[The Sky Over Berlin]

The Sky Over Berlin

Don't ask me how or why. Now and then
pigeons go astray, they go through
a window, a curtain, a mirror left half
open, and nothing can prevent their scattering
through the transparent sky of the soul, the way
watercolors disperse under the serendipity of water
drops. Don't ask me how or why
these mistakes happen, or if they even are
mistakes. How could I know whose hand
opens mirrors, whose hand precipitates
water? Sometimes, life chooses the wrong
piece, white moves for black, and then
an eagle appears under a coat, a word
on a bee's lips, a sad angel
sitting in a laundromat. They say
it happens to everyone, not only
those with wings. Comforting to know.
Comforting to know error is a part
of us, sustains us like air or blood,
that the best encounters are really
losses or confusions, accidents happening
three thousand feet above sea level over forgotten
cities, there where words ascend
like effervescent globules, and disappear.

--Gemma Gorga

["A Continuous Unfolding": D-Day, David Milch, García Lorca, and the Return of "Deadwood"]

An old article, from 2019, interesting by wide reaching, if maybe a little capricious, parallels.
Sven2

"A Continuous Unfolding": D-Day, David Milch, García Lorca, and the Return of "Deadwood"

By Stuart Mitchner

Tell me a story of deep delight.
— Robert Penn Warren

On the heels of the controversially rushed, truncated final season of Game of Thrones, HBO has released Deadwood: The Movie, the final chapter of David Milch's "story of deep delight," the series brought to an equally untimely and even more unfortunate end in 2006.

While the distinguished novelist/poet/critic Robert Penn Warren (1905-1989) may seem an unlikely godfather for such a work, the depth of his influence is made clear in Mark Singer's recent New Yorker article, "David Milch's Third Act." Anyone who has kept faith with Deadwood during the long wait for this moment should read Singer's piece, as well as Alan Sepinwall's outstanding appreciation in Rolling Stone. Far more significant than the revelation that Milch has Alzheimer's is what Singer's profile shows about how the lessons Milch learned from his mentor at Yale have given Deadwood the literary magnitude that sets it apart from other HBO masterworks like The Sopranos, The Wire, and Game of Thrones.

Referring to Warren, Milch says, "He was a teacher, but he was also always a searcher. He was respectful in sharing the pursuit and you felt you mustn't fail to bring anything but your best attention and respect for the transaction....You felt that you must suppress everything irrelevant or distracting.... You had in his presence an effect of a continuous unfolding. It wasn't so much an unfolding of a truth as it was of a passion ....The great blessing of Mr. Warren's presence was a rising up in one's heart of the desire to acknowledge that shared experience."

"Kubla Khan"

When Singer asks whether Alzheimer's "had given anything in return," Milch speaks of "a continuous sense of urgency ... an acute sense of time's passage." His suggestion "that time is ultimately the subject of every story" leads to a quote from Warren's poem "Tell Me a Story," lines that Milch has cited over the years "in classrooms, writers' rooms, personal encounters, lectures, and interviews":

Tell me a story.
Make it a story of great distances, and starlight.
The name of the story will be Time,
But you must not pronounce its name.
Tell me a story of deep delight.

The last two words echo in the "deep romantic chasm" of one of the most famous poems in English, Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "Kubla Khan." As he transcribes his laundanum dream, Coleridge hears "an Abyssinian maid/Singing of Mount Abora," and imagines his "deep delight" could he revive "Her symphony and song." In the opening stanza of Warren's poem, he recalls hearing the "great geese hoot northward" when he was a boy in Kentucky. Though he could not see them, "there being no moon/And the stars sparse," he "heard them." The experience of being involuntarily receptive to wonder and mystery, as expressed in Coleridge's visionary dream, similarly informs Warren's haunting line, "I did not know what was happening in my heart," which also evokes the wonders Deadwood achieves in its most poignant and powerful moments. Right now I'm thinking of the night scene near the end of the movie when Calamity Jane (Robin Weigert) and Joanie Stubbs (Kim Dickens) look up in "deep delight" at the slow magical fall of snowflakes as Milch concludes his "story of great distances and starlight."

In Walks Lorca

García Lorca is here because today, June 5, is his 120th birthday. So capacious is Milch's vision that it's possible to imagine an American incarnation of the Spanish poet walking down the muddy main street of Deadwood sometime between the shooting of Wild Bill and the snowy starlight Jane and Joanie delight in a decade later. Lorca would have a guitar, as he did when he was a student in Granada playing and singing Spanish folk music and making a name for himself before becoming a famous poet and playwright. There's a Deadwood ambiance in the "Gypsy Ballads," where "Rider and horse appear/With a long roll of the drum" and "Light like a deck of cards,/Hard and glossy and white,/Cuts in the brittle green/Horses rearing in fright." Or Lorca might sing of the "lunatic afternoon" in which "Angels of black took wing/To the far air of the West." He ends "Afternoon's Last Light" singing, "O unarriving Night,/Object of fear and dream,/How long the slanting sword,/How deep the driven wound!"

