Play written by Larry Kramer

I write this in the days following the shooting in Orlando, knowing that my editor has it scheduled to be published some time in August. Who am I kidding? I am the editor. Maybe it will go out sooner, but it is not timely. That would be the mistake- to assume that discussing prejudice is going to go out of style in two months. Larry Kramer wrote The Normal Heart in the 1980s. HBO (and Broadway for that matter) could still dramatize it thirty years later without losing the outrage engendered by the original script.

In 1986, finishing up my time at college in southern Ohio, I had directed some stage shows. In doing so, I had apparently developed a reputation for being a bit driven to do whatever needed doing to get the show up. Some friends in the local gay alliance were interested in doing a show about AIDS, which had come to our community with all its horror and little of the necessary understanding. We elected to do The Normal Heart, a show raising hackles in New York City at the time. As it turned out, we needed theater faculty sponsorship in order to stage the show using school facilities. (I don’t recall always obtaining such a vouchsafe, but if you wanted to do things right…) The problem was that school leadership at the time was not entirely comfortable acknowledging so overtly that homosexuals might be involved in theater. Ultimately, my adviser sponsored us, but urged us to dump The Normal Heart for As Is. Maybe he was right- the show was more anecdotal and just odd enough to fit my directorial skill set of the time. The producers and I agreed.

The show was a success for the space, the place, and the time. Some memories:
-finding and leaving undisturbed our lead sitting with two parents after a performance quietly talking with two parents who had just learned that their son was gay and had AIDS
-getting called outside during intermission and chewed out by two straight graduate students because two minor characters in the show were portrayed too explicitly as effeminate
-my good friend, Steve, making our simple set perfect by lining the walls with large sheets of paper detailing in colossal print the then-current statistics of the epidemic

More than being gay or a writer, Larry Kramer has stayed in public as an angry man. That anger has fueled some powerful social commentary that needs to be remembered two months from now and two years from now. Life comes in too many variations just within our species for anyone to claim perfect knowledge of the right path. You don’t get to define anyone else’s destination and damn you for trying. The best art, from Voltaire to George Orwell, has never stopped reminding us to let our brothers and sisters be as long as they are not hurting anyone else.

Scott and John, our two leads and my friends, have been gone a long time now. I formed a comedy troupe with Scott and we had some great times. I lost contact with both. It can be awfully damn hard to keep track of the things that are important.

You’ve Got to Check This Out is a blog series about music, words, and all sorts of artistic matters. It started with an explanation. 258 more to go.

New additions to You’ve Got to Check This Out are released regularly. Also, free humor, short works, and poetry are posted irregularly. Notifications are posted on Facebook which you can receive by friending or following Craig.

Book written by Janwillem van de Wetering

So few independent bookshops exist anymore, it is hard to believe the Mystery Lovers Bookshop was such a going concern a mere twenty five years ago. They managed to host author talks with a true who’s who of mysteries around 1990. More often than not, whatever the weather, the small store was crowded with fans as writers pontificated about their works and lives. (They remain a going concern– go there whenever you are close.)

Among the literary notables, Janwillem van de Wetering stood out for his foreignness and unique store of personal experience which he described entertainingly. To be honest, I think his description of his mysteries as being about two detectives in Amsterdam solving mysteries through Zen (or were they Zen mysteries solved normally?) felt somewhat lost in translation.

At the time, I knew nothing of the history of the relationship between Holland and Japan, let alone more than a faint glimpse of Buddhism. As it turned out, van de Wetering started out writing non-fiction about his experience joining a Zen temple in Kyoto as a young man.

