The Book of Mormon, and The Transformative Power of Art

Warning: I give away the whole dang plot, so if you've never seen or heard of the whole dang plot, then don't read this! 

Last night, I finally saw the musical The Book of Mormon. I was especially lucky to see it with a liberal but practicing Mormon friend, who pointed out the ways that the writers *really* understand Mormonism, like the names of the 18 year-old "Elders," (Price, Grant, Green, Young, Smith) which she said are all old pioneer Mormon names, meaning these kids come from the best Mormon families; or the perfect hairdos on the Mission President and other Mormons of authority who come to see the miraculous mission that has baptized more souls than any in Africa. 

The musical was a lot funnier, a lot more poignant and a lot more painful than I imagined it, largely due to a truly brilliant cast. Round, bouncy Cody Jamison Strand creates such a complete, awkward, socially inept and needy, creative nerd-person as Elder Cunningham, and so, ultimately, does Ryan Bondy, as his egotistical elder partner. (No, this does not mean that Elder Price is older than Elder Cunningham, it's just what Mormons on their mission call one another, these eighteen to twenty-two year olds who are not allowed to use first names with each other, or to be more than a few feet apart for two whole years.)   All the Mormon kids were individuals and effective, including a moving 

I can't find an image of this number with Mr. Bloomquist.

Daxton Bloomquist as the gay Elder McKinley, working so hard to "Turn It Off" and ultimately--to benefit of both McKinley and the musical-- failing. 

The "African" cast were also terrific: acting, dancing, and with fabulous voices, especially Candace Quarrels, as Nabulungi (mis-called by Elder Cunningham as everything from Nissan Sentra to Nala from The Lion King.) The number where she and elder Cunningham prepare for their first time (of baptism) is erotic and tender and howlingly funny. 

Ms. Quarrels, barely out of her teens, is deeply touching during the number Sal Tla Ka Siti, while I wish the moment when she tells Elder Cunningham, "You have shattered my soul," were allowed to resonate for a bit longer, because it is such a powerful one. 

The actors who play the Mormon deities--Jesus, Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, the Levite-cum-Angel Moroni and his dad, all double in many other roles and are hilarious in all of them.  

Although I do understand it, I find it hard to think about people (like my husband) being shocked by this show. It is so sweet and cheerful, all about being loyal to friends, being kind to one another, and joining together to fight evil (by pretend magic that threatens to turn the evil into a lesbian). 

Then, too, Book of Mormon is a loving valentine to traditional musicals, with call-outs to every Ruby Keeler dance routine, Agnes De Milles' modern-dance choreography for Rodeo and Appalachian Springs, and Jerome Robbin's Small House of Uncle Thomas ballet from The King And I. (The choreography, by Co-Director Casey Nicholaw, was incredibly witty.)

Of course, the entire musical is also gleefully obscene, even the Joseph Smith American Moses ballet with three-foot-long, snaky penises, female genital mutilation jokes, baby-rape jokes and frog-rape jokes. Hitler wears red sequins, and glazed donuts tap-dance through Heaven, which was a lot less imaginative than I thought it would be, and kind of a one (two, three, four, okay, five) joke number that went on for longer than the jokes warranted, I thought.

But then, the whole musical is filled with sequins, baby and frog rape and female genital mutilation jokes, not three-foot-long snaky penises, as well as General Butt-Fucking Naked (based on the real psychotic warlord, Liberian General Butt-Naked) who is ultimately defeated with the "I will turn your clitoris into a nose," joke--yes, that old thing, but hey, if it converts General BFN to Mormonism--or rather Arnoldism, who really cares? After watching a bunch of white-shirted, white boys sing, "I am Africa," while ignoring the Africans around them, after watching Ugandans presented as naive victims in Act I only to have them skewer missionaries, religious ideas, and the medical complex in Act II, I would become a follower of Arnoldism myself, if I weren't a Reform Jew, which amounts to almost the same precepts Arnoldism follows (apart from the door-bell ringing to find converts.) 

And yes, my favorite line in the whole musical probably belongs to the converted General BFN. "Hello," he sings. "My name is Elder Butt-Fucking Naked. 

Did you know the clitoris 

Is a holy sacred thing?" 

My Mormon friend she hasn't laughed that hard in years. I agree completely. I missed the magical, transformative thing that I have seen happen lately in musicals, but that, my friends, is the subject of another post. See this touring company if you can. It's worth it. (Though we were able to get very inexpensive tickets via the lottery process.) 

