collection "The Family Cannon" on Saturday at 7 P.M., 10 May. Otherwise we have nothing yet scheduled thereafter. Other events will probably pop up for the Fall.
Bureau: Are you a writer, if so, tell us about that process. if not tell us something about the ART of Reading .
DW: I tend to write letters to authors, especially if we seek their appearance here. Otherwise I continue to work on a project involving ambulance drivers in World War I.
Bureau: Its been a pleasure to talk with you. Would you provide a list of suggested reading for this season that people can purchase at the store ?
DW: We buy a lot of single copies of this and that. Though at this point in time I would suggest:
1)The Torrey Pines Gliderport, Gary Fogel, Arcadia
2)Selected Essays of Erich Auerbach, Ed. by James I. Porter, Princeton
3)My Sister Rosalind Franklin, Jenifer Glynn, Oxford
4)Essays and Reviews, Bernard Williams, Princeton
5)In Paradise, Peter Matthiessen, Riverhead
6)The Withering Storm, Sandor Marai, Alma Classics
7)The Letters of William Gaddis, Ed. by Steven Moore, Dalkey Archive
8)A Broken Heritage: Rock and Roll, Redemption, and the Life of Leonard Cohen, Liel Leibovitz
9)Patrick Leigh Fermor, Artemis Cooper, New York Review of Books Press
10) The Circle, Dave Eggers, McSweeney's Books
7461 Girard Avenue, La Jolla, Ca. 92037 (858)456-1800
HOURS: Monday-Saturday 10am-7pm; Sunday 11am-5pm
La Literatura Entrevista
LUIS VALDEZ: ESCRITOR
Por Joshua TRILIEGI
Luis VALDEZ cambió la Literatura Paisaje completo con su exitosa obra Fierce ", ZOOT SUIT". Aquí, en el sur de California, El juego es mucho más que las palabras. Se trata de una idea personal y positivo que dio a mucha gente la inspiración para hacer algo con las cosas que vieron, no sólo en sus hogares y barrios, pero para reclamar lo que estaba ocurriendo en los medios de comunicación, de poseer las historias que se les decía y simplemente reclamar lo que era suyo por derecho, para empezar: sus propias historias familiares . En esta entrevista Bureau Editor Joshua TRILIEGI y Luis VALDEZ discutir su carrera, su proceso de trabajo y el desarrollo de una fuerza poderosa que continúa inspirando a millones de personas indígenas de todo el Mundial y enseña a los demás.
Sr. Valdez llegó a crear la película "La Bamba", que cuenta la historia muy importante de América del músico y del compositor, Ritchie Valens. Impulsado por la proliferación de Retro Nostálgico Films de 1950 como American Graffiti y su seguimiento Happy Days, así como la popularidad del género biográfico musical de proyectos como The Buddy Holly Story, Elvis y similares: LA BAMBA era el proyecto perfecto que completamente lanzó la energía y la fuerza de SUIT ZOOT en la estratosfera de los medios de comunicación populares y la cultura, por último, una historia que legítimamente reclama, explicados y honraron la experiencia latina, o como Luis Valdez podría decirlo, "la experiencia chicana" en la historia de la música popular. La película en sí toca en el paradigma de la familia en tanto mítica y real
circunstancias. Una película hermosa y entretenida, que admite hasta hoy tal como lo hizo originalmente a partir de su creación. De la misma manera que Zoot Suit nos dio la carrera de Edward James Olmos, 'El Bogart Chicano', La Bamba nos dio una gran cantidad de talento frente y detrás de las escenas: Lou Diamond Phillips, Esai Morales, Los Lobos y Otros. Desde entonces, el Sr. Valdez ha continuado su influencia como líderes en el mundo latino y chicano Dramaturgo viajar por todas partes, todo el tiempo, compartiendo su gran riqueza de conocimientos y experiencia en un mundo sediento de la verdad, la experiencia y el entretenimiento.
Estamos orgullosos de traerle Luis Valdez, sin censura, sin inhibiciones y el invicto.
Joshua TRILIEGI : En primer lugar, es un placer para compartir su experiencia con nuestros lectores. Asistimos a la proyección de Los Ángeles del aniversario del Zoot Suit y más tarde compramos y releer la obra. Hay tantas cosas en ella: la realidad, el folclore y una potencia feroz, así como un elemento musical genuinamente cadera, ¿podría compartir con nosotros cómo esa pieza originalmente formado en su mente y cómo se desarrolló en la innovadora obra de Broadway?
