Songs for a Tuesday Morning: Talk-Show Religion and Soap Opera Love

Where were we?  Oh yeah--David Byrne.  To continue:

My favorite Talking Heads song? The incredibly depressing one with the uplifting tune.

AMANDA:  "Psycho Killer?'
MATTHEW:  Okay--the OTHER incredibly depressing one with the uplifting tune.
AMANDA:  "Once In A Lifetime?"
MATTHEW:  No, it's--
AMANDA:  "Burning Down  The House?"
MATTHEW:  NO!  It's THIS incredibly depressing song with the great uplifting tune:


Road to Nowhere


As for my favorite David Byrne solo album? The one that has this cover: 

My favorite David Byrne solo song? Track 11. 

The first 30 seconds? Not bad. The next 3 minutes? Brilliant. Thanks to the horns.  Listen to those horns. Listen to what they do and where they go starting at the 2:10 mark.  They're so good they make you think you can dance salsa without a single lesson.

This is happy. 

This is great stuff. 

This is exactly what you need to hear during a second straight week of gray crappy rainy weather to make you feel, well,--

AMANDA:  Glad to be alive?
MATTHEW:  Well, I wouldn't go that far.
AMANDA:  Try it some time.

Lie To Me

Opening Monologues: Toby Bell

This started out as a monologue, and turned into a whole first scene.  The original plan was to put a modern woman, writing under a male pseudonym, in the same room as George Sand and George Eliot.  That lasted for about the time it took to write the scene below, when I realized that I couldn't think of a good reason why a modern woman would want to write under a male pseudonym.  So I started reading up on the Twenties, which is where I figured it would make sense for a woman to want to write as a man, as a political point, as a declaration of war, as a kind of literary suffragette.  And which is where it will probably end up some day (minus the current final line Huck Finn echo, alas) with a couple of thinly-disguised Hemingway and Fitzgerald avatars whom the two Georges can take the piss out of.  Because, y’know, they deserve it.

[SHEILA GREENE, AKA TOBY BELL, STANDING AT A PODIUM]

SHEILA:  Hamilton Murray.  Cotton Mather Mills.  Vernon Lee.  Currer Bell.  C.E. Raimond.  Martin Ross.  John Oliver Hobbes.  All British.  All women.  Women writers using male names.  A nineteenth century epidemic.  Women trying to be judged, not by the bodies they're born into, but by the things they do.  By themselves.  Their answer?  Use a man's name.  Because if they don't, the male critical establish­ment says, oh great, another woman writer, and writes them off.  And they didn't want that.  They all got written off anyway.  All but one; one didn't.  One of them actually became the equal of a man--you can tell because she's the one they still publish under her fake name, the one nobody refers to as Mary Ann Evans.  The English George, as opposed to the French George.  I see them in my mind.  George Eliot.  George Sand. 

[AS THEIR NAMES ARE MENTIONED, THEY APPEAR RIGHT OF CENTER: GEORGE ELIOT, IN A PERIOD DRESS; GEORGE SAND, IN PERIOD JACKET AND TROUSERS.] 

SHEILA:  They are not happy.  They are not happy be­cause they are alone in a room full of women.  And in this room full of women, there are two other groups--the unread, and the Bronte sisters.  Who wrote as the Bell brothers, because they wanted their books to be judged honestly.  In the words of Charlotte Bronte, who published JANE EYRE as Currer Bell:  "To you I am nei­ther man nor woman--I come before you as an author only.  It is the sole standard by which you have a right to judge me--the sole ground on which I accept your judgment."  Such innocence.  Because the minute Currer Bell was revealed to be Charlotte Bronte, critics started using words like unnatural.  Started saying things like, probably barren; definitely unmarried; that's why she's having books instead of babies.  Books that don't get reviewed, they get dismissed.  So if you're a nineteenth century female trying to get published, well, as one critic put it, a woman turns to writing when, quote, thwarted affection shuts her off from that sweet domestic and mater­nal sphere to which her whole being spontaneously moves.  I wonder what George Eliot and George Sand would have to say to that.  

ELIOT: [READING AN ARTICLE] "Thwarted affection has shut you off from that sweet domes­tic and maternal sphere to which your whole being spontane­ously moves."

