New Zealand Attack/Tragedy

First my thoughts and hopes go out to the victims of this cowardly, reprehensible action.

To those who committed it, to those who enabled it, to those like our Resident in Chief who are making excuses for it… you are as guilty as the ones who pulled the trigger.

See, this blind yet supportive eye our resident in chief (and too many who voted for him) would turn toward intolerance, and step to power on the backs of stupidity, ignorance, greed and hate… this is the outcome of such a policy of hate. This is your ‘wall’ made manifest.

And in an increasingly connected global economy and global thought space, stupidity spreads. Especially when supported by fools in power.

America, has shown the world how to do mass murders of its own citizens by its own citizens, a genocidal and suicidal nation, that is infecting the rest of the world. The lack of laws to keep weapons of mass destruction out of the hands of the deranged, and the addled, and the damned. A lack of laws to hold the firearm manufacturers and the estate of the culprit fiscally responsible for the lives and bodies destroyed, by a wanton act of cowardice.

America, steered by madmen, shows the rest of the world how to go mad.

The answer?

The answer to blood?

The answer to horror?

The answer to deranged madmen calling for insane walls rather than real gun control?

The answer to too many of you who actually voted for such lunacy?

The answer is simple.

The answer is to admit you have been wrong.

Wrong as an American, or a Brit, or a New Zealander or a South African.

Wrong as a Democrat.

Wrong as a Republican.

Wrong as someone who believes in hate.

Wrong as someone who believes in love.

Wrong as a Christian.

Wrong as a Muslim.

Wrong as a Jew.

Wrong as a Buddhist.

Wrong as a Nazi.

You have to question everything you believe is right, and everything you believe is wrong, and only then can you see clearly.

Because a fool and a zealot do not question.

And we live in a world of fools and zealots, who do not challenge the absolute good and the absolute evil they have mistaken for the world.

Monologues, Alan Moore said.

Monologues we have mistaken for the world.

A man walked into a holy place, and destroyed lives, for a monologue he had mistaken for the world.

For a fiction, a fabrication, that with but a moments thought to question, the absolutes of his insane plan, people dead would now be alive, and families broken would be whole.

We all want to be on the side of the angels.

Whatever angels we bend our knee to.

But the magic of the world, is it is constantly changing. And every day, every single day, we have to get up, and ask ourselves, are we good men, or bad ones. And every single day, the answer to that question, should be in doubt.

We should never wake up assuming we are on the side of the angels. Because that is the quickest way… to do the devils work.

The man who walked into that Mosque in New Zealand was absolute in his conviction, and that is what damned him. And that is what will damn us all.

Absolutes whether the quest for a wall, or the quest for lives, absolutes… fail. They fail, especially when the price is paid not by you, but by some one else.

I end where I begin.

My thoughts go out to the victims of the latest man, the latest system, of absolutes. You want to really make a difference, really stop these massacres? This is what you do.

If you are a staunch supporter of NRA, question it. If you are a staunch opponent of NRA, question it. Question your absolutes, honestly, because I believe reason, all effing evidence to the contrary, I believe reason ultimately wins.

I believe a man on a path of hate or a man on a path of love, can be the same horrible man, for lack of questioning.

The humility of doubt can save their souls. Can define their souls. Accepting nothing as absolute.

Wake up every morning asking yourself if you are a good person or a bad one, and answering it honestly. And that is how you stay out of… true evil. Avoiding Absolutism.

I’m not preaching anything to you, that I don’t do myself.

Everyday I wake up, I ask myself if I am a good man or a bad one, and the act of questioning, and the striving to be a better man, is a great way to stop from, gleefully, being… the worst of men.

That’s all I have right now.

Be well.

Murder in the Age of Rome: American Heroes and American Mass-Murders

Superbowl Sunday I should no doubt have a post on the Superbowl like the rest of America.

However other things grab my interest. Other things that perhaps transcend caring what group of modern gladiators, beat another group of modern gladiators.