Luis Valdez : En el otoño de 1977, fue encargado por Gordon Davidson, director artístico de la Taper Forum Center Theatre Group / Marcos en Los Ángeles, para escribir una obra basada en un capítulo infame de la historia de Los Angeles, en concreto el Sleepy Lagoon Caso 1942 y los posteriores disturbios Zoot Suit de 1943. Aunque casi olvidado en los barrios chicanos, el Pachuco Época habían sido enterrados en los cubos de basura del olvido por el oficialismo Anglo que prefirió no conmemorar vergüenzas pasadas dolorosas. Una nueva generación entera nacida después de la Segunda Guerra Mundial casi no sabía nada acerca de los pachucos, aunque, inevitablemente, a mediados de los años 60, jóvenes méxico-americanos comenzaron a llamarse chicanos, como el legado de sus antepasados barrio zoot-adaptado pateó, heredando su orgullo racial , argot urbano y desafío cultural.
La diferencia generacional es que muchos de estos chicanos (a) s ahora estaban hablando su dialecto en colegios o universidades. Pero la dolorosa picadura de los disturbios Zoot Suit y el Sleepy Lagoon Caso persistía en los barrios, como una vieja herida supurante que se estaba décadas en sanar. Mi juego así sin darse cuenta se convirtió en una manera de tratar directamente con el daño psíquico infligido a los barrios este de Los Ángeles por los disturbios Zoot Suit abriendo la vieja herida racista y ventilar en el ámbito público del teatro. La verdad de esto se hizo evidente cuando el juego se agotó en el Mark Taper, incluso antes de que abriera, y cuando el público siguió el juego el Teatro Aquarius en Hollywood. Funcionó allí durante once meses, y al final, más de 400.000 personas vinieron a verlo. La mitad de ellos eran chicanos, la mayoría de los cuales nunca habían visto una obra de teatro antes. Esto entonces motivó el traslado al Teatro Winter Garden de Nueva York en 1979, donde Zoot Suit se convirtió en la primera chicana jugar para llegar a Broadway.
Las raíces de la obra, sin embargo, se encuentran lejos de la Gran Vía Blanca. Nací en un campamento de trabajo agrícola en Delano, California en 1940. En esos días Delano era un punto caliente en el valle de San Joaquín, y teníamos nuestras propias pachucos en el barrio "Barrio Chino" en la parte oeste. Uno de ellos era mi primo Billy; otro era su compañero de carreras CC. Billy hablaba un dialecto pachuco fluido, así que él me enseñó a llamar a mí mismo "Chicano", incluso pensó sólo seis que estaba. He aprendido mucho acerca de los pachucos, incluyendo su jerga y estilo de ser, de esta manera más íntima y familiar. Trágicamente, Billy tuvo una muerte violenta en Phoenix, dieciocho heridas de arma blanca en el pecho. Pero su compañero de carreras CC sobrevivió, se unió a la Marina de Guerra y llegó a casa un día para casarse y sentar la cabeza. En 1965, cuando le dije a mi madre en San José que estaba regresando a Delano para formar un teatro trabajadores agrícolas con los huelguistas de la uva, mi mamá dijo: "Oh, usted va a trabajar con CC" "CC" I dijo: "¿Es que vato todavía por aquí?" "Mijo," mi madre respondió: "¿No sabes quién es CC? Él es César Chávez ".
En 1970, El Teatro Campesino, el Teatro de Trabajadores del Campo nacido en los piquetes de la Gran Delano Grape Strike, produjo mi primera obra de larga duración desde la universidad. Se llamaba "Bernabé", con un personaje llamado "La Luna" que aparece en un pequeño papel como un mítico Pachuco en un traje de luces. El personaje era tan intrigante, supe de inmediato que se merecía una obra propia. Siete años más tarde, cuando Gordon Davidson me pidió que escribiera acerca del Sleepy Lagoon, he optado por hacer de El Pachuco la figura central mítico, tanto como maestro de ceremonias y alter ego de Henry "Hank" Reyna, el protagonista y líder de la 38 calle Gang. Por encima de todo, El Pachuco se convirtió en el guía, el narrador, por lo que la historia de la Sleepy Lagoon Case y los disturbios Zoot Suit podría ser contada a través de un Punto de vista chicano. El resto, como se suele decir, es historia del teatro americano.
