FILM REVIEW: WEINER BY OLIVIA MORRIS

 

"This documentary is so invasive of Weiner's personal and political life that the audience is left asking, 'why did he let them keep filming?'"

Weiner is a recently released documentary directed by Josh Kriegman and Elyse Steinberg, following Anthony Weiner, former representative of New York's 9th district, and his attempted reascension to political prominence.  The film revolves around Weiner's run for mayor of New York in 2013, in which he tries to distinguish himself from a humiliating sexting scandal that led to his resignation from Congress in 2011.  He was caught sexting multiple women nude pictures of himself, and the media backlash was unrelenting.  Despite this, for the first half of the documentary, he seems to be remarkably successful.

His wife and Hillary Clinton's top aide, Huma Abedin, speaks fondly of him when he announces his newfound mayoral campaign.  His office space, which initially housed only a single folding table, grows into a city of makeshift cubicles, overflowing with frenetic twenty-somethings.  A Quinnipiac poll taken from July 18th to July 23rd places Weiner as the frontrunner.  On July 23, in the middle of filming, a second scandal shocks the American public, the film crew, and even Abedin.  Weiner had continued to sext various women after the first scandal broke, this time under the nom de plume 'Carlos Danger.'

One of the most compelling aspects of the film is the relationship between Weiner and Abedin.  When the second scandal breaks, Weiner and Abedin begin a mission of inscrutable damage control.  The team is gathered into a small, whitewash room with nothing but an economy table, a few shattered chairs, and a mounted television.  Anxiety seems to vibrate off of the group as the details of Weiner's sexts display dimly off the television.  Abedin appears calm while making calls, the phone wedge between her shoulder and ear.  Then, she glances at the television and sees one of the explicit images her husband sent.  For the first time in the documentary, Abedin's facade breaks, and her jaw hangs open.  She turns to Weiner and they stare at each other silently for more than twenty agonizing seconds, recorded in high definition, before Weiner asks everyone to leave them alone.  While many documentaries have to dramatize glances and grasp at faux pas, Weiner's spectacle is held in the unflinching authenticity of this silence.  This documentary is so invasive of Weiner's personal and political life that the audience is left asking, "why did he let them keep filming?"

The film does not portray Weiner as a sulfur-and-smog noir villain, a trope all too popular in political television dramas.  Weiner isn't characterized as a buck-toothed, big-headed caricature, mindlessly throwing out buzzwords.  Instead, Weiner is a relatively charming, impassioned man with a fatal flaw.  His downfall echoes the pattern of a Greek tragedy — a successful man is brought down by his own unrelenting lust.  The documentary does an excellent job of providing a balanced view of Weiner.  The filmmakers rely heavily on their own footage, but also give the perspectives of news outlets, comedians, and those who campaigned for and against Weiner.

The film is unpredictable and remarkably compact, jamming an incredible amount of incendiary gossip into just 96 minutes. Weiner explores the depth of political corruption and the complexity of marriage in the public eye, and shows us more than we ever wanted to see of Anthony Weiner.

What Volunteering for Girls Rock has taught me by Ony Ratsimbaharison

 

I never had anything like Girls Rock when I was a child, but I’m so glad it exists. Girls Rock represents everything I hoped my world could be as a young girl, still so unaware of how systems of oppression were (and still are) working against me. It’s everything my soul was calling for when I was young and felt alone and misunderstood, unable to fully wield my voice.

The first time I volunteered for Girls Rock was at the Charleston camp in 2012. It was truly transformative and I gained a whole new perspective. The next year, I volunteered for Columbia’s first ever Girls Rock camp and I again learned so much from the experience. Volunteering for Girls Rock is more than just being a camp counselor or a glorified babysitter. It’s a place for campers and volunteers alike to reclaim their voices and use them to spread positivity and fight against the injustices we face in society—and, of course, to know that we rock!

"It’s a place for campers and volunteers alike to reclaim their voices"

One goal in growing up is to not repeat mistakes, and this applies to what we teach to the youth at Girls Rock. We want to save them from the horrible things we had to deal with. We want them to know that it’s okay, and it will get better, because it did for us. We need to advocate for them because our society deems it unnecessary for them to advocate for themselves, and they are often unheard. Girls Rock is one of the ways in which young people can feel comfortable enough to express themselves with no judgment or punishment. So here are just a few of the many things I’ve learned from Girls Rock:

1. IT’S OKAY TO BE LOUD

While I’m no stranger to playing my music loud, offstage I’m sometimes more mild-mannered and quiet, as was encouraged of me and most young girls growing up. Every now and then, I need to remind myself that it’s okay for me to be loud. It’s okay to scream sometimes and let it all out. This is why at camp we have scream circles, where we each take turns letting out a scream, as loud as we can. It’s a great way to get everyone loosened up and a healthy reminder to release any emotions we might have, rather than to keep them bottled up inside us.

2. ART IS IMPORTANT TO LIFE

I can’t stress this enough. The campers at Girls Rock make art through music and other mediums during various workshops and down-time throughout the day. Being surrounded by so much creativity for a week is rejuvenating, to say the least. Seeing the way it affects the campers and their progress is awe-inspiring. They become more comfortable with themselves and start to trust their instincts. They also learn new ways to express themselves, and do it fearlessly.

3. TAKING RISKS IS EVERYTHING

The campers are taught different instruments for one week (many for the first time ever) and form bands and write songs, which are then performed for a large crowd of people at the end of the week. If that’s not bold and courageous then I don’t know what is. The fact that they are able to work through their nerves and put themselves out there in such a way is extremely inspiring. It reminds me to keep pushing to let go and take those risks I often overthink about.

4. WE ARE MORE THAN OUR PHYSICAL APPEARANCE

So much more. One thing we stress at Girls Rock is to refrain from physical compliments. This is because even positive physical compliments reinforce the notion that we are valued by our physical appearance, another idea that is virtually inescapable for young girls in our society. Instead we try to give compliments about people’s strengths and personal achievements, which empowers them so much more.

"even positive physical compliments reinforce the notion that we are valued by our physical appearance..."

5. WE HAVE SO MUCH TO LEARN FROM YOUNG PEOPLE

I’m always floored by the level of competence and sheer fierceness our campers exude. Not only are they capable of learning so much in so little time, they perform so gracefully under pressure. Being young is hard enough when you are taught to be “seen and not heard,” like most kids are. This is why it’s important to advocate for the youth. As soon as we are able to recognize their ability to teach us, we will be able learn from them.

Check out more about Girls Rock Columbia here!

THEATRE REVIEW: Trustus Theatre production of Green Day's American Idiot, by Kyle Petersen

I was 17 years old when Green Day released American Idiot, their politically-tinged punk rock opera that at the time felt like the most lively and visceral protest music response to the Bush years and the Iraq War. So I was basically who the record was about, with all the buddings of political awareness tied up elegantly with suburban disaffection and adolescent angst. The surge of three chord rock songs and overwrought punk snarl mimicked the adrenaline coursing through my veins, and its rock opera ambition made the music seem as grandiose and important as my emotions felt.

While the album was well-received at the time as a sharp, of-the-moment critique of its time, something which felt mostly absent from the younger generation of artists, looking back on the album now, particularly in its guise as a Broadway musical, which debuted in 2010 and now serves as the finale to Trustus Theatre’s 2015-2016 season, lessens some of that temporality.

In his program notes, director Chad Henderson notes how thrilling it is to “work with this cast and production team to tell this story that, at times, feels like it’s been taken from our collective diaries” while also comparing to the 1967 counterculture musical Hair. That strikes me as particularly apt--as much as Billie Joe Armstrong might have been responding to his frustrations over new millenia Republican nonsense, he’s really working through some very archetypal coming of age themes that have been a part of American culture since the invention of the teenager in the post-World War II era: rebellion, shiftlessness, love, loss, and resignation. And it’s the timelessness of those themes, and how readily and ably Armstrong invokes them in his songs, that really give the album-turned-musical legs.

The Green Day frontman collaborated with director Michael Mayer (Spring Awakening, Hedwig & the Angry Itch) on the book that sketched out just a bit more narrative from the original album, adding minimal lines of dialogue and additional songs to make the three main characters--Johnny (Garrett Bright), Tunny (Patrick Dodds), and Will (Cody Lovell)--more distinct, but other than that it’s the staging and performances themselves that are the real draw here. Utilizing a large cast and an industrial-punk set (designed by Baxter Engle) marked by television screens flickering through images of war, news, politics, and pop culture (both from the 9/11 era and our current Kardashian/Trump moment), this is a jukebox musical at its best. The technical achievement here, given the number of mobile microphones, screens, staging levels, and musicians required, is stunning, borrowing elements from both a live concert and a music video as the show dictates, something absolutely necessary given the relative thinness of the plot.  

Bright owns his aspiring rock star-turned-junkie leading role, conveying just the right notes of youthful earnestness and foolhardy brashness that Green Day celebrates. As one of the central deliverers of Armstrong’s signature vocals, he also distinguishes himself by shifting from the rough adenoidal bray the frontman sometimes uses to a sweeter, more melancholy style that better fits the narrative, particularly on a couple of the crucial acoustic numbers. Both Dodds and Lovell also acquit themselves nicely, turning in great performances as the punk-goes-military recruit dude and (too)-early blue collar father archetype, respectively, as does Michael Hazin as St. Jimmy, Johnny’s devilish alter-ego. The presence of St. Jimmy as a character and Hazin as a performer also provides a necessary counterweight of rock star swagger to the waves of emo-ness that the play at some points almost drowns in. And while the women characters are mostly relegated to the backseat of this boy-centric story, Katie Leitner as Heather gets some quality time in the spotlight as Tunny’s pregnant girlfriend and hits some quality high notes to give the show some diva pizazz, while Devin Anderson plays Whatshername with a magnetic power that absolutely rescues the part from its tertiary role. Avery Bateman also sparkles in limited use as the Extraordinary Girl.

For all the great individual performances, though, this show hits its high points when the large cast is all out on stage together reveling in these songs. The two big medleys from the album, “Jesus of Suburbia” and “Homecoming,” shine particularly bright, as the large house band rockets through them with glee from their perch above the stage (led by music director Chris Cockrell) and the young chorus gets to holler the closest things to anthems produced in their own teenage years. “Nobody likes you/ everyone left you/they’re all out without you having fun” they sing with earnest abandon. We’re coming home again, indeed.

In those moments, I was often surprised by how well most of the songs translated so deftly to the stage, even for folks who aren’t necessarily fans of the band and familiar with the album, thanks to how electrifying it is to see them brought to life. In fact, I would say the more familiar numbers, like the opening "American Idiot," might have suffered a bit more than the theatrical album cuts which already has quite a bit of dramatic flare even before adaptation.

As for those that are or were fans of the album, like much of the cast obviously is, there’s a level of catharsis to living through them that can’t be denied. Seeing them all come out in a long line at the end of the night to take their bow, smiling as much in their eyes as their faces, in all of their rock ‘n’ roll sweat and glory, is to witness something a bit more than just another musical. They’ve really celebrated the power of music as rebellion, as salve, and as salvation, itself. And that's really something.

Green Day's American Idiot runs through July 30th. For ticket information go to trustus.org 

Jacob West opens show at Wired Goat & Travis Bland has a chat with him

Local artist Jacob West has his fingers in many pies. Jasper noticed that West planned to put some of his visual arts skills on exhibit coming up this Friday the 8th at the Wired Goat Coffee House down in the Vista, and we asked frequent Jasper contributor David Travis Bland to come up with a few questions for West to give us a little insight into what makes the man behind the music and the visual art tick. Here's a bit of that conversation.

