Its Dad's favorite play. Reading it with him in Texas was one of the
highlights of a crazy busy week of writing, organizing, trying to meet
deadlines, trials and tribulations, fun moments, explosive ups and quiet meanderings
in which I questioned myself and what I was doing.
After all, that is what reading Hamlet is all about.
In between
family and a couple of book manuscripts, Times up! held a few meetings; the
Occupy Direct Action group started holding plans for a January 19th street
action for the anniversary of Citizens United.
Exciting to see everyone at 60 Wall Street, as we plan for waves of
street actions throughout the weeks to come. Change doesn't happen with one
action, but in waves. So we'll come at
the world in waves, like water crashing onto the streets.
So much of street theater and social activism in New
York is born of conversations, reflections, moments on subways, others public
spaces, and the moments in which we muse about them, about the good things we
did, the things we should have said, what we might have rather not said, what
we did and did not do in response to lives slings and arrows. It is unlike Hamlet's internal dialogue about
whether to act or to think about acting on his impulses. Modern people think about what they should
do, instead of just acting on it. But
some of us still act on, when we should have thought about it, instead of
acting when we should have thought about things.
I spent a few days going back and forth about a
theater performance based on the community gardens. I love the idea of street theater as a
mechanism of social change. And most
certainly it has been for the garden movement.
But I am also weary of seeing our activism codified into a neat nitch in
history, in the museum, before we have achieved victory, which is permanent
community gardens. Debbie
Gould writes about her ambivalence with this process watching AIDS activism
enter the New York Public Library. For her that was the beginning of hte end of her
activism. While I'm glad garden activism
is getting attention, the attention it deserves, I also hope it does not become
a captive of a museum instead of as a piece of activism, fetishized to a point where
it loses it meaning or its power. So I'm
ambivalent.
Felix hoped our action would feel like Gran Fury, with a jigger of creative chaos. |
Felix had been writing about the need for creative
direct action. So I chimed in on
facebook that we needed Felix's festive, defiant brand of direct action, with
joy in defiance of a dour politics of capital which ways people down, sucking
the life and energy out of them.
The plan was to use street theater as we had done so many times before. December 17th, 2011. Photo by Eric McGregor. |
Throughout the
week, activists debated the meanings of the third anniversary of the Citizens United Supreme Court decision,
granting corporations the same rights as individuals. Can we really have a
democracy when corporations with their billions have the same right to vote
with their cash as regular people?
Corporations are people my friend, Mitt reminded us last summer. Some in
Occupy suggested lampooning this wedding between people and corporate persons
in our democracy. So that is what we're
doing Saturday.
Possible plan of action for our drama. Drawing by Kim Fraczek |
Occupy Wall Street would like to invite you
to the joining in
(un-)holy matrimony of a real human being to a non-human corporate “person” to celebrate the 3rd anniversary of Citizen's United, granting corporations equal rights as living things. So why not ask for their hand in marriage?
at 3:30 pm on Saturday,
January 19, 2013
Please arrive at 60 Wall St, where the wedding
party will then proceed to the steps of Federal
Hall for the ceremony.
Please dress in formal wedding attire either in corporate gear and suits for the Corporation side or as a human being on the Human side. Bring signs that match accordingly- protesting the union or encouraging/ branding it with corp. logos.
The Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir will preside. Reception to follow with cake and merriment.
to the joining in
(un-)holy matrimony of a real human being to a non-human corporate “person” to celebrate the 3rd anniversary of Citizen's United, granting corporations equal rights as living things. So why not ask for their hand in marriage?
at 3:30 pm on Saturday,
January 19, 2013
Please arrive at 60 Wall St, where the wedding
party will then proceed to the steps of Federal
Hall for the ceremony.
Please dress in formal wedding attire either in corporate gear and suits for the Corporation side or as a human being on the Human side. Bring signs that match accordingly- protesting the union or encouraging/ branding it with corp. logos.
The Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir will preside. Reception to follow with cake and merriment.
In Times Up, we decided we want a divorce, putting out a call for an action in which we called for an annulment of our relationship with corporate personhood. So we planned another mock street theater piece, as we have done many times before with members of Occupy.
Escape
Ride from Citi Bank's Proposed Forced Marriage to Bike Culture!
January 19th is the third anniversary of the Citizen United decision finding that corporations have the legal rights of people. And now Citi Bank is trying to marry #bikenyc.
Join Times Up! to remind the world that corporate sponsors do not make good partners and ride to escape this forced marriage with street theatrics and direct action.
Leaving ABC No Rio at 1:30, we will run from the bike of corporate greed, staging wedding processions and offering time to object at several Citi Bank locations on our way to the city-wide action against Citizen's United at 4pm. Wear wedding costumes, bring rice and kazoos!
After the action, we'll be joining the OWS Wedding
January 19th is the third anniversary of the Citizen United decision finding that corporations have the legal rights of people. And now Citi Bank is trying to marry #bikenyc.
Join Times Up! to remind the world that corporate sponsors do not make good partners and ride to escape this forced marriage with street theatrics and direct action.
Leaving ABC No Rio at 1:30, we will run from the bike of corporate greed, staging wedding processions and offering time to object at several Citi Bank locations on our way to the city-wide action against Citizen's United at 4pm. Wear wedding costumes, bring rice and kazoos!
After the action, we'll be joining the OWS Wedding
With the week full of plans for theatrics in the
streets, I flew to see my dad in Texas. The last few trips, we're spent more and
more time just talking literature. Its a
way of making sense of family and living. I hope it is a way to do more than
gossip, but the family mishigas is not so easy to avoid. Driving home from the airport, he usually asks
me how everyone is, whose doing what, who is suffering, succeeding, who isn't, how
his wife is coping with Alzheimers in the nursing home, and finally he asks
about his other sons, each of whom he sees as a characters in Brother's Karamazov or East of Eden. Various days, we're all the magnanimous Aron,
others the rebellious Cal. Its a musical
chairs in this family romance.
"Do you like that book?" Dad asks., his
voice dripping with contempt as if anyone why likes it is a complete idiot.
"The
Brother's Karamazov?"
"Yes."
"Even Alyosha? that pious wimp."
"I love him. Dad, every brother wants someone
like Alyosha, who reminds his brother, who is in jail, that he always believed
in his innocence. Every brother wants someone like that. Isn't that all any of
us want to hear from a brother?"
"Perhaps," Dad mumbles, assuming we all
should have relationships with our brothers like Cain and Able. All sons inevitably become parts of their
fathers, the good and the bad. These are the conversations of families. Its
what growing up is all about.
Over the weekend, we talked about Russian novels and my old professor, Mr Gregg, who just passed
(see note at the end of this blog). We also read Hamlet together, Its Dad's favorite of Shakespeare's tragedies.
(see note at the end of this blog). We also read Hamlet together, Its Dad's favorite of Shakespeare's tragedies.
"Whose there?" starts the opening
question.
The two words burst out, like the first two notes of
Beethoven's Ninth, Dad declared, becoming animated to visit a play he'd enjoyed
so many times beforehand, his mind back in the globe theater of his glory
years. We were reading two editions of
the play, one from Dad's undergraduate days at Harvard, another from graduate
school two decades later.
He studied with Tom
Roche at Princeton. "I am most
eccentric about Hamlet and, of course, totally right," Roche famously
boasted. "You are privileged, not
to hear me, but to be reading Shakespeare." Dad did his best to channel
his old adviser, whose presence still filled the room.
"Don't go around misquoting Shakespeare,"
Roche advised his students. Forgive this
misquotes Tom.
And so we read line by line, sitting to talk, making our way through Dad's memories
and stories and the multiple interpretations open to Hamlet.
"Is it what play?" The question is never answered.
Each line feels pregnant with meaning.