D-Day

Until Deadwood changed the dynamic, I was working on a D-Day sequel to last week's celebration of Whitman and Memorial Day, which ended with me smoking a Camel from the pack found on my bellygunner uncle's body after a freak training accident in February 1944. But for that, he might have been in one of the B-17s scouting the skies over Omaha Beach three months later.

Following the theme of cigarettes as a shared sacrament in films and fiction as well as real life, and guessing that Lorca must have been a smoker, I cast a line into the cyberstream and came up with Leslie Stainton's Lorca, A Dream of Life. It turns out that on the night of his arrest by Nationalist forces on August 16, 1936, Lorca was given a carton of (would you believe?) Camels by a friend. He was wearing "dark gray pants and a white shirt with a tie loosely tied around the collar" at the time, and when he demanded to know why he was beng arrested, he received a one-word answer, "Words."

Two nights later Lorca was handcuffed and driven to a small building six miles from Granada with a schoolteacher and two bullfighters known for left-wing politics. The poet offered the last of his Camels to a young guard who was on duty that night, asking if he could have a newspaper and "more tobacco." After humoring Lorca with smalltalk, the guard told him that they he and the other three were going to be killed. The sun had not yet risen when they were shot beside a stand of olive trees and buried in a nearby ravine.

In his introduction to The Poet in New York and Other Poems (1940), José Benjamin presents Lorca's murder as "the purest and clearest example of the martyrdom of an entire people."

"He Didn't Suffer"

Among the items the U.S. Army Air Force sent to my mother, along with the cigarettes and his dog-tag, was a large glossy photograph of a B-17 like the one my uncle died in, along with a letter to the effect that "he didn't suffer," and a handsome Citation of Honor signed by the commanding general of the Army Air Forces. The citation declares that "his sacrifice will help to keep aglow the flaming torch that lights our lives," so that "millions yet unborn may know the priceless joy of liberty." It ends: "We who pay him homage, and revere his memory, in solemn pride, rededicate ourselves to the fulfillment of the task for which he so gallantly placed his life upon the altar of man's freedom."

The Citation of Honor doesn't give my uncle's full name, which was Robert E. Lee Patterson, in honor of his grandfather, a Confederate general who served with Lee. His other grandfather, C.A. Davis, played the fiddle with Bat Masterson's band in Dodge City. I like to think he was with them when they performed in Deadwood at Al Swearengen's Gem or maybe Cy Tolliver's Bella Union. I still have the fiddle.

Telling the Story

The two characters from Game of Thrones I can imagine showing up in Deadwood are Jerome Flynn's earthy, wisecracking sellsword Bronn and of course Peter Dinklage's Tyrion Lannister, whose wit and eloquence qualify him to sling words with the likes of Ian MacShane's Al Swearengen. In the rushed conclusion of Game of Thrones it's left to Tyrion to tie up the labyrinth of loose ends in an uncharacteristically stilted speech: "What unites people? Armies? Gold? Flags? Stories. There's nothing more powerful in the world than a good story. Nothing can stop it. No enemy can defeat it."

As David Milch shows throughout Deadwood and most movingly in his interview with Mark Singer, it's the way you tell the story that counts. In quoting Milch on the influence of Robert Penn Warren, I found myself taking out lines (see the ellipses) for the sake of moving things along, not realizing that Milch was holding forth in the style of one of his characters. That said, I'll restore a characteristic omission. Speaking of his mentor, Milch says, "You had the feeling that there were two spirits residing in a holy place. And there was an absolute lack of self-consciousness to the process. A mutual absence."

When Singer, in his frank but delicate probing of Milch on how he deals with dementia, refers to his "ability to pull back from whatever is immediate and contemporary and go to a place—say, Deadwood—where your characters exist," Milch says, "I think that is the chief blessing of art, the opportunity to organize one's behavior around a different reality. It's a second chance. You pray to be equal to it, equal to its opportunities. We both know that some days you're better at that than others. In my case, there's a continuing unfolding discovery of the limitations of that vision."