I think I've always had the sneaking suspicion that southern cities and towns have a dark side, a seedy underbelly just underneath, not necessarily negative, but dark all the same. --- Jacob West

Music is a big inspiration for you. What’re some acts and song that motivated you to pick up the brushes?

I listen to a lot of different kinds of music and like to pull inspiration and imagery from all different places. Most of the pieces for my newest showing have been done fairly recently, and were inspired in part by some newer albums. The first three that come to mind are:

Deftones – Gore – This album is gritty, beautiful, and haunting, all the things I try to make my paintings.into

Aesop Rock – Impossible Kid – This album is dark, honest, and personal. I admire artists that can be open and honest, because I try to do the same thing with my art.

Chance the Rapper – Coloring Book – This mixtape is just too damn good and I can't stop listening to it.

~~~

This show features other local artists. Who are a couple local artists you dig?

I grew up in Columbia, so I've been extremely lucky to run into a lot of talented artists around town. There are three guys that I think are just on a whole other level:

John Stroman – I've known John a long time, and am just blown away with every piece of his I see. A lot of his pieces are on found materials, so he ends up with some really unique canvases to paint on. He also paints animals a lot, like I do, but where my work is usually pretty dark, his end up full of joy and just make you smile. I can't say enough good things about John or his work.

Alex Smith – Alex is another super talented artist from around town. He's a writer, director, actor, painter, I don't even know what all else he does! He recently had a show at Tapp's, full of extraordinary pieces. His work is usually a little haunting and just pulls you in instantly. I love art that can do that.

Sean Rayford – I've always been a huge fan of Rayford's work. He used to work at New Brookland and took pictures of all my favorite bands. Then I saw the pictures he took of Charleston and the State House when the flag was coming down, he's just been consistently capturing powerful and compelling images for as long as I can remember. I'm glad he's finally getting the recognition he deserves.

~~~

Each of your pieces are like self contained stories—snapshots of narratives. What are some of those stories and how did you visualize them on the canvas?

That's really what I was aiming for with my latest images. I felt that for a while now, my stuff has really depended on symbolism. This time around, I wanted to see if I could tell a story. I have a kind of loose narrative in my head for these new paintings, I named this group of paintings “Out Where the Grass Don't Grow”. They're supposed to be snapshots of different places and things happening in a fictional, romanticized version of a small southern town. I think I've always had the sneaking suspicion that southern cities and towns have a dark side, a seedy underbelly just underneath, not necessarily negative, but dark all the same.

~~~

You never had any formal art education. Do you think that’s allowed you to develop your own style? Has not having any training held you back in any way?

I think not having gone to art school did help me in certain ways. Years ago, I went to a comic convention with my sketchbook in hand and a young man's ambition. I did the thing that all young artists do at comic book conventions, I tried to get a job. My sketchbook was embarrassingly bad, but I did get a lot of great advice from the professional artists there. At the time, I was still deciding whether or not to go to art school, and every single person I asked for advice told me not to go. They said that my work had a strong voice of its own, and that I'd lose it if I went to art school. I'm not sure if they were saying that because my sketchbook was so terrible, or because they meant it. But either way, I didn't go to art school, and kept drawing, painting, and doing my own thing.

I've never really thought about how things would have turned out had I gotten formal training. I suppose i'd be better and maybe have made some important contacts. But, I'd also have art school debt.

~~~

You said your art is Southern Gothic in ways. Would your style be different if you weren’t born and raised in the South? (is that the case, you’ve always been around the south?)

I was born and raised in South Carolina. I was born in Lexington, spent some time as a kid in Charleston, then moved back to West Columbia in middle school, and moved downtown as an adult. Though, I've been lucky enough to travel all over the U.S and even Central and South America, I feel like the south (for better or worse) has a rich history and plenty of good and bad to pull from for inspiration. I have the feeling if I wasn't from around here, there's no way my style would be the same. I can't really put my finger on it, but there's something special about the American South. Our culture and community is special and unique and I hope that comes across in our art.

~~~

What does it mean to make it as an artist for you? Like is having a day job and being recognized in your community enough or does making it mean your livelihood comes exclusively from art?

I'm not sure, because every time I think I've made it, I set a new goal for myself. I remember thinking that “made it” meant that I got commissioned to paint for somebody. Then, I made it the first time I got to hang my art somewhere for sale and sold it. Then, I made it again when I had my first solo show. I keep moving the benchmark, so I don't think I'll ever make it. That being said, it sure would be awesome to be my own boss and paint for a living.

~~~

You get to do a portrait of anyone past, present, or future live in the flesh. Who is it?

Definitely the very first cave painter. The guy that invented 2D visual art.

BOOK REVIEW: CHUCK KLOSTERMAN'S BUT WHAT IF WERE WRONG? BY OLIVIA MORRIS (with a response from Kyle Petersen)

"I've spent most of my life being wrong," states Chuck Klosterman in the opening sentence of his newly released book, But What If We're Wrong? (Blue Rider Press, 2016.)  From this initial confession, Klosterman builds his model of universal wrongness, stating that many theories held to be objectively true will inevitably be deconstructed in the future.  He deals with the durability of the theory of gravity, the importance of the U.S. Constitution, and predicts a morphing in the literary canon.  He supports his claims by including brief interviews with experts in these various fields, and even when they disagree with him, he continues to develop his theories.

The most striking aspect of this book is Klosterman's shamelessly egocentric assumptions.  Klosterman makes a series of bold claims about the future of literary greatness predicated on one single idea: that the person who will define our generation is currently unheard of.  This obscurity won't be in the sense that we define Kafka as "obscure."  Kafka was published and in a circle of writers and intellects.  But rather, Klosterman suggests that this person will be entirely unread in their lifetime.  In theory, this person is holed up in their room right now, shoving their work in a padlocked trunk.  Greatness will be defined by some ramblings on privacy, rotting away on the Deep Web, which archivists will comb through like archeologists to find a hidden piece of the 21st century.

While these ideas are intriguing, they rely on a series of assumptions about the future that Klosterman himself admits are impossible to predict.  Nonetheless, he fixates on the idea that future greatness will be attributed to someone unknown, even providing a list as to what they may write about.  Klosterman puts blind faith in every baseless conviction, coming to this conclusion via internal logic, despite most of history and experts advising otherwise.

Klosterman is dealing in pop philosophy.  He claims that someone unknown will rise to prominence because the future will want fresh perspectives.  Not only do they want a different perspective, but also one that has been entirely unheard of.  Because with the creation of the internet, most perspectives have been heard, and therefore the future will search for increasingly obscure writing.  Hence the Deep Web.  As evidence, Klosterman references Junot Diaz's idea that the literary canon is inevitably going to become more diverse.  Almost all well-read people agree with that.  This trend has already begun.  But from that idea, Klosterman assumes that the canon will rapidly become so diverse that the only new wealth of information will come from someone entirely unread.  While it is an intriguing concept, it is hyperbolized to the point of absurdism.

In the second half of the book, Klosterman deals with ideas such as "what if gravity isn't real?" and "what if democracy isn't so great?"  But these are not new ideas.  People have already philosophized, researched, and put into practice these theories.  On the flip side, the people who don't know these ideas are not given sufficient evidence to ever get a comprehensive understanding of them. The entire book feels like a summary of an offhanded remark Malcolm Gladwell made about the state of the world.

What If We're Wrong? still seems like it will culminate at the end; We feel like Klosterman will explain why he has chosen to predict the future of the literary canon, rock 'n' roll, the US Constitution, and the concept of gravity.  Instead, he just rambles about a series of things that he finds interesting, with little to no cohesiveness.  But he vehemently claims at the beginning of the book that it isn't a collection of essays.  He means to create an image of the future and a paradigm for examining the present.  But most of his arguments are predicated on platitudes, making the entire book feel underdeveloped, unsubstantiated, and unoriginal.

Response from Kyle Petersen, Assistant Editor of Jasper and Frequent Cultural Apologist:

I get your frustration, Olivia, and it seems reminiscent of a lot of the criticism of Klosterman's writing for his NYT column The Ethicist: that he is self-serving, represents other people's ideas incorrectly or superficially, and spirals around a bit in his own meta-reflections rather than advancing a cogent argument.

That being said, your point about "pop philosophy" is well-taken and seems to excuse the book in some sense. Since the concept of the book is patently absurd and admittedly impossible to pull off, and that Klosterman admits all of that right from the get-go, makes this a bit of self-aware sophistry that finds some amusement and stimulation in its own intellectual cul-de-sacs. Klosterman makes the kind of (relatively) astute points about literature, music, and television that he's known for while also providing plenty of the self-ingratiating humor that marks his signature style. He's a bit weaker on the science and politics ends of things, but it also feels like a nice way to illustrate how arguments about culture are always kind of arguments about how we understand the larger world as well. If the ride gets bumpy and digressive in parts, well, he warned us about that too.

There's a moment near the end of the book, in between talk of baseball statistics and octopi, where he gets to the nut of the rationale behind the book: "There is not, in a material sense, any benefit to being right about a future you will not experience. But there are intrinsic benefits to constantly probing the possibility that our assumptions about the future might be wrong: humility and wonder. It's good to view reality as beyond our understanding, because it is. And it's exciting to imagine the prospect of a reality that cannot be imagined, because that's as close to pansophical omniscience as we will ever come."

Whether or not the arguments in this book are uniformly solid (we can probably all agree they are not), the value in spending a few hours going through Klosterman's experience feels edifying, for precisely the reasons he suggests.

INTERVIEW: Edward Schmunes, Photographer by Mary Catherine Ballou

Local artist Edward Shmunes incorporates photography and mixed media to create two-dimensional art.  Shmunes has been photographing for twenty-six years and counting, with pieces in shows, collections, and galleries across the country.  In the following interview, Shmunes kindly discusses his artistic background, inspirations, and process, revealing the importance of passion and instinct in his artwork.

Jasper: How did your interest in photography develop?

Shmunes: “I’ve been coloring since I was three, so I’ve always done that, I colored instead of [making] model airplanes.  I had limited interest in most things like Erector sets, similar to Legos, the Legos of my years – I really didn’t like that stuff.  I always wanted to color, color, color.  I never had an expensive camera until I became a dermatologist.  My partner and I decided to buy one for our practice…a 35 mm camera for the first time in my life.

I went to Charleston in the 70s and took some pictures.  I was a good friend with the Chair of the Department of Photography at USC, he saw them and said they were good and that I ought to do something with that.  I put something in the State Fair and won top prize in the amateur section, then I started putting stuff in galleries because it seemed to work.  At that time they had some art fairs downtown [in Columbia] before Vista Lights [existed] – things in the spring like a May festival. I remember I had a booth set up on the museum grounds, and the director came and bought a piece for the museum – that made me feel really good. I started entering shows…I’ve entered hundreds of national art shows [and] I got these affirmations that the stuff was good.”

Jasper: Have your artistic interests always been confined to photography, or have you explored other mediums?

Shmunes: “I’ve never had any training, just a natural eye for what’s good and what’s bad.  I painted a little bit in medical school…[but] photography is instantaneously satisfying.  I do better with a jumpstart, so even if I may take a picture and run with it and change it, that jumpstart is helpful for me, as opposed to a blank canvas.  [I] use photography as a quick springboard to start with an image…because my work is described as somewhat surreal, it does involve manipulation.  Early on [in the pre-digital age], I used to add dyes to glossy photographs (when glossy photos are printed they are in a water system…these are water soluble dyes, you can put them on a shiny surface and [they] dissolve into the surface so it doesn’t leave a mark but you can add colors).  Part of my approach to art in general is to have something that is engaging and fresh, hooks the viewer…[it] might not be on a conscious level at first.”

