Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Fundraising Increases
As Bumpspark* garners more and more grants and private donations, our fiscal sponsor Film/Video Arts sends out more of these thank you letters that patrons can use for tax purposes. If you would like your own letter, see how easy it is to donate.
Uncomfortable Silences
Mia Wallace: Don't you hate that?
Vincent Vega: What?
Mia Wallace: Uncomfortable silences. Why do we feel it's necessary to yak about bullshit in order to be comfortable?
Vincent Vega: I don't know. That's a good question.
– Quentin Tarantino “Pulp Fiction”
Playwright Edward Albee and the latest incarnation of Martha from his play, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? – Kathleen Turner – were at the Westport Country Playhouse last Monday night. The night was billed as an evening of conversation. “Be a fly on the wall” was the enticement on the flyer. I’ve used the same phrase in the Bumpspark* publicity.
The evening was pleasant enough. The venue is state of the art and yet constructed like an airy summer camp, rough-hewn and relaxed. I’ve been to public “conversations” before at many venues and the attempt to capture the extemporaneous usually slides into one of two other formats – the interview or the Q&A. In this case it was the latter.
Albee could bumpspark, if given the opportunity. I could tell that immediately. He was perfectly relaxed sitting in a plush leather chair in front of an audience of 300. That’s how it was set up, two living room chairs and an end table, all raised up like an alter. I wanted to run on stage and turn the two chairs around, away from the audience, in the hopes that the two occupants would forget us and really start talking.
Both Turner and Albee alluded a few times to their car ride on the way to the venue, to a dialogue behind the wheel that “they didn’t want to bore us with.” This was the real exchange that we would never hear.
Kathleen Turner might be able to bumpspark, but not in this kind of format. She was anxious from the moment they came out on stage. The uncomfortable silences killed her. Albee relaxed in the silences. He was only bothered by her discomfort. Turner is a brilliant actress. She trembles with energy and intellect in person, but she has been in the Hollywood system too long. Her internal editor, her PR man, looms over her every word. She's too afraid of what she might say to be involved in this kind of experiment.
Albee was ready to ponder, leaning back and thinking and grabbing questions from the air. Less than fifteen minutes into the event, Turner couldn’t take it anymore. “Let’s get questions from the audience.” And the opportunity was gone.
If the two of them were counterparts on a Bumpspark* episode, in an empty Broadway theater, or at one of their homes, and we had their trust, and they trusted the cinematographers, then maybe, with enough time, we could get to a real conversation.
The best moment of the evening was, of course, the most uncomfortable. Most of the questions from the audience were softballs. “Do you have any advice for young actors?” “What is your favorite of your plays?” Then an older woman stood up and declared that she was an elitist, that she “got” Albee’s plays, and that she was frustrated by fellow audience members who did not get them, i.e. the dumb people.
The audience did not like her immediately. I was more amazed by her lack of self-awareness and humor. But what a catalyst! Connecticut Post reporter Charles Walsh was apparently in the audience and mentioned this incident in his column. He was proud of the audience who booed her back into her seat. I wanted her to moderate the discussion. Forget political correctness - some of the most interesting responses came out of this momentary heat. Albee was appalled at the idea of one correct response to his plays.
“No audience member sees the same play,” he declared.
Turner found another good tangent during those initial, too few moments of contemplation. She brought up the collective organism that is the audience – how people go through a shared emotional experience in a theater that they rarely get anywhere else these days.
I found it ironic that while Albee and Turner were talking about the energy of a play, how anything can happen during a night’s performance, they were avoiding that evening’s goal – to find a similar energy in improvised banter.
In the end, Albee and Turner were pressed for time. They had to be concise. They had to be polite. They had no time to reflect. And thus we never really got to any worthy destinations.
I was very saddened by the loss of George Carlin this past week. I’m positive that he would have been a great counterpart for an episode. I’m anxious to finish the fundraising and get to the shooting.
Please donate.
Vincent Vega: What?
Mia Wallace: Uncomfortable silences. Why do we feel it's necessary to yak about bullshit in order to be comfortable?
Vincent Vega: I don't know. That's a good question.