In Deadwood: The Movie, David Milch and his cast and crew are more than equal to the many unfolding opportunities.

from: http://www.towntopics.com/wordpress/2019/06/05/a-continuous-unfolding-d-day-david-milch-garcia-lorca-and-the-return-of-deadwood/

[Nothing Wants to Suffer]

 Nothing Wants to Suffer

                    after Linda Hogan

Nothing wants to suffer. Not the wind
as it scrapes itself against the cliff. Not the cliff

being eaten, slowly, by the sea. The earth does not want
to suffer the rough tread of those who do not notice it.

The trees do not want to suffer the axe, nor see
their sisters felled by root rot, mildew, rust.

The coyote in its den. The puma stalking its prey.
These, too, want ease and a tender animal in the mouth

to take their hunger. An offering, one hopes,
made quickly, and without much suffering.

The chair mourns an angry sitter. The lamp, a scalded moth.
A table, the weight of years of argument.

We know this, though we forget.

Not the shark nor the tiger, fanged as they are.
Nor the worm, content in its windowless world

of soil and stone. Not the stone, resting in its riverbed.
The riverbed, gazing up at the stars.

Least of all, the stars, ensconced in their canopy,
looking down at all of us— their offspring—

scattered so far beyond reach.


--Danusha Lameris

[Hearing an Oriole at the Palace]

Hearing an Oriole at the Palace


In spring trees shrouding palace windows,

a spring oriole sings dawn light into song.


It sets out to startle the world, stops short,

flutters here, there. Return impossibly far,


it hides deep among dew-drenched leaves,

darts into blossoms and out, never settled.


We wander life, never back. Even a simple

birdcall starts us dreaming of home again.


--Wang Wei (701-761 CE)

translated by David Hinton

[Thank You]

Thank You


If you find yourself half naked
and barefoot in the frosty grass, hearing,
again, the earth's great, sonorous moan that says
you are the air of the now and gone, that says
all you love will turn to dust,
and will meet you there, do not
raise your fist. Do not raise
your small voice against it. And do not
take cover. Instead, curl your toes
into the grass, watch the cloud
ascending from your lips. Walk
through the garden's dormant splendor.
Say only, thank you.
Thank you.

--Ross Gay

[Deadwood: Why HBO Canceled the Series]

Deadwood: Why HBO Canceled the Series

The popular HBO series Deadwood was canceled after three seasons when WarnerMedia and Paramount Television couldn't come to terms.
By Rachel Roth
Published 2/23/2021

A western like no other. The HBO series Deadwood premiered on March 21, 2004, and ran for a total of three seasons. Set in the gold mining town of Deadwood, South Dakota, both before and after annexation by the Territory of Dakota, the series was largely a study about how civilization was nothing but organized chaos as shown through the lives and rivalry of saloon owner Al Swearengen and local justice Seth Bullock. Similar to another HBO giant, Boardwalk Empire, Deadwood combined fiction with historical truth, mixing original characters with real-life members of history, including Wyatt Earp and Wild Bill. Violent and compelling, the series is still considered to be one of the best of all time.

However, while Deadwood was beloved by both fans and critics, no amount of praise could save it from getting canceled. The series got the official ax in August of 2006, and the reasons for its abrupt end are as frustrating as one can possibly imagine.

Unlike most shows that suffer from poor ratings or drama from the set, the problems Deadwood faced came from higher up. The show was notoriously expensive, with set design alone taking up a big chunk of change. Showrunner David Milch was also a perfectionist, needing everything to look as authentic as possible. In order to make the show work, WarnerMedia, a subdivision of HBO, had to partner up with Paramount Television to properly produce the series, but the two networks could never get along. Contract disputes and disagreements over profit caused a troubled relationship, and the two finally split before Season 4 could get the green light.

It wasn't just network disputes that got Deadwood off the air, though. Milch the perfectionist wouldn't settle for anything less than what his vision demanded, and refused the initial olive branch the two companies offered him. Unable to reach a satisfying agreement with Paramount, HBO was ready to cut their losses and move on. Instead of a full 12-episode season order, Milch was offered a six-episode final season to wrap up the remaining plotlines, which he quickly turned down.

Milch finally agreed to wrap things up in a two hours series finale in the form of a TV movie, and after many delays, Deadwood: The Movie premiered on HBO on May 31, 2019, providing some much-needed closure for fans. Most of the main cast returned to reprise their roles, with the exceptions of Powers Boothe, Ricky Jay and Ralph Richeson, who all sadly died before production began, and Titus Welliver, who was busy filming Amazon's Bosch.

