Home

  • Essential Reading: The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War by Jeff Sharlet

    Read this book. Highly recommended. 

    That’s the summary and the sum. 

    I’m a big admirer of Jeff Sharlet. Have been for awhile. That admiration deepened with his latest book The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War. (That’s not an affiliate link if you’re wondering.) 

    411G8vIdhrL

    Sharlet likes to get right into the middle and the depths of the topics he’s exploring. He certainly does here as he walks the walk and talks the talk with a number of folks in the MAGA world seeking to understand just how close the embers of their smoldering hatred is to igniting. 

    Here’s a quote from the blurb that comes close to doing this book justice:

    Exploring a geography of grief and uncertainty in the midst of plague and rising fascism, The Undertow is a necessary reckoning with our precarious present that brings to light a decade of American failures as well as a vision for American possibility.

    Make no mistake. While Sharlet’s style makes for more than engaging reading the subject matter is not easy to swallow. But it’s a medicine that I think we all need to take if we want to understand what’s afflicting our national psyche in this era beyond the media moments both social and otherwise.

    As someone who thinks we’re already in the early stages of this country’s next Civil War I would argue the word “slow” in the title might have more aptly applied 7-10 years ago. That said, the stories and moments Sharlet relates leave no doubt that the divisions we face are so deep that the chances to bridge them are few and far between and perhaps already out of reach.

    Again, I highly recommend the book as I do the rest of Sharlet’s work. If you haven’t seen The Family on Netflix. I’d encourage you to check that out as well as Sharlet’s other work.  

  • Amazing Story: His Software Sang the Words of God. Then It Went Silent

    Every day is a good day when you learn something new. And this amazing story certainly offers something new to me. 

     

    TropeTrainer was software that had been taught to sing the words of God.

    Then it went silent.

    A developer created TropeTrainer, software that helped prepare kids for their bar and bat mitzvahs. He passed away. Due to advances on computers his software abruptly stopped running on new or updated computers and much was lost. 

    CleanShot 2023 04 04 at 07 03 51 2x

     

    Most magical was the voice synthesis, which featured an adjustable timbre and a playback speed, Buchler boasted on his website, that could be set “from unbearably slow to comfortably fast.”

    In a wink to exasperated Torah tutors, he devised the slogan “Software With Infinite Patience.”

    That brief description and excerpts here risk trivializing this story. So, go read the story. 

  • The American Catechism Comes To An End

    The Rule of Law.

    We are a country of laws not men.

    No one is above the law.

    If you’re of a certain age you can recite those tenets of the American Catechism as easily as drawing breath. I say of a certain age because I’m not sure they drill those fundamentals into the brains of youngsters anymore.

    Unknown 16

    On the one hand, that’s too bad. On the other, maybe not so much. Those truths, never self-evident, weren’t much more than man-made myths anyway. We’ve been mauling those myths since we made them. They’ve always bordered on being a bromide. Meant to comfort. Meant to explain without the need of any real explanation. There’s always been a finger tipping the balance on the scales of justice and Lady Justice has been known to take a peek from under that blindfold now and again.

    The magic behind any myth is the buy-in. When the customers aren’t buying anymore, well that leads to bankruptcy, dissolution, or disaster. Unless of course you’re a bank.

    “Indications” are that the indcitment of the decaying orange turd is going to turn into the buttressing of our current American pathology as the media rakes in the ratings while spewing out speculation. I’m surprised they aren’t selling ads at Super Bowl rates as I’m sure they’ll follow the decaying orange turd’s plane to NYC like they followed OJ’s Bronco. But there’s not going to be anything resembling what we’ve come to think of as justice in any of this when all is said and done. I’m guessing we’ll see some sort of deal, artful or not, in the name of preserving our sanity for the sake of healing the country.

    I know. Try not to laugh at that last part. Tough to heal a country that tore itself in two almost two centuries ago and has reopened those old wounds now that the bandages have been ripped off again.

