Berowne's 136

(For Three-Word Wednesday and ABC Wednesday: "K" is for "Kettle of Fish")
Flying to Biafra
Some years back I received an interesting assignment: I was hired to make a motion picture on Nigeria. It was a chance to do something of real value in my film work.

Making the film, which by the way was titled “Nigeria: Its Art and Its People,” wasn’t all that difficult. What was difficult was making Biafra part of the story.
You may not remember Biafra; it was a state in southern Nigeria, and like our southern states back in the 1860s it was secessionist. In other words, Biafra broke off from the rest of Nigeria and formed a new republic, which led to the Biafran War.
There have been so many wars over the past decades that people tend to forget this one, but the Biafran War was a major conflict: after two and a half years of fighting, during which a million civilians died from fighting and from famine, the new republic gave up in 1970 and rejoined Nigeria.
That’s when I showed up to make my movie.
Everything went fairly smoothly in the production; I shot the Nigerian art, the Nigerian people and lots of beautiful scenic stuff. But one day I got a call to meet with a top general; he said the government wanted Biafra to be in the film.
He said there was a marvelous Biafran dance troupe that I must go down and film. This would show that the country was now completely united once again.
I had no idea how this would work out; the war had just ended a few months earlier. In a way I felt better when I learned that what he had requested was sort of impossible.
There were no roads left to Biafra; no train tracks, no air travel, nothing. That old phrase, You can’t get there from here, was highly appropriate. I pointed this out to the general. Didn’t bother him a bit. Rent a plane, he said; get down there! We want that dance troupe in the film!

Well, that was a different kettle of fish; plane-renting had not been in my original budget. But I found a retired KLM pilot with a small plane who made a living from safari groups and such, so for an agreed-upon sum I enticed him to take me to Biafra.
What a trip that was! We flew at 400 feet all the way down; all of Africa was spread out before me – the jungle, the villages, the rivers, the whole deal. Quite beautiful.
We arrived at the Biafran airport – and there was nothing there. It was a large airport with an impressive control tower, but not a person was in sight. My pilot said he had never tried to land at an airport where there wasn’t anybody, but he’d give it a try.
So we landed and waited. There had been some sort of garbled message that folks would be there to pick me up in a van. There was no van. We waited some more.
My pilot had just made the suggestion that we pack it in and go back, when we heard a car’s horn in the near distance. A van arrived. The driver took me to an elementary school, where they were waiting for me.

The sight of the children was appalling. The kids, and everyone else I saw in Biafra, had suffered years of famine and they looked it. I wished I had thought to bring something with me, some kind of food, instead of just a camera.
When I explained to the teacher that I wanted to film the local dance troupe, she was puzzled. There was no such troupe. She believed that someone from up north, when visiting Biafra, had seen how, once she played a disc on her turntable in the classroom, the kids got up and gyrated about, as I guess all kids do when they hear music, and the visitor evidently thought there was some kind of dance troupe.
I didn’t know what to do. I shot the children, in their pitiful condition, dancing about to the music and figured I could maybe make the footage look something like a troupe later in the editing. But I had a terrible feeling about this whole operation.

Those folks had been cut off from everything, all waiting desperately for help from outside – for food, supplies - to arrive, and then I showed up, bringing nothing but an inane request for a dance troupe.

I had never been ashamed of my work as a film-maker, but I have to admit I felt some shame then. I was a person who could get back on the plane and fly north to a life of ease, able to savor a fine evening meal and many more such meals, while the results of the famine were to remain for a long time with all the children, with all the people, of Biafra.

(Also submitted to Sunday Scribblings)

Berowne's 135

(For Three-Word Wednesday and ABC Wednesday: "J" is for "Joker")
Summing up Dali’.
All his life the painter Salvador Dali’ had a desire not just to do the outlandish thing, he wanted to be the outlandish thing.

“I don’t do drugs. I am drugs.”
Many regarded him as shallow, a kind of joker, but he could be serious. It was, he reasoned, by ignoring aesthetic concerns that he could approach true art.
“It is good taste, and good taste alone, that possesses the power to sterilize and is always the first handicap to any creative functioning.”

His surrealism, his famous limp watches, summed up this thought. Which brings us to this week’s prompt, a painting by Dali':

“I am making things that inspire me with a profound emotion and I am trying to paint them honestly."
Picture a young man – Salvador was twenty-one at this time – absolutely dedicated to throwing off the shackles of his education and existence and conventional art training.
What fascinated him? What inspired him with a profound emotion?
In “Venus and a Sailor,” it is eros, the erotic force, that was to be his trademark throughout his life as an artist.
A sailor, after a month or so at sea, seeks a woman. To Dali’, this is that most important life force at work because the person the sailor seeks is not just a woman to nestle with; she is Woman – a girl, a mother figure, a goddess from the classical past, and yes, a prostitute.
Dali’ came at this theme from several different angles.