Deadwood: The Movie picks up a decade after the events of Season 3, with South Dakota celebrating its newly acquired statehood. While not the ending many had envisioned for the series, this final outing did enough to finally lay to rest many of the lingering questions fans had when the series was canceled.

from:
https://www.cbr.com/deadwood-why-hbo-canceled/

[Ian McShane on 'American Gods' Season 3, 'John Wick 4,' & His Love for 'Deadwood']

Ian McShane on 'American Gods' Season 3, 'John Wick 4,' & His Love for 'Deadwood'

By Christina Radish
Jan 17, 2021


You also did fantastic work on Deadwood. That was such a special show and it seemed at so many points, over the years, that the much talked about movie was just never going to happen. What was it like to actually finally get to do that movie and revisit that character?

McSHANE: When Deadwood happened, we had a meeting with me and David [Milch] and Tim [Olyphant] to start making the deals because they had a script and it all came together. I remember 2018 was a very full year. I did John Wick 3, and then we finished Season 2 of American Gods, and then I did Deadwood. It was like an out of body experience. We all went back, and it had been 12 years since we'd done it, but everybody came back exactly the same, we did our best, we finished it, and then it came out and I think they were a little dismissive of it, in terms of I thought they'd give something to David because I think it's his crowning achievement. SAG and all of those other people were very churlish with their awards. So, I was a little sad that David didn't get a little more because I did think the two-hour movie adaptation was pretty masterful, considering how most adaptations ended up disastrous. I thought they did a pretty good job on it.

In comparison to American Gods, which feels different every season, it was amazing how the Deadwood movie seemed to pick right back up where it left off, even though so much time had passed.

McSHANE: It was important to get that same feel. Even though they had a fire and the buildings are made of brick now, the people were still there, going through it. Life was tough. I love the fact that David wrote Al to show that he'd declined, over the years. He wasn't the same. Neither was Tim. Tim was older. We all are. Thank god, they didn't try to pick it up with everybody the same as they were before. The town was the same, but the people had all gotten older and a little bit more mature. It was a wonderful thing to do. The shoot was like, "Wow, we're all here again. Here we are. Let's do it." It was very special.

Does it feel very freeing to play a character like that, where you essentially can swear whenever you want, or a character like Wednesday, who can do whatever he wants to manipulate people? Is there something fun, as an actor, about playing characters like that?

McSHANE: Yeah, absolutely. Deadwood was David Milch's creation of a world maturing. And then, law came in and changed society. If Deadwood had gone on, I think it would have been one of the greatest shows, ever. It would have shown America becoming, after yesterday I won't say civilized, but showing how society changes. We did get the chance to do some of that. So, playing characters like that is very freeing. But then, David Milch is one of the greatest writers of all time on TV. Milch's vision is so extraordinary. At the beginning, you thought Al was a villain, but then you realized there was a little more to it than that. He wasn't just a black hat and black boots. That's the way with all characters now. Up until the '70s and '80s, villains were villains. Not so much in European movies because they've always been much more interesting. In the 2000s, you had The Shield and Tony Soprano. You had the Golden Age of TV, if you like.

from:
https://collider.com/ian-mcshane-american-gods-season-3-interview-john-wick-4/

[The New Decade]

The New Decade

I keep thinking there's a piano nearby.
I keep thinking it's my favorite song. It's my favorite song!

Below the marquee, I arrange the marquee:
Happy New Year, buddy. Happy 'nother one, sweetheart.

Out of ways to call you dead, I decide to call you busy,
call you at midnight from West Oakland.

These days I raise a glass to make sure it's empty.
Even when I was a drunk, I thought champagne was pointless.

In my two-story civility, I stick my head out
each window & scream. S'cuse me, s'cuse me,

I'm trying to remember a story about gold,
about a giant falling from the sky.

Someone once asked who I prayed to.
I said a boy with a missing front tooth.

In this order, I ask, first, for water,
which might mean mercy,

which might mean swing by in an hour
& I'll tell you the rest.

If you were here we'd dance, I think.
If you were here, you'd know what to do

what to do with all this time


--Hieu Minh Nguyen

[John from Cincinnati and Post-9/11 Bible Studies]

John from Cincinnati and Post-9/11 Bible Studies
by Sean Parker

Sopranos may be the biggest and arguably the best show HBO has ever brought to television. I was playing catch-up back in 2007 before the airing of the second half of its final season. Airing moments after the series finale of The Sopranos, a weird and interesting new show was set to take HBO into a new era, but John from Cincinnati was doomed from the moment Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros' "Johnny Appleseed" started.