– Quentin Tarantino “Pulp Fiction”
Playwright Edward Albee and the latest incarnation of Martha from his play, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? – Kathleen Turner – were at the Westport Country Playhouse last Monday night. The night was billed as an evening of conversation. “Be a fly on the wall” was the enticement on the flyer. I’ve used the same phrase in the Bumpspark* publicity.
The evening was pleasant enough. The venue is state of the art and yet constructed like an airy summer camp, rough-hewn and relaxed. I’ve been to public “conversations” before at many venues and the attempt to capture the extemporaneous usually slides into one of two other formats – the interview or the Q&A. In this case it was the latter.
Albee could bumpspark, if given the opportunity. I could tell that immediately. He was perfectly relaxed sitting in a plush leather chair in front of an audience of 300. That’s how it was set up, two living room chairs and an end table, all raised up like an alter. I wanted to run on stage and turn the two chairs around, away from the audience, in the hopes that the two occupants would forget us and really start talking.
Both Turner and Albee alluded a few times to their car ride on the way to the venue, to a dialogue behind the wheel that “they didn’t want to bore us with.” This was the real exchange that we would never hear.
Kathleen Turner might be able to bumpspark, but not in this kind of format. She was anxious from the moment they came out on stage. The uncomfortable silences killed her. Albee relaxed in the silences. He was only bothered by her discomfort. Turner is a brilliant actress. She trembles with energy and intellect in person, but she has been in the Hollywood system too long. Her internal editor, her PR man, looms over her every word. She's too afraid of what she might say to be involved in this kind of experiment.
Albee was ready to ponder, leaning back and thinking and grabbing questions from the air. Less than fifteen minutes into the event, Turner couldn’t take it anymore. “Let’s get questions from the audience.” And the opportunity was gone.
If the two of them were counterparts on a Bumpspark* episode, in an empty Broadway theater, or at one of their homes, and we had their trust, and they trusted the cinematographers, then maybe, with enough time, we could get to a real conversation.
The best moment of the evening was, of course, the most uncomfortable. Most of the questions from the audience were softballs. “Do you have any advice for young actors?” “What is your favorite of your plays?” Then an older woman stood up and declared that she was an elitist, that she “got” Albee’s plays, and that she was frustrated by fellow audience members who did not get them, i.e. the dumb people.
The audience did not like her immediately. I was more amazed by her lack of self-awareness and humor. But what a catalyst! Connecticut Post reporter Charles Walsh was apparently in the audience and mentioned this incident in his column. He was proud of the audience who booed her back into her seat. I wanted her to moderate the discussion. Forget political correctness - some of the most interesting responses came out of this momentary heat. Albee was appalled at the idea of one correct response to his plays.
“No audience member sees the same play,” he declared.
Turner found another good tangent during those initial, too few moments of contemplation. She brought up the collective organism that is the audience – how people go through a shared emotional experience in a theater that they rarely get anywhere else these days.
I found it ironic that while Albee and Turner were talking about the energy of a play, how anything can happen during a night’s performance, they were avoiding that evening’s goal – to find a similar energy in improvised banter.
In the end, Albee and Turner were pressed for time. They had to be concise. They had to be polite. They had no time to reflect. And thus we never really got to any worthy destinations.
I was very saddened by the loss of George Carlin this past week. I’m positive that he would have been a great counterpart for an episode. I’m anxious to finish the fundraising and get to the shooting.
Please donate.
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Big Blue Bumpspark*
Peter Gabriel fans know frustration. Innovative work takes time and there was a ten-year wait between his 1992 album Us and his last album, Up, in 2002. Gabriel’s distribution label, Real World Records, released an album today that is more than ten years in the making. Gabriel’s state of the art Real World Studios in Wiltshire England were conceived as a lab where artists from around the world could bumpspark their talents. Big Blue Ball collects the best results from encounters that took place in the early Nineties. It has taken them this long to sort through all the material that was produced.
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Harmonius Tension
The New York Times posted a review of last evening's Raising Sand concert at Madison Square Garden and the ongoing bumpspark of bluegrass and Led. Alison Krauss and Robert Plant’s “chemistry springs partly from contrast; even the most harmonious moments convey a subtle, fruitful tension.”
