Travelogue 879 – November 19
De Dingen
Part Two
It’s not even six, but it’s nearly the pitch of night outside. The café is cosy enough, furnished in hues of warm wood and bits of higher colour in the wall art and chair cushions. It still feels dim and hushed, though. It’s not an easy thing combatting the winter darkness.
Cosiness is important in winter. The Dutch might say the café is gezellig. That roughly translates to ‘cosy’. But it’s more. It doesn’t translate well, as Dutch people are eager to tell you. Gezellig is really a standalone concept for the Dutch, a mood. It could be good company, good cheer, comfort and warmth. I hypothesize now, sitting in the dim café, shielded from the cold, that the word grew organically in opposition to the lingering winter.
Kermit doesn’t receive much comfort at his post. We say he doesn’t require any. But what do we know? Physics teaches us that his body stands against gravity because the body pushes back. Already matter is mysterious. How do we reason through the state of the inanimate?
‘Inanimate’ describes matter that is imbued with no anima. Anima is soul or mind. It’s what motivates, makes us move. A chair is inanimate. A statue is inanimate. Is a dead body? Probably. But what about a zombie? I don’t think this concept has been fully worked out.
Our ghost has taken to leaving the door in our entryway open. It’s as though he craves the cold. This door shields us from the air that leaks through our front door. It’s an instinct now to reach for that door every time we enter the kitchen, it’s left open so often. We don’t think about it anymore.
Presumably a ghost moves. But it has no substance. Is it anima without matter? Does it speak to inanimate matter? Could Kermit communicate with our ghost? Maybe he is too busy pushing against the substance of the building below him.
Why does he do that? Why does he stand so long without a break? Why does our ghost like to move things around? Maybe what really matters to the inanimate is geometry. There’s some big blueprint where all the angles are right, or a common sense of symmetry concerning the alignment of all things.
Me, I’m cheered by the taste of carrot cake, and the aroma of my coffee. These are forms of solace. That must seem impossibly simple-minded to the inanimate.
Tuesday, November 19, 2019
Monday, November 18, 2019
Travelogue 878 – November 18
De Dingen
Part One
It was going to be our last rehearsal for the fall plays. That meant it would be the last time I would be in The Hague for a while, other than for the performance itself. I arrived in town early. I wanted to take my time cycling, enjoy the place. I wanted to see Kermit on Piet Heinstraat.
I rented my ‘OV Fiets’ at Central Station, and I leisurely made my way north and west across the centre of town. It was the end of the workday, so crowds were crossing city spaces in every direction. The bike paths were busy. I didn’t mind; I drifted along on the right side of the path, and I took in the sights of this pretty town. Just north of Central Station was the spacious, green park that I had always found so peaceful. My urban life hasn’t afforded me many views across open spaces. It’s a kind of salve to the agitated mind.
I settled in at the café on Piet Heinstraat. It was a stormy evening, and dusk had been coming earlier every day. It was already getting dark when I first spotted Kermit, still occupying the top of the gable across the street. He stood atop this four-storey yellow house on the corner, and he raised his arms in a kind of salute to the yielding summer, to the passing year. He grinned perpetually and hopefully toward the south. He grinned endearingly, fatuously, and without rest.
I could only make out his silhouette against the last of the day’s light that made its feeble way through legions of clouds. It made him seem heroic, standing against the darkening clouds, his features obscured. The night advanced inexorably, taking no note of Kermit. Despite Kermit’s efforts on behalf of warmth.
All this was conjecture, of course. Kermit was a happy puppet, but he was a puppet. I had no access to his thoughts. Perhaps the season was well aware of the tiny frog. More than aware. Perhaps Kermit was the wizard that summoned the winter.
Somehow this did seem like his time and his world, a winter dusk in the city, when people were rushing home to flee the cold and the bleak streets. It was the time of year we humans abandoned the cold out-of-doors to the rule of the things that had no nerves and no emotions. Buildings stood silently and sleek cars flashed by, dark and sealed and offering only the reflection of the city lights from their polished surfaces. Soon enough, the street would be still as Kermit, cold and silent.
De Dingen
Part One
It was going to be our last rehearsal for the fall plays. That meant it would be the last time I would be in The Hague for a while, other than for the performance itself. I arrived in town early. I wanted to take my time cycling, enjoy the place. I wanted to see Kermit on Piet Heinstraat.
