Hi Ed, Hello Sally and Arthur all you wonderful people. Hello Mike G.
I've been lurking for a while as these questions have been being asked. Maybe the
answer has to do with the willingness to be a nomad. During the last century
there was a rather steady stream across Europe of between 3.5 and 4 million people
each year. (According an article in the New York Review of books a couple of years
ago).
Maybe the issue is that economics as an ideal for a society has finally shown us
that we cannot afford to be one. That we cannot afford families and that nations
were an absurd dream more or less built around the idea of the worth of maintaining
a particular world view. Perhaps Canada and eventually the U.S. is just running
down, like the 700 year Moorish homeland in Spain. I'm sure that Mike Hollinshead
could document this much better than I.
By they way, he is writing one hell of a book. I've been slowly thinking about the
wonderful contexts that he has been putting around much of this stuff. I guess in
John Warfield's words, Mike has been taking an incomprehensible system and making
it comprehensible as a way of having to learn to live with its implications in the
present.
And what has old John Warfield been involved in? That Complexity invention guru at
George Mason. Well John has been dreaming up the future University.
http://www.mv.com/users/davidc/fes/shortc/issue1/warf.html as a starter. I've
been camping out myself on the NYTimes "Issues in Education" for a while since I
lost Futurework. They have been struggling trying to dream a future school
through their fog of political agendas.
So I sit here looking at things as an artist but more like a mechanic that I saw
working on a gearshift box years ago. He was dirty from the grease and was taking
the part out and looking at it. Brushing off the grease then putting it back and
turning it until it didn't work, then taking it out again and going through the
same thing all over again. At one point when he understood it, it worked! There
was nothing that I saw that was changed in the box. He was different in some
profound way from working with the stuff of it. What is it they say? There is
no complexity external to yourself. When we want our society bad enough to work
together and build it and change then we shall have it.
I've said this before but Russia's failure depends upon where you look. Did Russia
fail with those Ice Skaters or Olympic Athletes? How about with scholars in
esoteric fields? Or taking peasants and making them into Doctors, Scientists,
Writers, Composers and hundreds of performing companies filled with what Peter
Senge desires for American private industry. It all depends on where you look.
Or consider the former Yugoslavia, even though he ultimately failed, Marshall Tito
created a national consensus that allowed Serbs to live with Moslems and Croats
with the finest standard of living in the third world and one of the most educated
work forces in the world. Remember Michael Chussodovsky? (Sp?) But Tito died and
the IMF screwed it up. How does that poem go:
>A human pair crouched in his nostrils' heaving caves,
>there lit and fed a fire, set up their house and cooked,
>and from Death's upper lip hung down their new son's cradle.
>Feeling his nostrils tingling and his pale lips tickled,
>Death suddenly shook and tossed in sleep, and the dream vanished.
>For a brief moment Death had fallen asleep and dreamt of life. (NK)
Sitting amongst the remains of the Bolshoi ensemble last night, I had that feeling
that for a brief moment Death had fallen asleep and dreamt of life. Then the
economist's distribution system and the lack of personal ideals in a fascist
situation, those embargoes and the fact of not being able to keep the information
revolution out without destroying their culture and education, all came together to
make them seek another way. We cannot say that their way failed completely.
Their students were far superior to the American students on those Math tests this
year. How about we use that as a yard stick for success?
We cannot say that Castro has failed either. He hasn't been tried. He has been
embargoed for his entire career and his only market in Russia collapsed as a result
of the insane arms race, the trade embargo and that 19th century economic
philosophy. Some say he is a thief but I don't see them opening their houses or
lands to any Indians either. Today the former iron curtain is sending exceptional
technicians to destroy the inferior products of our own schools as well as
exceptional scholars, teachers and performers to do the same for our Fine Arts
establishments. If their culture takes over our training, our opera houses, our
orchestras and develops them we could end up speaking Russian as well as they speak
English. Oh yes their chemists are also making our cosmetics in New Jersey.
Last night I didn't see a single Russian woman that looked like those American TV
ads about Russia's fashion. But I did see a group of amazingly beautiful people,
men and women. A little tawdry, like they had gone through some rough times but
beautiful nonetheless and boy could they sing and dance. And though sad, they
sure knew how to have a good time at a party. They were a little frightening.
Regards
Ray Evans Harrell, artistic director
The Magic Circle Chamber Opera of New York, Inc.
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
