lies like truth

I wonder if people have always been fascinated with bad art or whether it’s elevation to rockstar status is a symptom of our own particular post-ironic times?

My question is prompted by recent articles in the media on both sides of the Atlantic about the Scottish weaver-turned-poet, William MacGonagall.

“MacGonagall has long been celebrated as Britain’s worst poet, inspiring satirical tributes to his doggerel awfulness from Spike Milligan, Monty Python and even the Muppets,” writes Esther Addley in The Guardian.

Now, it seems that the poet who was once pelted with fruit during a reading and who his own appreciation society call “without talent”, is in demand. A collection of MacGonagall’s poems, on A3 newspaper-style leaflets the poet is believed to have printed, was auctioned yesterday at an Edinburgh saleroom for £6,600 (about $13,000).

This is hardly a vast amount of money in manuscript auction terms when you consider that J K Rowling’s limited edition handwritten The Tales of Beedle Bard sold for $3.98 million in 2007 and an original copy of the Magna Carta sold for $21.3 million. But it’s still quite a sum for the work of an artist who is universally pilloried.

MacGonagall’s cultural notoriety today isn’t by any means an anomaly. For some reason, human beings love bad art. You only have to look at the sold-out performances of such music ensembles as the UK’s Really Terrible Orchestra and the Bay Area’s Porn Orchestra (that performs its ear-splitting works to projections of equally inept old porn movies — yay! two bad artforms for the price of one!) not to mention the cult status of the films of Ed Wood to see just how passionate people can be about bad art.

Awful music, films, paintings etc inspire us because they make art feel less remote and high falutin’. Bad art puts artists on the same playing field as everyone else. And that seems to be comforting, in a perverse kind of way, to many people.

But I’m not sure how I feel about the hype surrounding mediocrity. I must admit that there’s a special place in my heart for MacGonagall’s terrible “Bridge of Tay” ode, mostly because my father used to recite it at the top of his voice in a hammy Scots accent every now and again when I was a kid.

But while reciting bad poetry is good for the soul in the sense that it makes us giggle, it’s not great for culture as a whole. If we continue to make a big fuss of bad artists, then discerning quality from crap might become quite challenging for many people.The war against mediocrity must continue on all fronts.

In general, the theatre doesn’t do blood well. It’s somehow pretty hard for live audiences to suspend their disbelief at the sight of a guy sticking a retractable plastic knife or blunt-tipped sword into the gap between an adversary’s left side and his arm and watching a load of radioactive-looking ketchup spurt out from the fake wound. The cinema does gore so much more believably.

That’s why the most engrossing plays and compelling productions so often use language to describe bloody scenes of violence and death or use sound and or/visuals in an artful way to convey grizzly actions. The Greeks understood this and kept fratricide, matricide and all other kinds of -cide in the wings, leaving the horror to our imaginations.

Every now and again, though, I come across a theatre production which manages to cause the bile to rise in our throats by finding a way to make gore work on stage. But even when these effects succeed, more often than not, they make us laugh as much as they shock us. This is frequently the case with the sheep’s eyeballs and severed rubber heads used by San Francisco’s grand guignol company, Thrillpeddlers.

At the weekend, however, I caught a production of Tracy Letts’ Bug at San Francisco Playhouse which not only managed to put blood center stage, but also made it truly stomach-churning.

The drama pretty much reads like a knock off of every classic thriller in the movie cannon from The Fly to Psycho. The play tells the story of Agnes, a down-and-out junkie alcaholic who takes in a tortured young man Peter, who says he’s on the run from the military. The two of them spend their days holed up in a seedy midwestern motel room. In between trying to keep Agnes’ abusive ex-husband at bay, the two of them develop a crazy phobia about tiny insects invading their bodies.