I rented my ‘OV Fiets’ at Central Station, and I leisurely made my way north and west across the centre of town. It was the end of the workday, so crowds were crossing city spaces in every direction. The bike paths were busy. I didn’t mind; I drifted along on the right side of the path, and I took in the sights of this pretty town. Just north of Central Station was the spacious, green park that I had always found so peaceful. My urban life hasn’t afforded me many views across open spaces. It’s a kind of salve to the agitated mind.
I settled in at the café on Piet Heinstraat. It was a stormy evening, and dusk had been coming earlier every day. It was already getting dark when I first spotted Kermit, still occupying the top of the gable across the street. He stood atop this four-storey yellow house on the corner, and he raised his arms in a kind of salute to the yielding summer, to the passing year. He grinned perpetually and hopefully toward the south. He grinned endearingly, fatuously, and without rest.
I could only make out his silhouette against the last of the day’s light that made its feeble way through legions of clouds. It made him seem heroic, standing against the darkening clouds, his features obscured. The night advanced inexorably, taking no note of Kermit. Despite Kermit’s efforts on behalf of warmth.
All this was conjecture, of course. Kermit was a happy puppet, but he was a puppet. I had no access to his thoughts. Perhaps the season was well aware of the tiny frog. More than aware. Perhaps Kermit was the wizard that summoned the winter.
Somehow this did seem like his time and his world, a winter dusk in the city, when people were rushing home to flee the cold and the bleak streets. It was the time of year we humans abandoned the cold out-of-doors to the rule of the things that had no nerves and no emotions. Buildings stood silently and sleek cars flashed by, dark and sealed and offering only the reflection of the city lights from their polished surfaces. Soon enough, the street would be still as Kermit, cold and silent.
Sunday, November 17, 2019
Travelogue 877 – November 17
Show on the Train
Screening the film in an old church was, after all, appropriate. The film was almost a hundred years-old itself, a relic from another age. There was some correspondence in relative ages between the event and its setting, I would say. In the history of film, a hundred years is ancient history.
The film was a silent one, and so the high pipes of the organ displayed so prominently behind the film screen were put to good use. The church reverberated with musical accompaniment for the duration of the film. Much of the music turned around a motif of ‘Yankee Doodle Dandy’.
Presiding as movie star was one of the early high priests of film, Buster Keaton. This film he made during the decade of his prominence, in the 1920s. It was called ‘The General’, and it was set during the Civil War. The plot was based on actual events, when a set of Union spies stole a train and led a wild pursuit around Tennessee, as they left a trail of destruction. Keaton played the part of a clumsy Confederate engineer, who single-handedly chases after the spies, even as far as Union territory (where he rescues his beloved, who was kidnapped with the train).
The film was funny, of course. Keaton was a master of physical comedy, and the trademark deadpan expression just made him more endearing as the film went on. He pulled off some of his imaginative stunts, like sitting on a coupling rod among the train’s wheels as it set off, and leaping on and off the train and between cars as though he were an elf. But the film was more. Keaton was earnest about setting the scene. Town scenes and props were authentic. There were plenty of expansive landscapes. The trains themselves were amazing, and the battle scenes impressive. There was a surprisingly panoramic feel to this comedy. In one scene, a rail bridge was blown while a train crossed. Apparently, the wreckage remained there for decades as something of a tourist attraction. (The movie was filmed in Oregon.)
Considered his masterpiece now, ‘The General’ was poorly received. People didn’t find it funny enough. Its dismal performance at the box office undermined his role as independent filmmaker. He never quite recovered his status as director.
I’m no genius, but I can appreciate how Keaton might have felt, since I’ve just wrapped up a run of several plays. Audience reaction is a mysterious quantity. I have people approach me afterward with a light in their eyes and a smile, who dive right into a list of critiques. They’re too excited for introductions. Some of the criticism is quite helpful. Some is strange and off the mark. But I always smile, wondering about the impact that art has on people. Many of my audience were probably coerced into attending, being friends or family of actors. But they were touched. It’s not the bored and indifferent who approach a writer afterward. They find it hard to verbalize how theatre affects them, so they speak in accessible, analytical ways. I’m not boasting that it was the written word that touched them. It might have been the acting, the immediacy of the art form, or just the ritual of live events. But something did touch them, and that is gratifying.
Keaton started as a child vaudeville star whose singular talent was taking a beating. The concept of the act was a naughty boy annoying his father and being tossed around the stage. His particular forte was his ability to take a fall. It’s said that his dead pan style evolved from his observation that audiences didn’t respond well to his laughter while being thrown into the orchestra pit. That is an attentive artist.
The film ended, and the Dutch audience clapped. The shadows in the old church seemed long. The evening had deepened outside. The shadows were sombre. This might have been the genesis of comedy, I thought as I left, a tonic to nights in the temples.