Joshua TRILIEGI: Algo acerca de su trabajo es tan cierto, genuino y original, al mismo tiempo, usted habla de un buen número de personas de la comunidad. ¿Podría hablar un poco acerca de mantenerse fiel a la visión de uno y al mismo tiempo aprovechar una verdad más grande, no sólo para nuestras propias comunidades, sino para el mundo.
Luis Valdez : escribí mis primeras obras en el Estado de San José, donde se graduó en el '64 con una Licenciatura en Inglés con énfasis en la dramaturgia. No era la opción más práctica para un hijo de trabajadores agrícolas migrantes, y mucho menos un chicano, pero yo estaba decidido a seguir a mi corazón. Me había enganchado en el teatro en el primer grado en 1946, cuando me dieron el papel en la obra de la escuela de Navidad. Yo iba a jugar un mono que lleva una máscara de mi maestro hizo, volviendo la bolsa de tacos de color marrón en papel maché. Estaba eufórico. A continuación, la semana de mi gran debut, mi familia migrante fue desalojado del campo de trabajo en el que había expirado nuestra bienvenida. Nunca estuve en la obra. Un gran agujero de la desesperación se abrió en mi pecho. Podría haberme destruido. Pero aprendí desde el principio que los negativos siempre pueden convertirse en positivos. Me llevé dos cosas: una, el secreto de papel maché, que permitieron hacer mis propias máscaras y títeres; y dos, una profunda ira, residual para el desalojo de mi familia desde el campo de trabajo. Veinte años más tarde, fui a César Chávez y le lancé mi idea para un teatro de, por y para los trabajadores agrícolas. Y así, el agujero en mi pecho se convirtió en la boca hambrienta de mi creatividad, en el que he estado derramando obras de teatro, poemas, ensayos, guiones, libros, etc durante casi 70 años.
Joshua TRILIEGI: La escena de Los Angeles y California ha cambiado, crecido y desarrollado en una unificación más fuerte que nunca, [Desde la década de 1970] cuando SUIT ZOOT hizo su impresión inicial. Su trabajo es una gran parte de lo que nos growth.Tell acerca de sus humildes comienzos haciendo obras de teatro y parodias a nivel local, antes de desvelar algunas de sus obras maestras de opus.
Luis Valdez : El reto de la creación teatral con campesinos en huelga fue una lección de humildad. Cesar me había advertido desde el principio: "No hay dinero para hacer teatro en Delano," me dijo. "No hay actores, ni el escenario, no hay tiempo ni para ensayar. Estamos en el día piquete noche. ¿Todavía quiere tomar una grieta en ella? "" Absolutamente, Cesar! "Respondí. "¡Qué oportunidad!" Yo estaba, por supuesto, pensando en el espíritu del movimiento que había comenzado. Pero él tenía toda la razón. Por necesidad, El Teatro Campesino nació en el piquete. Con el tiempo, comenzamos a realizar en las reuniones Viernes noche'S NFWA. La Asociación Nacional de Trabajadores Agrícolas pudo haber sido rico en espíritu, pero fue muerto se rompió. Después de la universidad, me había unido a la San Francisco Mime Troupe durante un año, actuando en parques de la ciudad, el aprendizaje de las técnicas de improvisación de Commedia dell Arte. Este conocimiento ha demostrado ser más útil en Delano que toda la historia del teatro que había aprendido en SJS. Pero mi mayor revelación provino de los propios campesinos. Como actores y el público, que me enseñaron a permanecer a la tierra; mantenerse alejado de toda la basura artística pretencioso y al llegar al punto con Actos que estaban golpeando claro y duro. Por encima de todo, mantener una actitud positiva y esperanzadora. "No hables, hazlo!" Se convirtió en un Teatro precepto esencial. Más tarde, cuando comenzamos a organizar Actos sobre el Movimiento Chicano, la guerra de Vietnam y el racismo en las escuelas, encontramos a nuestro público en LA, chicanos y Nueva York no es menos receptivo a nuestra simplicidad básica de los huelguistas de uva originales. "Zoot Suit" se produjo una docena de años después del nacimiento de El Teatro, pero las raíces de mi obra de teatro musical como los de los pachucos originales alcanzar profundamente en la tierra barrio.
