Roberto Rossellini: 'Roma città aperta' / 'Rome, Open City' (1945)

Roberto Rossellini: Roma città aperta /  Rome, Open City (1945).

"All roads lead to Rome, Open City." -- Jean-Luc Godard (1959).

"In 2013, [Pope] Francis spoke to Rome’s La Repubblica newspaper and expressed his deep feelings for [Rome, Open City,] Roberto Rossellini’s realist war drama, which is a ground-zero account of the city under Nazi siege — and which features a Catholic priest as its main character." -- Source: here.

Rome, Open City has touches of Casablanca and any number of "under siege" tales, but its nearness to real events, shot among real war ruins, gives the film a powerful boost. It's raw.

An iconic image of Pina, played by Anna Magnani (1908-1973), in German-occupied Rome. 

The Criterion Collection version with extra features, part of the Roberto Rossellini War Trilogy box set (2017).  

Aldo Fabrizi (1905-1990) as Don Pietro Pellegrini, a goodly priest who says: "It's not hard to die well. The hard thing is to live well."  And, akin to Pope Francis: "I am a Catholic priest. I believe that those who fight for justice and truth walk in the path of God and the paths of God are infinite."

Today's Rune: Partnership.  

Twyla Tharp 50th Anniversary Tour: Dallas

I didn't get to see the Rolling Stones play this year, and I'm geographically too far away from seeing Pope Francis in person on his visit, but I did do something a bit different. Twyla Tharp's 50th Anniversary Tour began in Dallas at the Winspear Opera House (AT&T Performing Arts Center) on September 18 and 19, 2015. I attended on the second night and was thrilled to see it.

I do not know much about the technical aspects of dance and its choreography, but I do know when I like something, and I found this event mesmerizing and great fun: spectacle, music and dance choreographed with both respect and a sense of humor.  

Twyla Tharp is quoted in the program with regards to her organizing principle: "Simply put, PRELUDES AND FUGUES is the world as it ought to be. YOWZIE as it is. The FANFARES celebrate both."

The night proceeded in this order:

FIRST FANFARE

- PAUSE -

PRELUDES AND FUGUES

- INTERMISSION -

SECOND FANFARE

-PAUSE-

YOWZIE

[- FINIS -]

"Preludes and Fugues" revolved around piano music composed by Johann Sebastian Bach. "Yowzie" was constructed around early blues/jazz songs by Jelly Roll Morton, Fats Waller, and others. The whole second part of the night was wilder and more energetic than the first -- which was perfect, not least because audience members could bring "spirits" netted during the intermission to their seats, so long as they had lids on them. 

It was astonishingly pleasing to hear the pounding and thumping of bare feet on the stage, to see it all in person -- a much more exciting experience than seeing such things on a small glass screen.

The dress of the dancers contrasted between halves. For the Bach piano vibe, the men wore what looked to me like simple outfits from the time of the French Revolution or Napoleonic era. The women wore shorter outfits, more like flappers from the 1920s or pre-flappers from ancient times with colorful fabrics. The differences between the attire of the men and women was both anachronistic and cool. Much stranger were the outfits worn by both women and men after the intermission. Think bright, colorful ragtag clothes with the vibe of Billy Idol in "Dancing with Myself" -- sort of 70s punk meets 80s garish tones mixed within a hallucinated dreamscape. In other words: bizarre. Especially because the dancers moved around the stage to musical classics of the first half of the 20th century. Again, both anachronistic and cool.

Which all reminds me: it's good to stretch, get out of the same old, same old routines. My little synapses were firing away, taking it all in. A dash of pinot noir aided me.

Twyla Tharp is astonishing. She came out afterwards and spoke to a sizable subset of the overall audience, that portion which remained after the main performance. She fielded questions. Until this point, the only languages I'd heard around me (when seated elsewhere) were Portuguese, Russian, Italian and Queen's English. In the Q & A, American English was spoken.  

