Hey New Yorkers, get your shit together and go see my hombre Andrew Dinwiddie and his resurrection of Jimmy Swaggart. GET MAD AT SIN!:
In meticulously recreating one of Mr. Swaggart’s early 1970s culture-war sermons (from a vinyl record) in “Get Mad at Sin!” Andrew Dinwiddie reintroduces us to a gifted orator, compelling performer and thunderous moralizer in his prime. It’s a surprisingly generous act of resuscitation.
Strutting back and forth on a pink carpet, kicking up his legs and swooning at his own rhetoric, Mr. Dinwiddie as Mr. Swaggart breaks into a sweat but never loses his cool. He tosses in theatrical pauses and even some slang to attack the evils of homosexuality, premarital sex and acid rock. Mr. Dinwiddie’s powerful voice contains the echo of the great Baptist preachers as well as a breathy rumble that approaches the erotic.
But this is no Reverend Billy-like satire featuring winks at the hipster crowd or political cheap shots. The director, Jeff Larson, lets this fascinating historical document, which diagnoses a culture lurching toward oblivion, speak for itself, absent biography, context or comment. It’s an interesting strategy and emphasizes the stemwinder as a work of theater.
I'll spare you the lengthy cultural diatribe, but I'm fucking pissed that I'll miss this by a week. It's exciting to see my erstwhile creative peers begin coming into their own, and I really like the sound of this work. First of all because Andrew could conjour humidity on stage like nobody's business, and I have no doubt this performance is something of a tour-de-force; but moreover because of how it's constructed.
I got handed a voter guide from The League at the 24th and Mission Bart today. Gave me a warm and fuzzy. Love this stuff:
How crazy is San Francisco politics? We're endorsing Gavin Newsom, a guy who blocked us on twitter! We disagree with Gavin a lot. He talks a good game at being progressive, but most of the time he's on the "big money" side of crucial local issues: selling out Bayview/Hunters Point to Lennar, siding with PG&E against public power, etc. His policy of reporting immigrant youth to ICE before they've been convicted of any crimes is horrible. But when you take him out of SF and compare him to the usual hacks who run for office statewide, Gav looks pretty good. He supports reforming Prop 13 and is semi-serious about addressing climate change. His opponent in the primary is Janice Hahn. Her politics seem pretty good, but we don't think she's ready for prime time. She's gotten by on her family name and just doesn't have the experience.
Pssst! Here's a poorly kept secret: the main reason we want Gavin to become Lt. Governor is because if he wins, the Board of Supervisors gets to pick his replacement, and we're hoping that would mean that we'd finally get a Mayor we could be excited about! Some of us are afraid this could backfire on us: Gavin goes on to become Governor or Senator and uses his clout to support candidates and policies that we don't like. Hmm. It's a tough call.
I'm coming unmoored from the patterns and places that have been holding me down (or stabilizing me) for the past four years. Like a piece of space-borne high tech equipment that becomes disconnected from the mothership, my relationship to my previous live becomes more and more a product of literal inertia. Gaps begin to emerge.
Nothing as yet is rushing to fill in the spaces. The new direction is unclear, less a product of intention and energy expended than drift. I am shifting geographies and societies, but this is a broad infrastructural initiative — like vowing to lose 10 pounds or to read the classics — and not an end in and of itself. Something that I'm doing the hopes of causing something else to happen.
I'm feeling increasingly strongly that this little fugue should resolve itself in another iteration of various life philosophies. Another turn of the wheel, at which point I'll be inspired and driven to start communicating The Word again.
Finally, apropops nothing, here's a nice little piece from William Gibson about how his novels have always been about "now", and have gradually made the transition in setting from being 300 years in the future (when he was writing in the '80s) to being set in about a year ago (as he writes now).
I've been on a new kick this week, trying to set small and achievable goals for myself both in terms of taking on the often overwhelming sea of responsibilities with which I contend, and in improving the general quality of my life. So far I have a few things working:
