Things I Learned This Week

Dean, Brando, Marlon James, Dirt Dauber, and The Smiths

I was MIA a bit this week with so much going on, between Pecha Kucha and my sister being here. I was drowning in anxiety all week, but Pecha Kucha was better than I could have hoped. I will post a video as soon as it becomes available. Kate Rogers (who was ousted from the Alamo for being too friendly to the Black and indigenous narrative of the historical site) was also one of the speakers, and that woman is a complete and total bass ass. All the speakers were awesome, but I’m so glad I didn’t have to follow her as she got a (much-deserved) standing ovation! Now, I am relatively anxiety-free and sitting in my office, watching the wee bit of rain we are getting, and feeling hopeful. It was a great week.

Reading The History of Seven Killings by Marlon James for class and wow! I’m only on part two, but what a powerhouse book about the 1976 attempted assassination of Bob Marley and the One Love Peace Concert that followed. It helps that my husband just went to Jamaica, so he is reading in unison with me. (We were both surprised when Marlon James was an answer on Jeopardy Thursday. LOL. ) It’s kind of a difficult read as the POV jumps all over the place with a lot of Jamaican patois spoken. If you remember, we did see the milk toast biopic last year that covers the attack and the concert, but my husband is deep into the lore and politics and has schooled me so much already. It’s much easier when you know the political situation of the time. I decided to listen to this one on audio in conjunction, and the audio uses nine different voice actors, which makes a big difference. The patois might not be fully understandable, but I found it relatively easy to get the gist. Loving it so far.

To celebrate my other sister’s birthday and the birthday of my late mother, the three of us went to the San Antonio Highland Games and Celtic Music Festival. Now, I’ve never even been to a Renaissance Faire before, so I had no idea what to expect. My sister goes every year as she is more into my family’s Scottish lore than I am, and she has a West Highland White Terrier who participates in the Scottish dogs portion of the event. There were bagpipes and highland cattle and Shepard’s pie. People competing in log and hatchet throws. Scottish Deerhounds and Skye Terriers. The only thing that could have ruined it was the heat, and thankfully, it stayed delightfully chilly. We followed that up with the No Kings March, which left me feeling a little deflated. I don’t know that marching actually helps anything, and while I know this sounds ridiculous, but the amount of profanity and crude language and jokes about his looks on the signs made me feel like we’ve sunken a bit to their level. Maybe I’m old. Maybe I just hate the way our country is going in general. There were so many people with messages of uplift that I felt the cruel joking sometimes makes us just as bad as him. How much longer Papa Smurf!?!

My visiting sister throws pottery as well, so we were focused on getting her as much wheel time as possible, so I’m glad to be back at it myself. (My sis is deathly afraid of spiders, so I’m glad she was gone before this delightful little Southwestern Trapdoor Spider wandering onto my studio porch to escape the rain.) There is another wood fire in two weeks, so I need to get ready. Throwing more of the hanging pendants, and I think the key with those is going to be practice, practice, practice. Working on enough to have for the two front entrances at my place, plus some to sell at the Eye of the Dog’s Annual Dirt Dauber Festival on May 16 and 17 here in San Marcos. Hope to see you there. :) Also, if you wanna get involved, my friend Alex Trippe is teaching a hand building class at Eye of the Dog starting in this month. Those are her rad woodfired feet up there. She’s sooo good!

For my TA class, I had to read A Streetcar Named Desire, Death of a Salesman, and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolfe, all peak scripts in the history of theater. I’m loath to admit that I’d never seen the Streetcar film all the way through in one sitting, so last night we jumped in. Double wow. I forgot how gorgeous Brando was. There was some talk about the Chalmette/Brando comparison, and honestly, there is none in my book. We followed it up with another Elie Kazan film, East of Eden, based on the Steinbeck novel and starring someone who I think is a more comparative figure, James Dean. Those two have much of the same vibe. But honestly, the star of that film was the CinemaScope for sure. That color was gorgeous!

Speaking of which. It doing my regular during-movie Googling, I learned a bit of Smith trivia I’d never known. James Dean’s (Cal) brother in the film, Eron, is played by the actor Richard Davalos. A shot of him from the film is on the cover of The Smiths’ 1987 album Strangeways Here We Come, which came out when I was in high school. (Yes, I will probably go to my Gen-X grave clinging to a handful of Smiths and Cure CDs, sue me.) Of course, Morrissey was a James Dean fan and thus wanted Richard on the cover as a nod. According to Wiki, he really wanted to use a still of Harvey Keitel in Martin Scorsese’s 1967 film Who’s That Knocking at My Door, but Keitel told him to fuck off. I imagine he couldn’t get rights to a James Dean pic either. Anyways, I’ll leave you here with I Started Something I Can’t Finish from Strangeways.

Quote of the week?

“I’ve always made a point of not wasting my life, and every time I come back here I know that all I’ve done is to waste my life.”

—Biff Lowman in Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller

‘Til Tuesday, friends.

Burgin

(An MFA grad student at 50+… follow along and read my story here.)