In this version, what a beauty is the goddess; what a nonentity – he doesn’t even have a face – the sailor. He is not all that important in this scenario.
Here's still one more angle.

This would seem to be the most representational. The sailor has had quite a fall; he has become a mere puppet. The ship is at anchor in the harbor. Young Salvador has inserted a small iconic item from that time – 1924 – a “flapper.”
It’s almost as though he is commenting on class differences. It may be just my imagination but as I understand it the sailor, a common seaman, gets nothing; the man making out with the goddess is an officer, or possibly a petty officer.
To sum up, surrealism opened up infinite possibilities for Dali’s wild imagination.

(Also submitted to Sunday Scribblings)

Berowne's 134

(For Three-Word Wednesday and ABC Wednesday: "I" is for "Irene")

“You won’t try my energy drink? It’s a perfect way to start the day.”
“No thanks. A nice little cup of coffee, maybe with a touch of milk and sugar, gives me all the breakfast energy I need.”
“I don’t get it. People pay me real money for my work as a professional trainer, but you ignore what I have to say.”
“You probably haven’t noticed – I’m only your sister - but I’m not into weight lifting and all the rest of it. I know you just love that macho reputation, but at times you make yourself almost scary.”
“Whoever said I was scary?”
“Lucille, for one.”
“Lucille? You bring up Lucille? You know as well as I she was a nut job. You couldn’t believe a word she said.”
“Well, the word she said was, you were scary. Once you got mad and broke up the furniture in her apartment.”
“There! You see? Totally untrue! ‘Broke up the furniture’- that’s just plain crazy. We were having an argument and she said stuff that got me a bit upset. She had an old chair she had been trying to get rid of and I broke off one of the legs. That was hardly breaking up the furniture.”
“If breaking up a chair wasn’t breaking up the furniture, what was it?”
“It was helping her get rid of an old chair. But why are we talking about my old girl friend? I broke off with Lucille last year.”
“You broke off? She got a restraining order.”
“Look, Irene. Why are we wasting time talking about her? You said you wanted to talk about Jeff.”
“I know you mean well, Gary. I know you love your sister and you want to protect me and all that good stuff, but it can make my life difficult. I think this is going to call for a revolution in your thinking: it seems you don’t realize that sometimes your actions can be almost lethal. You’re a big guy – six foot three and God knows how many pounds right now.”
“What? Did Jeff claim that I got rough with him, pushed him around? That’s baloney!”
“No, no. It was nothing like that. It was the night I first asked Jeff over to meet the folks. I really thought he might be the guy I had been looking for.”
“Well, that’s wonderful. I sincerely hope it works out that way.”
“I didn’t realize you’d be home. That was the night you usually went to your weight-lifting group or club or whatever it is.”
“Well, tell you the truth, I wanted to meet this Jeff, see what he was like. I only got one sister and I want the best for her.”
“I’ve told you before - I know you don’t get it - but none of this is your business! You have no say in who I go out with, who I invite home! When I saw you talking with Jeff that night, my heart sank. Oh God, I thought, Gary is going to screw this up.”
“Why, that’s crazy. Jeff and I had a fine talk. He’s quite a guy; I admire him. I told him so.”
“Then you may be a bit surprised that I got an email from him today: he has decided we shouldn’t see each other again. Among the reasons he mentioned, he still hasn’t gotten over his talk with you.”
“What? I was friendly, welcomed him into our home. Wished him the best, the whole deal. What was wrong with that?”
“Maybe the part where you mentioned what you’d do if he ever did anything to make your sister unhappy. Breaking both legs or something like that.”
“It was only one leg. But it was a joke, just guy talk! This all hinges on that? And you say he was scared? Ha! Is he a man or a mouse? I don't think he’s right for you after all.”
“I’m going to try to fix things with him. But listen, Gary, because this is important. If you ever see Jeff again – and I hope that won’t happen often – I don’t want you to say anything to him. Nothing! Okay?”
“Fine. Whatever you say. And don’t worry, if ever I do talk with him again, it’ll be just to be friendly and assure him of how much I love my sister and want only what’s best for her.”
(Also submitted to Sunday Scribblings)

Berowne's 133

(Also for Three-Word Wednesday and ABC Wednesday: "H" is for "Happy.")