SAND:  Mangez moi.  As if the only women who can create are unfulfilled cre­ators.  As if we are all frustrated mothers.  I have two children!  I also have a brain.  I had the brain before I had the children--but to listen to these men, the only thing I can do with my brain is lobotomize it.  As if I am supposed to spend my life sitting around knitting all day like Penelope wait­ing for Ulysses.  "Frus­trated mothers."  I am a frus­trated woman!  Are all male writers frustrated fathers?

ELIOT:  My dear George; didn't you know?  The term "male writers" is redundant. 

SAND:  Mangez moi.

ELIOT:  You know the way men think.  They believe that in a woman, the urge to write is simply a digital expression of the urge to procreate.  They see us and they say, how mar­velous--another woman who thinks a pen is a penis.

SAND:  Ah yes, the almighty phallus!  You know what I say to that?  Mangez moi.

ELIOT:  What does that mean, exactly?

SAND:  It means, eat me. 

ELIOT:  Oh my!

SAND:  And I will say it to the face of anyone who thinks for one egotistical moment that all I want out of life is his phallus.  This is the great lie men tell them­selves--how you say, their fallacy.  They know so much about life?--they know nothing.  Life?  Life is a four-star res­taurant where the waiter comes up to you and says, "Bon­jour, mademoi­selle, and what would you like to order?  For you we have two dishes, especially prepared by our finest chefs.  The first is a life of drudg­ery and bore­dom.  The second is a life of drudg­ery, bore­dom, and motherhood.  Easy choice, no?  Excuse me--you would like to see a what?  A menu?  I am terribly sorry, mademoiselle--the menu is for the men."  And you know what I say to that? Baisez moi en levrette.  [TRANS­LATING] Fuck me like a greyhound.

ELIOT:  Oh MY!

SAND:  "That sweet domes­tic and maternal sphere to which my whole being spontane­ously moves?"  Blow me; blow me raw.  My whole being spontane­ously moves to kick­ that son of a bitch in the seat of his baggy pants--who is this, who wrote this?

ELIOT:  [HANDING HER THE ARTICLE] Mister George Henry Lewes.

SAND:  When I finish with him, he will be George Henry Loser.  Where is he, where can I find this pimple on the face of humanity, so I can pop him?

ELIOT:  In the drawing room, actually. 

SAND:  He's here?

ELIOT:  He's the man I live with.

SAND:  That man out there?--wrote this?--and you haven't slit his throat yet?

ELIOT:  It was written long before he met me.  Would you like to hear what he says about menstruation?

SAND:  Why is it that men are always telling us about menstrua­tion?

ELIOT:  Oddly enough, that's what Henry's wife said.

SAND:  His wife?  You are living with a married man?  My dear Mister Eliot--you have unsuspected depth.  We are the Trojan Horses, you and I.  They have let us into their walled city and now, we can attack them from within.

ELIOT:  Attack them how?

SAND:  With fire.  The sword.  Revolution.  We will use their own weapons against them.  The pen.  The sentence.  The period--no, that's our weapon.

ELIOT:  You forget.  The men around us are not Trojans.  They are Philis­tines.  They obey different laws.  They will never treat us as equals.  At best, they will use us as weapons.  They will accept us, which will drive a wedge between us and our sisters.  They will elevate us, which will discourage our daugh­ters.  And they will appropriate us, which will reas­sure their sons and brothers.  But they will never treat us as equals, not until the day that they publish our novels under our real names, and not the pen names we were forced, by them, to use.  No, my dear friend.  As long as women are the unique repositors of progenity, our efforts at self-expression will be given no more attention than those of a talking cow.  And a man may listen to what a talking cow has to say, but it is not the voice of an equal.  It is the voice of a creature whom God made to provide milk and meat.  That is what men see when they see us.  Milk and meat.  Any­thing more, and there must be a man trapped in that cow's body.

SAND:  Like a Trojan Horse; you see?  Dressed as men, using men's names.

ELIOT:  And how honest is that?  If that is the only way that I can be heard, then it is not my voice.