How HBO thought following up David Chase's heavily atmospheric gangster drama with a breezy, supernatural dramedy about spirituality and surfing just minutes after fans' reactions to that Sopranos finale is beyond me. The only thing the two shows share in common is the resilience of their strong performing female leads: Rebecca De Mornay as Cissy Yost and Edie Falco as Carmela Soprano. Imagine your favorite show of the past 7 years closing on something of a dark, ambiguous puzzle and then being brought to sun-filled sandy beaches in Imperial Beach, California where, lo and behold, you have more puzzles to decipher. Sopranos fans were likely walking into John from Cincinnati angry and despondent that this was the show set to take over their precious Sopranos timeslot.

David Milch, creator of Deadwood and NYPD Blue, even threw fans of his shows a curveball with John from Cincinnati, which was a departure from the grit they were used to from a show bearing his name. Co-creating the show with one-time Deadwood collaborator Kem Nunn, the show seemed more like a baffling quirky character study—comparably speaking, it's the SoCal version of Twin Peaks. Characters in both shows behave whimsically, like drug dealers listening to opera in their cars who care about the ailing family of the man they sell their drugs to; a bird conveys its thoughts to its owner much in the way that a woman might converse with a log; an internet café is a good stand-in for the Double R Diner; a run-down motel acts like The Great Northern Hotel, where strange occurrences seem to bring many of the characters together. 

The heart of John from Cincinnati is the dysfunctional, broken Yost family who, on the arrival of phrase-repeating John (Austin Nichols), begin to reconnect and heal. In some ways, Nichols's character feels very similar to Peter Sellers's Chance the gardener in Being There. Both are eccentric and simplistic, arriving in situations that require care and yet also helping the people around them. As John's and the Yosts' lives become more intertwined, more people seem to gravitate to them, becoming involved in their story and being drawn into the central location of the show: The Snug Harbor Motel. 

John from Cincinnati starts weird with an interaction between John and Linc Stark (Luke Perry). John appears, as if out of nowhere, while Mexican immigrants find their way across the border behind him. "The end is near," John tells Linc, and it will take most of the season for the audience to learn what that means. Linc ultimately puts together that John is "the end" and he is standing "near" Linc, but that reveal only begs more questions. There is a lot going on from the first few minutes of the show, and not paying attention at any time in any episode can cost you pieces of the puzzle. When the show aired back in 2007, I'd always re-watch the episodes and find new connections. I've seen the show multiple times now and I'm still catching new things, even thirteen years later.

Linc Stark arrives on that beach to appeal to Mitch Yost (Bruce Greenwood) by allowing him permission to sign his surf prodigy grandson, Shaun (Greyson Fletcher), to a sponsorship with his Stinkweed brand. Mitch recognizes Linc as the responsible party that allowed his son/Shaun's father Butchie (Brian Van Holt) into the lifestyle of an addict. Mitch is told to "Get back in the game" by John, and when Mitch asks Linc, "Is he with you?" the audience, looking for a clue, can recognize we have our hero and our villain showing up in the same place at the same time in an angel versus devil or light versus dark dichotomy. Luke Perry should also be recognized for his criminally under-acknowledged role in John from Cincinnati. The late actor was absolutely brilliant in his portrayal of the cutthroat, greedy, capitalist-incarnate Linc Stark, operating him at a level where you despise his manipulative nature but continually enjoy watching the character.

Mitch steps on a needle while walking to his car, and from then on Mitch randomly levitates. The show becomes blatantly Biblical, though religion never gets jammed down the viewer's throat because these events take place in the modern age—hell, there's enough violence, swearing, and sleaze in this version of John to make the Pope blush. But it is an interesting setup to see these Jesus-era characters and events written into modern-day storytelling and seeing the "what if" surrounding Joseph, Mary, John the Baptist, Mary Magdalene, and Jesus as people living today and not as just a 2,000-year-old interpretation. These are imperfect people living in an imperfect time, witnessing modern miracles, all connected, it would seem, by nature.

We witness the beauty of nature interacting with the Yosts through the ocean, of course, but also before and after Shaun's accident with Zippy, one of Bill's (Ed O'Neill) birds. During an interaction with Zippy, Shaun resuscitates the bird; later Zippy revives him in the hospital during Bill's "Hail Mary" attempt at saving Shaun's life after suffering a broken neck at a surfing competition—Lazarus be damned. And it isn't a preposterous idea to see Mitch meditating and consider his path to enlightenment working in tandem with nature, especially where Mitch pleads in PSA promo ads for the show for an end to illegal sewage dumping, calling the ocean is his church, his sanctuary. 

There's also a very interesting scientific aspect to the actions of the characters in the show being based on Sir Isaac Newton's Third Law of Motion: for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Waves break in and they crash back out.

    Mitch catches a good wave. 
    Mitch wipes out. 
    Mitch wipes out Cissy. 
    Cissy shows Butchie how to do that. 
    Cissy wipes Butchie out. 
    Butchie hurts Barry's head. 
    Mister Rollins comes in Barry's face. 
    My Father runs the Mega Millions.