I’d be surprised if I was the only blogger who was inspired by the above prompt to think of Will Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”
But there’s a problem.
The play is so well known it’s hard to say something about it that hasn’t been said before - and maybe too often. So I thought I’d just mention a few of the lesser-known facts about this delightful work. Let’s start with this:
In the play it’s a night like a dream and everything’s a bit crazy. Large numbers of fairies come out and do their fairy thing.
(Does that happen rarely? No, fairy often.)
It's my duty to point out that Will Shakespeare’s fairyland isn’t like any other. In his plays the gossamer types can be evil.
Will was influenced by the prevailing belief of the English peasants. When something bad happened, you had something, or someone, to blame it on.
If you have a perfectly healthy baby and the next morning it’s sickly, one of them dam’ fairies had come and switched them, took the healthy kid and left a “changeling.”

In addition, the King and the Queen of the fairies – Oberon and Titania – are awesomely powerful. When they’re squabbling, bad weather hits the entire land. Imagine fairies, especially the King and Queen of ‘em, each accusing the other of having had carnival knowledge of other beings.
I don’t know how closely Shakespeare studied his Freud, but there’s no denying that an important element of the play, the wood outside Athens, is the land of the id, the home of the unconscious and uncontrollable impulse.
I think it’s safe to say Will’s Boss, Queen Liz the One, was in attendance at the play’s first performance. Why? Because he goes out of his way to pay her a soothing compliment in the lines he wrote for the occasion.
You see, Oberon mentions that there is one individual who is above all the erotic banter and hanky-panky that goes on: without naming her, he is referring to Queen Elizabeth herself.
It seems Cupid took a shot at her, but to no avail.
Oberon: “A certain aim he took at a fair vestal, throned by the west, and loos’d his love shaft smartly from his bow, as it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts. But the imperial votr’ess passed on, in maiden meditation, fancy-free.”
In other words, Elizabeth is above such stuff; she’s busy creating the British Empire.
Perhaps the most famous single scene from this play has the beauteous Queen Titania falling madly in love with humble Nick Bottom, a weaver.

Nick isn’t much to look at in the best of times. But as I’m sure you know, he has been cursed (as who among us has not?) In his case, the curse is that he has been turned into a jassack.

Doesn’t matter; she still is enraptured by him:
Titania: “Come sit thee down upon this flow’ry bed While I thy amiable cheeks do coy, And stick musk-roses in thy sleek, smooth head And kiss thy fair large ears, my gentle joy.”
Too bad, like so many summer romances, l’affaire Titania-Bottom doesn’t last long.
Well, actually, since it’s now the beginning of September, it may be a bit late for a play about mid-summer. (The actual time in the play seems to be some time in May.) But for Will S, time didn't seem to matter.
Basically, it's a happy play. As a producer you can put it on these days as a work of exotic moonshine, a theatrical trifle. Or you can study it seriously – as I have certainly not done in this post - and come to realize that it is a complex and exacting work of art.
(Also submitted to Sunday Scribblings)

Berowne's 132

(Also for Three-Word Wednesday and ABC Wednesday: "G" is for "Gemuetlichkeit")

The prompt this week reminded me of the German word “Gemuetlichkeit”…
A word that, freely translated, can mean a sort of coziness; for example, a room in a home that induces a calm mood and peace of mind.
I found a town like that when I was making a film in Munich, back in the sixties. I had hired a very capable young woman to act as translator, facilitator, production assistant, etc. Once I asked her where in Munich she lived and she said she didn’t live in Munich, she lived in Dachau.

That brought me up short. Do people live in Dachau? It was as though someone had said "I live in Auschwitz." I was to learn that Dachau is a very pleasant, Gemuetlichkeitish sort of town, just north of Munich. That is what it is today and that’s what it was in the darkest days of the famous concentration camp.

It was in 1933 that Nazi bigwigs chose this village as the location for the very first of their concentration camps. Over the years, until 1945, it was a place where some 42,000 people were killed.
I asked my production assistant if I could visit; I’d love to explore Dachau. She volunteered to show me around.
Dachau is indeed a pleasant town, with a history that goes back more than 1,200 years. A hundred years or so ago it was an art center, famous for its impressionist painters.

But right down the road is this ghastly death factory. It’s still there. My assistant told me that, well after the war’s end, when she was in grammar school, there was a referendum that became a national affair: What should be done about the Dachau concentration camp? Should it be destroyed, all traces obliterated? Or should it be kept as a memorial to those who died there?
They have kept it as a memorial. You can visit it. It lives up to expectations; it is a powerful, moving experience.

Here’s a picture of some of the camp inmates, joyfully greeting the American troops who liberated them.
At this point I’d like to post a photo that I think is fascinating. One day in the thirties or forties a man who lived in Dachau took a picture from his window. I don’t know if he was pro or anti-Nazi. (I imagine taking such a photo was a rather dangerous thing to do.)