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Good Coordination
People keep calling Bumpspark* a reality show. I can accept that. The spark I’m looking for is similar to the energy the ABC producers of Dancing With The Stars or Wifeswap hope to find in strange bedfellows. I just want, rather than another wardrobe malfunction or a catfight between a young Republican and a Wiccan, something a little more enriching. Congratulations to Kristi Yamaguchi though. Who would have thought that a graceful Olympic Gold Medalist could also dance?
Giants
Do you remember all those comparisons between Lincoln and JFK? Oswald fired from a warehouse and hid in a theater; Booth fired in the theater and ran to a warehouse. Will coincidences never cease? Well it turns out Lincoln is also a good foil for Darwin. To start, they were both born on the same day. Author David Contosta examines what would have been one ‘ell of a bumpspark in his new book Rebel Giants this Tuesday.
Crossing Over
Wasn’t I right? Raising Sands turned out to be one of the best albums last year. Well, call it crossover, call it a mashup, or call it a bumpspark, two more of our chart toppers, from completely different sections of the music store, are seeing what 1+1 gets you. Folk rocker Josh Ritter has been appearing in public with gentile classical violinist Hilary Hahn.
By the way, are there any more music stores? Strawberries? Sam Goody? Tower? Damn. Talk about a revolution.
By the way, are there any more music stores? Strawberries? Sam Goody? Tower? Damn. Talk about a revolution.
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
Granted
Bumpspark* just received a substantial amount of funding from Western Connecticut State University's annual President’s Initiatives Fund. This year's initiative was any project that "advances the learning opportunities that differences can create."
WestConn President James W. Schmotter said, "Project Bumpspark presents an opportunity to develop a media venue that will permit the sort of cross-disciplinary dialogue that is all too rare today, both on university campuses and in the broader society. Because of the deluge of information and specialization that characterizes all fields of endeavor in 21st century America, we all tend to live and to think in our own cultural and intellectual silos. These can be comfortable, but they are also constraining. Bumpspark* provides an intriguing way to break down those silos and address the big, challenging questions we all face today.”
Couldn't have summed it up better, but here is a press release anyway.
WestConn President James W. Schmotter said, "Project Bumpspark presents an opportunity to develop a media venue that will permit the sort of cross-disciplinary dialogue that is all too rare today, both on university campuses and in the broader society. Because of the deluge of information and specialization that characterizes all fields of endeavor in 21st century America, we all tend to live and to think in our own cultural and intellectual silos. These can be comfortable, but they are also constraining. Bumpspark* provides an intriguing way to break down those silos and address the big, challenging questions we all face today.”
Couldn't have summed it up better, but here is a press release anyway.
Missed
On March 19, the world lost Arthur C. Clarke, a man never afraid to think out loud with his imagination. He was on my original list of what if, Bumpspark* counterparts: someone who could no doubt converse across many subjects and who's train of thought could be brought out by unexpected conversation and recorded for posterity. A missed opportunity.
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
New Year
One last thing for today. I sent out a year-end letter on Bumpspark* and posted it on the site at the end of last month. Check it.
Andrew
I met Andrew Hoover in Connecticut. He’s a singer/songwriter. I realize we all know one of those, but Andrew already has his own sound ("Nu-Blues") and he rehearses more than anyone I know. I believe he is the real thing.
Saving Face
I joined Facebook. Or rather, I've been subsumed by Facebook. I opened the box, I admit that. I voluntarily put up a page over the holidays and left the default blue question mark in cyberspace as an avatar for all that I am. (It was probably truer than any of the modifications I was to make afterwards.) Then I left it alone, and didn’t think of it again, until that first email came. “So and so added you as a friend on Facebook. We need to find out if you are, in fact, friends with so and so.” In fact? The question had the tone of a prosecutor in it. I now know why.
I’m not as closed off as Jerry on Seinfeld, who admitted he could not handle more than Elaine, George and Kramer in his life, but I am also not one of Malcolm Gladwell’s Connectors either. Everyone of the Facebook generation seems to be one of these “people with a special gift for bringing the world together.” Or maybe that is the design of the software, or, as Gladwell would put it, the virus. The first few hours of having two friends while everyone else has a median of, say, 142, has probably been enough to send some high schoolers into therapy. So you get to work, seeing how fast you can get six degrees from everybody else.