I've already written some about her earlier work with David Byrne on The Catherine Wheel project.  Let me add that Twyla Tharp's The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life (with Mark Reiter, 2006) is a useful and entertaining book, especially for the creatively inclined. For her 50th anniversary tour, you can access Twyla Tharp's NY Times blog here. 

This North American tour (or part thereof) proceeds next to the mountain states, the West Coast, Austin, New Orleans, Bloomington, Toronto, East Lansing, Chicago, Washington, DC, and New York City. Can you dig? I'd see it again if I could. 

Today's Rune: Initiation. 

Howard Thurman (1899-1981): With Head and Heart ~ Take II

Yeah! I finished a first read-through of With Head and Heart: The Autobiography of Howard Thurman (originally published in 1981). There's so much in this book that another round of reading it will be necessary.

One interesting facet: how Howard Thurman traveled around, extensively, despite the obstacles of segregation in the USA, and cultural-political barriers globally. It hearkens to the adage: If there's a will, there's a way; if there's no will, there's no way - a truth that applies to so much in the way of human activity.

Thurman traveled by foot, by rail, by ship, by plane and by automobile. Incidental details of these modes of travel are woven throughout With Head and Heart. And then there's always the matter of where to stay, and how to stay alive and thrive during each journey.

Howard Thurman (Boston University http://hgar-srv3.bu.edu/web/howard-thurman/howard-thurman-collection)

While reading With Head and Heart, it came upon me that I have become significantly more attuned to things over the years (or possibly I've become more self-aware of this attunement). In Texas, for example, I've become more immediately attuned to shifts in air quality  -- not only from day to day but also from space to space. Likewise, I've become more attuned to what other people are attuned to, interested in, driven by, fascinated with. 

Besides travel, I'm attuned to Howard Thurman's interweaving of fiscal matters, funding, the costs of moving around, taking up new responsibilities while holding personal space as sacred. Thurman was always attuned to how one must pay for things along the way -- and he took none of it for granted. In fact, he was very imaginative and resourceful.

And a third facet in With Head and Heart that I'm attuned to is Thurman's awareness of both differences and unities. From an early age, he witnessed doctrinal differences between Baptists and Methodists in his home town in Florida (Daytona Beach and thereabouts) -- silly distinctions that often came down to such matters as sprinkle baptism or full immersion baptism. And worse, Howard had to contend with the social damnation by narrow-minded Christians of people like his father, who chose not to participate in Christian rites. Thurman came to think of these differences and prejudices as absurd, and really he developed a spirit similar to that of today's Pope Francis and Tenzin Gyatso, the Dalai Lama.

And so, a real mentor for us now, Thurman was able to come to a meeting of the minds and spirits among a diverse group of people, whether Cree and Chippewa in Canada, or Muslims in Nigeria, or Jews and Buddhists in California, or Hindus, Buddhists and Christians in India, or secular people, agnostics and atheists anywhere -- he could meet them all, and did. The unities of people are real: we are mortals, we think and feel, eat and sleep, have a limited time here -- and so on. Good stuff.

Today's Rune: Harvest. 

Pilgrimage to Memphis

Pilgrimage to Memphis: National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Hotel (aka Motel). Side approach. Just reopened with extensive renovations on April 5, 2014. This image was frozen in time on April 11, 2014.  

The front of the Lorraine. Wreath marks the area where Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated on April  4, 1968. The National Civil Rights Museum is powerful, and goes perfectly well with the International Civil Rights Center & Museum in Greensboro, North Carolina. 

Last year at this time, also with friends I checked out the Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site in Little Rock, Arkansas, equally worth the pilgrimage. They are all sobering places of universal merit.    

Here's an eccentric Catholic-themed altar-like display on Beale Street in a shop front. It includes the latest three popes and various snippets of related text such as:

PROUD 2 B

AN AMERICAN

LAND OF THE FREE

FREEDOM OF SPEECH

FREEDOM OF RELIGION

GOD BLESS AMERICA

And, quoting Pope Francis: 'WHO AM I TO JUDGE?'