It shows a solid mass of people being herded along the main street of the town, heading toward the camp, just down the road, where so many of them would die. This must have happened a great many times over the twelve years of the camp’s existence.
If you visit the Dachau camp I’m sure you’ll be moved, as I was, by the phrase at the entrance – a phrase in five languages.
“NEVER AGAIN.”

(Also submitted to Sunday Scribblings)

Berowne's 131

(For Three-Word Wednesday and ABC Wednesday: "F" is for "Furious")
The end of World War II brought about one of the largest population movements in history.
Many thousands of people who had escaped from the Nazi genocide, who had somehow lived through the conflict, found they were facing a new tyranny, Soviet style.

Needless to say, many tried to come to the United States. For them, it must have seemed that the years of drought would soon be over; they would be in the land of plenty. Those who had family here, relatives who would help them, received preference.

I remember those days when shiploads of refugees arrived in New York. In the months after the war’s end you would often see worried-looking folks wandering about the city, each carrying a worn valise or satchel; they usually had a little note pinned to their lapels. The note gave their destination and asked passersby to be of help.
All of which brings me to my train trip at thst time up from Baltimore, where my ship was docked.
On the train, seated across the aisle from me, was a gentleman who was obviously one of those refugees; he had the requisite note on his lapel.
In a spasm of Good Samaritanism I welcomed him to America and asked if I could be of help. I know a couple of words in a number of languages, but he understood none of them. (He must have been from Southeastern Baluchistan or some such place.)
His note read that he was going to his brother-in-law’s, who lived in New York; please help. Fine! I said to him, accompanying my remarks with gestures and appropriate facial expressions, I too am going to New York! I’ll see you get there all right!
He gave a sort of half-smile, as though he understood this odd person was trying to be of help.
We cruised up the coast of New Jersey, with as much comfort and amusement as the Penn Railroad of that day could provide. My friend across the aisle looked worried each time we stopped – Elizabeth, Perth Amboy – but I would assure him no, this is not New York. Pas encore, noch nicht, not yet!
He seemed to understand, but still looked worried.
As anyone who has made this trip knows, there is one last stop, Newark, before the train takes a deep breath and plunges under the Hudson to come up in the Big Apple.
As we pulled into the Newark station, the conductor opened the door and shouted the name of the stop as loudly as he was able. Unfortunately, he shouted “New – ARK!”
To anyone from Southeastern Baluchistan, or almost any other foreign land, it would probably have sounded like a guy announcing our arrival in New York. My friend got up and headed for the door. I grabbed his arm: No! This is not New York! No New York! Not!
Now he really looked worried. He sat back down, but eyed me with great suspicion. I seemed to be sincere, but perhaps he had been told about sharpies in America and how they would try to trick you.
The train waited for a few minutes in the station. Then, just before it started up again, the conductor stuck his head in again and repeated, in his operatic fashion, “New – ARK!”
My refugee was now furious; he excitedly shot me a glance of pure hatred, ran for the door and managed to get off just as the train kicked into gear.
I often wondered what happened to my friend, arriving in New Jersey completely confused, speaking no English and knowing no one. But hey, America is the land of opportunity, right?
It’s quite possible he wound up, years later, as the owner of the biggest night club in Hoboken. :-)

(Also submitted to Sunday Scribblings.)

Berowne's 130

(Also submitted to Three-Word Wednesday and ABC Wednesday: "E" is for "Extraordinary")
Fortuitous, I believe, is what they call it.
Something happening by chance.
The above is a picture of and by Francesca Woodman, holding a shell as a talisman.
Thanks to my old friend Net Flix (an old high-school chum), I received a prize-winning documentary just a week or so ago titled “The Woodmans,” which told the strange, true, bizarre and ultimately sad story of the daughter of a family of artists, Francesca.

Both of her parents were artists; Francesca chose photography as her art form.
Back in the seventies, while still a teenager, her diary shows she felt elation at the work she was turning out, depression at the failure of a romantic relationship, the pressure because of the lack of appreciation of her extraordinary art and what might be termed her message.