Jasper: What role does digital photography now play in your artistic process?

Shmunes: “I have a friend named Dixie Allen, [she] used to teach computer graphics at USC, layout the Riverbanks Zoo Magazine, [and currently] makes Clipart on a national level.  She helped me learn Photoshop, for which I’m immensely grateful.  She gave me the basics…I’m no Photoshop whiz, but I have enough knowledge.  It’s just another paintbrush…as with all tools you can manipulate things differently.  I’m careful not to have something look [too manipulated]…if it screams manipulation before you can even see it, that’s a blockade to the viewer’s enjoyment.  You have to know what works.

I go on lots of trips, I look at every picture [I take] in Photoshop because it can be blurry as can be, and I might say, ‘Wow look at this blur!’  Or I wasn’t even aware that [something] wasn’t even over there...[so I] crop it and store it to be used for another photograph – it’s very time consuming.”

Jasper: Where does your artistic inspiration come from?

Shmunes: “It comes from the things that shout ‘take me!’  I like to be in a fresh, new area because your mind is open to new [things]…there are so many things that shout ‘take me!’ and so I listen to it and take it, because to me, they’re yelling! Sometimes you get it. [Other times] you’ll see the picture and wonder why it said ‘take me!’ and sometimes you’ll see in the middle is where something was screaming…you usually can find it when you look at the picture. It’s pretty true, follow your instincts…I do get rid of a lot of stuff, there’s so much that’s distracting in a picture, whether it’s a line leading you out or a chandelier that looks like it’s growing out of a person’s head.”

Jasper: Are there any parallels between your artistic and professional career?

Shmunes: “Dermatology is visual.  I went into something that I could see – you recognize clinical presentations by the nuances of their color, also feel – but visuals are hugely important.  That’s why they have Teledermatology - that whole field of having rural access to specialists via television cameras is very important for rural [practices].”

Jasper: If you could give some advice to aspiring photographers, what would it be?

Shmunes: “My advice would be to not let people tell you what to do, because they’re going to tell you the conventional things to do.  When work stands out, it’s usually not conventional, so if you want to be a conventional artist, go take a lot of courses.  I’ve never had any courses, I resist it…

I love looking at other people’s stuff, taking it in, I get very vitalized and enervated by looking at other people’s work and listening to them – [but] that’s different from going to a photography course.  I’m not a nature photographer.  If I was, then I’d see why I’d want to take courses from a master nature photographer.  Or if you’re doing darkroom work then you need to learn technique like that…I’m not doing stuff like that.

Just when you look at other people’s works and go to museums and shows, that is a lesson, or you hear somebody talk about their work - those are what I love doing, as opposed to taking a workshop.  Now, I might benefit from a technical, Photoshop workshop…

Photography has been a stepchild of art for a long time.  Particularly in the South…photography is new on the scene.  A lot of big cities have art shows and they are multimedia [as opposed to just photography shows]. In terms of advice to people, the materials you use really do matter.  Starting out, you are limited in your budget…it can really detract from a piece to have a [cheap] frame.  If you really love your piece, then use good materials to show off your piece.”

 ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Shmunes is fortunate to have exhibits at galleries such as City Art in Columbia.  He states, “I’m very proud of City Art – the caliber of the people, they have not turned it into a gift shop.  They have the building space to rent out and the art supply store downstairs.  It’s a very hard business, selling art…but they’re going to keep it mainly a gallery, they have high standards.  And the gallery I’m in in Charleston is an interior design place (Mitchell Hill Interiors) that’s very high-end.”

Shmunes is currently working on photos he took in Australia of various subjects, ranging from animals to Aborigines.  However, Shmunes explains: “I’m not a nature photographer, I don’t normally photograph animals…[also] I love to write and have tangential commentary that hopefully compliments the piece, [and] adds to the humor or mystery.  I gravitate basically to things that are surreal…they are going to be edgy and sometimes quirky.  That’s normally what I like because it’s fresh and different, so I try to put that into a landscape if I can do something that makes it special.”

For more information and to view portfolio images, please visit edward-shmunes.pixels.co

Greg Slatery's Summer 6 TV Binges w/ a note from Cindi

Jasper is not impressed by folks who say, "I don't watch TV," or "I don't even own a television," because usually we're distracted by the nose hairs they're waving at us as they regard us from above, and because anyone who gives a flip flop about art knows that we are living in the age of great television. Some of the most transgressive, provocative, insightful writing and some of the most poignant, multidimensional acting the airwaves (forgive our archaic idiom) have ever seen is happening now. And with alt sources like Hulu, Netflix, Amazon, Youtube, Crackle, Twitch, and Sling, cordcutters don't even have to own a dreaded television in order to partake of rich, mind-expanding culture.

I won't indulge in an essay about my 6 favorite TV retrospective binges (Six Feet Under, West Wing/Sports Night/Studio 60 (love me some Sorkin), Northern Exposure, Breaking Bad, The Riches, Hamish McBeth), but Stereofly's Greg Slattery put together a thoughtful list of surprises that makes me want to take another look at my choices the next time I hunker down with a pile of cats and some Ben & Jerry's Coffee, Coffee, Buzz, Buzz, Buzz for a little me-expanding-my-mind time.

Here are Greg's top 6 TV Series indulgences for those hellacious summer afternoons in the Soda City when you've got nothing but AC and a remote control in your sites. - Cindi

Adventures of Pete & Pete

While pegged as a children's show, Nickelodeon's Adventures of Pete & Pete holds up over time, offering the same joy to show veterans while still maintaining a level of quirky genius to appeal to those who missed out on the show when it first broadcast. Big Pete's voice of reason collides with his younger brother Pete's resistance to both authority and the mainstream, offering hilarious and relatable tales of growing up. You can pick up the first two seasons on DVD and online, but the third season has yet to be officially released...but the mighty power of YouTube has all three seasons available if you can put up with some video quality issues (it's worth it).

Show Me A Hero

This HBO mini-series is based on the non-fiction book by Lisa Belkin, following former police officer Nick Wasicsko as he runs for mayor of Yonkers, NY, in 1987 and the effect of a federal mandate to scatter public housing among the white middle-class neighborhoods in the city. If you are a fan of the work David Simon and William F. Zorzi have done together on The Wire and Treme, their six part mini-series holds the same investigative flame they're known for to both race and wealth.

Other Space

Paul Feig, most loved (by me) for his role in Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared, produced a science-fiction original series for Yahoo! last year called Other Space that never got much attention and was canceled when Yahoo! axed its on-demand streaming service division. The series follows a highly inexperienced crew who accidentally get launched into space with no clear vision on how to return. Mystery Science Theater 3000 fans may notice creator Joel Hodgson starring as the ship's mechanic and his robot sidekick A.R.T. sharing the voice of Crow T. Robot. The only stars in the series are the ones outside the ship, but Feig's direction provides a goofy science-fiction series for those looking for a less technical trip through space. A Yahoo! search for Other Space will pull up the only season, but according to Feig a second season will come even if he has to shoot it on his iPhone.

Marvel's Daredevil

If you've missed this Netflix exclusive, you have two incredible seasons for binge watching. Following the story of a blind lawyer with superhuman powers, Matt Murdock (a.k.a. Daredevil) takes to the streets to clean up the mess the justice system leaves to leave unscathed. This is one of the greatest comic book screen adaptations, using appropriately grimy scenery to set the dark tone for this action-packed superhero drama. If you felt the Daredevil film with Ben Affleck was a travesty, this series will bring you sweet relief. If you need more after two seasons of Daredevil, give Marvel's Jessica Jones a watch.

Wilfred

Following a failed suicide attempt, Elijah Wood's character Ryan can now hear his neighbor's dog Wilfred talk. This dark, twisted comedy explores the difficulties we all face in life with a canine serving as the voice of good and evil, though the line between the two is almost always blurred. Life lessons are common themes shrouded in pot smoking and debauchery. Though the series was ultimately canceled by FX, the crew was given enough warning to tie up loose ends for a satisfying, four season show that might be one of the stranger TV programs to date.

Stargate: Universe

I highly recommend watching the 1994 film Stargate prior to the series, only because it's a great film and offers some foundation for the story. If you've seen Stargate SG-1 and weren't a fan, I understand. This is different. This is better. As a crew flees an attack on their base on a remote planet, the team's scientist dials the Stargate to the ninth chevron to avoid taking the battle to Earth. As they cross through the Stargate they find themselves aboard an abandoned spacecraft known as Destiny. If you like the 2004 reboot of Battlestar Galactica, you'll appreciate Stargate Universe's dark exploration of what makes us human.

 ---

Greg Slattery is a tireless concert promoter and editor of the zine Stereofly and one of the founders of the independent record label 10 Foot Woody Records. Slattery is also a guitarist and singer/songwriter in the rock band Shallow Palace and plays guitar and bass for a variety of other acts around town, including Brian Robert & The Hollerin' River Talkers, among others. 

REVIEW: What Happened, Miss Simone? by Ony Ratsimbaharison

 

One interesting thing about being an artist is the dichotomy that exists between producing one’s art and then performing or releasing it for audiences to experience. Much of the time, the production of the art comes from a place of isolation and comfort-seeking. The performance aspect then sometimes comes as a need to support oneself, as in the case of Nina Simone, the classically trained pianist, who was forced to sing and perform other styles of music to support herself financially.

Something for which we will always thank her.

What Happened, Miss Simone? follows the life of the illustrious Nina Simone who was revered as an exceptionally talented singer, pianist, and civil rights activist. She put everything she had into her music and it showed. Like many artists, her portrayal is often tragic, but she was more than just a “tortured artist,” she was a dynamo.

Many things came to mind as I watched this film, directed by Liz Garbus and released in 2015. As a musician, I am always interested in observing the way famous musicians and artists are treated and portrayed in the media. Oftentimes their lives are far more nuanced than are the images we are offered of them, but this documentary, which opened the 2015 Sundance Film Festival and went onto be nominated for the Academy Award, does an admirable job of showing the viewer as much of the artist’s dynamic life as possible in an hour and forty minutes.

What happens when the spotlight becomes just too much for someone? Once producing art becomes someone’s livelihood, is it then their responsibility to keep making and performing their art for audiences, even when it’s hurting them? And what is our responsibility to artists, like Nina Simone, who may be affected by mental illness? These are just some of the questions I asked myself after watching this film.

It is important to remember Simone as not just as an artist, but as an activist as well. She was a black woman songstress living during the middle of the Civil Rights movement, who joined forces with many of the other key leaders of the movement, including Malcolm X, Betty Shabazz, and Martin Luther King. She was never quiet about who she was and how her black identity shaped her life and the lives of those she loved. I was pleased to see this aspect was not left out.

To see a musician portrayed as genuinely as they experience life, is rare in the media, but this documentary is successful at showing us the true Nina Simone. She was a star in her own right, and made her presence timelessly known. But only she truly knows “what happened,” as the title asks.

SIX BANDS AND WHAT I OWE TO A GUY NAMED DOUG: Summer 6s with by Ray McManus

I often joke about how I didn’t grow up with poetry in my house so I had to steal it.

If only it were a joke.

But I always had music, for better or worse, to define the world I was trying to live in or run from. Looking back, I can see how there were six bands who served as a catalyst and a touch stone for discovery that ultimately shaped me as a person and a writer, for better or worse, still living, still running. This list is no way a “best of” list or an argument for the greatest. There were many other bands, then and now, and millions of songs in between. Just six bands and my attempt to break everything I touched to see how it works on the inside. I have forgotten more than I remember.