It is very butterfly effect in general: one tiny act can cause a ripple effect that affects the world. And I often wonder where this was going in terms of making it a surfing metaphor, with John's constant attempts to get Mitch and Butchie Yost back in the game, as if this small butterfly-flap chain reaction might somehow save the world. That last line of John's father running the Mega Millions also serves as the end of the ripple as it resonates back to its point of origin. Not only is John saying that his father has the power to make Barry (Matt Winston) a millionaire, but he also initiated a way for the characters to return to each other (and not in a Lost "we created this island" sort of way). Barry buys the motel where Mister Rollins's ghost and Butchie reside. Barry has to face his ghosts and Butchie now is forced to deal with his parents. Mitch Yost should get back in the game, closure can be found, and the ripple can calm.

So, what was the point of it all? I don't think we'll ever know where the show was headed, but to understand where it was coming from, you'd have to take yourself back to that post-9/11 era of war in Afghanistan and Iraq and that helpless feeling in the aftermath of the falling towers. From the first episode, we learn that the new owner of the motel has had a terrible tragedy in this place and seeks to cleanse the place of its ghosts. More and more people become drawn to the Snug Harbor Motel either by pilgrimage or just showing up at the location looking for ways to help the Yosts. The motel becomes symbolic of how people from miles away volunteered at Ground Zero during the devastating aftermath of 9/11, drawing people from everywhere to come help. It's not unlike how a star may have guided three wise men (Willie Garson, Luis Guzmán, and Matt Winston) to Bethlehem, though now they're running the inn. Doctor Michael Smith (Garret Dillahunt), and drug dealers, Freddie (Dayton Callie) and Palaka (Paul Ben-Victor), begin orbiting around or staying as well, observing and assisting in ways that seem counter-intuitive, at least in Freddie's case, knowing that something special is taking place and they need to be a part of it. And similar again to the way a ripple in the water starts from a droplet and becomes a reverberating wave, more people become drawn to the motel by the presence of John, something I think would have continued in Season 2 as the motel would continue its rebuilding efforts and slowly fill up.

When John shows himself in front of a black sheet with a stick figure on it saying, "Shaun will soon be gone," it stirs fear in the hearts of Shaun's loved ones. It's very reminiscent of the al-Qaeda terrorism videos made during that time and sparks thoughts in the Yosts' minds about who the hell John even is. It's easily seen that after his return, this was John's way of asking for permission, or more like telling the Yosts that he was taking Shaun away, but in the moment the action is threatening. The lesson here is more one of understanding than one of fear. We live on a small rock in the middle of space, and we all have a communication problem on this planet. Racism is represented throughout the show between Butchie's views on Tina's (Chandra West) choice of film costars, Joe's (Jim Beaver) take on Mexican immigration, and also in a particular phrase of Joe's referring to Muslims "going to get themselves blown off the planet."

John repeats many unkind things the characters around him are saying when he asks, "if my words are yours, can you hear my father?" I believe many questions are being asked at the same time: if I repeat your words back to you, are you appalled by those words? John acts like a small child when he's repeating the words of the other characters, almost acting like this is what the next generation might hear. When he repeats that Muslims are "going to get themselves blown off the planet," it's almost as if a child is repeating the hateful speech of their parents, and it makes a valid point in the argument that these notions of hate are learned because a child takes the word of a parent as gospel. Shaun is brought back unharmed after the pair's secret trip to "Cincinnati," and by the end of the show concession and forgiveness are made on many sides.

Linc helps the Yosts out of a jam and is asked to "get in the game" by John. The invitation to Linc to join the Yosts is really a fantastic metaphor for what John from Cincinnati is about: hope and forgiveness. John is riding down the boulevard to the pier with someone who was once his enemy, he recognizes the faces of the "vatos" on the street that stabbed him and left him for dead, he changes the mind of the most suspicious ex-cop who gets detained for his efforts, and most importantly he unifies a family through the healing power of community. Jesus didn't change his world on his own—he had disciples, he had help. And the Yosts, like New York City, are not fixed by the end of the series; they're working on recovering and getting stronger together.

There's also the matter of John asking Cass (Emily Rose) to capture everything with her camera, as if asking her to spread the good word and write a gospel through the modern medium. And what is it Cass captured on that camera? John walking through an international festival, smiling with people, dancing to their cultural songs, and getting in a wrestling ring with a luchador and hugging him instead of fighting him. The message is simple if you can see the world the way John sees it—the way a child might.

