The Blog I'm Not Writing

Department Of Belated Summer Wishes

Happy Summer Solstice to all!  And to my fellow yogis, if this tradition is in your practice, I hope you had a memorable 108 Sun Salutations.

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Department Of Get Thee Behind Me, Satan
Sub-Department Of Stop Tempting My Husband, Bitch

Dateline: Saturday morning, circa 8 am, sitting at the breakfast table with MH.  MH picks up his copy of yesterday’s (Saturday) NYT crossword puzzle, which he hasn’t yet finished; he works on it a bit, then tells me he’s stuck with the 49 across clue and the down clues which cross the answer are not helping him.

Moiself  did the puzzle yesterday but can’t remember the clue.  MH reads it to me:

” ‘Noted tempter’ …I  can’t figure out the missing vowel;
I have “S _ _ AN.  Susan?  Susan is a noted tempter?”

He’s serious, and I can’t stop laughing.

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Department Of Another Family Contemplation Of The Theory Of Relativity
Sub-Department Of My Daughter, The Content Creator

Dateline: Tuesday am.  We’ve had some home maintenance projects – new gutters and downspouts installed/exterior house painting – that are 99% completed.  MH shared pictures of the house exterior on our family’s message board, so that our offspring could see the progress.  The following hijinks exchange ensued.

MH:
All done. Except for a gutter adjustment tomorrow.

Moiself:
Actually/unfortunately, the gutter adjustment isn’t until Thursday.

MH:
I’m living in an alternate timeline.

(daughter) Belle:
If you don’t actually go to sleep tonight, then maybe Thursday is tomorrow?

Moiself:
Don’t go getting all quantum time bending on us.

Belle:
Is time a fixed variable that we have no influence over? Or is it a mutable part of the universe that we simply haven’t figured out how to manipulate yet?  Is our perception of time the definition of it?  So many things to consider.
But yeah, for now we’ll just say Thursday.

Moiself:
This conversation is so going in my blog.

Yeah, but what time is dinner?

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Department Of The Best Pasta Shape Ever   [1]

That would be Sfoglini’s reginetti.  Soon I will be ordering another case of it (the whole grain, which is my fave) because I’m down to three boxes, and moiself  cannot be reginetti-less.

What is not to love about this shape – it’s like a teensy-weensy lasagna noodle.  Makes me happy just to look at it.

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Department Of I Respectfully But Vehemently Disagree

Moiself  recently heard a Tony-nominated playwright interviewed on an NPR show ,   [2]  during which he talked about his years of struggle to write his play, and how he scraped by due to the kindness of friends.  He used his experience as an example of why “we need government funding” of the arts.  I guess he meant we need more funding than we already have ?  For as I heard him whine speak about the subject, I wondered if he was somehow not aware of the NEA and other state and local government grants and funds, as well as the hundreds of private individuals and organizations offering artistic grants and funding?

Dateline: Sunday evening watching the latter half of the 77th annual Toni awards. There is that same playwright – David Adjmi, accepting a Tony award his award for Best Play for Stereophonic.  In his acceptance speech, Adjmi gushed about how “this was a very hard journey, to get this play up here….” and named the friends who let him sleep on their couch for seven years so that he could write the play, and then, again:

“It’s really hard to make a career in the arts; we need to fund the arts in America – it is the hallmark of a civilized society….”

Admi brought himself to tears as he recalled his struggle.  Of course when he made the plea for funding there was the obligatory applause from Supporters Of The Arts ®, who must whoop it up reverently with their version of, say amen.  Preach, brother!

As I do with most preaching, be it religious or artistic, I’m listening, then thinking…

Adjmi decries how hard it is to earn a living in the arts. This is nothing new; it always has been hard to earn a living in the arts.  It always should be hard to earn a living in the arts.

I’m not denying his or any composer, singer, actor, writer, painter, potter or other artist’s struggle.  I *am* calling for all who have chosen to pursue their art to check their privilege – their sense of exceptionalism –  if they think, for whatever reason, that their particular job should not be a struggle, and/or is deserving of endowment.