AC/DC

Let me start off by saying I have no real affinity for AC/DC with Brian Johnson. Yes, Back in Black was an album I cut some teeth on, probably French-kissed a girl while it played in the background. But it was sixth grade. We were on a fishing trip in North Georgia. I went with my best friend Kevin. His brother Brian and his brother’s friend Bryan were older and much cooler than we were and Bryan played Highway to Hell on this giant boom box at the back of the camper. I was in love with the first riff. It didn’t take long to fall in love with the rest: High Voltage, Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap, Let There Be Rock, and Powerage. The shrill in Bon Scott’s growl oozing sex. The hard driving guitar of Angus Young running around like a madman in a school boy outfit. Malcolm Young holding steady on a kind of cool I didn’t think could be possible. The rest is periphery.

I can’t hear “If You Want Blood (You’ve Got It)” without thinking of the back of a camper, or the backseat of a Chevy Nova, or a pool table in a basement. There was the time I sat in the principal’s office while he questioned how I could wear an AC/DC t-shirt and a cross on a necklace around my neck. The lyrics were fresh in my mind then, as they are today:

It's animal

Livin' in the human zoo

Animal

The shit that they toss to you

Feelin' like a christian

Locked in a cage

Thrown to the lions

On the second page

-- from If You Want Blood (You’ve Got It) by AC/DC

Give me “Riff Raff,” “Love Hungery Man,” or “What’s Next to the Moon” any day. AC/DC is for transforming the awkward preteen. For getting high, for punching concrete, for the courage to fuck everything. See also: Led Zeppelin, CCR, and Black Sabbath.

-->Video: If You Want Blood (You've Got It) by AC/DC

The Clash

Stuck in rural Lexington county with nowhere to go, no prospects for a future, just single-file lines to football practice for nothing, to baseball practice for nothing, to plow or be plowed under for nothing. But then “Janie Jones” is cranking, and suddenly I’m not afraid to put my mouth where my muscle is, and push back against the man.

I’m 16, driving down dirt roads or through Main St blasting that first album as loud as an 85 Toyota standard speaker system could handle. I wore that cassette out. It broke somewhere on “(White Man) In Hammersmith Palais.” Of course Give ‘Em Enough Rope and London Calling got its fair share of wear too. But not like that first album. Not like “I’m so Bored with the USA,” “Hate and War,” and “White Riot.”  I’m not sure what turned me on more, Mick Jones’ riffs or Joe Strummer’s ethos, but what I heard in that band shaped the spectrum of pretty much who I am today -- the punk aesthetic, the smooth dub, the charge of the DIY politic. I’m quite sure I misappropriated all of these things (perhaps still do), but as Joe said, “sometimes you have to be a little bit stupid.”

What The Clash taught me was simple: a) the old men in the factories want to steal away the best years of our lives, and b) “he who fucks nuns, will later join the church.”

All the power's in the hands

Of people rich enough to buy it

While we walk the street

Too chicken to even try it …

…Are you taking over

or are you taking orders?

Are you going backwards

Or are you going forwards?

-- from White Riot by The Clash

It’s hard enough to be a teenager, much less to be a teenager in a wasteland of fields and old buildings where old men get their kicks by using what little authority they had to bully down change. I wanted nothing more than a riot. A riot of my own. See also: The Sex Pistols, The Ramones, The Buzzcocks, and Wire.

-->Video: White Riot by The Clash

Hüsker Dü (and the Pixies… and Sonic Youth)

Maybe it was because I worked around chainsaws and wood chippers so much. I got to where I loved hearing noise and trying to make music out of it. I didn’t know then that I was embarking on the very practice that would make me a poet. I was just bored. Chainsaws and chippers have three distinct pitches: idle, rev, and bite. I could play some mean throttle, work the revs in succession. But bite was tricky. I was probably hard to work with.

New Day Rising by Hüsker Dü came out in in 1985, but I discovered it (and them) in 89, shortly after the Pixies Surfer Rosa and Sonic Youth’s Daydream Nation came out. I would hang out at this place called the shed. Bryan and two other guys, Doug and Scot, would jam there. They were good. It was fun. And now we’re deaf. But some nights I’d come by and only Doug would be there. We’d talk about music, the punk scene of the 70’s. Doug was going to USC. At the time I didn’t know anyone who went to college. I certainly didn’t know anyone cool going to college. He had cool music and he hooked me up. This was a wonderful year of noise and occasional screaming, but I’ll be honest, I don’t remember much of it. Smoked out in the whir behind a wall of sound. I remember blasting “Terms of Psychic Warfare” in Glen’s truck on our way back to the store, towards the end of our lunch break. A memory that I just can’t let go.

And whereas Sonic Youth and the Pixies played a bit more lyrically, Hüsker Dü was straight forward with their sound. Straight up guitar, bass, and drums; sometimes I couldn’t even hear Mould singing. The sound was primal, swift, and hardcore, wrapped in a welcoming fuzz. Like two guys railing against the county on a Friday night in a burned out shack on a dirt road. Sometimes my ears still ring and I can’t remember why.

But I remember this: if you stand up in the breakroom and yell “THESE ARE THE TERMS,” no one will know what you are talking about.

I guess they couldn’t hear Mould singing either.

It's not about my politics

Something happened way too quick

Bunch of men who played it sick

They divide and conquer

It's all here before your eyes

Safety is a big disguise

That hides among the other lies

They divide and conquer

-- from Divide and Conquer by Hüsker Dü

-->Video: Divide and Conquer by Hüsker Dü

 

R.E.M.

Somewhere before the late 80’s – early 90’s, I thought there was singular definition to being Southern – a truck, a pair of boots, a Billy Ray Cyrus, a Brooks and Dunn. And I raged against it. Too much. I needed something to balance it all out. I need something to expand my definition of the world. I needed less “us vs. them” and more “us.” R.E.M. did for me and more. I came late to the party. Document had just been released, and the single “The One I Love” was getting some airplay. And while everyone in my circle was railing against it, and the band for that matter, because they thought it sucked, I was listening to Murmur, Reckoning, Fables of the Reconstruction, and Life’s Rich Pageant. I didn’t care what my friends at the time were saying. This band had poetry. It redefined (for me) what it meant to be Southern – what it meant to be us. Even well into the 90’s and into the 21^st century, whether floating in a pool or singing on the porch at Tim’s house, I felt like I belonged, as if I could begin the begin again, like I was included for a reason and not by accident.

But it wasn’t just the music of R.E.M. that moved me, or the poetry of Stipe, or the inclusion and celebration and understanding of the necessity to queer the world, it was the further exploration of so many other bands musicians I had never heard of at the time: Tom Waits, Patti Smith, Velvet Underground, Gram Parsons, T. Rex, Flying Burritos, etc. Just as my musical taste blossomed, so did my understanding of the fucked up world I was living in. Through Stipe, I found a voice that walked unafraid. Through the band, I found a harmony that I didn’t think could exist. And suddenly I found myself in college no longer ashamed of where I came from, though still angry at politicians and baby boomers (that seems to never change), and perhaps most important of all, to stop trying to always make sense. To “believe in coyotes and time as an abstract” and to “explain the change, the difference between what you want and what you need” (I Believe).  Dark and light, sense and no sense, pop and folk and at times heavy, political and apolitical, queer and straight, mainstream and underground, quirky and sublime, R.E.M. is convergence. They carried that from Murmur to Collapse Into Now with a few songs here and there that should have never been cut for an album. But that is part of the brilliance. The staying power. The “holy shit I can’t believe this band is still playing and still has it” power. I am grateful to Doug for plugging me into it.

Disturbance at the Heron House

A stampede at the monument

To liberty and honor under the honor roll

Just a gathering of the grunts and greens

The cogs and grunts and hirelings

A meeting of a mean idea to hold

When feeding time has come and gone

They'll lose their heart and head for home

Try to tell us something we don't know

-- from Disturbance at the Heron House by R.E.M.

-->Video: Driver 8 by R.E.M.

 The Pogues

I wasn’t born punk. That, I grew in to as mater of necessity to minimize confusion. However, I was born Irish, and I grew up in typical Irish American, working class house with lots of God in it.  But growing up Irish in the South presents its own sense of confusion. Hell, most don’t even know they are Irish beyond their last name, and if they do, they automatically think they are Scots-Irish. Or worse, when everyone saw Braveheart and suddenly wanted to be Scottish. I remember pointing to my Irish flag license plate on my truck (I forget the context), and a guy asked me if that was the “gay flag or did I pull for the University of Miami.” Just absolute cluelessness.

Doug told me I’d like the Pogues. It came out of a conversation when we were talking about this videotape I had of England in the 70’s and the birth of the Punk Rock movement. In the video, jumping up and down in a skating rink at a Clash concert, was a young Shane MacGowan, ears and all, but most of his teeth still intact. From the moment I first heard Red Roses for Me and Rum Sodomy & the Lash and If I should Fall from the Grace of God and Hell’s Ditch (yes, I left out Peace and Love on purpose), I was in love all over again. This is Irish music (that didn’t sound anything like the Planxty and Phil Coulter my dad listened to) and punk merging together. Where the fuck-it-all and die-hard could co-exist. Where pain and misery could co-exist in celebration. Also whiskey and pints. Lots of whiskey and pints. Where the roughshod could stand up and say drink with me for the love of it, for the love of all of it. For the empty pocket. For the blisters. For the friends I had to bury (first Kevin, then Glen). For the birth of my son. For the birth of my daughters. For the divorce. For the marriage. For still having empty pockets. For everyday I’ve lived despite it all.  Fuck all. All of it. Fuck it.

I have cursed, bled and sworn

Jumped bail and landed up in jail

Life has often tried to stretch me

But the rope always was slack

And now that I've a pile

I'll go down to the Chelsea

I'll walk in on my feet

But I'll leave there on my back

I am going, I am going

Any which way the wind may be blowing

I am going, I am going

Where streams of whiskey are flowing

-- from Streams of Whiskey by The Pogues

-->Video: Waxie's Dargle by The Pogues (lo-fi quality)

See Shane MacGowan and the Popes. See Flogging Molly. See Dropkick Murphys.

 

Uncle Tupelo (+ Son Volt + Wilco + Whiskeytown + Trampled by Turtles?)

The 90’s started to die somewhere around 94-95. The rest of the world has been slowly dying since. It was easier in my youth to fight against everything older and established simply because all those things seemed hell bent on ignoring who we were and where we wanted to be. Bush (#2) came to the Whitehouse, and hell followed with him. That hell we still live in today. Somewhere in the middle I had this cd called No Alternative, a mix of alternative bands that were breaking through. On that cd was Uncle Tupelo. Doug said he thought I would like them, that I can’t be angry all the time. So I unplugged, bought Anodyne. And in doing so, I found connected to the country that I was brought up to believe didn’t exist. From fields in Minnesota to the dusty heartland to the triangle of North Carolina (which might as well have been just as far), there was a connection.  Uncle Tupelo and, by extension, Son Volt and, by extension, Wilco and, by extension, Whiskeytown and, by extension, Ryan Adams and, by extension, newer bands like The Avett Brothers and (one of my new favorites) Trampled by Turtles started to shape a better narrative for me. It was narrative still fueled by the restless punk (think Uncle Tupelo’s remake of the Stooges’ “I Wanna Be Your Dog”) and the desperate need to speak (think “Whiskey Bottle,” “Graveyard Shift,” and “Chickamauga.” But there was a new current of inclusion for the backroad, the small town, the desolate and the matter of fact. And where R.E.M. helped me to secure and balance, these bands did too.