When Gabriel Marin as Peter suddenly takes off his shirt to reveal a chest lacerated with wounds like he’s some kind of latterday St Sebastian, responses from the audience range from sharp intakes of breath to uncomfortable laughter to cries. It’s quite an effect. Marin’s completely off-kielter (without going over the top) behavior makes us believe that he’s suffering from some terrible inner torment. The wounds are a manifestation of the turmoil he’s experiencing inside. It’s truly frightening.

It’s so rare to see blood done well on stage. Now at least I know it’s not impossible. This clever marriage of taut writing, compelling stage makeup and brilliant acting may is very hard to achieve though. As the saying goes, kids: don’t try this at home.

Some pilgrimages must be made. I spent Thursday night three and a half hours down the California coast in San Luis Obispo listening to Chanticleer, the renowned San Francisco-based a capella male vocal ensemble, perform music from the Mission period.

Over the next couple of weeks, the Grammy-winning group is undertaking a tour of eight of the 21 missions on the California coast’s legendary Camino Real, including two concerts in San Francisco’s Mission Dolores, where it made its inaugural public appearance in 1978. I’ll be witnessing the first of those concerts tomorrow evening. If it’s as mesmerizing as the San Luis Obispo soiree, then I’m in for a treat.

Hearing the group perform songs by such 18th century west coast musical luminaries as Juan Bautisto Sancho and Manuel de Sumaya in the very buildings in which this music was originally played is what makes the concerts truly special. Chanticleer’s clarity of tone and gentle expressionism probably has something to do with the magic too.

For the story behind the tour, check out my article in last Sunday’s Los Angeles Times.

Last weekend, American conceptual artist Spencer Tunick photographed around 1,800 naked people lying prostrate on the bleachers at the Viennese soccer stadium that will host the Euro 2008 soccer final on June 29.

Tunick’s body of work comprises many projects involving large numbers of naked people posing together in unlikely surroundings. One of the artist’s latest endeavors took place on a glacier in Switzerland, where 600 people stripped off in temperatures of about 10 Celsius (50 F) last August. His biggest project to date involved 18,000 people in Mexico City last year. In the coming months, he’ll be shooting hundreds of nudes in Ireland. So much for Catholic schoolgirl modesty.

It’s remarkable that so many people flock to participate in Tunick’s massive projects when you consider the uncompromising demands he makes on his “models.” Yet people must find the process of stripping off en masse so wonderfully life-affirming, communal-spirited and plain bonkers that they leap in. I know I would if the artist ever came to the Bay Area to undertake a project. Seems like that won’t be happening anytime soon though. According to a Reuters story about the artist’s soccer stadium session the other day, Tunick has trouble persuading U.S. authorities to go along with his plans for photo shoots (Down with Puritans.) As a result, he works much more frequently in other parts of the world than over here. Though, it seems to me that San Francisco would be them perfect place for a Tunick installation. The city is renowned for its nude bicycle brigade and naked fun run competitors. It would be great to see him bring thousands of people together for a shoot on Golden Gate Bridge.

Until that day arrives, I guess I’ll have to make do with his photographs. There’s something so arresting about the end-product of Tunick’s work — all those frail, flushed bodies facing off against the elements; against something much bigger than themselves.

Somehow inbetween launching a production company, performing his latest monologue Citizen Josh all over the country, planning a new TV/Internet program and starting work on his next solo show, Josh Kornbluth has managed to find the time to revamp his website and join the blogosphere.

I don’t know how the man does it.

Most people know the Bay Area-based performer for his politically-charged solo shows and the Sony Pictures Classics feature Haiku Tunnel which caused a stir at The Sundance Festival in 2001. But beyond all these worthy achievements, Kornbluth will always have a special place in my heart for his enthusiastic and quite lovely oboe playing. I had the pleasure of playing klezmer oboe duets with him a few months ago on the opening night of Citizen Josh at Berkley Repertory Theatre. It’s not an experience I’ll forget in a hurry.

At any rate, a warm welcome to a fellow blogger.

