if . . .

this classic Hans Christian Anderson tale came as a gift . . . an unexpected gift bringing so much love . . . i remember being closed hearted . . . we stop respecting ourselves when we lose the heart to give & breathe to the other . . . a wise writer spoke that life has nothing more important to demand than the simplest of all stories - one person looking for another . . . each day the eyes of the other are written in the space of the soul . . . all the names of all those who dare to tread on the place of imagination are lifted into the tears that fall creating an ocean . . . touch the salt water . . . thank you for the journey . . . :: note :: . . . it inevitably happened . . . a student just in passing . . . "oh I found your blog" . . . so if more of you come . . . hello . . . go see Little Mermaid . . .

"1. Being Open-Hearted" "2. Telling Visionary Stories " "3. Offering (and Holding) Space" "4. Grounding" ". . . this is the fundamental structure of the workshop." (Parking Lot | Refining the four Open Space Practices ) :: note :: . . . if asked to describe my teaching ethic could not provide a better statement . . .

"Glowlab, a Brooklyn-based psychogeography network presents Open Lab at Art Interactive. During this festival and exhibition curated by Christina Ray, more than twenty artists will research the effects of the urban environment on emotion and behavior by leading a series of public events." (>>> context weblog sampling new cultural context | how does your city affect you? ) :: note :: . . . my city flows along the river & when connected to the water as it opens to the sky a vibrant & beautiful place stirs the heart . . . the trees are majestic & seek to clothe the buildings reminding us of the cycle of the seasons . . . & the snow . . . the power of white to change all in an hour . . .my city lets me breathe fully and allows a path beyond to the praire . . .

. . . students presented a workshop at the peace conference . . . created a performance working with the themes of peace, oppression and rights . . .

"The Penelopiad: The Myth of Penelope and Odysseus by Atwood is a retelling of Homer's story from Penelope's point of view. Atwood told Reuters she almost pulled out of the project after she failed in several attempts to write about different myths." "Homer portrays Penelope as the faithful wife who holds the country together and raises a son while Odysseus is off fighting his wars. When Odysseus returns, he kills Penelope's suitors and her maids." "Atwood said she was haunted by the tale of the 12 hanged maids and her book reveals what Penelope was really up to. "The story as told in The Odyssey doesn't hold water," she said. "There are too many inconsistencies."" ... "'I grew up thinking that history is the stuff that makes newspaper headlines and gets analyzed by journalists, while myth was something that primitive people swapped around the campfire. The distinction seemed quite simple," said author Mic...

Byung-Hun Min . . . artistic statement . . . Nature in Korea is rather small, delicate and sensitive to me. I come closer to it much more easily. And I try to see it with a serene state of view. :: note :: . . . found at wood s lot what has become the most important site on the web . . . a place to return to again and again . . . changes with the consciousness of the days and the cycle of the seasons . . . many recognized as another year passed a short while ago . . . decided to wait . . . glad i did . . . the above statement speaks to how to approach such places on the web . . .

. . . Scorched Ice by Mansel Robinson receives a studied perfomance by Last Exit Theater . . . . . . the words are carefully crafted . . . the back & forth scenic structure drives the action past the target of the harrowing threat of nuclear holocaust during the Cuban Missile Crisis to a coming of age story . . . the voice of the play is strong and sure . . . rich & resonant in metaphor the sparse action is deliberate & evocative . . . the characters constantly tremble trapped or fleeing a harsh, inexplicable existence . . . the naive childish backdrop used to project the plodding of the nameless and phantasmagorical refugees or the universal night sky gives a luminous depth to the narrative . . . Yet . . . during my early training a wise man of the theater instructed: "cut the spoken which doesn't advance the action . . . let the actions speak" . . . a playwright needs to trust action . . . a director courage to keep the words on the page to release the...

"The Image That Speaks Volumes * Evokes * Provokes * Kindles * Awakens * Suggests * Stirs * Invokes * Agitates * Educates " (fno.org | Wondering with and about Images by Jamie McKenzie )

:: note :: . . . nephew was in town . . . asked to be driven to "the wall" . . . grafitti artists had met and worked on this wall . . .

"A modern and ironic look at Commedia dell'Arte. Impressions from a comic and poetic world full of meetings and clashes that reveal themselves through dances and extraordinary loves." (Teatrino Giullare | Serenades ) :: note :: . . . attended a splendid performance . . . beyond words . . . beyond thoughts . . . " Beyond the barriers " pushed deep into the heart and gut to stir laughter and awe . . . from clowns of the absurd through poetic gestural language back to the tradition of commedia dell' arte the scenes danced, sometimes wildly and other times gently, around the place where theater eludes precise meaning and moves beyond to the mystery of the rhythm and irony of life . . . . . . a brilliant bricolage where each group performed intimations of meaning about vulnerability & finitude and futility & fragility . . . archaically physical all the works were propelled by actors exploring an explosive dynamic . . . and there resides the power of ...