Struggle is the common lot of most people in the working world, who do not receive any kind of artistic accolades nor have opportunites, e.g., award shows, for public forums in which they may complain about their struggles. They plow the fields, fix the cars bag the groceries manufacture the semi-conductors, empty the bedpans, collect the lab results, interpret the data, bake the bread, comfort the bereaved, put out the fires, clean the kettles, sweep the movie theaters, mend the crab pots, patrol the demilitarized zones…

Adjmi didn’t mentioned receiving financial aid or grants for Stereophonic, and his play’s success belies his plea for funding.  Somehow, he managed to produce this work of art without the government’s help – and  let us always remember that the translation of “the government,” means the tax dollars of moiself and y’all.

Save for those rare artists born to wealth (or the nepotistic receivers of artistic funding and opportunities), life in any artistic field has always been that of financial struggle before commercial success (and often afterward), usually involving multiple side jobs and other means of support.  How would the playwright who thinks there should be more public funding of the arts, and others who hold similar sentiments, define what would constitute more support of “the arts,” and who will get to define what is an art worthy of support, and which artists will get support, and for what length of time such support is given….?

There are museums and art galleries wherein I’ve lingered for hours, and others I’ve fled after15 minutes because, content, meh.  I’m a fan of performing arts and patronize live music, theater and other events.  There’ve been plays and concerts I’ve attended/movies I’ve seen where I left feeling entertained and even aesthetically transformed, and others – even a few ones which won prestigious awards and were recommended by “everyone”  [3]  –   where I left during intermission, or if I forced myself to stay to the bitter end, I left the venue thinking, Holy imaginative waste of time, how did this piece of embarrassingly trivial, reductionist, hackneyed crapola ever get produced? It’s a bad enough that I spent money on a ticket, but to subsidize this playwright’s/director’s/performer’s delusion that they are “artists” worthy of third party “support”….?

Sorry, starving artists.  Eat less, get a second job, a third job, a patron, a couch to surf on.  Struggle, like the rest of us. Government support for the arts? You take their money, you play by their rules.  In Russia during the USSR era there was little art seen by the public apart from that which was funded – or allowed – by the government.  Remember any great works of socialist realism that came out of the Soviet-sponsored art?

Socialist Realism
A form of modern realism imposed in Russia by Stalin following his rise to power after the death of Lenin in 1924, characterized in painting by rigorously optimistic pictures of Soviet life painted in a realist style

The doctrine was formally proclaimed by Maxim Gorky at the Soviet Writers Congress of 1934, although not precisely defined. In practice, in painting it meant using realist styles to create highly optimistic depictions of Soviet life. Any pessimistic or critical element was banned…. It was quite simply propaganda art, and has an ironic resemblance to the Fascist realism imposed by Hitler in Germany (see ITAL Entartete Kunst – degenerate art       [4] ).

(excerpt from the Tate Museum’s “Socialist Realism,” https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/s/socialist-realism  )

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Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [5]

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Parting Shot:  I love it when/I hate it when…

I love it when I come across a new (to me) George Carlin witticism; I hate it when I remember that Carlin died years ago and isn’t here to reflect on today’s wackadoodle.

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May you have strength when tempted by Susan;
May your art remain free of government supports and constraints;
May you decide to have a favorite pasta shape;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

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[1] As decreed by the Most Omnipotent Italian Saucy  Epicurean  Loving  Foodie,  as in, moiself.

[2] Can’t remember which program…a Fresh Air interview, most likely?

[3] for example, not to deny the creativity and hard work of Lin Manuel Miranda, but I couldn’t abide Hamilton (or In the Heights) – both of which I so wanted and expected to like (or maybe, thought I *should* like).  With the rapid-fire, rap-ish dialog, I felt like the cast was shouting at me the whole time.

[4] Degenerate art ( Entartete Kunst)  is the label the Nazis applied to art they didn’t approve of – any art which did not extol or depict “Kinder, Küche, Kirche” ( family, home and church), which was the Nazi party’s and Hitler’s view of the virtues of German life. 

[5] “free-think-er n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. Freethinkers include atheists, agnostics and rationalists.   No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.”  Definition courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, ffrf.org