Shelter from the Brainstorm

In most creative environments, brainstorms just don’t work. That is, they usually don’t work as they’re intended to. But even if a team of creatives does manage to follow the “rules” of a brainstorm, this way of working often ends up quashing ingenuity and prohibiting productive collaboration. There are better ways to inspire creativity.

(Read the rest of "Shelter from the Brainstorm" on the Moxy Blog.)

Free Eliza Doolittle!

I had the pleasure of seeing the SF Playhouse production of My Fair Lady last night with friends. It's always fun to see live theater, and I do like the SF Playhouse—it's such a plucky little theater company. If the terms "live theater" and "plucky little theater company" sound good to you, then I think you'd enjoy this production. The music in My Fair Lady is, of course, wonderful—and it's very well done in this show. But the production lacks some polish. The costumes, especially, had a "kids, search your closets" sort of feel. Henry Higgins's black shoes were very distracting: his trouser cuffs kept exposing their giant bat-shaped buckles. Were these shoes a souvenir of the actor's gothy youth, we wondered? 

That's a minor quibble, to be sure. But what's interesting is that these shoes sort of pointed to, I think, a missed opportunity with this show—a modernization or a "look through the lens of our times" that this production weakly pointed to at times. But having one of the Cockneys breakdance for just a moment didn't take this idea far enough. 

I've seen the film version of My Fair Lady a couple of times. It's easy to get distracted by the camp of it all—and the songs, which are so captivating. But the Pygmalion story, as expressed through this musical, really speaks to our country's current conversation about poverty and class, I think. There's a chance I'm still reeling from some of the attack speeches at the Republican National Convention, but My Fair Lady (this production included) almost seems sort of Ayn Rand-ian at times. That's a low insult, so let me explain: For one thing, the show seems to look at poverty as a chosen state. Professor Higgins's viewpoint is something like this: "If the unwashed lower classes would just seek out education, their problems would be solved! But they're obviously happy in their muck." And the poor wretches, as portrayed in the show, support this notion. Their poverty looks like rather a lark. Drink, drink, drink, get some change thrown at you, and then dance a happy jig. It's adorable.

When Eliza presents herself to be Professor Higgins's prisoner and guinea pig, we're led to view it as an up-by-her-bootstraps act of will. "Look—she's improving herself. Anyone can do it." But what if this moment were staged more clearly as an act of desperation, which is what it looks like to me?

There's a lot to explore in this vein, I think. And it could be clearer that Eliza's pride and self-respect are something she holds on to in spite of Higgins's experimentation, not something she gains through it.

The biggest problem with My Fair Lady is the ending, which I guess one can't do much about. I mean, obviously, Eliza Doolittle is suffering from Stockholm Syndrome. How else can we explain her attraction to the the abusive, tyrannical Higgins? In George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion, Eliza doesn't return to the professor at the end, as she does in the musical—in Pygmalion, she goes off to marry Freddy, who's kind of a nonentity in My Fair Lady. We get that Freddy is sort of a sap, but he loves Eliza madly (as she is), and he's nice to her. Something Henry Higgins never is. Compare the worshipful "On the Street Where You Live" with the begrudging (but still sweet, sure) "I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face."

Ugh! Now I hate that ending. It'd be a cute song in the mouth of someone just a bit more self-aware. Free Eliza! Free Eliza! Free Eliza!

This could be staged a lot more convincingly and poignantly. I mean, Freddy's primary shortcoming seems to be that he's not rich. How sad! And how apropos to our times. Because that seems to be the problem that many Republicans have with poor people: they simply don't earn enough money, those rogues. People like Ann Romney seem to think that being rich is easy—after all, she and Mitt started out eating pasta on an ironing board, so why can't everyone get from that level to hers? It's infuriating, the lack of empathy—and the lack of intelligence—on display, the inability to recognize one's own great good fortune (and recognize the difference between truly being poor and "slumming it"). I'm not jealous of rich people. I'm annoyed that they think being rich is something anyone can do if they just work hard. Why can't the English learn to speak? And why can't Americans just get off of welfare?

Maybe I need to lay off politics for a while. It's just ruining musicals for me. 

Hot Stuff

I have said many times that Donna Summer's Bad Girls album was the first album I bought with my own money -- but this might not be true. It feels true, and the timing is right, so it's likely true. I am pretty sure I remember buying the record on a Christmas-money spending spree. But the details of my childhood are so, so hazy. And no one was paying super-close attention to me in 1979 and 1980, so I don't know whether there's anyone who could verify this independently. Maybe my mother owned the record, and I just appropriated it ... although my buying the record seems likelier, given what I know about her musical tastes.

If it wasn't my first record, I don't want to know. It should've been my first record, and that's good enough. I like my version of history -- in which something in Donna Summer's music called out to me, spoke to me of the glittery disco balls and glamorous nightclubs and sans-souci fun that were waiting, waiting, waiting for me just beyond adolescence. Donna Summer was one of the voices of the gay generation just before mine. I felt the reverberations of her musical revolution -- I responded without knowing why. It would be years before I knew what "I Feel Love" was really all about (before I would feel love -- in the way that Summer meant -- for myself). But I knew it was my music.

As was the song "Bad Girls," which makes me think of my sisters. Not that they are bad girls (again, I think it was a while before I was hip to what "bad girls" were in this context). Rather I think we, or maybe just I when I was that age, aspired to be the candy-coated bad girls the song conjures: tough, playful, sexy, and streetwise. I can picture my sisters and me dancing around our living room to the song. This is likely a composite memory, and the song we were actually dancing to might've been "Hot Stuff," or it might've been the MTV video for "She Works Hard for the Money" -- or maybe we never danced to Donna Summer at all. But, again, I prefer my version of history.

All this is to say that Donna Summer's music was woven through my childhood. But by the time I got to nightclub-going age, disco had died twice. It was the late 1980s, and AIDS was killing everyone. Being gay had become a lot less sans-souci and a lot scarier. Then a nasty rumor (which had Summer saying something cruel and stupid about people with AIDS) greatly damaged Summer's standing in the gay community. She vehemently denied the rumor and worked very hard to repair her reputation among, and reaffirm her support for, gay people. I don't think anything was proved either way.

Who knows. But I believe and prefer Summer's version of history. You know how people love to tear down their idols. ... And even if the rumor were true, I'd be satisfied with her penance.

Anyway. These were the things in my mind today when Facebook -- our modern Greek chorus of celebrity death -- started singing Summer's eulogy to me this morning. What is a life? Well, there are plenty of half-remembered and misremembered moments, and then there are lies that become true, or true enough, through repetition. But there's also music, and disco rollerskating, and jubilant nightclubs, and moments of joy. ... That's what Summer's Facebook eulogy describes -- and who could ask for a better one? In millions of lives, Summer's music was the soundtrack to, or the very reason for, moments of joy: little kids posturing gleefully as "bad girls," hard-working women demanding to be treated right, and young gay men like me feeling love.



Thank you and farewell, Donna Summer. I hope you loved your life.

30 Million Jobs

Read about my appearance on Dylan Ratigan's MSNBC show, and watch a clip: "Choosing a Career Is a Lifelong Activity."