This weekend, according to the AP, Chris Kyle, ex-Navy Seal Sniper and author of the 2012 best-selling AMERICAN SNIPER was killed along with another veteran Chad Littlefield in a shooting at the gun range at Rough Creek Lodge and Resort in Glen Rose, Texas. Killed by another former veteran.

The details and the reasons are still sketchy, but aren’t they always. What is known is this is the latest in what is seemingly an endless parade of American mass-murders.

Why?

Why?

And reading the coverage of this latest violence, something of interest struck me in the coverage.

The CNN coverage states:

“[Chris] Kyle learned to shoot on hunting trips with his father, then went on to serve four combat tours in Iraq with the SEALS, though his official biography notes he also worked with Army and Marine units. He received two Silver Stars and other commendations before leaving the Navy in 2009 — claiming that, in his years as a sniper, he’d killed more than 150 people, which he called a record for an American.”

and

“The first time, you’re not even sure you can do it,” he [Chris Kyle] said in the interview. “But I’m not over there looking at these people as people. I’m not wondering if he has a family. I’m just trying to keep my guys safe. Every time I kill someone, he can’t plant an (improvised explosive device). You don’t think twice about it.”

and

“In a statement, the [Fitco Cares]foundation described Kyle as an “American hero” and pledged to carry on his mission.”

And maybe it’s that simple.

Maybe from Sergeant York to Audie Murphy to today’s efficient killers, maybe it has become the American pastime to define as hero the indiscriminate taking of lives. While we live in a world where the pursuit of life, is often dependent on those adept at death, perhaps what is increasingly lost in the American mindset today… is the sense of that act as an evil, perhaps a necessary evil, but an evil none the less.

Perhaps the American media’s glorification of men of war at the expense of men of peace, seeps into the American zeitgeist, the American Soul if you will, and America’s export of indiscriminate horror and blood abroad, returns to us at home.

From Columbine to Aurora to Sandy Hook, perhaps these uniquely American Massacres are part and parcel of the increasing unrepentant and murderous definition of American Heroes.

We glorify the wrong things in our Soldiers, and by so doing glorify the wrong things in ourselves. They are heroes because they are willing to sacrifice, not because they are willing to kill. They and we are victims, when we have to kill. When the killing is all we have left. And worse when the act of that killing ceases to have meaning.

Chickens coming home to roost. By its fruit will you know a tree.

A soldier and a warrior died this weekend and that is a tragedy. But it is only a tragedy if the loss of the 150 lives he took, is also a tragedy.

Like any soldier, like every soldier; either every life has value or no life has value. That is the lesson of America and the world in the 21st century. The more easily we justify killing the other, the more valueless we make their lives, the more valueless we make our own.

That’s the lesson I learned today, while all of Rome was watching the Gladiators in the Coliseum,

Somehow I think… a lesson of value.

THEATER REVIEW: CSC’s Movable Shakespeare’s RICHARD III

“No beast so fierce but knows some touch of pity. But I know none, and therefore am no beast.”
― William Shakespeare, Richard III

There is no shortage of villains in the oeuvre of the writer known as William Shakespeare. From the machinations of Hamlet’s Uncle-cum-Father who puts Hamlet ‘too much in the Sun’, to the deviousness of Othello’s ‘trusted’ Iago, to the bloody, eye-plucking Cornwall in King Lear, but none are so ever quotable, and perhaps as eminently watchable as Richard III, who is of such expanse in his villainy that he is the star of his own self-titled play, rather than just a player in another character’s tale.

And this comes to life in florid detail in the Chesapeake Shakespeare Company’s unique production of RICHARD III. Directed by Ian Gallanar, one of the CSC’s founders, RICHARD III is presented in a ‘movable’ style that puts the audience, truly in the heart of the action and makes them mute(and not so mute) chorus to this tale of treachery and tragedy.

Taking place in the ‘haunted’ ruins at the Patapsco Female Institute Historic Park in Ellicott City, Maryland, beneath the stars and the eyes of God, it is truly a presentation to remember. Particularly on a good, clear fall night (which we were blessed to see it on) with the wind picking up just a little, and showering Richard III with leaves, almost on queue, as he woos a man’s widow over his corpse. Ay, it’s a great thing, when the heavens provide your special effects.