One of the loveliest aspects of being an arts & culture — as opposed to entertainment — journalist is that I don’t often have to pursue famous people for interviews. I reserve only the highest admiration for writers who not only manage to secure meetings and phonecalls with celebrities but then also somehow go on to write articles and books that don’t merely repeat the dull stuff about these “A” listers that the public has read a thousand times. Doing these things requires amazing skills and creativity and very few people are up to the job in my opinion.

Every now and again, though, even in my blissfully celeb-free line of work, I’ll be forced to put myself through the charade of writing flattering emails to press agents, managers, producers, label reps and a whole host of other flunkies in order to request an interview with someone who is either mildly or very well known.

The process is frequently painful. One often ends up making inumerable phone calls and sending countless emails before tracking down the right contact person. (“Oh, you should have said you were a reporter for a British magazine when you called three weeks ago — we only handle Mr. Z’s U.S. media requests…”) And even when I’ve zoned in on the correct target, I’ll either never hear from them again, or be turned down flat. (“Mr. Z isn’t doing press right now.”) It’s particularly frustrating when the PR agent or whomever decides that they’ll “pass” because the client in question doesn’t have anything in particular to promote at the time of calling. (“Mr. Z won’t be touring again until 2009 following the release of his next movie/album/book. Why don’t you try again then?”) This is annoying because more often than not, my request for an interview has nothing to do with whatever the person has to promote.

On some occasions, though, I have been pleasantly surprised by how easy the process of obtaing phone- or face-time with luminaries can be. OK, I’ve never tried to obtain interviews with the likes of Madonna or Gwyneth Paltrow. But getting to speak to several other famous — albeit slightly less starry — individuals in recent years like movie director Mike Leigh, the late author Douglas Adams and musician Tricky simply required the exchange of one or two emails. And only this morning, I had uncharacteristically friendly and responsive conversations with the PR agent and personal manager of a pop music icon whose name I shan’t reveal here for fear of jinxing the possibility of this person agreeing to a phone conversation for a story I’m writing about singing for The Guardian newspaper.

I guess the celebrity system does have its loopholes after all.

Why are human beings so obsessed with completing unfinished artworks? The world’s desk drawers must sequester untold numbers of semi-developed plays, novels, paintings and string quartets. Yet for some reason, the idea of the unfinished artwork is a source of unbridled fascination for many of us.

Some of these artistic fragments are masterpieces in their own right. The two existing movements of Franz Schubert’s famous 1822 Symphony No. 8 in B minor (popularly known as The Unfinished Symphony) are a case in point, as is Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales. But more often than not, we’re unwilling to accept unfinished works for what they are. We want completion. Luckily for humankind, there’s always someone desperate for the chance to add the finishing touches to an unfinished work. But whether these efforts do anything positive for the original creator’s posthumous reputation is up for debate.

At their best, these acts of completion capture the spirit of the original fragment while making a special feature of the missing content. A great example is the 1985 musical adaptation of Charles Dickens’ unfinished novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood. The Broadway production ran for more than 600 performances, won five Tony Awards including Best Musical and has received many subsequent regional revivals. As cheesy as it sounds, the show’s popularity stems from its interactive ending, in which audience members can vote on which of the characters is the murderer.

But some attempts to finish unfinished works are more apt to make us wish that the original material had been left untouched in that desk drawer. More often than not, the fault isn’t the founding artist’s but the well-intentioned efforts of the people hell-bent on rehabilitating an abandoned artwork. If not handled with utmost sensitivity and creative wizardry, the end result can look as preposterous as Stonehenge might were the ancient monument to be topped off with a shiny red tile roof.

Just before Franz Kafka died in 1924, the author sent his literary executor, Max Brod, the following instructions: “Dearest Max, my last request: Everything I leave behind me…in the way of diaries, manuscripts, letters (my own and others’), sketches, and so on, [is] to be burned unread.” Brod famously ignored his client’s wishes, choosing instead to publish as much of Kafka’s unfinished writings as he could lay his hands on. The world is grateful to Brod for going against Kafka’s desires – if he hadn’t, Kafka’s great unfinished novel The Castle would have been lost forever.