"The first difficulty that we face in order to understand correctly the workings of tragedy according to Aristotle stems from the very definition which that philosopher gives of art. What is art, any art? For him , it is an imitation of nature. For us, the word "imitate" means to make a more or less perfect copy of an original model. Art would, then, be a copy of nature. And "nature" mens the whole of created things. Art would, therefore, be a copy of created things." "But this has nothing to do with Aristotle. For him, to imitate (mimesis) has nothing to do with copying an exterior model. "Mimesis" means rather a "re-creation." And nature is not the whole of created things but rather the creative principle itself. Thus when Aristotle says that art imitates nature, we must understand that this statement, which can be found in any modern version of the Poetics , is due to a bad translation, which in tern stems from an isolated int...

. . . leaves piling and running down the street . . . one of my favourite times . . .

"A New York Philharmonic trumpeter who taught both Wynton Marsalis and Miles Davis died this week. William Vacchiano, who never missed a performance during his 38 years with the New York Philharmonic, was 93. Vacchiano became the philharmonic's principal trumpet player in 1942, seven years after joining. Philharmonic spokesman Eric Latzky called Vachhiano "one of the great trumpet teachers of the 20th century." His teaching career at Julliard spanned nearly seven decades. " (cbc.ca| Teacher of Wynton Marsalis and Miles Davis dies ) :: note :: . . . to all the great teachers of the great . . . more recognition and honor . . . thanks . . .

". . . the first-ever collection of Hiroshi Sugimoto's 'Theater' photographs. To create each image, Sugimoto would take a long-exposure photograph of a cinema screen for the entire duration of a movie, resulting in a blank white screen. 'Different movies give different brightnesses,' he said. 'If it's an optimistic story, I usually end up with a bright screen; if it's a sad story, it's a dark screen. Occult movie? Very dark.' The project was partly the result of wanting to make a simple form visible: 'The simplest forms have authority, like a blank white light. And how do you photograph that? You need a framework to make it visible. But this is not simply white light; it is the result of too much information.'" (eyestorm.com | Hiroshi Sugimoto Theaters, 2000 )

"Within the new movement gained through elasticity and plasticity the actor must be a good friend of gravity and know how to play with it. The action in rhythm is to know how to express the inner emotion and psyche externally. Not a reproducing stereotypical gestures but a rigorous study about impulse, gesture and activity in order to transform those into physical actions. An actor's action in rhythm vibrates in the space musically which is in dancing-ness. It is a search for a spatial movement. " (unpublished actors manifesto) :: note :: . . . more to follow . . .

:: note :: . . . received this e-card from a MoMA exhibit . . . SAFE: Design Takes On Risk | October 16, 2005[^]January 2, 2006 . . . always thought of chains as oppression . . . not as security nor safety . . . hmmm . . .

"'Teachers and students negotiate what counts as knowledge in the classroom, who can have knowledge, and how knowledge can be generated, challenged and evaluated' (p.45). We believe that the context for this negotiation, this social construction of meaning, is always one of power. The teacher and students-teachers inhabit roles that allow them to wield far greater power than their students in the classroom. However, they are also constrained by mandates handed down by the school principal, the school district, and the state. When they step outside of prescribed roles, teachers may be censured by their respective institutions and/or parents. They may be both oppressors and oppressed at the same time (Freire, 1993)." (Teacher Education Quarterly| Behind the Mask and beneath the Story: Enabling Students-Teachers1 To Reflect Critically on the Socially-Constructed Nature of Their "Normal" Practice ) :: note :: . . . masks and power . . .

"First, a disclaimer: the following is a work of non-fiction. As such, it is unlikely to be as vivid, or textured, or as faithful to the author's deepest convictions and emotions as his own fiction, as linguistically adventurous or as revealing about the way it feels to live now as the latest novels by Salman Rushdie or Zadie Smith. I write novels. In fact, I just finished one, which is one reason I was alarmed to hear VS Naipaul declaring recently, in an interview with the New York Times, that the novel was dead. Which would make me, I guess, a necrophiliac. Naipaul essentially argues - stop me if you've heard this one before - that non-fiction is better suited than fiction to dealing with the big issues and capturing the way we live now. " (Guardian | The uses of invention ) :: note :: . . . writing short fiction this summer discovered the same result . . .

"Go get slaughtered and we promise you a long and pleasant life." (ctheory.net | The Rhetorics of Life and Multitude in Michel Foucault and Paolo Virno )

"Constitutions do not create our rights; they recognize and codify the ones we already have, and provide means for their protection. We already possess our rights in two senses: either because our ancestors secured them or because they are inherent in the very idea of being human." ( Michael Ignatieff. The Rights Revolution . 28) :: note :: . . . wondering about the rights revolution . . . the individual and the group . . .