Other bits include: "Francis credited with exorcism." Let's not forget this airy claim: "Memphis is the center of the spiritual universe."

Pilgrimage to Memphis. Closeup of a sign for Shirley's Beauty Salon, near Stax grounds. Can you dig?

Today's Rune: Partnership.  

The Way of Saint Francis Redux

I've always liked the traditions of Saint Francis of Assisi. Not only did he --Giovanni Francesco di Bernardone, who lived between circa 1181 and 1226 A.D. -- develop a peaceful and open worldview, but it turns out his appreciation of the environment and its animal denizens may be as scientifically valid as it is valid philosophically, poetically, ethically and spiritually.

Have you seen or read about the breakthrough studies of birds and rats in recent years? The bird studies (of crows and pigeons) indicate facial recognition -- these birds seem to be able to detect familiar human faces and can determine between friendly and hostile based on earlier interactions, while rats empathize with other rats, helping them escape miniature prison cells and generally lending a paw to those in need.

Not that strange, really, but certainly cool to think about. I can attest that birds in Texas seem "happy" (and relieved) every time I fill up a bird bath during the ongoing drought, for instance. They are watching from nearby trees and bushes, no question. There's little doubt they'd have been very happy to see Saint Francis coming around -- something anyone can emulate at least to some degree even now.  

Saint Francis reminds me of the Buddha in his consistently kindly actions. And now we can enjoy Pope Francis I as he performs wonders of his own. 

Today's Rune: Fertility.   

The Moviegoer

Last time I read -- and then wrote about -- Walker Percy's The Moviegoer (1961) was about two years ago. Before that, I hadn't read it since high school. In between the first two reads, Katrina struck. What I see now is  how much I've taken to heart Percy's existentialist idea of "the search." The search is about funding the now with meaning -- "significant moments," as San Antonio Bill would say, "energy exchanges." Social media conveys these sporadically, theatrically maybe. Theatre of the Absurd much of the time.

I should point out that I'm a Catholic convert, and very much dig Pope Francis for telling it like it is. Percy was a Catholic convert, too. You don't have to be Catholic to be an existentialist, though; you don't have to be religious at all. It's more like karma -- it's there and it works. The search. Not "finding oneself," more an active, open-ended, open-minded seeking, and finding of significant moments, exchanging "real" energy, not flagging half-ass energy. This can be done in solace, alone, or with another person or with other people -- strangers, friends, frenemies, guests, enemies, acquaintances, immediate family, extended family -- the quantity and specifics are less important than the momentous quality.

Percy: "The search is what anyone would undertake if . . . not sunk in the everydayness of [one's] own life . . . To become aware of the possibility of the search is to be onto something. Not to be onto something is to be in despair" (page 13). 

One must be watchful of complacency and laziness, of losing one's sense of curiosity and wonder, of sinking or slumping into what Percy calls "everydayness" (a sort of "vegetable torpor," as Woody Allen once put it).

And so Binx Bolling notes later in Percy's novel:

"But, good as it gets, my old place is used up . . . and when I awake, I awake in the grip of everydayness. Everydayness is the enemy. No search is possible. Perhaps there was a time when everydayness was not too strong and one could break its grip by brute strength. Now nothing breaks it -- but disaster. Only once in my life was the grip of everydayness broken: when I lay bleeding in a ditch" (page 145).

The key is to keep searching, not for "the one key" but for (adopting a Stevie Wonder idea) "songs in the key of life." 

Today's Rune: Wholeness.  

Francis of Assisi, Medieval Saint

The idea and example of Saint Francis of Assisi (ca. 1181-1226) makes many a person happy, and few angry. Why? Furthermore, he was fast-tracked to sainthood less than two years after his death by Pope Gregory IX. 

