Arlene Goldbard's Blog

• Complicating the Story

  January 2, 2009

  • On New Year's Day, we saw the film Cadillac Records. After drying our eyes, we sat for a few minutes in the empty theater speculating about why such a wonderful film hadn't done better at the box office.

    Since opening on December 5, it's earned less than $8 million (as opposed to Marley & Me, $50-plus million in ten days), with the result that it has shown in fewer theaters every week since. The performances are remarkable, especially the protean Jeffrey Wright (as Muddy Waters), one of the best actors who ever lived, Beyonce Knowles as Etta James and the British actor Eamonn Walker, who gives an astounding performance as Howlin' Wolf.

    This fictionalized account of Chicago's Chess Records is not a documentary. Instead, it provides yet more evidence for Sandro Portelli's wonderful quip that "Many of the most important stories are true but not accurate.”

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• Steer Into It

  December 25, 2008

  • I haven't had my driving-on-black-ice lesson yet. Weather conditions have been spectacularly cold, but there hasn't been the right combination of temperature, precipitation and time off to open space for this particular learning experience—yet.

    Everyone is happy to offer advice, though. They tell me to drive slowly, brake slowly and turn slowly, so as to avoid gliding into the intersection precisely when I mean to stop. They describe slow-motion accidents observed from this very location. Most of all, they deliver the paradoxical prescription that apparently is foundational to Ice Driving 101: Steer into it. "When your car starts to skid," they say, "you'll feel like braking or turning the wheel in the other direction, but don't do it! Just steer into the skid until you feel the car gripping the road again."

    Surrender again? Remember in The Wizard of Oz, when the Wicked Witch of the West spelled out "Surrender Dorothy" using her broomstick as a skywriter? Maybe I'm projecting, but the surrender message seems pretty ubiquitous right now.

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• Vote Now for Artists' Jobs

  December 17, 2008

  • I'm in the midst of writing an article about public service employment for artists, an ideas whose time has once again come around. There are numerous proposals afloat and a semi-mysterious political process that will determine whether and how this idea will be implemented. I'll be posting a link to my article and more information later, but right now, I want to ask you to take a few seconds and help elevate this concept into visibility with the Obama team.

    Go to Change.org and vote for the National Campaign to Hire Artists to Work in Schools. You'll have to register—it's very quick and easy—before your vote will be counted. Rumor has it that more than 500 votes are needed to make the proposal rise to serious consideration. Please forward this information to everyone you know. Thanks!

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• Surrender (and Catch)

  December 13, 2008

  • My subject is letting go of what I think I know, so as to discover whatever I can. I am not good at this, but I want it very much. Happily, life keeps putting helpful information in my path.

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• In Praise of Improvisation

  November 24, 2008

  • Driving over Donner Pass Friday morning, we saw: clear skies, sun glittering on an expanse of deep-blue lake, rushing streams lined with red and gold reeds resembling the fur of an unknown animal, polished stones like giant mushrooms, ribbons of snow tucked beneath their rims.

    "I love California," I told my husband, minutes before we alighted at a vista point to say our blessings of leave-taking. "It feels like who I am: high mixed with low, all categories blurred, limitless permission to improvise." I'm not a surfer girl or a valley girl, but California shaped me to the core. I pour a libation of tears before we cross the state line.

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• Bye-Bye Bear Republic

  November 19, 2008

  • The movers come tomorrow to take our worldly goods to Kansas City, the mere name of which launches a song in the jukebox of my brain. I hope to have a lovely and musical time exploring my new home, and not to be too daunted by the things KC denizens keep telling this Californian to expect (i.e., "black ice," not a licorice-flavored dessert but a traffic hazard).

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• You-Know-What Shift

  November 13, 2008

  • My friend hates the phrase "paradigm shift." She's right, of course, that it is overused to the point of exhaustion. (And people like myself are the culprits, hoarding scraps of hope lo these many years to shore up our belief that positive change is around the corner.) But still, right now, I can't think of anything that says it better: events have caused a large number of people to reconsider their internalized models of how the world works, to notice and begin to root out retrograde tendencies lodged in the corners of their own minds.

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• Let The Healing Begin

  November 5, 2008

  • My Canadian friends and I were huddled together in hope, glued to CNN, when, a few minutes after 8 pm Pacific Time, the results put Barack Obama over the line and into the presidency. I felt something lift off my shoulders: a weight of shame called George W. Bush that had been lodged there so long I'd forgotten how it felt to be without that heavy load.

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• Think Globally, Vote Locally

  November 2, 2008

  • I'm in another airport, this time headed to Canada for a speaking engagement. I will be there on election night.

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• X-Ray Vision

  October 28, 2008

  • I remember reading something in a book by Doris Lessing—I think it was one of her "space fiction" series, maybe Shikasta.

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• Power Surge

  October 17, 2008

  • "This time"—my friend stood over a sinkful of dirty dishes, a stricken expression on her face—"I'm voting as if my life depended on it." Extreme energies of hope and fear are rising and ricocheting over every city and town in the nation. I wish there were a way to harness a forcefield of this magnitude: I imagine it could power the world's largest engine, probably forever.

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• Turn, Turn, Turn

  October 8, 2008

  • Yom Kippur begins tonight. This holy day is the fulcrum of the Jewish year: in preparation, we do a cheshbon hanefesh—a soul inventory—cleaning up our conduct and relationships to ready ourselves for the moment tonight when the beautiful Kol Nidre prayer is chanted, annulling all vows, reminding us that in the deepest place, in the deepest way, we are free.

    Everywhere I look these days, I see how much that reminder is needed.

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• Justice Permeated by Love

  October 2, 2008

  • If you've been reading my blog, you've seen me quote before from the Reverend James Lawson's founding statement of principles for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee well over forty years

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• The Patriotism Problem

  September 24, 2008

  • The difficulty I have wrapping my head around patriotism is one I sometimes share with other children of immigrants, those whose heritage, like mine, was stamped with the dark face of nationalism, the imprint of a patriotism that believed the country where our forebears were born would be purified by our absence.

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• Who's Afraid of Sarah Palin? Read On for A Call to Artists

  September 13, 2008

  • Judging from my friends' reactions (and the level of unrest in the Blogosphere and Punditstan), Sarah Palin's nomination has unleashed a tidal wave of fear and despair large enough to sweep defeat from the jaws of victory—unless we can master this reactivity and get on with winning the election.
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