"Ay the poor ghost, while memory holds a seat
at this distracted globe."
Was it an honest ghost of his father which was
offering Hamlet counsel? Was he even real? Hamlet's friends see him first. Horatio, the scientist, believes what he can
see, and there is a ghost in front of him.
"Do you consent that we shall acquaint him with
it?"
Should his friends tell Hamlet that there is a ghost
of his Dad running around?
They are friends so the probably ought to, at least
one would think.
"Let us once again assail your ears that are so
fortified against the story."
Part of what I love about reading this material
today, in this time, is how attuned the bard's words seem to the pace and
patterns of the world, of the earth's moods, its head, its pulse, the clues it
offers.
"As harbingers proceeding still fate
And prolog to the amen coming
Have heaven and earth together demonstrated
Until our climatures and countrymen."
But what would any of us do if our father was
killed, our mother married his brother, and you watched him become King? Something is rotten there. Hamlet knows it. But he doesn't know what to do? So he thinks out loud. He wonders, should he kill the uncle or
should he just talk about killing the uncle.
"For these are actions that a man might play,
anybody can do?"
A modern man thinks about it, a medieval man acts on
his instinct and takes the uncle out, Dad reminded me over and over.
And Hamlet torments himself, thinking, speaking out loud,
sharing his inner machinations with the audience at the globe.
"Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless
villain! oh vengeance.
Why what an ass am I?"
"What an ass am I?" We both loved that line. |
Soliloquy after soliloquy , we watch Hamlet wonder
and plan.
"The plays the thing wherin I'll catch the
conscience of the king?" he explains.
I used the
line over and over in my dissertation and later street
activism, explaining that we use stories and theater to make our arguments,
much like Hamlet planned to use the play to catch his uncle in a lie. If the uncle responds we know the ghost is
right.
But is it an honest ghost? What would you do if a ghost came up to you
and told you such things? Dad asked.
"Till now, the very witching time of night....
The rest is silence."
But what of all the ruminations? I posited that Hamlet's inner dialogue is akin
to modern psychoanalysis.
Dad thought that was a completely ridiculous
argument. "Something which would
come out of an English department," he explained.
Trees in the back yard. |
"But Dad - isn't interpretation what this is
all about? What's wrong with
interpreting? Isn't that our job?""
"Not too much.
Blame Tom Roach if I am not too creative about this. He beat that out of me as I wrote my
dissertation."
"Well, the reason I think this has to do with psychoanalysis
is it sounds like Hamlet is talking through his moves instead of first acting
them out. He's wondering if he should be
or not be, if he should act or not to act.
Sometimes we have to act.
Sometimes its better to let things go while we think about it. He's allowing us to see his bad self. He's exploring that bad self, like a jazz
musician who allows the crowd to dance with something deeper inside
themselves. That's part of what this is
all about... Its part of what good theater is all about... it allows us to be
real or at least to imagine it."
Dad still thought my view was like an English
department theory, but he was paying attention.
And so we read through the final soliloquy and
continued our conversation, watched football and movies, ate blackened cat
fish, okra and tomatoes and told some lies.
Dad excavated some of his stories from the trip to
the middle east my parents went on back in the mid -1960's, with Tad, my mom,
and Dads best friend Fred. As usual much
of the afternoon was spend dissecting the tragicomic life of Fred Mayer, his
writing, poetry, and what happened to his life, ate some more, drank some more
and went to bed. Digging around on the
internet, we
found that he had actually published his dissertation writings, three years
before he died. And he never told
anyone about it. But there it was, reminding of him, not quite Hamlet's
ghost. More of a chuckle through time
and memory.
"He was
there sharing his stories with his buddies over martinis when he got
back," Dad smiled, recalling their return from the trip to the Middle
East.
Flying home, I read Christopher Isherwood and worked
on my writing. "Write it down or
its gone forever," Isherwood advised.