Influenced by the Americana of our parents, Uncle Tupelo (and the like) helped carve a space for my generation to connect and shape. Whereas I wanted to rebel against the established themes from country music (and by some extension The Grateful Dead) that didn’t seem to represent me or who I wanted to be, Uncle Tupelo (and the like) helped me to see more of the similarities than I was at first willing to admit and what I had conveniently forgotten. And it was simple. A banjo. A fiddle. A mandolin. A guitar (both acoustic and electric). Melody. Harmony. A retold story with young characters facing modern challenges. The celebration of the success and failures of those challenges and all the shakedowns in between. This became the folk movement of my generation. A movement uncorrupted by coffee houses and big orange couches in New York City. A movement free from corporate sponsorship. You could find these bands in small venues packed with college students under a cloud of smoke where everyone was, simply put, getting down. This was, and still is, a welcome escape from so much of the cookie-cutter bullshit we hear today. Thank you Jay Farrar and Jeff Tweedy. Thank you Ryan Adams and Caitlin Cary. Thank you boys from Minnesota.  You’ve helped make so much of my world relevant.

So much of my life I spent running from ghosts or trying to tackle them. So much of my life I spent charged and angry with what I was born with and into. And because of Uncle Tupelo (and the like) I’m not so angry as I am charged. Rather than running from those ghosts, I’m singing with them.

Appalachian, so patient

The lessons we've traveled

As soon as we're out, we're kicking our way back in

Fighting fire with unlit matches

From our respective trenches

No authority can clean up this mess we're in

A miracle might point the way

To solutions we're after

And avert our chronic impending disaster

Chickamauga's where I've been

Solitude is where I'm bound

I don't ever wanna taste these tears again

from Chickamauga by Uncle Tupelo

See also: Old Crow Medicine Crow, Langhorne Slim, The Jayhawks, anything but Mumford and Sons

-->Video (sort of): Whiskey Bottle by Uncle Tupelo

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ray McManus is the author of three books of poetry, Punch, Red Dirt Jesus, and Driving through the country before you are born, and co-editor (with R. Mac Jones) of Found Anew. His poetry and prose have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. Ray is an associate professor of English at the University of South Carolina Sumter.

Summer 6s with Larry Hembree - "Listen.Watch.Read.Drink."

Jasper asked local arts leaders to name their 6 favorite summer arts indulgences--ways to spend the kind of fancy-free time that only comes on those slow, sweltering, Southern summer days. Larry Hembree, whose past has seen him employed by or in charge of almost every major arts organization in town, (think Trustus Theatre, the Nick, Columbia City Ballet, SC Arts Commission, and more), chose two each from Jasper's top editorial subjects. His caveat was that each and every arts endeavor also required a little liquid lubricant to either bump up or smooth out the experience.

Here's how the good Mr. Hembree recommends you spend your next lazy summer afternoon.

Listens

Showing my age, I always like to revisit Carole King’s “Tapestry,” the 1972 Grammy Album of the Year and one of the bestselling albums of all time. In my past life as a hula-hoop champion (Wham-O produced competitions across the country in the summertime,) I had my most successful freestyle routine to the first cut on the first side (yes, a real album), “I Feel The Earth Move” until the hoop slipped from my hand while practicing one day and cracked the album. Currently, the award winning “Beautiful: The Carole King Musical” is running on Broadway and sporting a national tour, which stops in Greenville in February. Listen to this album while sipping good red wine.

Speaking of Broadway, there has been nothing more exciting in many years than the soundtrack to “Hamilton,” oddly enough based on the life of Founding Father Alexander Hamilton (and I loathed history classes.) The show just won eleven Tony Awards and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. A very diverse score (and that’s an understatement), you’ll want to play it over and over, maybe accompanied by an Old Fashioned or Manhattan or both. This show will run on Broadway forever. There are no tickets available for the near future.

 

Watches

Like I needed another television series to get hooked on, I checked out the Netflix series “Bloodline,” mainly because a former UGA theatre student and fellow actor friend, Kyle Chandler stars in it. I was hooked halfway through the first show. A rich narrative, great characters and with an all-star cast including Cissy Spacek, made for plenty to pull one in. The second season has just been released.  It takes place in the Florida Keys so it’s summer friendly. Tequila is perfect with this one.

And then there’s “America Ninja Warrior,” the NBC summer series that’s so hot it makes Famously Hot Columbia feel like Antarctica. Nothing else to say. Just watch it. A case of PBR or Budweiser and/or cheap box wine for this guilty redneck indulgence.

Reads

“The Magus,” a 1965 postmodern novel by British writer John Fowles. This is a book that I revisit a lot.  I read it first when I fell in love with John Fowles' popular novel and film of the same title, The French Lieutenant’s Woman.  The novel’s setting is exotic, roaming from Greece to France to the isolated forests of Finland.  The plot’s twists and turns are riveting and Fowle’s pacing is masterful. Accompany this read with ouzo, for sure.

Hiding My Candy: The Autobiography of the Grand Empress of Savanna, by the Lady Chablis. Let’s just call this little read a very sassy autobiographical account of former West Columbia resident and prominent figure in the book and film Midnight in the Garden of  Good and Evil. If you don’t know who she is, dig in to the book. This is a summer must-read for folks who might need some sensitivity training. It’s a quick read and if the narrative is offensive, don’t worry; she also includes beauty tips and recipes.  Prosecco is mandatory for this one and will kill two birds with one stone; use it to make a toast to the power of diversity.

*~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~*

Summer Sixes - Poet Len Lawson Shares his Favorite Films for Summer

"You take the red pill - you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes." 

"Show me the money."

"What business is it of yours where I'm from, friendo?”

"It is the dismal tide. It is not the one thing."

"Don't ever argue with the Big Dog, because the Big Dog is always right."

"Aw, man. I shot Marvin in the face."

"You had me at hello."

"Are you not entertained?"

"I'm gonna get medieval on your ass."

℘

 Like every other American obsessed with pop culture, I love these kinds of rankings. Unlike every other American obsessed with pop culture, I probably take these rankings much too seriously because I am passionate about films. I try to go to the movies as a normal person enjoying the theatre experience. I end up thinking I’m Siskel and Ebert giving movies stars or taking them away for this nuance or that wrinkle.

I have maintained this top list of movies for about two decades now, and it is very competitive and tough for new films to break into it. I do give new films a fair trial to enter the lauded pantheon of my top movies. Usually however, they fall to the wayside farther down rankings. (The last movie to really break into the top list after much deliberation made it all the way to the number one spot, so that’s encouraging for new films.)

For example, I would be inclined to add last year’s epic, bone-chilling film The Revenant to this list, but it has to stand the test of time. Moreover, it would have to knock off the other greats here from their respective perches. I really try to avoid the instant reaction of giving the hot new movie the top spot. This is a long process of analyzing characters, cinematography, musical score, drama, and other factors I think I’m qualified to address. I am an educator after all, so I’d like to think I’m good at crafting rubrics.

I know no one likes reading the introductions to these lists, so without further ado, here they are in descending order. Have fun! - Len Lawson

#6 Gladiator

I’m a sucker for Shakespeare, so this film has all the feels of a Shakespearean tragedy: the setting of Rome, the monarchy, suspense, death, high drama. Maximus Decimus Meridius is the quintessential Shakespearean lead character. He totally puts me in mind of Hamlet or Macbeth. Maximus is the general of the emperor’s army and likely heir to the throne because the emperor Marcus Aurelius believes Maximus is more fit to assume the throne than the emperor’s own son Commodus, a sniveling, weaselly, spoiled brat who consequently kills his father the emperor to quicken his pace to the throne. Maximus is not having it, so he goes AWOL only to find that Commodus has destroyed his home and his family. Maximus is then sold into slavery and forced to compete in the gladiator games in Rome where he again meets up with now Emperor Commodus whose reign is not well-received by the Roman senate nor by his sister Lucilla thriving for her own survival in her evil brother’s kingdom.

Russell Crowe is an endearing Spanish slave who as a former general can rally any Roman to his cause. His famous line Are you not entertained?? has become a rallying cry in sports, especially in MMA and professional wrestling. The drama sets up classic coliseum battles and dangerous alliances. I would love to teach this as a play to college students!

#5 The Matrix Trilogy

I’m pulling a notorious rankings move and including three movies in one spot because it is my list and because one Matrix movie teases the pallet for much more. This movie changed cinematography forever. How many films can you name where a martial arts maneuver or dance move is named for the title? The first film appeared at the turn of the century when the world was still in fear of Y2K (ask your parents). The themes of the film made us think that the actual matrix was a reality and not fantasy. The trilogy has that groundbreaking feel not only on film but on pop culture like the insurgence of the Star Wars films. Personally, as a person of faith, I can make so many spiritual connections to the Matrix films that it blows the mind. The plot is a bit complex for a summary, but once the end of the first film hits you, you’re taken to another place beyond movies. Furthermore by the last film, you are left with more questions than answers, and the answers won’t come unless you watch the movie again and again. The layers are endless. To quote my own poetry, “your mind capsizes.” I would watch any movie if you promised me it would have that kind of lasting effect on me.

 #4 Pulp Fiction

This will forever be Quentin Tarantino’s best work. If you put two gangsters, their mob boss, his wife, and a boxer in a blender, then Pulp Fiction (by definition of this term shown at the beginning of the movie) is what you get. For extra fun, Tarantino jumbles the three acts of the movie out of order, so the heart of the film is not even the storyline. The core of the film is the characters themselves. This cast is awesome: Uma Thurman, Ving Rhames, Bruce Willis, John Travolta, Samuel L. Jackson, and more. After you watch the movie, you want these characters to be in your life for better or worse forever, and you definitely never want Samuel L. Jackson to leave the screen. His dialogue alone has become pop culture gospel. For example, Do you read the Bible, Ringo?...Say what again! I dare you! and before you leave this earth, you better remember Ezekiel 25:17.

This movie is too real for average people like us to watch. You get windows into parts of life you should know nothing about, which is why it keeps us coming back to it.

 #3 Jerry McGuire

A successful sports agent as he says “eats frozen pizza and grows a conscience” one night and basically destroys his career, leaving him with one scrappy, bottom-feeding NFL player. The two develop a dubious friendship outside of their business relationship that changes both their lives for respective purposes.

I am not a real Tom Cruise fan, but I liked him in this movie only because he was stripped of his usual cocky, arrogant Color of Money, Cocktail, Top Gun persona and put into an actual domestic role. It is fun to watch that persona be stripped away scene by scene in character, no less. His awkwardness is endearing when the character Jerry Maguire is out of his element.

Each character has his or her own memorable quotes here. Several breakout stars are in this film: Renee Zellweger as Dorothy Boyd, the frumpy, girl-next-door, widowed mother looking for love (You had me at hello); Jonathan Lipnicki as her cute son Ray (Did you know bees as dogs can smell fear?); and of course Cuba Gooding, Jr. as the embattled football star Rod Tidwell with the classic line Show me the money! It is cool to see Regina King and him as husband and wife both after being in Boyz n the Hood and other unheralded black films.

This is the first and only movie to make me cry. I watched it in the theatre when it first debuted, but one day as a teenager sitting at home watching the scene where Jerry and Dorothy are having issues before Rod’s big game made me tear up. She says, I have this great guy who loves my kid, and he sure does like me a lot. And I can’t live like that. It’s not how I’m built. Wow! She had me at hello!