Joshua TRILIEGI: asistí a las audiciones para LA BAMBA de Los Ángeles Complejo Teatral en los años - los años ochenta. El entusiasmo en torno del proyecto era, y sigue siendo, muy vivo y totalmente actual. Cuéntanos un poco acerca de esa experiencia.
Luis Valdez : Antes de que fuera una película, LA BAMBA originalmente iba a ser un musical por mí y mi hermano Daniel. En realidad, fue concebido en la noche de la inauguración de Zoot Suit en Nueva York. Estábamos en el Winter Garden Theater en Broadway, y como yo hice mis rondas finales antes de la hora de la cortina, me cayó en el camerino de mi hermano en el segundo piso. Como el actor principal en la obra de Edward James Olmos, Daniel estaba de buen humor. Los dos nos quedamos. Habíamos vino un largo camino desde Delano. Celebrando nuestro éxito, nos comprometimos que ahora que nos habíamos traído los años 40 en Broadway, debemos llevar a los años 50. Pero, ¿cómo, con qué? En ese preciso momento, escuchamos la música de mariachi. Mirando por la ventana vestidor, hacia abajo, hacia la Séptima Avenida, vimos una banda dorada, plenamente adaptado de mariachis tocando hacia nosotros. No sabíamos en ese momento, pero el Presidente de México había enviado mariachis serenata a nosotros en la noche de apertura. Daniel y reconocí la melodía inmediatamente. Era la respuesta a la pregunta que acababa planteado entre sí acerca de nuestro próximo musical. Simultáneamente,
se rió y dijo las palabras entre sí: La Bamba!
Fueron necesarios cinco años para llevar el proyecto a buen término. El mayor problema resultó ser la falta de material biográfico acerca de Ritchie Valens, nacido Richard Valenzuela, en 1941 en Los Angeles. Había unos cuantos artículos en revistas viejas, pero ningún libro o biografía publicada. Lo que es peor, Daniel tuvo ningún éxito en la búsqueda de miembros sobrevivientes de la familia de Ritchie. Se habían ido de largo de Pacoima en el Valle de San Fernando, donde vivieron en los años 50, 60 y 70, y en los años 80, antes de la Internet, no había ninguna red social para aprovechar. Sin contacto directo con la familia, LA BAMBA se estaba convirtiendo en una quimera. Un tanto desanimado, Daniel regresó de Los Ángeles a San Juan Bautista, base de operaciones de El Teatro Campesino, jurando no obstante seguir buscando. Entonces, una noche, como ironías de la vida que tienen, por fin cumplido medio hermano mayor de Ritchie, Bob Morales. Él se encontró con él en San Juan Bautista en el Saloon de Daisy! Resultó que Bob y la mayoría de la familia de Ritchie ahora vivían veinticinco kilómetros en Watsonville, y de vez en cuando frecuentaba Daisy con sus amigos del motorista. Una cosa llevó a otra rápidamente. Bob tomó Daniel para satisfacer Connie Valenzuela, madre de Ritchie, entonces Daniel me llevó a conocer a toda la familia. En cuestión de días, tomamos la historia de nuestro viejo amigo Taylor Hackford en Hollywood, quien accedió a la opción historia de Ritchie como un biopic para la gran pantalla con Columbia Pictures. Yo escribí el guión durante el invierno y una vez nos dieron la luz verde, dirigí la imagen en el verano siguiente, con mi hermano como productor asociado. Al final, nuestra biopic terminó recaudando más de 100 millones en todo el mundo. Muy pocas películas vienen a ser tan precipitadamente. Pero hubo giros del destino. Habíamos previsto inicialmente por parte de Ritchie Valens como un vehículo para mi hermano, pero por el tiempo que nos dieron la luz verde, Daniel amablemente concedido que a 37 ya no podía pasar como 17. Así, por todos sus esfuerzos, él generosamente creado una oportunidad para hacer una estrella de Lou Diamond Phillips.
Joshua TRILIEGI : Una experiencia de los escritores con sus colaboradores es bastante importante, en su caso: Los Lobos, Edward James Olmos, Lou Diamond Phillips para nombrar unos pocos. ¿Va a hablar de lo mucho que tuvo entrada en el momento de estos proyectos estaban en desarrollo en la elección de estos compañeros artistas.