And the whole play went thus, as a crowd of over 100, moved from picturesque room or steps or courtyard, moved from scene to scene, and watched actors of talent and temper… a tale unfold.

And before getting into the actors, a bit more on the setting.

Ellicott City is a 30 square mile area, more loose community than incorporated sub-division, that traces its history back to its founding as a Flour Mill back in 1772 by Quaker Brothers named Ellicott. Nestled in the Baltimore-Washington bosom, the area is rumored to, like Rome, be built on seven hills.

So this is no concrete jungle or ‘great white way’ for your theatrical experience, it is a beautiful and languid tree-lined drive, followed by a pretty spooky uphill walk to make the (typically) 8pm showing, that takes place in the Grecian tinged ruins of the Patapsco Female Institute.

So that is the stage, not New York, or Charlotte, or DC or LA, but the woodlands of Ellicott City; and the PFI Historic Park is a stage worth traveling to see.

Now for those who prance upon that stage.

While there are many strengths to an outdoor production, there are also obvious weaknesses. There are minor moments of congestion and confusion inherent in herding a hundred people to and fro, and that very act of going in and out of the ‘reality’ of the play, perhaps can limit how engrossed the viewer can get into the play.

However I think the immediacy of being ‘in’ the play, and viewing that closely the actors and interacting in their space, compensates for any loss of concentrated immersion in the piece.

However one other weakness of an outdoor production, is the sound. Without the acoustics and sound system of a real theater the actors have to project to be heard, particularly should the weather pick up. Some actors were better at doing this than others. Some actors needed to project better. And some actors were stellar.

The word stellar has to be kept close to the name Vince Eisenson who stars as the titular Richard the IIIrd. He has, as expected, to carry much of the play, much of the language, much of the energy. It is a ponderous role to undertake, and Eisenson manages not just to suffer the weight of the role, but to carry it as if he was born to it.

Part of this may have to do with his youth, but more than that Eisenson’s Richard is a far more vibrant and lively Richard, no less tortured than other actors who have portrayed the character, but there is a sophistication there, a deft touch to his portrayal, that eschews mustache twirling, that makes the character’s ability to charm and deceive, more believable here.

Also of note is the performance of Associate Director Scott Allan Small, as he makes the role of Buckingham, that I think can often come off as no more than a yes man, into one of the formidable figures of the play. He particularly just shines in the scene where he mixes with the audience as he ‘attempts’ to get Richard to accept the crown.

Also the scene where Buckingham draws the line at the slaying of children, and demands his due of Richard, I thought was just played beautifully between the two actors of Eisenson and Small. The physicality of how they played that role, with Buckingham played as the brick wall in that scene (like Marvel Comics’ Kingpin transplanted to Shakespeare), against Richard’s flowing water, that seeps into the brick… and breaks it all to pieces.

And the CSC performance is filled with such capable actors, among them Dave Gamble, Greg Burgess, and Jamie Jager in a passionate performance as Richmond. Another highlight scene is with Ron Heneghan delivering a very captivating performance as the imprisoned Clarence; it takes place in a fireplace dominated prison opposite equally entertaining performances by Bart Debicki as Brackenbury (the lieutenant of the tower) and the actors playing his assassins (Rebecca Dreyfuss and Jared Murray).

All in all, a thoroughly enjoyable and recommended production, by a theater company I do not think you would be wrong, in calling world class. And this is typified by the fact that the last few performances of their RICHARD III (ending the weekend of this writing) are all sold out.

But don’t mourn too much, if moved by this review to sample the Chesapeake Shakespeare Company in the future and will be visiting the East Coast, 2013 brings new CSC productions of Shakespeare’s classic plays, among them ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA and THE TAMING OF THE SHREW.

And If RICHARD III is a gauge, both shows will be much labored over in their construction, and much loved in their delivery.

Accolades go out to communications Director Sandra Maddox Barton for all her assistance, in making this review possible.