An extra good scene is where Rod and Jerry are fed up with each other after hanging on by a thread in their respective roles during the football season. Each tries to counsel the other in the areas they are lacking in their lives. I always laugh when Jerry tells Rod, Just shut up! Play the game! Play it from your heart, and I will show you the Quan. And that’s the truth, man. That’s the truth. Can you handle it?? (an obvious allusion to Cruise’s movie A Few Good Men).

Well, I laugh and cry, but the movie has sports, comedy, drama, suspense, and black characters not as stereotypes. Therefore, I’m in for the long haul. Show me the replay! I’ll watch every time.

#2 The Fugitive

My favorite actor is Tommy Lee Jones. He can make any movie great by being the same character in each one! He is always the take-charge, semi-surly, no-nonsense leader who lives by the moral compass of a Batman character. I was first introduced to him in The Fugitive.

The first time I saw the movie was when my high school played it in every classroom throughout the day on the last day of school (gotta love those '90s education standards). I couldn’t wait to get to my next class when the bell rang to see what would happen to this doctor who was convicted of murder for the death of his wife, claiming a one-armed man was the killer. Harrison Ford as Dr. Richard Kimble is the anti-O.J. Simpson in this movie.

You are hooked in this movie after the epic train scene which was a huge deal in the '90s. After Kimble escapes the wreckage from the convict transport train crashing, the chase is on for Jones as U.S. Marshall Deputy Samuel Gerard goes on the hunt for Kimble. As a fugitive from the law, Kimble even has the audacity to look for the man who killed his wife and solve the mystery of why. You root for both Gerard and Kimble throughout the movie.

This might be the best cat-and-mouse chase movie ever if it weren’t for my number one. The way Jones as Gerard leads his band of deputies is endearing so much that, again, you want the characters to be with you always. This is also why I love the sequel film U.S. Marshals just as much if not more. I would love to see Harrison Ford and Tommy Lee Jones do a sequel where they just share a beer and remember the old days of chasing down killers and dodging bullets in Chicago. Hopefully, both will make it to this meeting; they’re both getting up in age.

 #1 No Country for Old Men

Again I say, I love Tommy Lee Jones, but in this movie, he is older, slower, and even wiser and cagier than his character U.S. Marshal Samuel Gerard in The Fugitive. In this film, he is not the slick, dominant leader. He is the wily veteran Sheriff Ed Tom Bell trying to keep up with the drug trade and violence in his Texas county. He is also trying to keep up with two younger, swifter, more brazen characters: Josh Brolin as Llewelyn Moss, a hunter who finds a briefcase with $2 million in a drug deal-gone-bad and Javier Bardem as Anton Chigurh, a ruthless sociopath hired to retrieve the briefcase.

There are so many layers to the film. Chigurh (pronounced like sugar, stress on the second syllable) has his own code of ethics and kills on his terms. He is a character for the ages in film on the same level with The Joker but colder, not as maniacal. He even allows his victims to call it on a coin toss to reveal their fates. His air pump is a unique weapon used originally to kill cattle before the slaughter. His shotgun with the silencer on the end shatters victims’ bodies without prejudice. This man should not be roaming free on the streets anywhere. He always taunts his victims with probing questions, yet he never sees reality by their terms, only his. He is sick, but he is brilliant at his skillset, a chilling prophet spreading his gospel of right and wrong in blood. He confronts one of his victims in the film with this epic question: If the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule?

Llewelyn tries to keep out of Chigurh’s reach throughout the movie with his own military veteran skillset. Each tries to outwit the other with Sheriff Bell always one step behind. The most amazing part of the film is that none of these three main characters EVER come face to face with the other. Brilliant! It is a thriller without much dialogue. The pictures tell the story with genius.

Although it is a masterful film based on the novel by Cormac McCarthy with the title taken from a William Butler Yeats poem “Sailing to Byzantium,"* the scene where Sheriff Bell almost catches up to Chigurh in an El Paso hotel always irks me. If Chigurh can escape Bell, then why doesn’t he kill Bell like the rest of his victims? The sheriff coming back for Chigurh would certainly upset Chigurh’s “code." The sheriff would be very vulnerable returning to the hotel. There are many theories to this scene. This is just another layer to the classic.

The lifestyle of violence portrayed in the film catches up to all three main characters, but each responds to it in different ways. It either consumes them, overcomes them, or surrenders them. The great line by Sherriff Bell and the El Paso sheriff toward the end speaks to the warning of the title: It is the dismal tide. It is not the one thing.

℘

What have we learned from this list? They all have arguably white male-dominated main characters. All but one has gun violence and horrific death scenes. Obviously, I like suspense, thriller, and drama films. I like my movies well-rounded with a little bit of each genre, but these three keep me interested. As a writer and poet, I am always considering elements of fiction in films. I usually can predict a film’s outcome before the halfway point which is no fun for anyone I watch with, but I usually keep these things to myself. I try to lose the critical eye in movies, but that wouldn’t make me an artist, would it?

Len Lawson is the author of the upcoming chapbook Before the Night Wakes You (Finishing Line Press) and co-editor of the upcoming Poets Respond to Race anthology (Muddy Ford Press). He has been accepted to the Ph.D. in English Literature and Criticism program at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Len is a 2015 Pushcart Prize & Best of the Net nominee and a 2016 Callaloo Fellow.  His poetry has been featured in Fall Lines, Jasper Magazine, Charleston Currents, and Poems on The Comet. He teaches writing at Central Carolina Technical College, and his website is www.lenlawson.co.

*Sailing to Byzantium

by William Butler Yeats

That is no country for old men. The young In one another's arms, birds in the trees – Those dying generations – at their song, The salmon‐falls, the mackerel‐crowded seas, Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long Whatever is begotten, born, and dies. Caught in that sensual music all neglect Monuments of unageing intellect.

An aged man is but a paltry thing, A tattered coat upon a stick, unless Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing For every tatter in its mortal dress, Nor is there singing school but studying Monuments of its own magnificence; And therefore I have sailed the seas and come To the holy city of Byzantium.

O sages standing in God's holy fire As in the gold mosaic of a wall, Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre, And be the singing‐masters of my soul. Consume my heart away; sick with desire And fastened to a dying animal It knows not what it is; and gather me Into the artifice of eternity.

Once out of nature I shall never take My bodily form from any natural thing, But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make Of hammered gold and gold enamelling To keep a drowsy Emperor awake; Or set upon a golden bough to sing To lords and ladies of Byzantium Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

Summer 6s with The SC State Library's CURTIS ROGERS

"I vividly remember being on an airplane while reading the part about the ebola victim who was on an airplane while the hemorrhagic fever began to cause him to bleed from multiple orifices. I put down the book and slowly began to look at the other passengers around me for signs of hemorrhagic fever."

- Curtis Rogers

Jasper asked some of our community arts leaders their advice on the SIX best literary, visual, and musical indulgences for the sweltery summer months in Columbia. Here's Curtis Rogers' recommended summer reads ...

 #1

James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl

One of my favorite recollections from childhood and probably the first time I remember being completely engrossed in a book. This was probably the first time I read a chapter book and I remember initially being disappointed it didn’t have that many images. I used to be the kid who would judge a book by how many pages had images on them so that it wouldn’t be that many pages to have to read.

#2

Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton

My first sci-fi book! This was also the first time I vividly remember reading the book then watching the movie and having the thrill of knowing what was going to happen next. I think this was the book that hooked me on science fiction and also gave me a big interest in virology.

#3

The Hot Zone by Richard Preston

This was a summer read and I can’t remember where I was vacationing but I vividly remember being on an airplane while reading the part about the ebola victim who was on an airplane while the hemorrhagic fever began to cause him to bleed from multiple orifices. I put down the book and slowly began to look at the other passengers around me for signs of hemorrhagic fever. Thankfully, no one sneezed or was coughing.

#4

Robopocalypse by Daniel Wilson

Cars with computerized components begin killing humans as the robots begin their rise against humanity. What more could you want in a book? This book will really make you think critically about owning a car without a computer in it. Even computerized toys become part of a collective consciousness in their rise to power over humans.

#5

The Kalevala by Elias Lönnrot

Sometimes I don’t read science fiction. I really like poetry, too, and if you like poetry, and I mean really long poetry, this one is for you. It’s the national epic poem of Finland that explains creation through Scandinavian mythology. You’ll enjoy it if you can get around the long Finnish names like Väinämöinen and Lemminkäinen. The Kalevala's metre is a form of trochaic tetrameter that is known as the Kalevala metre. It’s quite rhythmic and I remember that it was a quick read. It’s not for everyone but will certainly make you more interesting (or maybe more boring) at dinner parties.

#6

House of Suns by Alastair Reynolds

On my second trip to Germany, while waiting for my colleague to get off work (she is the librarian for the Hamburg Parliament), I wandered into the Taschen bookstore and found the English language section. After browsing through some titles, I came across this one and was immediately engaged! It’s a story that takes place over 6 million years. It’s a forbidden love story between two “shatterlings” who were cloned from Abigail Gentian millennia ago. Something is trying to eliminate all of the shatterlings and the big question is who?

 etcetera

On another note, I just finished reading John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War and highly recommend it if you’re into science fiction and looking for a great summer read. When you turn 75, you can enter the Colonial Defense Forces and serve for up to ten years but that’s all you know before you sign up. It’s interesting to find out what really happens to those who enlist and go offworld. Let’s just say genetic manipulation plays a big part and you also get introduced to some pretty intense alien races from whom the CDF fights to protect human colonies across the galaxy. You’re also introduced to skip drive technology and how spaceships travel at faster than light speed.

Dr. Curtis R. Rogers is the Director of Communications for the South Carolina State Library and Coordinates the South Carolina Center for the Book and has been working in the library and information science field for 27 years. He has worked at the Union Carnegie Library, the Charleston County Public Library and has taught courses at the USC School of Library and Information Science.  He received a Bachelor of Arts in Geography, Master of Library and Information Science, and Doctor of Education in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of South Carolina.  In 2001, he completed the University of the Azores Summer Study Course in Azorean Portuguese Culture and Language and in 2002 completed the Certified Public Manager credential. In 2008, he was President of the SC Library Association.  Rogers developed a national library survey on library use of social media for public relations and has presented this survey’s results at the 2009 German Library Association Conference and at the State and University Library of Hamburg. He currently serves as secretary of the SC Academy of Authors, and chairs the USC School of Library and Information Annual Literacy Leaders (ALL) Awards committee.

Summer Six(es) with Gillian Albrecht

 

It’s summer in the city and sometimes during this time of year we find ourselves with the weird sensation of (gasp!) free time on our hands.  Rather than letting this phenomenon catch you unawares on some stray Saturday afternoon, Jasper has you covered with our summertime series alliteratively called the Summer Sixes in which we ask members of the Columbia arts community to share their favorite top 6 films, reads, albums, or TV series binges.  We’ll be bringing you this throughout the summer so pay attention to What Jasper Said to learn more about what your friends and neighbors like to do with their spare time, and maybe get some ideas of what to do with yours.

We asked Broadway veteran Gillian Scalici Albrecht to help us out with her top 6 in any of the above categories and she -- like other folks to come -- was kind enough to help us out in almost all the categories. Read Gillian's responses below, then check out some of her work at the end of the post.

Summer in SC is for me about staying out of the heat than anything else. I usually use the summers for my travels to new and exciting places, where for the most part it’s cooler but also since it is a quieter time in Columbia and have kids in school; it’s a good time to go and see the world. I am not a big television watcher and have not succumbed to all the reality shows as I am not interested in other peoples’ lives and all the talent shows are fun; but give me a good Broadway show anytime with hard learned talent and terrific productions! When I do watch it’s usually crime stories with real actors and good plots where I can disappear for an hour in a story of partial truth that is usually heart wrenching. I cry very easily and a good story gets me each time.