Luis Valdez : Durante el casting de Zoot Suit en el Mark Taper Forum en el 78, nuestro mayor dilema resultó ser la parte de El Pachuco. Yo escribí el guión con mi hermano Daniel en mente, aunque yo lo vi tanto como Henry Reyna y El Pachuco. La cuestión de nepotismo a un lado, nos había estado colaborando dentro de El Teatro Campesino de una docena de años antes de Zoot Suit llegó. Así que era natural para él para servir como mi modelo único para el juego. Desafortunadamente, a diferencia de la película, no podía jugar dos roles en el escenario al mismo tiempo. Así que nos propusimos en nuestra búsqueda para encontrar a uno u otro. Después de un agotador dos semanas en LA, incapaz de encontrar un suplente Henry o Pachuco entre cientos de actores, me tomé el fin de semana para estar con mi esposa Lupe de vuelta en San Juan, donde se recuperaba después de dar a luz a nuestro tercer hijo Lakin en el mismo día en que terminé el guión. Daniel continuó con las audiciones. Un día o dos más tarde, me llamó con entusiasmo sometido: "¿Sabes una cosa", dijo, "me encontré con El Pachuco!"
Resultó que después de otro día decepcionante en LA, mi hermano conoció aa recortar Chicano actor con un rostro Bogart paseando por los pasillos del Mark Taper anexo al otro lado del centro de música. Daniel le preguntó si él estaba allí para las audiciones. El Bogie Chicano respondió: "¿Qué audiciones?" Al parecer, no sabía nada de Zoot Suit, pero que estaba dispuesto a leer un papel. Así que Daniel le leyó. Yo le había dado a mi hermano la opción de jugar cualquiera de los dos cables, pero una vez que vio y oyó a Edward James Olmos leyó, supo que había encontrado a El Pachuco.
Un espíritu de colaboración creativa es siempre una necesidad en el teatro, pero teniendo en cuenta mi experiencia con el Teatro, "Zoot Suit" no podría haber ocurrido de otra manera. Eddie Olmos creó El Pachuco, con tanta seguridad como El Pachuco ayudó a crear Edward James Olmos la estrella de cine. La feroz intensidad de su presencia en el escenario, sin duda, provenía de su propio ser, pero Eddie tenía un "instinto asesino" que capturó la esencia del fenómeno pachuco en los años 40. Curiosamente, en una forma similar, Lou Diamond Phillips capturó el instinto asesino que hizo Ritchie Valens una estrella de rock; aunque en el caso de Ritchie, que se mezcló con la inocencia residual de un 17 años de edad. Esta inocencia es la clave para el patetismo perdurable de "Donna", un lamento clásico adolescente del amor perdido hace mucho tiempo, si alguna vez hubo uno. Encontrar a esta mezcla de candidez con ferocidad era el desafío en la fundición de la estrella de LA BAMBA. Literalmente, una audición de más de 600 actores de Los Ángeles a Nueva York. Finalmente, en Dallas, Texas, se encuentra a un actor que había estado haciendo películas cristianas. Llegó con una cierta intensidad de leer para Bob, el papel que obviamente codiciaba. Pero bajo toda esa bravuconería era un corazón inconfundiblemente conmovedora. Así que Lou Diamond Phillips se convirtió Ritchie Valens, Ritchie se convirtió Lou, con toda la ferocidad inocente que le hizo alcanzar las estrellas.
Nada de esto, por supuesto, habría sido posible sin mis colaboradores musicales. En el caso de "Zoot Suit" Tengo una deuda de gratitud con Lalo Guerrero, el padrino y el Gran Maestro de la Música Chicana. Con su permiso, hice tapping directamente en cinco de sus clásicos de la década de 1940 para convertir mi obra en una forma de kick-culo del teatro de cabaret, si no en un musical hecho y derecho. La música de Lalo es sin duda el alma de Pachuco "Zoot Suit". Del mismo modo, la música de Ritchie es el alma de LA BAMBA, pero nunca podría haber vuelto a la vida sin Los Lobos. Fuimos amigos mucho antes de su primer álbum, "Just Another Band from East LA" lanzamos su notable carrera. Pero trabajando en la banda sonora de la película con Los Lobos, con la voz de David Hidalgo como Ritchie, fue una alegría de colaboración. LA BAMBA los llevó a la cima de las listas, por primera vez, pero han estado allí muchas veces desde entonces. También lo ha hecho el gran Carlos Santana, otro de mis colaboradores en la película. Es su sutil y penetrante solos de guitarra que siguen la trayectoria emocional de Ritchie en toda la película. Seamos realistas. Genio en el barrio es genio en todas partes. ¡Ajua!
