Straight Up | Jan Herman

Arts, Media & Culture News with 'tude

Whom Do You Believe? Clapper or Snowden?

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You won’t see Edward Snowden being interviewed on American TV. But you will see the nation’s top intelligence official James R. Clapper Jr., all over the news this morning accusing him of damaging national security.

What Martin Luther King Jr. Said About Jazz

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Spike Wilner writes the electronic newsletter for Smalls Jazz Club, where he’s the congenial manager and one of the owners. The newsletter is always informative. Never sinks to mere PR. Which makes it one of the best around. (Wilner doesn’t just write the newsletter. He’s a first-class jazz pianist. Click the photo or this link […]

Amiri Baraka Has Died, a Remembrance

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Amiri Baraka’s obituary in the NY Times this morning mentioned his first contact with Allen Ginsberg. …to whom, in the puckish spirit of the times, he had written a letter on toilet paper reading, “Are you for real?” (“I’m for real, but I’m tired of being Allen Ginsberg,” came the reply, on what, its recipient […]

Above the Wintry Fields

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The poem “A Murmuration of Starlings” is by Heathcote Williams, the narration by Alan Cox. After a visit to the Wordsworths in the Lake District, Coleridge caught a glimpse from his stagecoach Of a gigantic flock of birds as it swooped, rose then fell Above the frozen, wintry fields of a passing farm. It was […]

How a Brilliant Writer Got in His Own Way

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I’m told Ben Hecht was recently inducted into the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame. That could be why I was asked to write a piece about him for a special “Chicago Issue” of the Chicago Quarterly Review, but something tells me it was pure coincidence. I also have a feeling the Hall of Fame won’t […]

In NYC: Catching Up With Peter Schumann
and the Bread and Puppet Theater

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Peter Schumann: The Shatterer is the first solo museum exhibition of Bread and Puppet Theater founder and director Peter Schumann. The exhibition opened in November 2013 as part of the first season in the museum’s newly expanded galleries. It marks the 50th anniversary of the theater company and introduces New York audiences to a largely […]

‘The Red Dagger’ by Heathcote Williams

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London’s symbol for the hub of global finance in the City (Shown on the city’s flag to convey heraldic grandeur) Comes from a blood-soaked dagger that killed the rebel, Wat Tyler, For Tyler had challenged London on behalf of the poor. The dagger survives and is on display at Fishmonger’s Hall In the City’s secretive […]

‘Aletheia,’ a Work-in-Progress

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“Aletheia” is chamber music theater work about a musician in a dressing room preparing to perform for a gala benefit for an opera house that is taking place in the courtyard below her window. Though excited at first, she can’t bring herself to go down and perform. As her sense of isolation increases, she becomes, […]

A Thanksgiving Team: Burroughs & Mustill, Redux

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A Straight Up tradition continues. William S. Burroughs’s words of gratitude on Thanksgiving Day paired with a couple of collages by Norman O. Mustill. Look and listen. It’s delish . . . Thanks for the wild turkey and the passenger pigeons, destined to be shit out through wholesome American guts — thanks for a Continent […]

Gay ‘Kit’ Marlowe: Poet, Spy, Elizabethan Proto-punk

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LATEST UPDATE: Sept. 1 — “Killing Kit” is to be staged in a London try out. The production opens at The Cockpit on Sept. 21. FURTHER UPDATE: Feb. 15 — The reading came off well, I’m told. Somebody in The Cockpit audience tweeted: “Beautiful, meaty, dangerous Elizabethan play for today’s Elizabethans. Real writing. Great night.” […]

Two Poe Shows — One at the Morgan, One on Paper

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Not being a Poe man myself, I asked a friend who happens to be an avid Poe man, how he would describe him. His reply — “The best writer, the best bad writer, America ever produced” — was pretty much a capsule preview of Charles McGrath’s excellent feature in this morning’s NY Times about the […]

Heathcote Williams: ‘My Dad and My Uncle’

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Words by Heathcote Williams. Narration and montage by Alan Cox. Written upon learning that WWI centenary Remembrance plans are to be given £50 million by the UK government.— BBC News, 11 October 2012 My Dad and my Uncle were in World War One. At least they were in it, but not in it: Conscripted but […]

Sight Unseen, a Plug for Godfrey Reggio’s ‘Visitors’

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2002: “Naqoyqatsi,” meaning “life as war,” was the third in Reggio’s qatsi trilogy. 1988: “Powaqqatsi,” meaning “life in transformation,” was the second. 1982: “Koyaanisqatsi,” meaning “life out of balance,” was the first. Reggio’s latest, “Visitors,” with another score by Philip Glass, will be released in 2014.

He Had a Dream, But His Speech Was Hardly Noticed

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Given all the self-congratulation of the 50th anniversary celebration marking the historic significance of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, you’d think its importance had been noted at the time, especially by the news media. Well, Jess Bravin has news for you. The day before King gave the speech on the steps […]

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