However, it’s possible in a way to speculate why the author may not have wanted his literary fragments sent off to the printers: Doing so would inevitably increase the chances of misrepresentation. In fact, Brod made such extensive changes to Kafka’s texts, altering punctuation, word order and chapter divisions, that scholars are no longer willing to accept his version as authentic.

This goes to show that the little control artists have over completed works of art once those artifacts enter the public domain diminishes considerably when the works in question are incomplete. This is particularly the case for artists whose work predates our own era’s tight copyright laws.

I’m all for bringing previously hidden, half-finished works into the light. But sometimes it’s better to let these creative fragments remain as unfinished sentences rather than making them grind exhausted to a period/full stop.

Often when I receive responses to posts I write, people refer to the texts as “articles.” Which leads me to wonder whether the word “blog post” and “article” means the same same thing to most people who read material on the Internet. To me, there’s a huge difference between what I post to ArtsJournal / chloeveltman.com and the content that magazines and newspapers commission me to write. For one thing, it usually takes me an hour or less to create and publish a blog post, whereas an article can take weeks or even months to research and write. For another, I’m the only “editor” involved in the blogging process, whereas whenever I write a piece for a magazine or newspaper, a whole team of editors, sub-editors and other media people often gets involved. For a third, I pretty much write whatever I want on my blog, whereas to have something published elsewhere involves getting past various gatekeepers.

All of the above differences affect both the content and style of what I write. As such, it feels a bit strange when people writing to me about my blog posts refer to them as “articles.” To play devil’s advocate for a moment: If readers are genuinely unable to distininguish between a quick, visceral response to the world, and something more detailed and well-thought-out, then is it worth spending all the time and effort writing articles at all?

I’m pretty sure I’m over-intellectualizing this. It’s probably just a matter of semantics. Perhaps it’s too much to expect readers outside the journalistic process to separate the term “article” from “blog post.” The line between the two concepts is blurred after all — some bloggers do undertake lots of research for their blog postings and agonize over every word. Equally, newspapers and magazines publish many articles that are poorly written and researched.

To me, however, the terms are far from interchangeable. A blog post is all about getting new ideas and news out there in a timely or spontaneous fashion to kick-start conversations. The writing should be as clear and stylish as possible under the the quick turnaround timeframe that goes hand in hand with posting five days a week. And of course facts should be accurate. But beyond a perfuctory breaking news report, an an article is something that one could think of as growing out of a blog post — a piece of work that involves more long, hard thinking, in-depth and/or wide-ranging interviews and perspectives, and a refined style.

Perhaps one day when blogs become the absolute heart of cultural journalism — and, dare I say it, when economics make it possible for bloggers to devote themselves 100% to creating content for their blogs — it may be possible to conflate the terms. For now however, the two terms remain separated in my practice and mind.

I don’t keep up with the world of musicals as closely as some other arts scenes. But the news that the Broadway musical Glory Days was shutting down after only one performance made me feel sad. Penned by 23-year-old composer-lyricist Nick Blaemire and 24-year-old librettist James Gardiner, the 90-minute, pop-driven musical deals with four friends sorting out their differences a year after high school.

My feelings don’t have much to do with the work itself, which I didn’t see during its preview run or on opening night. When I was in New York a couple of weeks ago, however, I was struck by the avalanche of publicity that the show was getting in advance of its official opening at Circle in the Square Theatre. There were posters everywhere. Every time I turned on the local news, I heard the show mentioned. All the friends I saw during my stay talked about the fast rise to fame of the production’s creators.

The amount of hype alone raised warning bells for me, though I didn’t think that the musical’s producers would open and close the show on the very same night in response to poor advance sales and weak reviews.