SAND:  And if I use my own voice, and sign my own name, then I am not a writer, I am a woman writer.  I say we must beat them at their own game.

ELIOT:  And I say we must ignore their conventions and create our own.  I yearn to write the story of a woman who lives in unwed happiness with a married man.  I cannot.  I can only write it with my life.  But that is the story behind every­thing I write.  The one I live.  The one I can never put to paper.  God knows I've tried.  But I cannot find the words.  I do not have the language.  I do not know the words to describe who I am when the men leave the room.  [A WEAK LAUGH] If a woman falls in a room and there are no men to hear her, does she make a sound?  [RUB­BING HER HEAD] I'm getting a migraine.

SAND:  [RUBBING ELIOT'S TEMPLES] Here; let me.

ELIOT:  [A SIGH OF PLEASURE] Ah.  Where have you been all my life?

SAND:  [WHERE ELSE?] In France.

ELIOT:  Ah yes; dining at the four-star restaurant.  I like that image; the menus are for the men.  I will tell you something I have learned about menus and men.  There is another res­taurant--a restaurant in London--where the waiter comes up to you and says, "Excuse me, miss, but you're the main course on today's menu.  Would you like to take a turn in front of the gentlemen over there?  Or would you like to just sit here till you grow old and die?"  Eat me indeed.  Because how are we chosen by these men with their menus?  As far as men are concerned, there is one thing and one thing only that matters.  One question that defines a woman's limits.  If the answer is yes, then there is no end to what she can achieve; within limits.

SAND:  And the question?

ELIOT:  Is she beautiful, or not beautiful?

SHEILA:  "Was she beautiful, or not beautiful?"  That's how George Eliot begins a novel called Daniel Deronda, the last novel she ever wrote.  "Was she beautiful, or not beautiful?"  Already you know who's thinking this--it's some guy--the title character, actually.  And already you know that he's trying to figure out where this woman exists in his uni­verse.  Is she beautiful, or not beautiful?  What I want to know is, why is it that a woman's story never begins until a man notices her?  Why can't a woman just stand up and say, "Excuse me--I have a story"--no--no, "I am a story."  I am a story here.  And in my story it doesn't matter if I'm beau­tiful or not because my story has nothing to do with men.

     [THE TWO GEORGES STARE AT HER]

SHEILA:  [BEAT; RELUCTANTLY] Well, maybe one or two men.  And a lot of boys.  Two men tops.  But they are not the center of this story.  I am.  It's not about them.  It's not about me happening to men.  It's about them happening to me.  Where are the stories about men happening to women like earth­quakes happen to San Francisco?  Like hurricanes happen to Puerto Rico?  Like mange happens to your pet schnauzer?  Every woman in the world is one of those stories.  I'm one of those stories.  But I am not part of somebody else's universe.  It doesn't matter if I'm beautiful--what matters is who I am, and what I can do.

     [THE TWO GEORGES SNORT AT HER NAIVETE]

SHEILA:  [CONCEDING] Okay; all right--in most stories, who I am is a girlfriend, a poten­tial girl­friend, or an ex-girl­friend; and what I can do is stand there and look beau­tiful.  Well not this story.  This is my story.  You don't know my story unless you know me.  And you don't know me unless you've read a book by Virginia Woolf called A Room Of One's Own.

Copyright 1999 Matthew J Wells

Songs for a Tuesday morning: Like a pizza in the rain

Something Wild got a Criterion re-issue last Tuesday, and watching it again reminded me of when I first saw the film, which is when I fell in love with Melanie Griffth, and thought Ray Liotta could act.  (I know, I know--Goodfellas--but seriously--he's never been better than in this flick.)

It also reminded me of how much I love the David Byrne of those years, and how well Jonathan Demme's soundtracks stand up years after their original release.  The soundtrack for this particular film is like a snapshot of the mid-80's, encapsulating musically exactly what the film does: a crazy point in time where you could have a dozen different moods and styles clashing up against each other, and yet they were all part of one big crazy all-enveloping thing that could grab anyone, say anything, and go anywhere.

So, because we all need to feel like we can do that, or make things that do that, here are two songs from the Something Wild soundtrack to get us through a rainy cloudy gloomy Tuesday, and maybe just help us to relive--and recreate?--an anything-can-happen moment.