That said, I love travelling in Europe and am a person who loves seeing all the places that fill our history books. My choice of reading is generally anything that is filled with historical facts and a good story so it’s usually a good fiction novel based on history. I lived in Germany for many years and am fascinated with stories of World War II and love good stories and stories about families and survival. One of my favorite books is Sarah’s Key. Some of my favorite reads are “The Invisible Bridge” by Julie Orringer, the books by Philippa Gregory about Henry the VIII and his many wives and the lifestyle and historical facts surrounding it, like “The Other Boleyn Girl”, “The Virgin Lover.”  I can’t think of a more profound and moving film which says all of this like “Life is Beautiful” and “The Pianist.” A more recent film involving history and brilliantly done is “The Imitation Game.”

Stories filled with struggle, sacrifice and success also like The Glass Castle and Half Broke Horses by Jeannette Walls keep life in perspective and are fascinating reads. More books I have enjoyed are “The Sandcastle Girls”, “Having our Say”, “The Help”, “My Sisters Keeper”, and “Water for Elephants”,

Contrary to what most people would think, I don’t listen to Broadway soundtracks. I don’t like the feeling of having to concentrate and think I have to study something but just want the pleasure of listening. I am an R&B fanatic. Love Quincy Jones, Lou Rawls, George Benson, Lionel Richie, Al Jarreau,  Pattie Austin and James Ingram, Natalie Cole, and can’t get enough of Whitney Houston and her amazing voice and some of the oldies like Sarah Vaughn, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Lena Horne and still love Diana Ross and the Supremes to sing along with.

And my all-time favorite is a good old piano bar with great jazz and a glass of wine looking at the ocean! Happy Summer!

Check out Gillian in her salad days!

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9b3ppgqUFo[/embed]

Read more about Gillian in the current issue of Jasper Magazine and check out her latest project Broadway at USC.

Tuesday is MAKE MUSIC DAY brought to you by One Columbia and friends

 

This Tuesday, June 21, Columbia will take part in its second annual Make Music Columbia event. Music will be played just about everywhere, from Five Points, Main Street, the State House, Lexington and more. It’s a perfect indoor and outdoor event for music-lovers of all ages to experience all sorts of music, happening from 9 am – 9 pm. There will be music of all styles, from rock, hip hop, folk, jazz, experimental and anything in between.

Make Music Columbia is part of a broader network that is the Make Music Day Alliance. The first Make Music Day was in France in 1982, and it is now a worldwide event, with over 700 cities in 120 countries participating. It happens each year on the summer solstice, a great way to celebrate the longest day of the year.

Anyone is free to participate in Make Music Columbia, and there will be a number of mass appeals, which are large groups of people playing the same instruments together. These will take place at the State House, and anyone is welcome to walk up and join in. They’ll have ukulele songbooks, harmonicas and more for the crowd. No musical skill required!

There will be buskers all around the city along with other organized concerts, which are all free and open to the public. People are also welcomed and encouraged to sign up to either host or perform. This is primarily a collaborative effort, made possible by the committed work of One Columbia, Rice Music House and WXRY FM.

OVER 64 ARTISTS!

MORE THAN 25 VENUES!

ANOTHER CITY-ENHANCING EVENT FROM YOUR FRIENDS AT ONE COLUMBIA

Most performances can be caught in Five Points, Main Street, and The Village at Sandhills, and there will be outdoor concerts at Tapp’s Arts Center and The Lula Drake on Main Street. There are still a lot more places to enjoy performances, and these can be found at makemusiccolumbia.org.

“The idea is to create so much music that people encounter it during their daily activities,” says Ashleigh Lancaster, Office Manager at One Columbia. “The idea that you can fill a whole city with performances like that is really exciting… It makes the streets feel so alive.”

Lancaster believes this is a great event for Columbia to be able to participate in a worldwide event while also enjoying the stress–relieving qualities of music. It can put a smile on people’s faces, and give them the opportunity to let go during the week.

THREE MASS APPEALS:

• First up – Join the Sound Circle!  Led by Girls Rock Columbia, make music using your voice – strange noises, bleeps, boops, even screams come together to create a unique chorus! Starts around 6pm.
• Then – Learn the Harmonica! Thanks to Hohner, we’ll be handing out 100 free harmonicas! Walk right up and learn how to play – then we’ll try our new skills as a group. Starts around 6:30pm.
• And, then – Uke it Up! The Cola Ukulele Band will perform their sweet tunes for you, but not before teaching you a few things they’ve learned! Be sure to bring your ukulele. There will be some books on hand with sheet music. Starts around 7:15pm 

So no matter how talented or less-than-talented you feel in your musical abilities, Lancaster and all the other good folks organizing Make Music Columbia invite you to make or just enjoy some music this Tuesday, June 21. It’ll be a great way to celebrate the summer solstice, and join the worldwide Fête de la Musique (meaning both “festival of music” and “make music” in French).

-- Ony Ratsimbaharison

BOOK REVIEW: Patti Smith's M Train by Mary Catherine Ballou

 

“I stood in front of the fence on tiptoe and peered through the broken slat.  All kinds of indistinct memories collided.  Vacant lots skinned knees train yards mystical hobos forbidden yet wondrous dwellings of mythical junkyard angels” (Smith 136).

M Train (Alfred A. Knopf, 2015), the latest book from acclaimed musician and poet Patti Smith, takes readers on a dreamlike journey of her adult life, chronicling both the profound and the mundane.  Throughout, Smith manages to elevate her grounded, daily routine of drinking black coffee into a ritual that serves as a stepping-stone to ethereal destinations encompassing her past, present, and future.

Documenting trips across the globe, Smith constructs a portrait of her intensely private yet at the same time professional life, from the early stages of her marriage to Fred “Sonic” Smith – including an account of their trip to an abandoned penal colony in French Guiana in homage of Jean Genet – to her pilgrimages to the burial sites of esteemed authors and artists.

While Smith continues to enjoy success in the professional field, M Train provides readers with an intimate depiction of her private existence, leaving few quirks behind.  Yet while she portrays herself as an artistic recluse of sorts, her curiosity and wanderlust takes her in many directions, including Casa Azul, the former home of Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo; the Tokyo graves of authors Akutagawa and Dazai; and, the New York landscape of the Rockaway Beach boardwalk, where she purchases an abandoned bungalow just before Hurricane Sandy strikes.

Combined with the central role of memories and dreams, M Train incorporates both prose and poetry-laden accounts of Smith’s sundry encounters with friends, acquaintances, locations, and objects.  Whether unveiling imaginary or real-life occurrences, M Train absorbs the reader from the start, weaving a tapestry of philosophical and geographical quips unique to Smith.  “I had a black coat,” Smith writes.  “A poet gave it to me some years ago on my fifty-seventh birthday.  It had been his --- an ill-fitting, unlined Comme des Garçons overcoat that I secretly coveted” (160).  She continues, “Every time I put it on I felt like myself…The pockets had come unstitched at the seam and I lost everything I absentmindedly slipped into their holy caves…I loved my coat and the café and my morning routine.  It was the clearest and simplest expression of my solitary identity” (160).  Smith’s effort to understand and forge her own identity remains one of the most prominent themes throughout this book.

While the topics in M Train, including Smith’s black coat and her obsession with obscure cafés, detective shows, and deceased authors, each serve as personal anecdotes, the stories transcend her individual life to strike universal chords relatable to readers, ranging from the drudgery and pleasure derived from daily routines or losing precious belongings in airports or torn pockets, to weathering great storms, reconnecting and reminiscing with friends, and learning to cope with life’s tragedies.

A hybrid of poetry, prose, and photography, M Train exposes both the surreal and real, while Smith transforms the reader into a confidante who can share these experiences with her.   Throughout this book, Smith reveals that she is more than a rock star – she’s an artist, mother, wife, daughter, sister, muse, and inspirer.  M Train exemplifies her efforts to come to terms with the mysteries of life, while her own trajectory through it all draws upon experiences in the personal and public arena.  Most importantly, Smith’s experiences lend M Train a philosophical dimension seldom found within celebrity culture.

REVIEW: The Lobster by Olivia Morris

 

"Lobsters live for over one hundred years, are blue-blooded like aristocrats, and stay fertile all their lives," David explains, wedged between a floral bedspread and a flat-affect hotel manager.  The characters exist in shades of blue and gray, with their drab clothing and the hotel's muted decorating scheme.  A suited man stands silently in the corner, his head cut out of the frame.  David's voice is monotone as he explains why he would want to be transformed into a lobster, if it came to it.

Colin Farrell stars as David, the central and only named character in the recently released film, The Lobster, whose wife has just left him after twelve years of marriage.  By the laws of this dystopian universe in which the film takes place, any adult person without a partner is required to move into a hotel for six weeks, in order to find another spouse.  If they fail to find a suitable partner, they will be changed into an animal of their choosing.

In this dark comedy, Greek filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos examines the highly inorganic aspect of modern relationships.  On Tinder, people make snap decisions about potential partners, depending on their appearance or the few character cues that can be explained in under 500 characters.  In real life, an adult who has never been married is considered odd or antisocial.  Teenagers feel an immense amount of social pressure to secure a date to prom.  Lanthimos takes these cultural imperatives to the extreme and places his characters in dire situations if they don't have a mate.  The characters cautiously revolve around each other, not looking for love, but rather looking for someone with whom a relationship might seem convincing, at best.  They are attracted to each other because of miniscule details, like something as silly as both individuals being prone to nosebleeds, and even then some of the idiosyncrasies are cultivated. But Lanthimos does this with such an exacting formality that the viewer is left finding humor in the absurdity.  David is completely serious as he explains that he would like to be a lobster because he "like(s) the sea very much."

Lanthimos has been elevated into the class of visually compelling, emotionally provocative sci-fi filmmakers, reminiscent of the work of Spike Jonez, Charlie Kaufman, and Michel Gondry.  Lanthimos gives the dystopian film a sense of contained surrealism.  The most science-y aspect of the film, transforming humans, is left almost entirely untouched.  The overarching tone of dystopia is largely just a catalyst for exploring the real and superficial aspects of human affection, with cutting cynicism.

The brilliance of the movie comes from its perfectly balanced juxtapositions.  From start to finish, from the weather to the wallpaper, from the forest to the city, the color palette of the movie is incredibly bleak.  The colors are muted and underwhelming, in a way that makes every scene seem drained of livelihood.  In a similar fashion, the characters speak clearly, matter-of-factly, and in emotionally blunted tones, blundering awkwardly through comically literal conversations.

In contrast though, the film splices in several scenes of dramatic slow-motion, while Beethoven bursts through the speakers.  There are highly disturbing, bloody scenes that caused half the audience to cover their eyes during.  This disjointing of tonality is intentionally funny, but also adds another layer of creativity.  The overly dramatic scenes are clearly superficial and disjointed, like the relationships in the movie.

The audience had a deeply divided reaction in the theater I was in.  Some left, understandably so.  The movie gets incredibly dilated at points, seeming to stretch and repeat itself unnecessarily.  Rachel Weisz's narration is jarring and doesn't enhance the movie in any direct way.  However, these formulaic, almost robotic tendencies are exactly what thematically anchor the movie.  You cannot go into this film expecting to be blindly entertained or emotionally manipulated.  This movie will not make your heart race.  It won't make you jump or cry.  However, it will make you think intensely about what it means to fall in, be in, or lose love, and whether or not you've ever actually done any of those things.