As an article about the show’s brief rise and fall in The Washington Post explains: “But while the novelty of two extremely young talents crashing Broadway created considerable publicity, the online chatter ran from befuddled to venomous, and the box office was dismal. During last week’s previews, the show grossed just under $47,000 and played to about 22 percent capacity.”

What makes me upset about this story is the system. It provides yet another example of the damaging effects of society’s obsession with youth and speed. The caffeinated journey of this modestly-scaled show from Arlington’s Signature Theatre in January to the Circle in the Square follows similar lines to, say, the trajectory of Britney Spears. I just hope to god that Blaemire and Gardiner have the good sense not to let this setback push them into rehab, or worse.

I’m sure the producers had sound financial reasons for pulling the plug on Glory Days. But why so soon? Couldn’t they have let the show run on for a few more weeks? Even if the critics hated it, I’m pretty sure the musical would have done swift business among high school and college groups.

Lately, tea drinking seems to have reached epidemic heights in the U.S. Only a few years ago, tea drinkers in this country were lucky to find anything other than crappy Lipton’s brand black tea in grocery stores and restaurants. These days, tea emporiums are flourishing, run-of-the-mill corner cafes stock a wide selection of brews from standard black teas to more adventurous greens, whites and reds, and Americans all over the country are exchanging their cafetieres for teapots. The other day, I was even able to obtain a cup of camomile tea in my local bar.

What’s behind the new popularity of this seemingly least American of beverages? Certainly, tea isn’t a new commodity in the U.S. It’s hardly Kombucha, the fermented mushroom-based drink that seems to be all the rage right now.

According to the fascinating history page on the Stash tea company website, the American tea revolution has its roots in the 17th century. Apparently, settlers were confirmed tea drinkers. Peter Stuyvesant brought the first tea to America to the colonists in the Dutch settlement of New Amsterdam around the 1650s. Tea became popular in the 18th century, particularly among genteel women. But the war of Independence scuppered the relationship between America and the beverage when the British raised taxes on tea, which led to the Boston Tea Party of 1773.

Coffee may have since far overtaken tea as the brewed beverage of choice in the U.S., but tea is obviously now making a comeback. Why? Doctors’ orders probably have something to do with it — a cup of black tea has far less caffeine than the average cup of coffee, and many Americans are switching to tea for health reasons.

I’m guessing that the rise of Starbucks and other similar beverage outlets may have also helped to reunite the American public with tea, as has the growing popularity of yoga, Chinese medicine and various other practices brought to the U.S. by Eastern tea-drinking nations in recent decades.

Turning tea into a “luxury” item through skillful marketing and fancy packaging etc has also helped to raise the profile of the beverage in the media.

As much hype as there is about tea right now, I don’t think tea drinking is a fad. It’s here to stay. Let’s not forget, after all, that the U.S. is responsible for two of the most enduring tea traditions. It was an American tea plantation owner, Richard Blechynden, who invented iced tea in 1904. And his fellow countryman, Thomas Sullivan, who came up with the concept of “bagged tea” four years later.

There’s something daunting about putting the word “national” on the front of the name of an arts organization. Being a ballet company or orchestra is one thing; being a national ballet company or national orchestra is quite another. Somehow the term carries an awesome amount of baggage with it.

The sheer size of this country and its fragmented legislative system which favors private support of the arts has prevented an American National Theatre from taking root, even though the idea has had — and continues to have — many supporters from within the arts world. I’m not sure where the latest plans to bring a national theatre to downtown Manhattan have got to (the movement’s website doesn’t seem to have been updated in quite some time.) Looking into history, Lincoln Center Theater’s Vivian Beaumont stage was established with a national theatre mission in mind, and the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. has long considered itself to be the nation’s cultural center (even though it doesn’t at all fulfill that role in reality.)