Joshua TRILIEGI: En el barrio que yo crecí, en ese momento, había varios campamentos y escuelas de pensamiento diferentes que se hizo representar por imágenes y, finalmente, los carteles en las habitaciones de nuestros amigos: Farah Fawcett, de Bruce Lee, Led Zeppelin, Gerry López, David Partridge y por supuesto la increíble imagen de artista IGNACIO GOMEZ quien diseñó la imagen para SUIT ZOOT. Esa imagen en particular siempre ha sido y siempre significará algo muy especial para muchos de nosotros. Hable con nosotros sobre imagen y el texto, y que relación muy importante entre el artista y escritor.
Luis Valdez : El primer cartel para SUIT ZOOT fue creado a partir de un dibujo de José Montoya, el último gran poeta chicano, muralista y maestro de los barrios de Sacramento. Tanto con pintura y tinta, José había sido la captura de la imagen Pachuco durante décadas, en los poemas, litografías y carteles de serigrafía. En 1973, él y sus homies la RCAF (Rebelde Chicano Artistas delantero que en broma a sí mismos apodado el Royal Chicano Air Force) incluso montó una pieza en el Tercer Festival de Teatro de San José llamado "Recuerdos del Palomar". Ataviado como pachucos en zoot suits con sus huisas en mini faldas, José y sus compinches no pretenden presentar una obra de teatro tanto como oferta de una forma de arte de performance. Característicamente, las imágenes pachuco de José siempre estaban imbuidos con un tinte de humor autocrítico; que era exactamente la calidad del primer cartel SUIT ZOOT. Esta imagen representa la obra de teatro en su primera versión, una semana dos talleres ciclo de producción como parte de la "New Theatre For Now" en la serie de la forma cónica en la primavera del '78.
Cuando volví a escribir la obra para abrir la temporada principal que caen, el Grupo de Teatro del Centro contrató a Ignacio Gómez para crear una nueva imagen más en concierto con el creciente impacto de la producción. Más o menos estilo en la interpretación de Edward James Olmos del papel, El Pachuco ahora se convirtió en una figura destacada a caballo entre el Ayuntamiento. Más en línea con las dimensiones míticas del personaje principal de mi obra, la imagen era elegante, austera y de los grandes. Casi de inmediato, gracias a la brillante habilidad de Nacho como artista, El Pachuco se convirtieron en un icono. Como se ve en los periódicos, revistas y en los costados de los autobuses municipales, la imagen parecía cavar su camino en la conciencia del público, especialmente en la comunidad chicana. Con el debido respeto y modestia, sigue siendo un ejemplo perfecto de cómo un artista y un dramaturgo que se unen pueden crear un poderoso símbolo que habla a través de múltiples generaciones, tal vez incluso ayudar a curar algunas viejas heridas psíquicas en la Ciudad de los Ángeles.
Joshua TRILIEGI: La trayectoria de una carrera tiene su propio pulso y arco. Has seguido mantenerse ocupado con colaboraciones de todo tipo: El Teatro Campesino, San Diego Repertory Proyectos, PBS Great Performances y así sucesivamente. Cuéntanos sobre el reciente Proyecto Diosa antigua y el papel que Kinan Valdez ha asumido desde 2006.
Luis Valdez : El Teatro Campesino celebrará su 50 º aniversario en 2015 Después de medio siglo de activismo artístico y cultural ininterrumpida, nos sentimos orgullosos de declararnos una familia de teatro multi-generacional.. No podríamos haber sobrevivido de otra manera. Mi amada esposa, Lupe Trujillo Valdez, se unió a El Teatro en 1968. Como activista de la Universidad Estatal de Fresno, ella era la hija de campesinos, un partidario de la Unión de Campesinos, y la primera chicana con educación universitaria a "huir con el circo. "Nos casamos en el 69, tanto por amor como por nuestras convicciones políticas compartidas. Tenemos tres hijos - Anahuac ('71), Kinan ('73) y Lakin ('78) - todos nacidos en la familia de Teatro, todos los artistas y activistas en su propio derecho, todas dedicadas a la mejora del mundo que les rodea a través de la justicia social y las artes. Otros miembros de 40 años, más y fundadores del Teatro, como mi hermano biológico Daniel y su hermano espiritual Phil Esparza, también han criado a sus hijos y nietos dentro de nuestra familia de familias.