Loco de Amor

Ever Fallen In Love

As far as I'm concerned

The only good thing about this:

. . . is that this is now in print again:

You will believe a god can make breakfast

Don't let the glowering poster fool you. Thor is actually a pretty cheery movie, which follows the Iron Man arc of setting up an asshole and then humanizing him--in Thor's case, literally. Is it a believable humanization? Yes and no. The problem, I think, is that Chris Hemsworth plays Asshole Thor so well that, by comparison, his Humanized Thor is kind of boring, almost as if he was channeling Errol Flynn and then replacing him with Robert Taylor. It helps that he plays most of his Humanized Thor scenes opposite Natalie Portman. A Toyota Celica could look human next to Natalie Portman.


Is the movie fun? Yes, but not exhilarating. Marvel still hasn’t managed to duplicate the sheer joy of the original Iron Man, which looks better and better as time passes. The most joyous part of this film is in the opening half hour, when Thor and his friends go off to battle the Frost Giants. It ends up being a hard high point to match, especially since the rest of the film is about how Thor gets humbled and humanized. Compared to the joy of calling down the lightning, serving eggs over easy can’t help but look bland.

Of the two other potential high points, the battle with the Destroyer seems rushed and almost perfunctory, even though -– wow -- best realization of a Jack Kirby visual concept ever. And yet even in its truncated state it’s still strong enough to make the final throw-down with Loki feel a little anti-climactic.

Which is probably the only bad thing associated with Loki in the film, thanks to Tom Hiddleston’s performance in the part. When he’s onscreen, you can’t take your eyes off him, even when he appears to be doing nothing at all except thinking and observing. And no, he’s nowhere near as sly or mischievous as he should be, but then this is his origin story too, and he travels in the exact opposite direction from his brother Thor, from someone who appears thoughtful and sensitive to someone who is full of himself and always has one more trick up his sleeve. Which means that, as Thor gets blander, Loki gets more and more interesting. And to everybody’s credit, he doesn’t do the Obvious Bad Thing, given his father fixation. What he does is a lot more subtle, and is a clear echo of the same flaw in Thor’s character before he’s Humanized.

The other standout performance is Idris Elba as Heimdall. The guy manages the near-impossible feat of being wrapped up in an incredibly Kirbyesque costume and projecting not just authority, but godlike authority. You get the feeling that Kenneth Branagh walked around the set whispering "This is not a comic book movie, this is Shakespeare," to all the Asgardians, and Hiddleston and Elba really stepped up to the analogy.


The film is actually so many different movies rolled into one that it has no business being a consistent whole, so credit Branagh with that as well. It’s a little bit King Lear, with Thor as Edgar and Loki as Edmund; it’s a continuity-based entry in what has become Marvel’s Big Avengers Crossover; and since Thor’s new-found humility is shown when he cooks everybody breakfast, it’s a chick flick as well. (“Oh my God -- he’s a god -- and he can cook!”) The weird thing is, even with all these mismatched parts, the film doesn’t feel like it’s all over the place, like one of those awful productions of Shakespeare you see sometimes where twenty actors are in twenty different plays. Its chief flaw is that it suffers greatly from a near-total absence of script. By which I mean, “Somebody actually wrote this?” There is a noticeable dearth of clever or memorable in the dialogue, and if it weren’t for solid performances from the main actors, this would be a very hard movie to listen to (though a gorgeous one to look at, thanks to the Asgard scenes). I swear to God, there’s a universal law which states that intelligent dialogue exists in inverse proportion to high production values, which explains why the more special effects you have in a movie, the dumber the dialogue sounds.

For the theologically inclined, the whole "Is this guy really a god?" question gets its modern-day science-as-religion based answer (quoting Arthur C Clarke on science and magic, throwing out the "Primitive society would think they were gods" option), but really--if you can believe that Natalie Portman is a scientist, how hard is it to believe in Norse gods? It's the Natalie Portman Premise Law in action. (I mean come on--the only reason everybody believed Black Swan was a serious movie is because it was ten times easier than believing Portman was a ballet dancer.) Me, I had no problem with the Asgard angle. But what I still don't get, and never did about Thor, is how he can be a kid and growing up in Asgard in the relative here and now, and yet have appeared a couple of thousand years ago in Scandinavian legends.