Facebook did not exist when I was at NYU. Before all this, I thought it was an accomplishment that I still got together a few times a year with eight friends from my freshman year dorm. My older sister and parents and their friends always thought this was amazing, especially as some of the eight got married and some of the eight didn’t. (Guess which of us are on Facebook.) Wizened family members will tell you that you’ll be able to count your best friends on your hand in the end. I have yet to break 100 on Facebook, and I have a lot of default blue question marks amongst them. I’m ultimately fine with that, because I’d rather they were spending the time with their kids.
If you went or are going to college in this millennium though, it is not uncommon to have two hundred of your fellow undergrads in your Facebook roster. I’m under no delusion that they are all, in fact, the best of friends. Messaging back and forth with one of the youngest on my list, I asked him about one very attractive face in his 250 plus. He said he had no idea who she was. “Cute though, isn’t she?”
Even if these people aren’t all truly friends, they are now connected. They can reach each other when and if they have something to say and that is quite something. Facebook was started at Harvard, where it literally pays to know everyone. But as Facebook zambonis the hockey rink, you might do as well staying in touch with your lab partner at Ithaca as much as anyone at the Ivys. As important as who you know now is how many you know, because you can’t predict anymore where the person you might need is going to come from. I can only imagine getting in touch with everyone I graduated with at Tisch with the click of one button and that is my loss.
There are some odd side effects though. The ego’s endless fascination with questionnaires quickly has you spilling intimate details as potentially dangerous as your social security number out on the lawn. Facebook is PR as pastime, or procrastination. One friend’s Facebook page became the nexus for pictures of her sister’s drunken shenanigans at college and her aunt’s birthday greetings and her coworkers’ gossip. This is the glimpse of chaotic freedom that ingenuity gives us right before the lawyers get involved. While having lunch with three of those eight friends from NYU recently, one of them described Facebook with another Seinfeld reference. “Worlds are colliding.” What happens when your boss decides you don’t have enough work to do because your Facebook page is so active? What if she fires you after your cousin posts video of your “sick day?”
And then there is that moment when you either find, or God help you, are found by, someone with whom you don’t ever really want to reconnect. It cools the whole experience like a flush during a shower. You realize how naked you are out there in cyberspace. I wonder what happens when the average relationship goes sour. Can you remove someone from your friend list? Does it then actually post this information on your timeline for everyone to read? “Jim is no longer friends with Carol. They, in fact, hate each other’s guts.”
I think I’m pretty much done with Facebook as a friend corral. I never became one for joining the Oregon Trail or the ninja battles or any of the other applications/spam. It is fun to see how people are doing, like bumping into one another on the street. I’d still rather get together in person and play Scrabble over Scrabulous. With the overwhelming pressure of the holidays and final papers at the end of last semester, Facebook became an easy, convenient distraction when I just couldn’t think anymore. Now it is resolution time, the beginning of my thesis year, and I’m going to do my best to utilize my laptop for the reasons it was purchased.
John
As long as I’m talking about creative people that I know, let me bring up two others. John Girouard
is an artist I met in my home away from home, the White Mountains of New Hampshire. He creates paintings with hot wax on canvas and the results reflect light like stained glass. You really have to see the outcome in person, but he posted his patented process online.
Nami
For five weeks in the summer of 1999, I crossed Europe by train and backpack. I recommend traveling alone; you are more approachable to strangers. It is easier to meet both fellow travelers and the locals. Instead of checking off a list of postcard destinations, they take you in directions you didn’t expect. You really travel.
Towards the end of that trip, I did meet my friend Nami who was working in the fashion industry in Milan at the time. The two of us took a train to Barcelona and met another good friend, Mike Bradley. Then we climbed the towers of Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia and ate tapas. Don’t we look relaxed?
I first met Nami when she was studying fashion at the Rhode Island School of Design. I went to see her senior year show and was really impressed with how complete a vision she had. RISD is such a great school. There was a big house party after the show and I remember having such a good time.
Anyway, Nami emailed me today because she just released a new clothing line. It looks brilliant.
Kudos Nam.
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