Mid-Age Blessings; Fears For A Daughter

Yesterday, I walked with a friend through a crowded downtown area and overheard many harassing comments aimed at young woman by the men around us. Since I don't live in France, I am more or less past the age. I felt so--relieved. I can walk past a construction site and ask questions about what's going on there, without being treated like a target, just as I did before puberty. (I love construction. I did serious research about training as a union electrician until I talked to women who were electricians, heard about the harassment they endured on site, and realized I didn't want to work in a battle zone.) 

Then I thought, I have a little daughter. Who will some day reach puberty. Some day, like I did, she will have to walk that gauntlet. Why do men do this? Why do we allow it? Why is harassment still a thing? 

My friend said, "I remember the first time somebody whistled at my little sister. She was eleven. Eleven! I was sixteen, and I was used to it, but she was just a baby. I felt like crying."

I would have felt like kicking them in the teeth. And puberty, for both boys and girls, is coming so much earlier. That supposed sexy babe someone is whistling at might be nine or ten years old. 

Then, I look at the Instagram feed from young women, even some that I know. It starts when they are thirteen--or younger--photos of pursed lips, poses in their underwear, everything aimed at being "sexy." 

Only it's not sexy. It's silly and pretentious, an echo of some guy's jack-off pin-up, not living as a sexual being who happens to be a woman. 


I remember as a kid seeing Tonya Pinkins as Sweet Anita in Jelly's Last Jam and thinking, "Now, that's not a superimposition of "sexy" on that actress, it's her being inside her body and feeling sexual." 

But when I saw Ms. Pinkins publicizing that show, (in red leather chaps over black pants)--she was busy projecting manufactured sexiness. (I knew her at the time, so I know. "This is what it takes," she said. "So this is what I'll do.")

I have to be clear that I'm not laying this off on Ms. Pinkins, or on the girl above in the photo of the selfie, or on my niece, or on any of the women working so hard to fit the pinup image of sexy. Women are not magically able to identify cultural prisons and thus free themselves from them--if that were true, no females would support genital mutilation, or sell a girl child into sexual slavery, or marry off their eight-year-old daughter, or support Donald Trump (who finds his sixteen-year-old daughter pin-up sexy.)

Still, my gut knows that this projected sexuality is some kind of mirror image of women in burkhas; women twisting themselves for men. And I cringe at the idea of my child being caught in that. I know, I already know, that my older child won't fall for it. I hope--so much--that I can help my youngest can avoid it. 

P.S. Ninalee "Jinx" Allen Craig, the young woman in the top photo, has said, (sixty-some years later) that she was not being harassed in the image, that the men involved were all unemployed and it was such a hard time in Italy, and that she later flirted with one of them and went for a ride on the motoscooter of another. That may be how she remembers it, but--look at her face. That woman is NOT enjoying the experience. 

Oh, My God. Babies Really Are Turning Into Dinosaurs!

Close-up. 


I swear, these are *not* staged photographs. Just coincidence. 
And interesting children in our area. 

Oh, No! Humans Mutating in Size, Now Larger Than Lions, Dinosaurs!

Since those dinosaurs escaped the fence, baby humans have mutated. Some are now grotesquely huge--or at least their feet are. These prints also indicate that their toes are also exploding away from their feet. And that lion is no longer pussy-cat-sixed either. 

A Tough Week--

I don't have the skill of pretending things are going to be okay. I don't have the kind of faith that reassures me everything will always work out. I lost that, ten years ago when I was going through a series of miscarriages like physical (and hormonal) blows and spoke with an old, dear friend whose husband--a ballet dancer-- had just dropped dead. 

My friend's way of grieving was outsized rage. Mine was dripping tears on anyone who asked, "How ya doing?" including the nice lady at the health food store whose name I didn't know.

"I just want to be like those pioneer women," I told my friend. "I should be able to bloom where I'm planted." 

My friend cackled like a maniac. "Pioneer women? My grandmothers were pioneer women, both of them. One of them died at thirty, just lay down by the side of the covered wagon and died. And the other went in-sane. I'm talking about a mental institution. In those days." (Believe me, she spoke with more emphasis than underlines could ever communicate. 

"But God won't give us anything more than we can handle," I said. 

"Of course!" she shrieked. "That's why there are no suicides." 

My friend had a point. And her response was so refreshing after hearing, "Well, maybe God didn't intend for you to have that baby." (or that one, or that one or that one.) Or "My angel baby is in heaven and that's all I need to know," or--my favorite--"God needed that baby for someone else," which is a hell of a kick in the teeth while you're still bleeding and, oh, what the heck, lactating, for a pregnancy that has failed, because, obviously, God only had a finite number of babies to give, and we were deemed unworthy of this one. 