Show on the Train
Screening the film in an old church was, after all, appropriate. The film was almost a hundred years-old itself, a relic from another age. There was some correspondence in relative ages between the event and its setting, I would say. In the history of film, a hundred years is ancient history.
The film was a silent one, and so the high pipes of the organ displayed so prominently behind the film screen were put to good use. The church reverberated with musical accompaniment for the duration of the film. Much of the music turned around a motif of ‘Yankee Doodle Dandy’.
Presiding as movie star was one of the early high priests of film, Buster Keaton. This film he made during the decade of his prominence, in the 1920s. It was called ‘The General’, and it was set during the Civil War. The plot was based on actual events, when a set of Union spies stole a train and led a wild pursuit around Tennessee, as they left a trail of destruction. Keaton played the part of a clumsy Confederate engineer, who single-handedly chases after the spies, even as far as Union territory (where he rescues his beloved, who was kidnapped with the train).
The film was funny, of course. Keaton was a master of physical comedy, and the trademark deadpan expression just made him more endearing as the film went on. He pulled off some of his imaginative stunts, like sitting on a coupling rod among the train’s wheels as it set off, and leaping on and off the train and between cars as though he were an elf. But the film was more. Keaton was earnest about setting the scene. Town scenes and props were authentic. There were plenty of expansive landscapes. The trains themselves were amazing, and the battle scenes impressive. There was a surprisingly panoramic feel to this comedy. In one scene, a rail bridge was blown while a train crossed. Apparently, the wreckage remained there for decades as something of a tourist attraction. (The movie was filmed in Oregon.)
Considered his masterpiece now, ‘The General’ was poorly received. People didn’t find it funny enough. Its dismal performance at the box office undermined his role as independent filmmaker. He never quite recovered his status as director.
I’m no genius, but I can appreciate how Keaton might have felt, since I’ve just wrapped up a run of several plays. Audience reaction is a mysterious quantity. I have people approach me afterward with a light in their eyes and a smile, who dive right into a list of critiques. They’re too excited for introductions. Some of the criticism is quite helpful. Some is strange and off the mark. But I always smile, wondering about the impact that art has on people. Many of my audience were probably coerced into attending, being friends or family of actors. But they were touched. It’s not the bored and indifferent who approach a writer afterward. They find it hard to verbalize how theatre affects them, so they speak in accessible, analytical ways. I’m not boasting that it was the written word that touched them. It might have been the acting, the immediacy of the art form, or just the ritual of live events. But something did touch them, and that is gratifying.
Keaton started as a child vaudeville star whose singular talent was taking a beating. The concept of the act was a naughty boy annoying his father and being tossed around the stage. His particular forte was his ability to take a fall. It’s said that his dead pan style evolved from his observation that audiences didn’t respond well to his laughter while being thrown into the orchestra pit. That is an attentive artist.
The film ended, and the Dutch audience clapped. The shadows in the old church seemed long. The evening had deepened outside. The shadows were sombre. This might have been the genesis of comedy, I thought as I left, a tonic to nights in the temples.
Saturday, November 16, 2019
Travelogue 876 – November 16
Show in the Church
I was writing about how theatre is made. The cast and the crew work slowly and carefully for months, and then, when the actors take the stage, time plays its trick. The springs are pulled from the clock, and everyone is abandoned to a shocking free fall. It feels like the show collapses into a spinning series of stills, and then it’s over.
A week later, I was scouting for a different experience. I wanted to join the audience. Time treats people in the seats with more respect. When a performance works, time eddies in a pleasant pool, still enough to catch a rich set of reflections. Even when the show doesn’t work, time gathers, though it might gather at one’s feet like a puddle of waste.
There was a film festival in Schiedam, the next town west on the Maas River. It’s a ten-minute cycle ride. The film I chose started early enough that I could be home again for dinner. The venue was the town’s central church, the Grote Kerk.
Schiedam rose from the marshes at about the same time as Rotterdam, in the thirteenth century or so, (though marginal villages existed on these sites earlier). For centuries, the two towns were probably very similar, towns with dams, towns with big-river access. It took a while for Rotterdam’s port to gain primacy.
Schiedam held her own during Holland’s Golden Age in the seventeenth century, but did even better when Dutch genever, or gin, captured the fancy of Northern Europe’s sailors and drunks. For more than a century, it was the premier origin of Holland’s magic liquor, so much so that the town’s name survived in French and English for a while as a generic name for the stuff.