And so he wrote everything down, books he read, friends he met, and
things he enjoyed. This montage of
memories is for your Christopher. Thanks
Dad, Fred, Mr. Gregg, Hamlet and the many ghosts of our lives we live with every day,
though we might not see them. Maybe they are still in the room, laughing at us.
And back home from the airport, to the Community bookstore, back to Carroll Park and the particularly green Gawanus Canal. |
Blog Postscript.
While writing this I started thinking about Richard Gregg, who taught the class I loved in Russian Novel at Vassar. I could not find an obit, but the Vassar College Russian Studies Department sent me this note.
MEMORIAL
MINUTE FOR RICHARD GREGG
(Presented
at faculty meeting, Jan 21, 2009)
Richard Gregg
died on Dec. 11, 2008 after a long illness. He had retired in 1998 after having
served Vassar for 30 years.
Sandy Gregg
(“Sandy” is how he preferred to be called) was born in Paris in 1927 to
American parents. His father was a specialist in public medicine connected to
an international organization, and spent several years in France. (Sandy’s
French connection was later strengthened by his marriage to Françoise Bouriez.)
Sandy graduated from Harvard in 1951, majoring in Russian, and went on to an
M.A. in the same institution. He was a student there when Vladimir Nabokov did
a brief stint of teaching at Harvard, and Sandy recalled that he was absolutely
the worst teacher he had ever had. Sandy enrolled in the Ph.D program at
Columbia, writing a dissertation of the 19th c. poet Fyodor Tiutchev
which in 1962 earned Columbia’s Ansley Award for the best dissertation in the
humanities produced in that year. In researching this topic, Sandy became a
member of the first contingent of American students allowed to conduct research
in the USSR as a result of a cultural exchange agreement that had come into
force in 1958. Sandy spent the 1958-59 academic year in Leningrad, trying to
make sense of the voluminous but virtually undecipherable papers of Tiutchev
held in a literary institute there.
Sandy’s book on
Tiutchev came out in 1965, and was immediately recognized as a landmark
contribution to scholarship. In the years that followed Sandy authored some
thirty articles in various scholarly journals, nearly all of them focused on 19th
century Russian literature, primarily on Pushkin and Gogol.
Sandy Gregg
came to Vassar in 1968, hired as a full professor with tenure, and throughout
his thirty years here chose to remain chair of the Russian department. He also
served dutifully on a number of faculty committees, but (I’m afraid) avoided
most faculty meetings, attending literally none in some years. He tended to
mistrust technology and found no use for computers that our administration
distributed to the faculty offices. I recall that early in this period Sandy
asked me to show him how to read and send emails. My demonstration was however
soon cut short by his favorite saying: “Life is too short,” and Sandy’s
computer gathered dust for the rest of his years in Chicago Hall. He was also
old-fashioned in ways that — I submit — many of us could emulate. He made
absolutely no concession to the unfortunate trend known as grade inflation, and
handed out C+ and B- with abandon for work he considered “good but uninspired,”
(as I recall seeing on one of the papers he had graded) all the while remaining
an extremely popular teacher.
Sandy Gregg was famous for his ready wit.
I remember one occasion when he found himself among Chicago Hall faculty who
were discussing a project involving computer-assisted cooperation with Williams
College. Sandy prefaced his remarks (which were quite useful) by saying that he
felt like a Muslim who had by mistake wandered into a Vatican conclave.
Another occasion involved his annoyance
at students in his Russian Novel course (held in one of the Rockefeller
auditoriums) who – come warm spring days – tended to doff their flip-flops and
put their bare feet up onto the backs of the seats in front of them, making all
ten toes visible. Sandy found this extremely irritating, complaining to me that
he had told the class that “only the Russian novelists are allowed to bare
their souls” – but that nothing changed.
I could cite quite a few other episodes
of this type, but “life is too short” and I’ll close by saying that Sandy Gregg
was a good man, an outstanding scholar, a great teacher, and an unforgettable
colleague. All of us who knew him will miss him greatly.
As always, so well said.
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