César Chávez murió en 1993, marcando el comienzo de un cambio organizativo en el Movimiento Chicano que El Teatro Campesino comenzó a sufrir de forma natural en los mediados de los años noventa. No era nada más ni menos que el paso del liderazgo de una generación a la siguiente. La generación más vieja continuó sirviendo en el Consejo de Administración, pero la generación más joven tomó las riendas de las operaciones día a día. En este sentido, mi hijo Anáhuac fue el primero el servir como el nuevo Gerente General de la empresa. A su debido tiempo, tanto Kinan y Lakin se convirtieron en directores artísticos asociados, hasta Kinan asumió el liderazgo completo como Director Artístico en 2007. Durante todo este tiempo, continuaron escribir, dirigir, producir y actuar en nuevas obras de su propia creación. Ellos protagonizaron clásicos de Teatro como "La Gran Carpa De Los Rasquachis" y se llevaron toda la responsabilidad de la Navidad juega en la Misión de San Juan Bautista. Trabajar con otros artistas jóvenes en la empresa, que protagonizaron clásicos del teatro mundial como Alfred Jarry "Ubu Roi" y Bertolt Brecht "las medidas adoptadas." Experimentar con formas musicales, Kinan también escribió y dirigió una obra de teatro diosa llamada "La Fascinatrix" y otro trabajo cuasi-satírico llamado "Te Quiero, Sam Burguesa." Su objetivo era, obviamente, para ampliar la gama de trabajo de El Teatro, pero con otras obras que conscientemente pegado al núcleo político. A saber, en 2010 Lakin escribió y dirigió una pieza llamada "Víctor en la sombra", sobre el cantante de folk chileno mártir Víctor Jara. Los tres hermanos y luego colaboraron en tres obras de teatro basadas en CreationMyths mayas, incluyendo "Popol Vuh - Partes Uno y Dos", escrita y dirigida por Kinan; y "Popol Vuh - la tercera parte, los Mellizos Mágicos", escrita y dirigida por Lakin. Más recientemente, este verano de 2014, Kinan y Lakin colaboró con el La Jolla Playhouse / San Diego REP, tocando los cables en "El Henry", la adaptación estridente de Herbert Siguenza de Enrique IV de Shakespeare primera parte.
Joshua TRILIEGI: Usted es considerado el padrino de América Teatro Worldwide. ¿Ha habido presión para crear un cierto tipo de trabajo con el manto adjunto? ¿Y cómo hacemos nosotros, como escritores, como artistas, como artistas conservan la misma vitalidad y espontaneidad en nuestro trabajo, después de la fama y la notoriedad?
Luis Valdez : En 2010, fui invitado a la ciudad de México por la CNT (Compañía Nacional de Teatro) para traducir y dirigir el estreno mundial de SUIT ZOOT en español. Por lo que yo sé, ningún otro dramaturgo chicano / director jamás se le había ofrecido un gran honor, por lo que aceptó con la humildad de un huérfano perdido hace mucho tiempo, dada la oportunidad para finalmente volver a casa. Irónicamente, yo no nací en México. Ni eran mi mamá y papá, que nacieron en Arizona a principios del XX siglo. Los inmigrantes reales en mi familia eran mis abuelos - mis abuelos y bisabuelos - quien cruzó la frontera desde el estado norteño de Sonora antes de la Revolución Mexicana hace más de un siglo. ¿Por qué entonces me siento como un huérfano? Debido a que toda mi vida, a pesar de nacimiento myAmerican, yo había sido tratado como un mexicano. He aquí, pues es otro ejemplo de cómo los negativos siempre pueden convertirse en positivos. Como un indio de aspecto, con guión mexicano-americano, no tenía más remedio que declararme un chicano; que si ves a mi manera es un siglo XXI de las Américas, con una identidad hemisférica. No compré en esa línea ficticia dibujado en el desierto llamado la frontera que separa a ricos de pobres, blanco del marrón, "América" de América "Latina". Así que a pesar de toda la fama y notoriedad de mi carrera me ha llevado, sigo siendo de color marrón y de aspecto indio. No siento más presión para permanecer Latino que ser un anglo. Yo sólo soy el que soy, y eso es todo lo que hay que hacer. En el análisis final, la asimilación no es una calle de sentido único. Culturas del mundo han estado asimilando entre sí durante siglos. Tarde o temprano, la mayoría de las personas en este hemisferio se darán cuenta de que todos somos nuevos estadounidenses. Hasta entonces, me baso en la lucha por la justicia social para mantener mi trabajo espontáneo y vital.