Whatever the means, Schiedam had its salad days. And so it is that, despite its current reputation as a dumpy little city with a crime problem, Schiedam does have a very attractive historic centre, a district more cohesive than Rotterdam’s, which was lost in the Second World War. At the centre of this pretty little district is the Grote Kerk.
The church is no Chartres, but it’s a solid beauty in sooty red brick, comparable to other Golden Age churches in South Holland. It could be little sister to Den Haag’s Grote Kerk, smaller, more angular, only lacking the graceful heights of the nave in Den Haag. It could be an older, shrunken sister to Rotterdam’s Grote Kerk, missing the lighter Renaissance touches. But she is a pretty addition to this swampy little region at the delta.
The film was projected onto a huge screen set up underneath the sixteenth-century organ case, which occupies all the space in its high arch. The case is a beautiful work to contemplate in itself, composed of dark wood with many ornamental carvings, including the Dutch imperial lions with the crown. There appear to be a pair of fit mermen holding up the highest set of organ pipes. At the top, lost in the shadows of the arch is a winged angel equipped with a trumpet.
Show in the Church
I was writing about how theatre is made. The cast and the crew work slowly and carefully for months, and then, when the actors take the stage, time plays its trick. The springs are pulled from the clock, and everyone is abandoned to a shocking free fall. It feels like the show collapses into a spinning series of stills, and then it’s over.
A week later, I was scouting for a different experience. I wanted to join the audience. Time treats people in the seats with more respect. When a performance works, time eddies in a pleasant pool, still enough to catch a rich set of reflections. Even when the show doesn’t work, time gathers, though it might gather at one’s feet like a puddle of waste.
There was a film festival in Schiedam, the next town west on the Maas River. It’s a ten-minute cycle ride. The film I chose started early enough that I could be home again for dinner. The venue was the town’s central church, the Grote Kerk.
Schiedam rose from the marshes at about the same time as Rotterdam, in the thirteenth century or so, (though marginal villages existed on these sites earlier). For centuries, the two towns were probably very similar, towns with dams, towns with big-river access. It took a while for Rotterdam’s port to gain primacy.
Schiedam held her own during Holland’s Golden Age in the seventeenth century, but did even better when Dutch genever, or gin, captured the fancy of Northern Europe’s sailors and drunks. For more than a century, it was the premier origin of Holland’s magic liquor, so much so that the town’s name survived in French and English for a while as a generic name for the stuff.
Whatever the means, Schiedam had its salad days. And so it is that, despite its current reputation as a dumpy little city with a crime problem, Schiedam does have a very attractive historic centre, a district more cohesive than Rotterdam’s, which was lost in the Second World War. At the centre of this pretty little district is the Grote Kerk.
The church is no Chartres, but it’s a solid beauty in sooty red brick, comparable to other Golden Age churches in South Holland. It could be little sister to Den Haag’s Grote Kerk, smaller, more angular, only lacking the graceful heights of the nave in Den Haag. It could be an older, shrunken sister to Rotterdam’s Grote Kerk, missing the lighter Renaissance touches. But she is a pretty addition to this swampy little region at the delta.
The film was projected onto a huge screen set up underneath the sixteenth-century organ case, which occupies all the space in its high arch. The case is a beautiful work to contemplate in itself, composed of dark wood with many ornamental carvings, including the Dutch imperial lions with the crown. There appear to be a pair of fit mermen holding up the highest set of organ pipes. At the top, lost in the shadows of the arch is a winged angel equipped with a trumpet.
Tuesday, November 12, 2019
Travelogue 875 – November 12
Show of the Season
The sky is shreds and tatters this morning. In the north, the clouds are dark as dusk. I’m watching out the windows as we dress Baby in a rush. We have some new rain pants for her, and we’re struggling with those. They are lined with fleece, and so they must be rolled on and peeled off. Baby amuses herself by lying limp in our arms as we try to put on the final layer.
Baby and I are finally on the bike, pedalling south. In this direction, the sky is shreds and tatters. The clouds are flying low. Some are white, and some are grey. Between some of them are glimpses of blue sky. It’s a sky of conflict, and it’s a sky of paradox. There’s a play up there, a story to be told. The clouds tear as they race. Among the trailing threads of their raiment, the open sky is allowed brief windows.
I’m in theatre recovery. The plays had their first show last weekend. All of the fall has been devoted to this point to pulling together these shows. Next week, we perform in The Hague. And then that’s it. That’s the shock and the joy of doing theatre, how quickly it’s over. Months of writing, planning, rehearsing, and promoting can begin to feel like a job, or like a second family. Then, quite suddenly, you’re stage-side as the lights are coming up.