    We’ve accelerated the mauling of the myths and cratering of the catechism. But there’s a silver lining. There’s no longer a need to bend a knee and recite the litanies. Instead use that energy to find one of the increasing number of lawyers who don’t practice all of the supposed rules of their professsion if you get in trouble. Turns out those rules and regs were just myths also.

    So many compare favorably our sacred sayings against the clichéd catcalls condeming third-world countries when political fortunes rise and fall. Well now that we’ve dispensed with another of those long held “we’re better than the rest of the world” legacies about the peaceful transfer of power, I’d put us pretty damned close to admission into that thrid-world circle and getting closer every day. We haven’t accepted that “failed peaceful transfer of power” reality and we’re still clinging like kudzu to that myth as we live through its continuing aftermath.

    Bottom line. We’ve been had. We’ve let ourselves be had. We used to like that we’ve been had. We used to live with that quite comfortably just like we lived with most other myths and magical sayings that allowed us to sleep at night. Some are pissed off about it. Others are trying to pretend we can return to past like you can return to bed pulling the covers over your head to avoid the day a little longer.

    The day is either here or damned near.

    And yeah. I’m pissed.

  • Ink Diaries: And the Reviews Start Coming In

    The cast did a glorious job at Friday night’s opening of Ink at Playhouse on the Square. They received a well deserved standing ovation. And now we’ve got our first review in from the Memphis Flyer, headlined Murdoch’s Legacy: Fast-Paced Ink Delivers at Circuit Playhouse. 

    The Circuit cast is solid and the production smartly executed. It’s entertaining from the get-go and stirs up enough issues to provoke discussions long after the final bows.

    P1040603

     

    Check it out. 

     

  • Ink Diaries: And We’re Open

    And we’re open. 

    P1040673

    The cast did an amazing job in this final push and received a much deserved standing ovation. We’re off an running with The Playhouse on the Square production of James Graham’s Ink.

  • Ink Diaries: Closing in on Opening

    We’re four days from Opening Night. Still a lot of work to do but getting ready to break some legs. 

     

    IMG 1116

  • Ink Diaries: Today in Tech Rehearsal Land

  • Ink Diaries: Push

    Push. 

    1 DDsOx6D3oe8ZxcA OTfIDA

    Push harder. 

  • Ink Diaries: Wrestling the Doubt Demons

    I’m not sure which summons the doubt demons more: Thinking over your work the next morning in the cold light of day or watching that work unfold standing in the back of a darkened theatre. One moment you’re thrilled with how you’re telling a story on stage. The next you’re wondering if you’ve lost your mind.

    IMG 1094

    Self-doubt is an affliction most artists recognize. You see it in every mirror. No one questions you more than you. No one argues with you louder than you. And generally, no one has any idea but you. It’s a lonely, creepy, dark place.

    I’ve reached that point, now that we’re rehearsing on stage, where I’m living and breathing more doubt than air. My oxygen intake will decrease in fits and starts over the next 10 days while the doubt swells. Things start to take shape and become searingly solid on stage and in my brain I’m thinking “wow, that’s good” simultanesouly with what I did with that moment just sucks. I dream the show at night and wake up in a cold sweat with anxieity over a moment I’ve just dream watched.

    Fortunately I’ve learned better how to face those demons. I generally trust my gut and my instincts. But every now and then my gut ties itself up into a knot of Gordian proportions. That tangle tightens when you look to you collaborators for some sign of affirmation one way or the other and the answer you see in their eyes is “you’re the boss.”

    Well, yeah. That’s true.

    But you both long for and hope against pushback.

    The dreams are another thing. If they keep landing on the same moments it means I need to reexamine that work. Or I just ate the wrong thing before falling asleep.

    On the other hand, if those moments of self-doubt don’t creep in I would know I’m just pretending. Decisions beget decisions. Bold ones beget bigger moments of doubt and bigger chances of success. And bigger demons.

    So. I’m back in the river of doubt. In a paradox, it feels good and right to be here again, swirling throught the rapids, simultaneously wondering if I’m just all wet and have hit my head on a rock

  • Ink Diaries: Home

    We moved into the theatre last night. Feels like home. 

    IMG 1066