For the visually inclined, skip the 3D version -- the only really cool 3D effect is in the final credits, which says a lot about how this whole 3D thing is just a way to soak an extra ten bucks out of people. For the continuity inclined, there is a cameo that looks forward to next year’s Avengers movie, as well as the now-traditional easter-egg teaser at the end of the credits which looks forward to both Captain America and Avengers. And for the psychologically inclined, it’s worth noting that the humbling of the title character occurs when he realizes he can’t even get it up with a derrick—it being his “hammer,” which is a word I can't hear and not think of that Nathan Fillion line from Dr. Horrible.

I hate it when that happens.

And for all the blissfully non-geek in the audience, the thing in the teaser at the end?  You can read about it here.

The one untidy thing

“My social life is such a mess,” you said,
   As if you were confessing to the murder
Of seven babies with an arrowhead.
   The truth is, dear, nothing could be absurder.
In our life’s bureau, there is always one
   Big drawer that’s a complete and total mess--
We pull it open and we’re overrun
   With matchbooks, coins, a Betsy Johnson dress, 
Ex-lovers, drunken nights, old cab receipts,
   Regrets, and bottles of stress medication--
A drawer which helps us say no to the Neats
   And save the wild from dull domestication.
     Clutter’s a beauty mark, dear--not a canker;
     Mess is not order’s failure, but its anchor.

Copyright 2011 Matthew J Wells

The Great War

Surrounded by the shrapnel of affection,
   I walk the mine field of our recent past--
If I take one step in the wrong direction,
   I’ll be kaput before I hear the blast.
I swing my head away from where the stench is,
   And turn my back on what we’ve both defiled;
The future’s somewhere out beyond the trenches,
   Where fields are green and poppies still grow wild.
Oh, I will wake up screaming in the night,
   My shell-shocked heart exploding in my chest,
To see your face flicker like candlelight
   Before it’s blown away, like all our best.
      And yes, I’ll live, but I will be the slave
      Of slaughtered love, dumped in a double grave.

Copyright 2011 Matthew J Wells

Opening Monologues: Wildest Dreams

Ah, the thinly-disguised autobiographical Trick Becket plays. Most of which I burned or shredded or batched up in a Strand bag to support that air conditioner in Inwood. Trick is still around, but he hasn't aged a bit. He's the narrator of the novel based on the Cedar diaries, which I may actually finish some day, and he's the main character in a play called No Soap Radio, which I may actually write some day. Here's an early appearance in a one-act called Wildest Dreams that actually got produced way back when, though not very well as I remember it, which is probably why I'm blanking on the date. Just so you know: yes, this woman is real, but she is not named Sheila. Who is also real, and whom I saw for the first time in years a few months ago. Monologue for another day; here's this one.

TRICK: When I think of Sheila I see myself standing across the street from her building. Leaning against a lamppost. There's a light on in her apartment. Shadows on the curtains.  Then the light goes out. And I try to picture the guy that she's with. The guy that she's with when the lights go out. And I think to myself, it could have been me. Turning out that light. The light by her bed. Where is her bed now? It changes. I've seen it against the right wall, against the left wall, lengthwise under the windows. It changes. Every time she dates someone, it changes. If you last a week, you wake up one morning to Sheila standing at the bathroom door, hands on hips, still wet from the shower, just staring. You're lying in the bed and she's standing there. Staring at the bed, the bureau, the bookcase with the twenty-nine pictures of her father. Just staring. A look on her face that says something's wrong, something's out of place. So she throws on a shirt, a guy’s shirt, not one of your shirts, somebody else’s, a shirt some guy left some night ages ago, a guy whose name she won’t even remember when you ask her, so don’t bother asking. She throws on a shirt and starts moving furniture around. And of course you help her, you get up out of bed and push things around, change things around, show her you’re helpful, dress the place up. Until it's done. Until she's happy. Until it's the picture of happiness. Until the next time, when somebody else is lying in the bed, and Sheila is standing there, dripping wet, staring. Moving things around in her mind. Knowing there’s something wrong here, but not knowing what it is. Knowing there’s something out of place. There’s always something out of place. And there always will be, no matter how many couches she moves. Because it's not the furniture that bothers her. It's never the furniture. It's that guy in the bed.