I think it’s something we all love and hate, the precipitous nature of that moment, without being able to reconcile the duality. The moment breaks from the physics of time, arriving outside of its objective place, and passing like a cascade in an otherwise slow stream. You shake off the spell at the after party, scratching your head. All those weeks rowing along in the calm waters of rehearsal, your careful thoughts measured like the motion of rowing, and then the tumble of the cascade reduces everything to instinct, and you can’t be sure of the result, of how exactly you did.
As fall came on, Baby was rehearsing the seasons in her mind. She always had trouble distinguishing summer from sunny and cold from winter. When fall’s first chill came on, she couldn’t understand why I would deny it was winter. I couldn’t interest her in this intermediary season. She only wanted to know when the snow would come. Last year, she was quite taken with the change of the leaves, so I tried reviving that interest and giving the season its name, but the fascinations of children – or this child – rarely have long lives or afterlives. And so, we’ve reached a temporary impasse in understanding the four seasons. She does have a remarkable memory, though. She remembers the leaves of last year. She remembers throwing snowballs at Mama and where they landed.
To be fair, the seasons are each distinct, aren’t they? We do them a disservice to stress their homogeneity too much. Every autumn is not the same; what makes them beautiful is the variation on a theme. Children have an instinct for these things, and we would do well to pay attention. Winter comes. Where adults take comfort from the familiar, children just want the opportunity to throw snowballs.
In theatre, we play games with time. We narrate a season, and we re-enact it. It may be meant as an act of solace, but the ephemeral nature of it projects more shadow than light. We start with sentiment, but we act out something stark and frightening. Afterward, we give in to a slight shudder. We raise our glasses to each other’s health, and the terrible premonition passes.
Show of the Season
The sky is shreds and tatters this morning. In the north, the clouds are dark as dusk. I’m watching out the windows as we dress Baby in a rush. We have some new rain pants for her, and we’re struggling with those. They are lined with fleece, and so they must be rolled on and peeled off. Baby amuses herself by lying limp in our arms as we try to put on the final layer.
Baby and I are finally on the bike, pedalling south. In this direction, the sky is shreds and tatters. The clouds are flying low. Some are white, and some are grey. Between some of them are glimpses of blue sky. It’s a sky of conflict, and it’s a sky of paradox. There’s a play up there, a story to be told. The clouds tear as they race. Among the trailing threads of their raiment, the open sky is allowed brief windows.
I’m in theatre recovery. The plays had their first show last weekend. All of the fall has been devoted to this point to pulling together these shows. Next week, we perform in The Hague. And then that’s it. That’s the shock and the joy of doing theatre, how quickly it’s over. Months of writing, planning, rehearsing, and promoting can begin to feel like a job, or like a second family. Then, quite suddenly, you’re stage-side as the lights are coming up.
I think it’s something we all love and hate, the precipitous nature of that moment, without being able to reconcile the duality. The moment breaks from the physics of time, arriving outside of its objective place, and passing like a cascade in an otherwise slow stream. You shake off the spell at the after party, scratching your head. All those weeks rowing along in the calm waters of rehearsal, your careful thoughts measured like the motion of rowing, and then the tumble of the cascade reduces everything to instinct, and you can’t be sure of the result, of how exactly you did.
As fall came on, Baby was rehearsing the seasons in her mind. She always had trouble distinguishing summer from sunny and cold from winter. When fall’s first chill came on, she couldn’t understand why I would deny it was winter. I couldn’t interest her in this intermediary season. She only wanted to know when the snow would come. Last year, she was quite taken with the change of the leaves, so I tried reviving that interest and giving the season its name, but the fascinations of children – or this child – rarely have long lives or afterlives. And so, we’ve reached a temporary impasse in understanding the four seasons. She does have a remarkable memory, though. She remembers the leaves of last year. She remembers throwing snowballs at Mama and where they landed.
To be fair, the seasons are each distinct, aren’t they? We do them a disservice to stress their homogeneity too much. Every autumn is not the same; what makes them beautiful is the variation on a theme. Children have an instinct for these things, and we would do well to pay attention. Winter comes. Where adults take comfort from the familiar, children just want the opportunity to throw snowballs.
In theatre, we play games with time. We narrate a season, and we re-enact it. It may be meant as an act of solace, but the ephemeral nature of it projects more shadow than light. We start with sentiment, but we act out something stark and frightening. Afterward, we give in to a slight shudder. We raise our glasses to each other’s health, and the terrible premonition passes.
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