But while Americans continue to struggle with the possibility of establishing a national homebase for theatre, the Brits are making new inroads onto U.S. soil. Not content with UK-oriented drama festivals like New York’s Brits Off Broadway, a group of English theatrical entrepreneurs is in the process of setting up something called The British National Theatre of America. And — intriguingly — they’re doing it about as far away from the Great White Way as it’s possible to be: in Las Vegas.

Vegas’ cultural life hasn’t fared well of late, what with The Las Vegas Guggenheim closing its doors and The Wynn Las Vegas casino bidding its resident show, Spamalot, farewell. The city hasn’t done much to nurture a non-profit theatre scene over the years.

Whether The British National Theatre of America brings new vigor to the local arts environment remains to be seen. But in the meantime, locals can look forward to the company’s probable inaugural show, Cinderella the Pantomime, and people around the country and abroad can keep track of the group’s endeavors via their MySpace and FaceBook pages.

“A large part of what we’re trying to do is to build a theatre community in Las Vegas,” says  BNTA co-founder, British playwright and Vegas resident, Jo Cattell. I’m all for broadening the Las Vegas arts scene beyond Celine Dion and Cirque du Soleil. But I can’t help worrying that The British National Theatre of America is doing itself a disservice by making the term “national” part of its name. For one thing it’s confusing. Does the troupe intend to recreate — rather like the Venetian casino with respects to Venice — the British National Theatre in London? Or is the goal to create a Las Vegas-based American theatre on a national scale albeit with British input? For another, the fact that so many attempts to create a so-called national theatre have run aground has made people rather skeptical of the term. In short, I don’t suppose the endeavor would lose any credibility by dropping the grandiose n-word.

One of the worst things about spending an evening at an a cocktail party in England is having to answer the question, “what do you do?” This is a phrase I don’t hear that much in the U.S. Americans may ask “what do you do for a living?” but that’s not quite the same as “what do you do?” because it doesn’t allow that little “do” word to run amok and come to represent the sum total of a person’s existence.

While in the U.K., people are only allowed to apply the “do” word to the activity they undertake everyday to keep a roof over their head, in the U.S. the qualifier “for a living” has to be added because there’s a general acceptance of the idea that peoples’ lives are composed of many key activities that extend beyond the remit of a day-to-day job. For example, in the U.S., a person can say that he or she is an artist even if it’s not something he or she makes a living at. Do this in England, and you’ll get nothing more than a furrowed look.

The British tend to be suspicious of people who answer the “what do you do?” question by claiming to be writers of graphic novels, yodelers, morris dancers or sitar players. When misappropriators of the “to do” verb later let slip that they happen to work in a restaurant or as an accountant to make rent, a cold front automatically descends upon the room. They are pitied for thinking of themselves as artists, when really what they “do” has nothing to “do” with making art. Poor fools, they’re living in a deluded dream. For how can they possibly call themselves artists if don’t have a Top 10 hit, a place on the bestseller lists or aren’t at the very least capable of making a full-time living from their art?

This attitude is crippling to British culture — not to mention cocktail party conversation. In the U.S., people don’t seem to have a problem with talking about what the British would call “hobbies” with a level of devotion and enthusiasm that their compatriots across the Atlantic only reserve for discussing their jobs. For this reason alone, I have to admit that I like cocktail parties in America a great deal more than back home in England.

But it’s an odd phenomenon — one that I think about on occasion but still don’t understand. The U.S. boasts the biggest work ethic of any nation in the world. People take their jobs incredibly seriously and, if statistics are to be believed, have little time inbetween working and sleeping to engage in anything of an artistic nature. Yet somehow, there’s more “give” at the heart of the culture; a tolerance for people trying on phrases like “I’m a singer-songwriter” or “I design theatre sets” to see how they fit even if they’ve never signed a deal with a record company or created the scenery for a Broadway show.

This is ultimately very liberating. It allows people to articulate and acknowledge that there’s more to life than clocking in and clocking out. The British could learn a thing or two from the American attitude to “to do.”