John from Cincinnati is a beautiful, weird, and transcendent 10 episodes that to this day gets overlooked as "the show that came on after The Sopranos." The fact is that the series was judged too harshly in 2007 when it was likely ahead of its time. This is the type of show that would likely have been cheered in the streaming era because of its interconnectivity and the depth of its characters. The show boasts a fantastic cast and a wonderful continuing story where every episode somehow deepens the mystery surrounding who John is by revealing pieces to the puzzle. We never do find out what was planned for 9/11/14, or if that relates to John being "the end," or even what John actually is, and I suspect we never would have had the show continued. He could have been anything: a horseman of the apocalypse or a fallen angel, an extraterrestrial or a shapeshifter.

In the words of John, there are some things I know and there are some things I don't. Many questions go unanswered and many set-ups for a second season were made but never realized—including a pregnancy for Cissy, Kai (Keala Kennelly) becoming the mother of God, the mysticism around the Snug Harbor Motel Bar, if the El Camino guy that spoke a lot like John was his father, and what the shuffleboards signify. I can make some guesses based on the clues, but I never think there's enough evidence.

The grace the show proposes we have in the face of tragedy and the measuring of ourselves to say what we mean with kindness in our hearts will forever be its message and legacy in my eyes. Even now—in the muddied political climate that we currently find ourselves in, where the United States has never been more divided and people mistake sides of the aisle for religious conviction without the consideration that people's opinions and ideals have to be considered—the show serves as a reminder to communicate. John from Cincinnati was a big believer in perspective and having an open enough heart to welcome people into our lives and not cast them out. As we ride one wave out of 2020 and catch the one into 2021, I think it's important to keep our faith in people. You never know whose father may be running the Mega Millions.

John from Cincinnati is now streaming on HBOMax.

from:https://25yearslatersite.com/2020/12/31/john-from-cincinnati-and-post-9-11-bible-studies/

[Sorrow Is Not My Name]

Sorrow Is Not My Name

—after Gwendolyn Brooks

No matter the pull toward brink. No
matter the florid, deep sleep awaits.
There is a time for everything. Look,
just this morning a vulture
nodded his red, grizzled head at me,
and I looked at him, admiring
the sickle of his beak.

Then the wind kicked up, and,
after arranging that good suit of feathers
he up and took off.
Just like that. And to boot,
there are, on this planet alone, something like two
million naturally occurring sweet things,
some with names so generous as to kick
the steel from my knees: agave, persimmon,
stick ball, the purple okra I bought for two bucks
at the market. Think of that. The long night,
the skeleton in the mirror, the man behind me
on the bus taking notes, yeah, yeah.
But look; my niece is running through a field
calling my name. My neighbor sings like an angel
and at the end of my block is a basketball court.
I remember. My color's green. I'm spring.

      —for Walter Aikens

--Ross Gay

[Syros]

Syros


In Syros' harbor abandoned merchant ships lay iddle.

Stem by stem by stem. Moored for many years:

CAPE RION, Monrovia.

KRITOS, Andros.

SCOTIA, Panama.



Dark paintings on the water, they have been hung aside.


Like playthings from our childhood, grown gigantic,

that remind us

of what we never became.


XELATROS, Piraeus.

CASSIOPEIA, Monrovia.

The ocean scans them no more.


But when we first came to Syros, it was at night,

we saw stem by stem by stem in moonlight and thought:

what a powerful fleet, what splendid connections!


--Tomas Transtromer

translated by May Swenson and Leif Sjoberg


Posted by svengali2 at 6:56 PM No com

['Deadwood,' 'NYPD Blue' Creator David Milch Talks About Living With Alzheimer's]

'Deadwood,' 'NYPD Blue' Creator David Milch Talks About Living With Alzheimer's

by Malina Saval

Oct 16, 2020 10:15am PT

From his work on the iconic, Golden Globe-winning 1980s cop drama "Hill Street Blues" to creating such TV series as "NYPD Blue," "Deadwood" and "Luck," four-time Emmy Award-winning David Milich has been an iconic figure in the biz. Milch is battling Alzheimer's, a ravaging brain disease for which there is no cure. From his residence at a care facility in Southern California, Milch describes his experience:

"I'm 75 years old and I was diagnosed about a year and half ago," says Milch. "It's a slow unfolding as you become aware of the compromising of your faculties. And that becomes increasingly dramatic and distressing. And finally, you can't turn your back on it any longer — that's been the story with me. [It's] forgetfulness of all different sorts, which compromised my ability to meet my daily responsibilities. Finally, there comes a period where you're fighting off what is clearly a change and you have to, if you're going to be responsible and meet the concerns that other people are beginning to show, you have to encounter all of that.

