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I just went to see a play called Myth, Propaganda and Disaster in Nazi Germany and Contemporary America: A Drama in 30 Scenes and purchased a copy of it as it might well never exist in the states.
It will take me a long time to formulate entirely what I think of the play as an American, a New Yorker, a person involved in theatre and a soul a long way from home, and obviously it resonates on all those levels.
Watching it also made me think of being in high school, and how I always thought it hurt the worst when I could hear what people who hated me had to say about me, but what frightened me the most were those things said about me so far away I could live as if they didn't exist. That's a bit what seeing a play like this so far from home is like, to see strangers who weren't even there using my accent and talking about the World Trade Center like the weather, because it is what we talk about like the weather. And where were you?
From the first scene:
"In the end, the madness that had only been implicit at the outset, and that no one believed anyone in their right mind could possibly mean, consumed everything, and the rational was revealed as nothing more than the handmaiden of the completely insane."
From the middle:
"I read this thing the other day, about self-awareness -- did you read it? That they're trying to write software for machines to have self-awareness -- isn't that a strange idea? -- and the reason is to try to improve their mobility, because if a machine isn't really aware of where it is in an environment, then it can't really navigate properly -- So the idea is to write a program which allows the machine to locate itself in an environment -- and that's a kind of self-awareness; and so there I was thinking, is that all it is? All this goo in the middle of us, all this -- who am I, where am I going, what does it mean?-- all that stuff that's kept the motor of our civilization going for the last three thousand years -- is just so I can get from the front door to the supermarket and back [...] And if machines can locate themselves in an environment, will they start wondering what it all means too? And when they break down and decay, will they rage against fate and feel betrayed and alone? Will they feel angry that something has given them the ability to locate themselves in an environment but never told them why they're there?"
From the end:
"But still, we have unfinished business: who was the last thinker of the Enlightenment, Professor?"
*
Anyway, also bought some pretentious Aussie film mag 'cause it's got an article on Catherine Martin which also manages to illustrate the bizarre tottering youth of advertising as an art form in this country -- a subject of a very long post from me in the near future, about what it says about a place if all its graphic design in every context from art to fashion (A vast majority of clothing here both casual and not contains elements of text in the design) to commerce is merely about the manipulation, recombination and destruction of text.
*
Meanwhile I've a ton of homework, and it is perhaps indicative of the nature of film that my week on film is proving to be vastly disorganized at every level. But I'm here to work and persevere, and I'm getting there. I'm working on a scene from Agnes of God as well as the Closer piece (yay Clive Owen at the Golden Globes. Yay yay yay. Aside from just loving the performance he's just a guy who has deserved the recognition long before this, so it's nice to see.)
*
Wait, what the fucking fuck? We've invaded Iran? What's going on?
It will take me a long time to formulate entirely what I think of the play as an American, a New Yorker, a person involved in theatre and a soul a long way from home, and obviously it resonates on all those levels.
Watching it also made me think of being in high school, and how I always thought it hurt the worst when I could hear what people who hated me had to say about me, but what frightened me the most were those things said about me so far away I could live as if they didn't exist. That's a bit what seeing a play like this so far from home is like, to see strangers who weren't even there using my accent and talking about the World Trade Center like the weather, because it is what we talk about like the weather. And where were you?
From the first scene:
"In the end, the madness that had only been implicit at the outset, and that no one believed anyone in their right mind could possibly mean, consumed everything, and the rational was revealed as nothing more than the handmaiden of the completely insane."
From the middle:
"I read this thing the other day, about self-awareness -- did you read it? That they're trying to write software for machines to have self-awareness -- isn't that a strange idea? -- and the reason is to try to improve their mobility, because if a machine isn't really aware of where it is in an environment, then it can't really navigate properly -- So the idea is to write a program which allows the machine to locate itself in an environment -- and that's a kind of self-awareness; and so there I was thinking, is that all it is? All this goo in the middle of us, all this -- who am I, where am I going, what does it mean?-- all that stuff that's kept the motor of our civilization going for the last three thousand years -- is just so I can get from the front door to the supermarket and back [...] And if machines can locate themselves in an environment, will they start wondering what it all means too? And when they break down and decay, will they rage against fate and feel betrayed and alone? Will they feel angry that something has given them the ability to locate themselves in an environment but never told them why they're there?"
From the end:
"But still, we have unfinished business: who was the last thinker of the Enlightenment, Professor?"
*
Anyway, also bought some pretentious Aussie film mag 'cause it's got an article on Catherine Martin which also manages to illustrate the bizarre tottering youth of advertising as an art form in this country -- a subject of a very long post from me in the near future, about what it says about a place if all its graphic design in every context from art to fashion (A vast majority of clothing here both casual and not contains elements of text in the design) to commerce is merely about the manipulation, recombination and destruction of text.
*
Meanwhile I've a ton of homework, and it is perhaps indicative of the nature of film that my week on film is proving to be vastly disorganized at every level. But I'm here to work and persevere, and I'm getting there. I'm working on a scene from Agnes of God as well as the Closer piece (yay Clive Owen at the Golden Globes. Yay yay yay. Aside from just loving the performance he's just a guy who has deserved the recognition long before this, so it's nice to see.)
*
Wait, what the fucking fuck? We've invaded Iran? What's going on?
