Time Management
It's after 2 PM and I haven't had breakfast yet. Bah humbug.
Anyhow, last night my love and I went to a benefit concert for Katrina victims put on by the New Yorker. It was an amazing concert. Great actors and writers read from the writings of other great writers, or occasionally, their own writing. Also, many New York and New Orleans-based musicians gave performances. I can't believe it cost $50 a ticket. It was a really heartfelt play at a synthesized race politics. Still, the sea of faces was immaculately white at the intermission. The performers were an interesting mix, but in general there was an awkward line, the white New York of Lou Reed, and the black New Orleans of Buckwheat Zydeco. The black performers really pleased the white crowd - albeit with flares of racial tension provided by the incomparable Toni Morrison, reading Flannery O'Connor, Lou Reed, Kevin Kline singing from a black man's perspective and Terrence Howard, reading Mark Twain as though Mr. Clemens were a negro himself.
While I was in a meandering line for the scant lavatorial resources at The Town Hall, I wrote the following about my ambivalence towards the event:
So many and so expectant are the faces waiting to be entertained by these performers. That we may, in the dark hall, blend together our white and their black. And in return for their propulsion of this admixture, we give them our money to help rebuild.
Forgive me, I am tired and in lined between a man in hemmed-in jeans for the bathroom. I am amidst town hall, historic and brimming with the mottled shadows of aging white faces. Those shadows, now being stretched away, are held in fineries and cradled to ease in civility, until they rest, face and fold as one, in dream if not in waking.
When Kevin Kline played the piano and sang "they're trying to wash us away", he played with our heartstrings and our frayed nerves, because there was the distinct sense that he was taking on a black perspective to show camaraderie, but also in the spirit of blending, of empathy in the vortex of racial ambivalence. After all, is the face of New Orleans, or for that matter, the whole area, white or black? I can tell you that despite the audience at The Town Hall, the face of New York is a shade far darker than ivory.
But the music was amazing. Buckwheat Zydeco was my favorite and a fitting final act to a show all about how necessary it is for white people to work through the slog of division to do something good for people with all that they have. When Buckwheat called out "are you having a good time?" it was a high-spirited demand, because if the people in this crowd weren't having a good time, then there was little hope for those who weren't so regaled with such luxurious entertainments.
The show reminded me that I had always wanted to go to New Orleans, and that without the spirit of New Orleans, there would be very little fun in America. After all, the confrontational, hot energy of New Orleans, its expanded realm of possibilities and its ability to function amidst the urban and social decay that so fills America is what gives all of America's manmade diversions their gloire. Disneyland, Vegas, Memphis, even Hollywood are all fed by the antic energy and moral amorphousness that has been bred for generations in New Orleans, the impossible city. Like America's great artists, New Orleans is a city that has thrived in evading the fact that all that very little stands between life and death, between high times and doldrums. And we could all use that knowledge better in this country right now. After all, who knows how much longer we will be a great power in the world? Lets enjoy it and make great things before the storm clouds come and we have to run for shelter.
It's 3 now and still no breakfast.
Anyhow, last night my love and I went to a benefit concert for Katrina victims put on by the New Yorker. It was an amazing concert. Great actors and writers read from the writings of other great writers, or occasionally, their own writing. Also, many New York and New Orleans-based musicians gave performances. I can't believe it cost $50 a ticket. It was a really heartfelt play at a synthesized race politics. Still, the sea of faces was immaculately white at the intermission. The performers were an interesting mix, but in general there was an awkward line, the white New York of Lou Reed, and the black New Orleans of Buckwheat Zydeco. The black performers really pleased the white crowd - albeit with flares of racial tension provided by the incomparable Toni Morrison, reading Flannery O'Connor, Lou Reed, Kevin Kline singing from a black man's perspective and Terrence Howard, reading Mark Twain as though Mr. Clemens were a negro himself.
While I was in a meandering line for the scant lavatorial resources at The Town Hall, I wrote the following about my ambivalence towards the event:
So many and so expectant are the faces waiting to be entertained by these performers. That we may, in the dark hall, blend together our white and their black. And in return for their propulsion of this admixture, we give them our money to help rebuild.
Forgive me, I am tired and in lined between a man in hemmed-in jeans for the bathroom. I am amidst town hall, historic and brimming with the mottled shadows of aging white faces. Those shadows, now being stretched away, are held in fineries and cradled to ease in civility, until they rest, face and fold as one, in dream if not in waking.
When Kevin Kline played the piano and sang "they're trying to wash us away", he played with our heartstrings and our frayed nerves, because there was the distinct sense that he was taking on a black perspective to show camaraderie, but also in the spirit of blending, of empathy in the vortex of racial ambivalence. After all, is the face of New Orleans, or for that matter, the whole area, white or black? I can tell you that despite the audience at The Town Hall, the face of New York is a shade far darker than ivory.
But the music was amazing. Buckwheat Zydeco was my favorite and a fitting final act to a show all about how necessary it is for white people to work through the slog of division to do something good for people with all that they have. When Buckwheat called out "are you having a good time?" it was a high-spirited demand, because if the people in this crowd weren't having a good time, then there was little hope for those who weren't so regaled with such luxurious entertainments.
The show reminded me that I had always wanted to go to New Orleans, and that without the spirit of New Orleans, there would be very little fun in America. After all, the confrontational, hot energy of New Orleans, its expanded realm of possibilities and its ability to function amidst the urban and social decay that so fills America is what gives all of America's manmade diversions their gloire. Disneyland, Vegas, Memphis, even Hollywood are all fed by the antic energy and moral amorphousness that has been bred for generations in New Orleans, the impossible city. Like America's great artists, New Orleans is a city that has thrived in evading the fact that all that very little stands between life and death, between high times and doldrums. And we could all use that knowledge better in this country right now. After all, who knows how much longer we will be a great power in the world? Lets enjoy it and make great things before the storm clouds come and we have to run for shelter.
It's 3 now and still no breakfast.
posted by J. Benjamin Franklin | 2:05 PM
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