Copyright 1993 Matthew J Wells

Opening Monologues: Iphigenia at Trinity

I've been going through my files recently, and I've noticed that I tend to start plays with monologues.  And when I say "tend," I mean "almost without exception."  We'll leave the psychological explanation for that to future therapy sessions. 

THERAPIST:  Monologues mean that, even when you're writing about different people, Matthew, it's always "Me!" 
"Me!"  "Me!"
MATTHEW:  But plays are nothing but competing monologues, Doctor!
THERAPIST:  Which is why you describe yourself as a playwright, and not a writer. 
MATTHEW:  Son of a.

I'll post a bunch of examples over the next few days, so you can see how many different Me's I have in me.  The example below is from a play that my then-agent said had too much science in it and not enough people stuff.  When I handed her another play that was more character-based, she said it didn't have enough science in it.  I tell you--there's just no pleasing people who don't know what the fuck they're doing.  Which is actually one of the themes of Iphigenia at Trinity:

Scene 1

[1939. A classroom in the Institute for Physical Chemistry in Gottingen. JOHN HENRY WISE, 39, lectures the audience as if it his class of students.]


WISE:  What do killing a man in battle and teaching physics have in common? You might say nothing. And on the surface of things, you would be correct. But all equations are built upon solid facts, as a house is built on a foundation. Here are some facts. My father was Austrian. My mother is Jewish. Under the laws of Germany, this makes me Jewish as well. Therefore, under the laws which went into effect in 1933, I should by rights no longer be allowed to teach physics. But because of my distinguished service during the Great War, I was exempted from this distinction. So you see -– because I ran away to play soldier at an age not much older than your own -- and then killed several men, for which I was awarded a medal, and received a bullet wound, for which I was awarded an honorable discharge -- I was lucky enough to be permitted to remain on here in Gottingen as a professor of physics. My father died in the war, you know. So many millions, dead on both sides, and to me the only death that matters is my father’s. So. Another equation. What do physics and Greek have in common? You will say, aha, this is an easy one, because Herr Professor Weiss is not only our physics teacher, he is also a teacher of the classics. True enough. What do physics and ancient Greek have in common? Me. This is one answer. They also have something else in common. The Greeks constantly argued amongst themselves about the meaning of life. These days, physicists like myself, we find ourselves arguing about the meaning behind what we have discovered about life. Are they the same thing? I think they are. So we have yet another answer to our second equation. And since all things of any consequence travel in threes, let me propose one final equation for your consideration. I often ask myself, what ethical standards should a scientist apply to his work? As I see it, a scientist has three responsibilities. There’s that number again. The first is to employ the scientific method to answer questions, to create new things, and to raise humanity even higher above the animals. The second is to promote a greater understanding of the laws which govern the universe by explaining what science has discovered in terms and language which can be understood by anyone. And the third responsibility, the greatest of these, is to raise my voice and speak my mind as loud as possible when men with no scientific knowledge are deciding how to use those devices which science has created. So. The terms of my third equation are this. A scientist is a man with a voice. He has a responsibility to speak. It is part of the equation. He must speak out. In the long troubled history of the world, the story of science is the story of men who are compelled to speak out, even when the rest of the ignorant world demands that they must be silenced.




Copyright 2003 Matthew J Wells

love and death

You are the kiss that burns my two lips raw--
   The drink that licks my tongue with a new taste,
The sight that makes my eyes go wide with awe
   And my uncertain soul feel damned and graced--
The tapeworm I can’t feed enough, the hole
   Nothing can cover, nothing can fill in--
The champ who slap-shots hope into the goal
   Past my defenses for the final win.
You are the black ice that my skidding heart
   Is totaled by--the dish I gobble up
So greedily I choke--the serving cart
   That brings me champagne in a poisoned cup:
      The certain death of callous apathy
      That buries me in love’s vitality.

Copyright 2011 Matthew J Wells