-- Olivia Morris

The lesson that night

Here, in its original format, is the beautiful poem Jasper's literary arts editor -- Ed Madden -- wrote for The State, published June 17, 2016. We're sharing this iteration here simply to preserve the correct formatting for posterity. 

The lesson that night

for 17 June 2016

     “And these are they likewise which are sown on stony ground.” – Mark 4:16

     “Who are we now?” – Nikky Finney, “A New Day Dawns”

How hot it was that sun-beat week,

watering the yard every day,

the curled leaves and dry ground,

green wings of zinnia breaking the soil.

They sat together around a green table,

prayed, sang, then opened the gospel—

the lesson that night was seed sown

on stony ground. What can we know

of the human heart, entangled in all

that we’ve been taught? A boy from here

sat with them about an hour,

then aimed his hate and opened fire.

~

How quick we were to act,

focused on that festering flag,

quick to take it down

and move forward, move on—

these aren’t the same.

After weeks of heat, it rained the day

the governor said to take it down.

Are we somehow different now?

How would we know?

~

We furled a flag. We furled a flag.

A girl was slung across a room,

a man who ran shot in the back.

The broke and broken schools remain.

What has changed, beyond that square

of empty sky where it once flew,

the opened door of clouds and blue?

~

The lesson that night was stony ground.

Not birds, not thorns, not the good soil.

What grows up quick among the stones.

What has no roots, what withers away.

A friend calls change a perennial plant.

A second year takes nurture and luck.

If it comes back another year,

a better chance that it will stay.

Water well the just-sown and just-up.

Water long in morning light.

Water long and soak the roots

to learn the lesson of that night.

Learn the lesson of that night.

REVIEW: Columbia Children's Theatre presents The Commedia Hansel and Gretel by Melissa Swick Ellington

Columbia Children’s Theatre presents a delightful summer treat with The Commedia Hansel and Gretel. Following numerous other commedia summer shows produced by CCT, Hansel and Gretel benefits from the collaborative nature of the Italian theatre tradition commedia dell’arte. Innovative director Jerry Stephenson aptly describes the entertaining characters as “beloved, rag-tag, fame-hungry players,” and audiences of all ages will enjoy their mischief.

The “Spaghetti and Meatball Players” include five commedia characters (Columbine, Pantalone, Arlequino, Punchin, and Rosetta) who take on multiple roles within the story. As Columbine, Mary Miles becomes an amusing Gretel, tap-dancing and pouting her way through the forest. Paul Lindley II’s Arlequino plays her long-suffering brother Hansel with charm and verve. The fairy tale siblings achieve effective rapport with the young audience through interaction that feels both genuine and satisfyingly silly. In the role of Punchin, Baker Morrison delivers a hilarious performance as two iconic stars of Food Network fame, while Noah Barker’s Pantalone succeeds as the humorously incompetent fairy tale father and other roles. As Rosetta, Kaitlyn Fuller does double duty as stepmother and witch; she skillfully creates distinctly memorable characters who menace Hansel and Gretel with flair. (At certain performances, alternate actors will play the following roles: George Dinsmore as Pantalone, Taylor Diveley as Arlequino, Julian Deleon as Punchin, and Frances Farrar as Rosetta.)

As audiences have come to anticipate, CCT puts forth first class production quality. Vibrant flag banners liven up the stage, which features a useful proscenium for backdrop changes in Patrick Faulds’ attractive set. Jim Litzinger’s lighting and sound design choices work beautifully to support the production, and Stevenson and Donna Harvey score a big win in the costume department with colorful creations that highlight appealing use of shape and texture. Company/stage manager Candice Fuller keeps everything on track in what must be a riotous backstage experience.

This high energy performance successfully combines popular culture and entertainment with classic fairy tale conventions. While some of the comical references will not be familiar to young children, there are plenty of jokes that make sense to the littlest audience members as the older crew snickers over references to the Kardashians, Paula Deen, and Lin-Manuel Miranda, among many more. The engaging actors capitalize on the improvisational aspect of the commedia tradition as they incorporate audience responses with quick-witted confidence. As the latest installment from the Spaghetti and Meatball Players, Hansel and Gretel is a welcome addition to the clever commedia tradition at Columbia Children’s Theatre.

Performances of The Commedia Hansel & Gretel at the Columbia Children’s Theatre will run through June 19 (Saturday at 10:30 a.m., 2:00 p.m., and 7:00 p.m.; and Sunday at 3:00 p.m.). Ticket prices are $10 for children three years old through adult, $8 for seniors and active duty military, and $5 for all tickets on Saturdays at 7:00 pm only. Tickets may be purchased from the box office (803-691-4548) or online at www.columbiachildrenstheatre.com.

-- Melissa Swick Ellington

Summer 6s - with Khris Coolidge

It’s summer in the city and sometimes during this time of year we find ourselves with the weird sensation of (gasp!) free time on our hands.  Rather than letting this phenomenon catch you unawares on some stray Saturday afternoon, Jasper has you covered with our summertime series alliteratively called the Summer Sixes in which we ask members of the Columbia arts community to share their favorite top 6 films, reads, albums, or TV series binges.  We’ll be bringing you this throughout the summer so pay attention to What Jasper Said to learn more about what your friends and neighbors like to do with their spare time, and maybe get some ideas of what to do with yours.

We're starting with Khris Coolidge, the cover artist for the current issue of Jasper that's out on the shelves right now. Here's what Khris had to say about his top 6 choices for Summertime Songs.

When I was a junior in high school, I took up the guitar, and the first songs I learned were by James Taylor, a popular singer/songwriter during the 1970s. I went on to sing his song “Rainy Day Man” at my high school talent show. I got a kiss on the cheek after that show, so I figured JT must know a thing or two about touching people’s hearts. However, not long after, I moved on to musicians like Bruce Springsteen and The Clash who thrashed out their songs, maybe not warming hearts so much as rocking people’s worlds. I never got back into JT, and eventually I put down my own guitar, but Taylor has kept on making music up through the present day. I’ve chosen six of his tunes that are likely not well known, but they speak to the thread that runs through JT’s work all these years: the significance of relationships with friends, family, lovers, children, and dogs.

• “Nobody But You” (Album: One Man Dog, 1971)

In this song JT expresses his appreciations for those who stuck with him through all his ups and down. He sings “You can talk about bands of angels/And they think you come with your soul in your hands to set their children free/But you talk about little bit of understanding, things that happen day to day/Some of you folks sure enough have been good to me.” One of the traditions at my workplace is starting Wednesday morning staff meetings with appreciations to colleagues for the work they’ve done and the support they’ve given. That’s a swell way to get a day going.

• Sarah Maria (Album: Gorilla, 1975)

Time to time Taylor has written about fatherhood, and this is a sweet ode to a daughter. In these few lines he captures a simple moment that captures a father’s heart: “Well you know about the sugar cane/That comes from way down south/She’s got one end in her hand/She’s got one end in her mouth/Sarah, Sarah Maria.”

• If I Keep My Heart Out Of Sight (Album: JT, 1977)

This is JT’s foray into lounge music, but he gets at the vulnerability that sometimes comes with loving someone when he sings “If I slip and tip my hand/I’m certain to scare you away.”

• “The Frozen Man” (Album: New Moon Shine, 1991)

This is Taylor’s tale of a man brought back to life after lying frozen for a century and re-fitted with some body parts, who discovers he would’ve rather stayed dead without his loved ones to live with. The frozen man sings “I thought it would be nice just to visit my grave, see what kind of tombstone I might have/I saw my wife and my daughter and it seemed so strange/both of them dead and gone from extreme old age/See here, when I die make sure I'm gone, don't leave 'em nothing to work on.”

• Another Day (Album: Hourglass, 1997)

“Wake up Suzy/Put your shoes on/Walk with me into this light/Finally this morning/I’m feeling whole again/ It was a hell of a night/Just to be with you by my side/Just to have you near in my sight/Just to walk a while in this light/Just to know that life goes on.” Who hasn’t had those tough times when we sought out the reassurance that comes with the mere presence of some trusted other?

• “Montana” (Album: Before This World, 2015)

JT’s lived the dream, had lots of success, but in this song he expresses the wisdom that it’s all about being with somebody you’re close to. “I'm not smart enough for this life I've been livin'/A little bit slow for the pace of the game/It's not I'm ungrateful for all I've been given/But nevertheless, just the same/I wish to my soul I was back in Montana/High on my mountain and deep in the snow/Up in my cabin, over the valley/Under the blankets with you.”

Through Flesh and Stone : An Interview with Sara Schneckloth By Mary Catherine Ballou

Through Flesh and Stone, the most recent exhibit by artist Sara Schneckloth, opened at 701 Center for Contemporary Art on Friday, June 10.  Inspired by Schneckloth’s visits to the canyons of New Mexico, Through Flesh and Stone features both drawings and an interactive installation, translating Schneckloth’s topographical studies into abstractly kinetic pieces that invite visitors to connect with the artwork on a multidimensional level.  Through Flesh and Stone animates Schneckloth’s interpretive drawings, challenging viewers to analyze and manipulate the fluid pieces inspired by Southwestern terrains.  As a professor of Studio Art at the University of South Carolina and an artist whose work has been featured internationally and nationally, Schneckloth kindly agreed to answer some questions regarding her vision and artwork in Through Flesh and Stone.

Jasper: What inspired you to create Through Flesh and Stone?

Schneckloth : I've made three long visits to New Mexico starting in Fall of 2015, each for several weeks.  During these trips, I have been drawing from the landscape, both literally and abstractly.  At the heart of my interest and excitement are the slot canyons throughout [the] northern part of the state.

So many elements of the landscape there excite me, endlessly - the color, the light, the surreal geology, the feeling of being in the midst of deep time that is still slowly unfolding.  It feels like all the senses are activated and enhanced while I'm there, not just vision, but touch, sound - my whole body is brought into how I take in the environment, and I feel actively changed by encounters with the land and the sky.

Through Flesh and Stone includes drawings I made in New Mexico and a new set of drawings from Massachusetts.  All the drawings are an exploration of the intersections of biology and geology, working through different interpretations and media.  In the interactive piece, I'm experimenting with creating the sensation of going through a Southwestern slot canyon, a tight and constricted space that is alive with color and texture.

Jasper: Please explain the interactive portion.

Schneckloth : The interactive piece is a 20-foot long, 12-foot high constricted tunnel made of spandex fabric. The drawings are put in motion and projected on to the large flexible screens that move with your touch as you traverse the tight space.  In addition to the tunnel piece, there will be over twenty drawings displayed.

Jasper: How do you think people will react to this exhibit?

Schneckloth : With the interactive canyon piece, my hope is for people to share in the sense of mystery that I experience in these spaces; whether it's fear, or wonder, or being put into a different state of awareness about time and the body.  The canyons, for me, are places to feel incredibly young, connected to processes that have endured for ages, beyond simple understanding.

Jasper: What mediums are featured in your pieces?

Schneckloth : The drawings combine ink, watercolor, colored pencil, graphite and wax on synthetic paper.  I combine these regularly to get surfaces and effects that don't immediately give themselves up to easy interpretation, but are rather layered and combined to create new effects.  For the video, I scanned and animated all the drawings, so as to create movement and flow.

Jasper: Do you have a favorite piece?

Schneckloth : I don't have a favorite as such, but I am excited about showing a series of ten new drawings that came from a residency at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art last month.  These are another take on the intersection of biology and geology, but coming from a different geographical perspective, looking at the industrial Northeast in contrast to the desert environment of the Southwest.  It's interesting to me to see the differences in palette and feel between the two sets of drawings.