I am poorly equipped as an art critic. I must leave that to others. What fascinated me about Francesca’s work, as a former cinematographer, were her methods, her experiments with exposure and composition, her constantly-recurring themes, even her props.
And perhaps above all, her exploration of the human body in space and of the genre of self-portraiture. In her work there are hundreds of pictures of the female nude, and the nude was almost always Francesca herself.
As one critic put it, she “demonstrated a desire to beat the code of appearances." Surely she did that – in such pictures as:
"…She flings her arms back at the camera, so that her upturned breasts and open mouth, screaming in fright or celebration, -- present an image of the liberated psyche in flight."
Or this one. “She physically encased herself in a museum glass case... We see Woodman's left breast and thigh pressed against the glass as she squats. ... Her head, moreover, appears cut from her torso... While her right hand exerts pressure against the glass, her left seems to caress the form."
On January 19, 1981, she committed suicide – at the age of 22! - by jumping out of a loft window in New York. An acquaintance wrote, "Things had been bad, there had been therapy, things had gotten better, but then…”
Today, so many years after her death, Francesca Woodman has become, in the art world, not just an artist of substance but one with an almost monumental reputation.
Her work is in the permanent collections of museums, here and around the world, among them the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art — and her style has so influenced other professional and amateur photographers that effects she pioneered now appear in commercial and fashion photography.
In one of her photographs of a Victorian tombstone, you can read the inscription: “To Die is Gain.”
(Also submitted to Sunday Scribblings)

Berowne's 129

(For Three-Word Wednesday and ABC Wednesday: "D" is for A Date With a Countess)

The picture above reminds me that back in 1884 the wildly different 1% and 99% sections of the population existed, just like today.
The 1 percent had most of the money and the 99 percent wanted it.
Or some of it.
Or any of it.
Now, I’ve always proudly been – well, maybe not so proudly – one of the 99 percenters. Yet it may surprise you that as a youth Berowne, an impecunious party, had a date with a countess.
Let me tell you the story.
We’re going back to a time, soon after World War II ended, when I was working in a small radio station in New York.
I’m sure you understand that at that time there was almost no television. Oh, technically TV existed, but few people had sets. Most of the folks throughout the land had never even seen television.
In the NYC area, there were several programs available for the few who possessed TVs; the shows were usually short and very inexpensive to produce, mainly because no one had any money for television production.
At the time, I had nothing to do with TV; I was doing a morning radio show, also inexpensive to produce – me playing old 78s of Perry Como and Nat King Cole, etc.
My show had a huge audience; there must have been 8 or 10 folks listening on any given day.
One of them, though I didn’t know it at the time, was a European gentleman who was quite impressed with American broadcasting. I learned later that he listened to my program almost every morning. He seemed to have come to believe that I was someone of importance in that field.
He was mistaken.
This gentleman read that a French countess had come to visit America, staying at the Waldorf-Astoria. I don’t mention her name because of privacy and because her actual moniker ran on for a couple of lines.
Anyway, this chap spoke with her and learned that she had seen one of the few American TV shows then in existence and had been very impressed. It was a brief interview-type program featuring Mrs Eleanor Roosevelt, who chatted with various celebrities and political figures of the day.
The countess had a brilliant idea. She should have a similar TV program in America; she spoke English reasonably well and she knew quite a lot of upper-crust type folks on this side of the pond. “Meet the Countess,” it would be called, or something similar.
The fellow who listened to my show told her that he knew a man who was very important in the American broadcasting industry and who was wise about such things; he could set up such a TV show for her.
Guess who that was?
At the time, I was not only not influential in television, I didn’t even own a TV. I had watched television sets primarily by standing on the sidewalk and looking at those in store front windows.
This man got me on the phone and told me about the countess and how great she’d be with her own TV show; if I produced it I’d probably make a small fortune.
Nobody was making a small fortune in television at that time, not even those who knew something about it – which didn’t include me.
However, I was very drawn to the idea. Imagine. Me as a young TV producer, someone of importance, not someone who played old 78 discs of Perry Como for a living.
The countess called and invited me to visit her at the Waldorf. I wrote earlier that I had a date with her; it was actually afternoon tea. I was not uneasy; I had read my P G Wodehouse and I knew how to conduct myself with the titled classes.
I told her that to get her idea for a show approved she should submit a sample reel to the appropriate people. She told me she was glad to have someone who was an expert in such matters working with her on her project. Go ahead, she said, and set it up.
I called about frantically, seeking information. I was told that a brief professionally-produced sound film as an audition – there was no such thing as video tape at that time – would cost such and such an amount.
It was more than she had expected to pay. She asked, how much would it cost without sound?
That’s when I began to realize that the whole thing was crumbling and my dream of becoming a big-time TV producer was going up in smoke. The very idea that we might submit a sample reel for a TV interview program that would be silent and consist of just her sitting there smiling and pretending to talk with someone was something that even I could see didn’t have much of a chance of success.
Ultimately the countess bade me farewell and I left the dream world of television and went back to the hard, cold reality of spinning old Perry Como records on radio.
(Also submitted to Sunday Scribblings)