Office by Alex Penny
What drew us to the way we went? What was the vision, the inciting incident? Actually, there was no incident, no high drama. There was simply a change of thought, a new way of looking at things, a tilt of the head, a revolution in our perception. We looked at what we had—the hit-or-miss; put-it-up, tear-it-down; make-a-buck, lose-a-buck; discontinuous; artist-indifferent; New York-centered ways of Broadway, and they weren’t tolerable anymore, and it made us angry. We thought there had to be a better way, and we made that up out of what was lying around ungathered and, standing on the shoulders of earlier efforts in America and examples common in other countries, we went forward, some of us starting small, some like the Guthrie, big.
The fabric of the thought that propelled us was that theater should stop serving the function of making money, for which it has never been and never will be suited, and start serving the revelation and shaping of the process of living, for which it is uniquely suited, for which it, indeed, exists. The new thought was that theater should be restored to itself as a form of art.
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Maybe this is something we have to rediscover every 50 years or so. Here’s this, from THE GIFT by Lewis Hyde:
To restate this choice in slightly different terms, a circulation of gifts nourishes those parts of our spirit that are not entirely personal, parts that derive from nature, the group, the race, or the gods. Furthermore, although these wider spirits are a part of us, they are not “ours”; they are endowments bestowed upon us. To feed them by giving away the increase they have brought us is to accept that our participation in them brings with it an obligation to preserve their vitality. When, on the other hand, we reverse the direction of the increase— when we profit on exchange or convert “one man’s gift to another man’s capital”—we nourish that part of our being (or our group) which is distinct and separate from others. Negative reciprocity strengthens the spirits—constructive or destructive—of individualism and clannishness. In the present century the opposition between negative and positive reciprocity has taken the form of a debate between “capitalist” and “communist,” “individualist” and “socialist”; but the conflict is much older than that, because it is an essential polarity between the part and the whole, the one and the many. Every age must find its balance between the two, and in every age the domination of either one will bring with it the call for its opposite. For where, on the one hand, there is no way to assert identity against the mass, and no opportunity for private gain, we lose the well-advertised benefits of a market society—its particular freedoms, its particular kind of innovation, its individual and material variety, and so on. But where, on the other hand, the market alone rules, and particularly where its benefits derive from the conversion of gift property to commodities, the fruits of gift exchange are lost. At that point commerce becomes correctly associated with the fragmentation of community and the suppression of liveliness, fertility, and social feeling. For where we maintain no institutions of positive reciprocity, we find ourselves unable to participate in those “wider spirits” I just spoke of— unable to enter gracefully into nature, unable to draw community out of the mass, and, finally, unable to receive, contribute toward, and pass along the collective treasures we refer to as culture and tradition. Only when the increase of gifts moves with the gift may the accumulated wealth of our spirit continue to grow among us, so that each of us may enter, and be revived by, a vitality beyond his or her solitary powers.
Hyde, Lewis (2009-07-01). The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World (Vintage) (pp. 48-50). Vintage. Kindle Edition.
The most heart-breaking part is that she wanted to take in a foster kid because she herself was raised in foster care.
From the Daily Show (as reported by my future husband Wyatt Cenac), this nice woman’s application to be a foster parent was rejected because she, as a Muslim, stated that she would not serve pork in her home. Ridiculous, obviously. Have any vegetarians or vegans had trouble with the foster system because of their diets? Anyone have any information?
I can’t imagine serving animal products in my home, regardless of the situation—kids can be really picky, but there are so many foods!, and sometimes kids haven’t been able to try very many. Your opinions?
i was moved by the softly elegiac quality of the final note. as if the singer is mourning the lost gentility of the age of belvedere. brava, hooper and md. brava.
This is me signing the Mr. Belvedere theme songs. Maria made a video to go along with it and put it on youtube. People really hate it for some reason, I don’t understand.
Mr. Belvedere theme song (via onesharpbroad)
this is totally the mr. belvedere of otters.
Via