It's harder to walk this world with the awareness that God sends babies and heals people, and also sends schizophrenia and sociopathy and Alzheimer's disease, let alone Stalin and Hitler and Pol Pot and the guy who grabbed a five-year-old and broke her nose and raped her last week. (That's if one believes in God, which, when you're looking at this whole unpretty picture, creates a very tough balancing act.) 

The crazy thing is that I learned from this horrible time, just like some (horrible) people said I would--"Some day, this will be a blessing." (Oh yeah? Someday, I will have the courage to kick you in the teeth.) 

It does help me to listen better, and I think people sense this, which is why total strangers will often tell me of deep griefs. 

And it helps during tough times. Not a lot, but it helps. Because, sometimes, despite my very, very, very best efforts, I do life so badly. Sometimes, I don't listen right--to strangers or anybody else. Sometimes, my own fears get in the way of letting a child fail and then figure out a plan on their own--if they can. Which maybe they can't. So maybe I need to help them. (Right? There are no manuals for this kind of shit. Right?) So, sometimes, I forget to help my kid with a disability remember four-square breathing, and visualizing success, and instead, I push. 

Sometimes, I blunder blindly, and knock over the dream house I'm trying to build. Sometimes, our whole family, for the most loving reasons, does it all wrong and then we all have to pick up the pieces and get moving again. 

Others helped this week. The guy at the fair who sold me the painting that I'd been wanting for ten years now, but could never afford--giving it to me for far more than half-off because he's heard our challenges over the years as I hang there, admiring his wife's art work. 

The artist herself, through her painting, (done in felted wool and studded with gems and stones and tiny sparkles that flicker like real stars in the sky.) 

The lady at the glasses joint who spoke of that morning, with their little girl with juvenile arthritis. "I never imagined when I signed up for a second tiny baby that we'd wind up sitting on the floor in the bathroom for an hour, the whole family, trying to get her to put on pants so she could go to school, this crazy dysfunctional family going through every single pair of pants she owned trying to find a pair that didn't hurt her. Who knew this would be my life?" 

The self-described "super-nerd," at the fair, who took off her antique walkman headset and showed us her sketch book filled with marvelously expressive bears interspersed with notes like, "There's a huge difference between being done and being finished," or "Trying to find the smile that says I'm still full of hope but doesn't show the gritted teeth."

My family, from youngest to oldest, who just keep loving one another, including the kid with special needs,--and the awareness that this kid knows how much we love, and that we'll always keep trying. 

If there is a God, maybe God is this kind of blundering kindness. 

And if there isn't, well, well, hell. Thank God for blundering kindness. We blunder on. 

Top Art work by Bear Paw Paperworks and Fiber --this photograph does not nearly do justice to the texture and glimmer and peace of the artist's work. 
http://www.bearpaw-paperworks.com

Bear Art work by http://www.suerowe.com
This tiny sketch does not begin to do justice to the warmth and humor and humanity of this artist's work, much of it in exuberant color. 

Please respect these artists' work.

I just realized--both of these artists use bears as a totem. There must be a message in that somewhere. 

Everybody loves Photos of Cats, Right?

 Katz, Katz, Katz, Katz's. The photo at the bottom is a Nussbaum. 

Are Train Stations the Home of Evil Empires?

Our little Daisies and Brownie Scouts toured the old train station yesterday. The hijabi sisters couldn't come, but we had all the rest, even the tempestuous little one--one of my favorites, whose mother was going to pull her after she didn't realize we had a field trip last week, too. (Mama, it turns out, doesn't read emails, only texts. So now we know.)

The girls were hungry which made them rowdy, and the tour guides, though kind, began the tour by kicking them out of the train station to show them the art installation in between the doors that we had already spent six minutes with, while saying things like, "I work for the County Government, so they pay me. But George works for Amtrak. So the Federal Government pays me. Do you know what Government is?"

A complicated question for hungry children ranging in age from four to eleven.

Also, there wasn't a single train in sight. The entire tour. Buses are nice, and barges are interesting, but nothing beats a train.

My favorite moment, however, came early, when the Amtrak guy tried to explain the origin of the famous Empire Builder. (See photo above.)

"The Empire Builder?" said the littlest Daisy.

"That sounds scary," said the little one with the long braids and the gravely voice.

"Yeah, scary," said her best friend, shaking her corn rows.

Amtrak guy looked puzzled. "Scary? The Empire Builder?" He was white, in his sixties, I'd guess, wearing a white shirt and tie, and looking like a black-and-white photo of the 1960's come to life.

"Of course," I said.  "All they ever hear about are Evil Empires."

Little heads bobbed emphatically up and down.

We have a terrific school, but in the battle of Modern education vs. Popular Culture, I guess Evil Empires win every time.

Not our daisy scouts, but close. For our group, multiply by 2.3, make some girls younger and some almost eleven.