Biographer André Vauchez contextualizes for us -- as translated by Michael F. Cusato -- in Francis of Assisi: The Life and Afterlife of a Medieval Saint,* Yale, 2012, pages 324-325:

"[T]he clerics of the thirteenth century, with only a few exceptions, mistrusted innovations, seeing in them only dangerous attempts to question, if not subvert, the established order. In their eyes, novitas was invested with a positive content only to the extent that it was based on the past and gave contemporary relevance to it. One could make the new out of the old only by breathing life into what already existed and by making reappear what had become dead or enfeebled." (Sort of like the idea behind perestroika, come to think of it).

Francis was more acceptable to the status quo than various "heresies," rivals such as the Cathari/Albigensians and subsequent "Protestant" sects -- that is, groups that wished to overthrow the Catholic hierarchy entirely.

Being kindly to animals and fringe elements is a "nice" alternative to heresy.

In the words of Saint Francis: 

Where there is charity and wisdom there is neither fear nor ignorance. Where there is patience and humility there is neither anger nor worry. Where there is poverty and joy there is neither cupidity nor avarice. Where there is quiet and meditation there is neither solicitude nor dissipation . . . Where there is mercy and discretion there is neither superfluity nor hard-heartedness. "Admonitions, Rules, etc." as translated by Paschal Robinson in 1905.  

Today's Rune: Wholeness. 

*Originally published in 2009 as François d'Assise: Entre histoire et mémoire.

White Smoke, New Pope: And Along Comes Francis

Where were you when Pope Francis was chosen?  As for me, it's Hot Springs, Arkansas, at the Arlington Hotel, watching on CNN. He seems like a good choice, with Saint Francis as earthly model: San Francesco d'Assisi (circa 1181-1226). Our new Francis is a Sagittarius, which means he probably has a wild streak; things will happen with him in charge of the Roman Catholic Church. Saint Francis was a reformer, close to having been declared a heretic but instead, kept in the fold. Defender of the poor, friend of the birds.  Now, Pope Franciscus of Argentina.

What a year, this 2013 A.D., what an epoch -- in the midst of climate change, social reform, start of a second term for Barack Obama, retired pope (Benedict XVI), death of Hugo Chávez, election of Pope Francis I, 50th anniversary year of the death of JFK. And it's only March! What next?

Today's Rune: Wholeness.       

I Found That Essence Rare

"I Found That Essence Rare"*

Aim for the body rare, you'll see it on TV
The worst thing in 1954 was the Bikini
See the girl on the TV dressed in a Bikini
She doesn't think so but she's dressed for the H-Bomb
(For the H-Bomb)

I found that essence rare, it's what I looked for
I knew I'd get what I asked for

Aim for the country fair you read it in the papers
The worst happens any week a scandal on the front page
See the happy pair smiling close like they are monkeys
They wouldn't think so but they're holding themselves down
(Hold themselves down)

I found that essence rare, it's what I looked for
I knew I'd get what I asked for

I found that essence rare, it's what I looked for
I knew I'd get what I asked for

Aim for politicians fair who'll treat your vote well
The last thing they'll ever do is act in your interest
Look at the world through your polaroid glasses
Things'll look a whole lot better for the working classes
(Working classes)

I found that essence rare, it's what I looked for
I knew I'd get what I asked for

I found that essence rare, it's what I looked for
I knew I'd get what I asked for.

*Gang of Four, Entertainment! (1979) -- Dave Allen, Hugo Burnham, Andy Gill, Jon King.


Micheline Bernadini -- first woman to wear the modern bikini -- ever.

Today's Rune: Fertility.

Gemini Birthdays: Albrecht Dürer, Alexander Pope, Henri le Douanier Rousseau, Suzanne Lilar (b. Suzanne Verbist), Thomas Wright Fats Waller, Harold Robbins (b. Francis Kane, Harold Rubin), Raymond Burr, Robert Creeley, Al Franken, Jeffrey Dahmer, Biggie Smalls aka The Notorious B.I.G. (b. Christopher George Latore Wallace).

Au revoir!