The mysteries sounded difficult, which they are not. They are fantastic. Be that as it may, I tracked down his first memoir and was enthralled. Few writers about any mystical experience are so forthright about the challenges, odd moments, and general silliness. He does a tremendous job describing hardship while avoiding the implicit message that he has been a martyr. Really, van de Wetering simply did this thing and it was rather different from things that you might have done, so you might be interested. Perhaps that is the nature of Zen, in that it defies that piety that we assume of the faithful (which does a disservice to the dedication required of monks). On the other hand, the experience described in The Empty Mirror sounds horrible, at least for someone steeped in modern conveniences. A week doing without is one thing… add in tolerating a strict instructor…

As a younger man, for whatever reason, I always assumed that one did not write about his life until he had lived to some advanced age. Granted, that probably deprived us of some interesting narratives by the short-lived, but there you go. So, what to think about the serial memoirist? Janvillem van de Wetering was charming and kind in that single brief encounter. He wrote two more books about his experiences with Zen later in life and they make good reads as well, more time spent with an old friend catching up. David Sedaris and Bill Bryson have mined similar territory by living and then talking about it on the installment plan. And then, here we are, with the blog, this ongoing commentary on whatever we happen to be doing at the time. I can’t imagine van de Wetering blogging his way through his initiate phase at the temple any more than I can imagine any of the more creative types out there blogging as they go through life, and yet they are.

Could The Empty Mirror as a thoughtful piece of work exist in the moment? Consider a world in which you have the ongoing description of the experience followed by the thoughtful retrospective consideration. Surely we lose interest in the latter if we have been following the former. Do we then lose something for posterity? Perhaps even the ability to consider and learn from our history?

You’ve Got to Check This Out is a blog series about music, words, and all sorts of artistic matters. It started with an explanation. 259 more to go.

New additions to You’ve Got to Check This Out are released regularly. Also, free humor, short works, and poetry are posted irregularly. Notifications are posted on Facebook which you can receive by friending or following Craig.

Song written by Shane MacGowan
Performed by The Pogues

Ecstatic and angry. Listening to the Pogues can feel like time spent with a manic personality. Make that a charismatic manic. The fascinating thing is how well that manner is channeled by the music. Surely, the band has had its struggles, particularly with their lead singer, but the art- I could listen to them all day. And have done so. And have been asked to stop, for just an hour… please. Which probably raises some question as to the type of person that responds to their music.

No one raised in any faith who has ever asked questions of that faith has not felt as though they have fallen. Art can be a response to that lapse. So can vice. Both can bring a sense of elation. Art is an attempt to restore or instigate communication with the ephemeral. Surely, the artist appreciates the kindness of audiences, but somewhere along the way, the art takes on a life of its own. Robert Johnson supposedly did the devil’s work and ended up in the ground unmarked, but I doubt the Pogues were thinking of him. In the end, Johnson and the Pogues get closer to heaven than any person has the right, making music that surrounds and glorifies the human experience in all its facets.

For the album cover, the octet is augmented by James Joyce, the patron saint of modern literature. I have no better idea how Joyce would have felt about that then whether or not W.C. Fields would have been happy about being on an album cover for the Beatles. Joyce can read like a manic depressive with OCD, so there is that shared heritage beyond their mutual country of origin.

One of the things that you notice about protest music is a certain world weariness that pervades the content. Maybe that’s what made Edwin Starr’s War stand out from something like Eve of Destruction. Protest-worthy events continue piling up without end. Our art and our common existence requires that constant infusion of fresh blood that discovers new crimes and old sins anew.

The Pogues took their anger and crafted phenomenal music. Everywhere they turned, they found something to be pissed off about, even when they had a good day at the horse track, they manage to sound annoyed.

Then, there is Fairytale of New York. What does it say about me that I get goosebumps when Shane MacGowan reminds his love, after all the vitriol, that he kept her dreams with his? No other song in pop music so beautifully encapsulates the immigrant couple’s trial. I have called attention to Kirstie MacColl before and I am at a loss… Ah, hell, here come the tears again.

Sometimes you need Jean-Michel Basquiat or Keith Haring or Francisco Goya. Picasso needed to make Guernica. The Clash needed to sing Spanish Bombs. The Pogues needed to exist because we need to be angry and sad and happy to the extremes. Sometimes you need to drive down the street with the music blaring a bunch of punks.

You’ve Got to Check This Out is a blog series about music, words, and all sorts of artistic matters. It started with an explanation. 260 more to go.

New additions to You’ve Got to Check This Out are released regularly. Also, free humor, short works, and poetry are posted irregularly. Notifications are posted on Facebook which you can receive by friending or following Craig.