Joshua TRILIEGI: Sus apariciones públicas son totalmente fruto de la casualidad, sin ensayos y abajo a la derecha en negrita. Me encanta eso de ti, no hay mentira. No a diferencia de El Zoot Suiter encontrando su poder una vez que en realidad se quita el traje y se encuentra debajo del traje. ¿A quién le atribuir ese rasgo particular en sus primeras influencias?
Luis Valdez : Mis primeras influencias sin duda procedían de mi familia inmediata - mis padres, tías y tíos, abuelos y sus compadres. Eran un montón de vital importancia, crujiente, terroso. Pero como un niño que no podía dejar de notar de inmediato que algo no estaba bien. La vida fue manipulada de alguna manera. A pesar de todo nuestro sudor y agotador trabajo en los campos, siempre estábamos jodidos, pobres como el infierno y de gas, sin nada que hacer más que pasar a la siguiente trabajo de baja categoría. Odiaba rebajan el trabajo, no porque era insoportablemente dura, sino porque era humillante. Tanto más porque los salarios eran muy barato. Mis padres mantuvieron el ánimo, mediante el desarrollo de un sentido del humor irónico, pero rápidamente me di cuenta que esta era la única manera en que podían tolerar los pasteles de mierda en la cara que el destino les estaba dando. A pesar de la desesperación que se avecina constante, que a mí ya mis hermanos mantienen en la escuela, sabiendo que era nuestra única salida. A su debido tiempo, descubrí que el trabajo con mis manos no me impidió el uso de mi imaginación. Así que, aunque yo estaba recogiendo algodón, patatas, cerezas, ciruelas y albaricoques tan rápido como pude, mi mente estaba corriendo automáticamente antidisturbios con ideas para cuentos bilingües, chistes y canciones. Con este tipo de ejercicio mental diario, mis lecciones de la escuela se convirtieron en fácil, una manera de demostrar mi valía a mis profesores ya mi mismo en la cara de la discriminación. Al igual que mis tíos y primos, aprendí a defenderme con humor irónico de picadura usando el argot Pachuco del barrio, pero también he desarrollado una habilidad en English.Mentally código de alternar entre el español y el Inglés, al final me desarrollé una fluidez espontánea de expresión que sólo puede venir de un cerebro bien ejercitado. Como digo, cualquier negativa siempre se puede convertir en algo positivo. Gané una beca para asistir a San Jose State College en 1958, como una de las principales de mi primer año de Matemáticas y Física. Por segundo año, yo sabía lo que realmente tenía que hacer. Tuve que poner mi imaginación libre por la liberación de todos esos cuentos, chistes y canciones todavía zinging en mi cabeza. Tuve que admitir que a mí mismo que yo era un actor y dramaturgo, a pesar del hecho de que una carrera en el teatro era totalmente impracticable. Así que me cambié mayores a Inglés, y nunca miró hacia atrás. Me convertí en lo que siempre quise ser - un dramaturgo chicano.
Joshua TRILIEGI: Gracias por tomarse el tiempo de compartir su experiencia con nuestros lectores. ¿Cómo pueden los proyectos actuales y en desarrollo el apoyo público y producciones de ETC?
Luis Valdez : Este verano El Teatro Campesino está produciendo mi última obra de larga duración, VALLE DEL CORAZÓN, en nuestra casa de juegos en San Juan Bautista. Se extiende desde agosto hasta septiembre, antes de pasar a otros lugares como parte de nuestra celebración del Cincuentenario. Si vienes en fin de semana del Día del Trabajo, se puede ver tanto en nuestro teatro VALLE y Popul Vuh al aire libre en el parque. Si no puede llegar a San Juan, usted nos puede ayudar mediante la donación en línea a través de nuestro sitio web en elteatrocampesino.com. Pero, por favor apoyar cualquiera de las producciones teatrales latinos en su área. Nosotros seguimos creyendo fervientemente que para que nuestros antiguos antepasados mayas creían "El teatro es el Creador de la Comunidad, y la comunidad es el Creador del Teatro.": CREER ES CREAR. ¡Si Se Puede!
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