It's an increasingly distressing sequence of events, but finally there's no turning your back on it. You kind of fight a rear-guard action. You look at it as a series of accumulating skirmishes where you look at the challenges for the given day and your hope is to be able to get through without acknowledging what is privately an undeniable fact. It's a demoralizing accumulation of irrefutable facts.

At a certain point you make so many adjustments to conceal or circumvent the effects of the illness. And then, if you are to retain any sort of dignity, you have to acknowledge that you've changed. And if you're going to keep your dignity you have to make adjustments to the disease, and that takes up more and more of your conscious life and emotional life. I'm grateful that I'm part of a family which has been generous and brave in trying to help me. I try to work every day, to write. Each day is about coming to terms yet again with the compromising facts of your condition, and you finally get to the point where you have to make concessions to what's going on with you. And you try to embrace your families, the concessions that they've made or are trying to make. In some ways you could describe it all as an accelerating pace of compromise.

I live in a facility which is organized around the recognition of and adjustment to what is happening and what is continuing to happen. And you just learn to live with it, as best you can. It's an accelerating deterioration. [For me], it's about being a continuing part of the community, trying to be a source of support and strength as long as you can to your family. And doing it all as you live into the recognition of the concessions that you have to make increasingly, day after day."

from:
https://variety.com/2020/tv/spotlight/deadwood-nypd-blue-creator-david-milch-brave-battle-alzheimers-1234807100/

[6 unresolved cliffhangers from television that still haunt usThe A.V. Club]

No one I assume would hold their breath hoping to restart a conversation about the meaning of the final scene in John From Cincinnati. Or maybe, just maybe, there are some souls, still searching, still contemplating, what do we know.
Here's one at least.

from:
6 unresolved cliffhangers from television that still haunt us
The A.V. Club

Just because I can't tell you what happened in the season-one finale of John From Cincinnati doesn't mean I didn't want to see where it was going. David Milch's notoriously impenetrable surfing drama was canceled by HBO the day after it aired its final episode, an unceremonious end for a show that may or may not have contributed to the premature end of Milch's Deadwood. And while JFC is no Deadwood—what is?—I grew to love the way Milch's lyrical soliloquies flowed from the mouths of his seaside eccentrics and deadbeats. But, while the cast always intrigued me more than the story's miraculous healings and prophetic visions, I still find myself returning to that first season's parting shot. John, the mysterious, Christ-like figure at the center of the narrative, intones, "Mother of God, Cass-Kai," as Kai, a relatively minor character played by Keala Kennelly, surfs across the screen. I've turned it over again and again in my head over the years, weighing it against the show's Christian allusions and explorations of community and miracles, but every time I come up empty. Milch got a chance to wrap up Deadwood with a movie, maybe he can do the same with JFC? I'm not holding my breath. [Randall Colburn]

from:
https://tv.avclub.com/6-unresolved-cliffhangers-from-television-that-still-ha-1845371166

[Fable]

Fable

We had, each of us, a set of wishes.

The number changed. And what we wished --

that changed also. Because

we had, all of us, such different dreams.


The wishes were all different, the hopes all different.

And the disasters and the catastrophes, always different.


In great waves they left the earth,

even the one that is always wasted.


Waves of despair, waves of hopeless longing and heartache.

Waves of mysterious wild hungers of youth, the dreams of childhood.

Detailed, urgent; once in a while, selfless.


All different, except of course

the wish to go back. Inevitably

last or first, repeated

over and over --


So the echo lingered. And the wish

held us and tormented us

though we knew in our own bodies

it was never granted.



We knew, and on dark nights, we acknowledged this.

How sweet the night became then,

once the wish released us,

how utterly silent.



--Louise Gluck

[Drought]

Drought

Mid-August, and the hanging petunias are finally dead. Only the vines survive, wiry and sick, and soon they will die too, hopefully. Perhaps then it will be safe.

For a long time I brought them water from my bath, so if the neighbors called the police, I could speak into the truth machine and prove I had not broken any laws. But then someone did call, perhaps Mrs. Bressen, a patriot, who is such a nice old lady. My snapdragons opened their buds each morning for weeks afterward.

I had a café table in the southeast corner of the terrace, facing the lake, which was once as blue a cornflower, and two lemon-colored garden chairs, begonias overhead. I was lucky they let me go; in another neighborhood it might have been different. Hard times need hard measures.

My flowering lace. My red bee balm. My exuberant orange marigolds. My sprightly purple zinnias. My impatiens, my lobelia, my prim rose. My poor snapdragons, what summoned your strength each morning for one more push, one last burst of trust?

--Alpay Ulku