"Transit" by Rachel Cusk (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016)
How do you categorize a novel in which the protagonist mostly listens and observes the actions of others, not judgmentally, almost like a psychiatrist who has no control except her ability to stay or leave?
Transit episodically tells the tales of people who surround Faye, the protagonist, a writer. The book opens with a spam email from an astrologer informing her that an important transit of the planets will save her from the feeling insignificant.
"What the planets offer, she said, is nothing less than the chance to regain faith in the grandeur of the human: how much more dignity and honour, how much kindness and responsibility and respect, would we bring to our dealings with one another if we believed that each and every one of us had a cosmic importance?"
Faye purchases the chart, then proceeds to act insignificantly throughout the book. Her encounters with her realtor, who helps her purchase a flat in London, her remodeler, her abusive neighbors below, her former lover, her fellow writers, her children, her cousin—all of whom seem to have some cosmic importance, reveal Faye’s Zelig-like ability to avoid confrontation, much less make an impression. Her role is to allow them to reveal their stories, one chapter apiece.
Transit is short and crisply written. I enjoyed it and recommend it.
"Haunt", Poems by Ryan Meyer, Amazon 2018
Teraphilia means love of a monster. Ryan Meyer likely enjoys this condition and writes poems to the monster under his bed that he wished would come out and play. In Dear Demon, he concludes,
“Crawl out from under my bedframe
Whenever you feel safe enough.
There’s no need to feel afraid:
I won’t bite.”
And in The Boogeyman Lives, Meyer tears down our image of this ogre and ends with,
“Most of all, he isn’t human, he isn’t
A metaphor for your Earthly fears.
He is much, much more than that.
He does in fact wait for you,
Underneath your bed.”
Embracing the macabre, Ryan makes every poem a slice of the dark side, the unknown and unknowable, leaving us closer to the subject but still in the dark. Because this is where the fun is for those who enjoy the unearthly. The poems, written in free verse, lend themselves to reading aloud, some even conjure up a group around a campfire, anticipating a good scare.
Meyer’s descriptions conjured memories for me. The Gusts of a Tempest brought back the pond on the farm.
“This silence grew louder during
Our pause, settling around us like silt
At the bottom of a pond…”
Anyone who ever walked in pond muck never forgets--and to compare silence to the silken terror that envelopes your feet and legs gives it such strength. In He Looked Like Me, we “shrug off anxieties...like a rain poncho”. In Sour, a woman “lets her inhibitions slide down the surface of the bar”. The poems are full of graphic word-images.
I am not a poet, nor a student of poetry, so cannot critique the literary qualities of Haunt. But I am a reader and enjoyed most every poem, thinking of where they could live again as a Halloween greeting card, or paired with an illustration or as the inspiration for a film. Some of the poems will haunt me.
"Jesus Christ Superstar" by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice produced by The Lyric Opera Chicago
The Lyric Opera House from the stage.
The Lyric seats 3,563. Fortunately, our seats were closer than those at the Paramount in Aurora. I’d never seen Superstar. It was interesting to see so many attendees my age who were there for love and nostalgia, and the young and very young who were there because this musical is timeless. No need to cover the book. We know the story. The telling was mesmerizing.
Herod descends the ramp that also forms a crucifix.
There is no dialogue, only song and orchestration. The cast was “beige”, a few white, and the rest black and tan. Likely, this is authentic for the eastern Mediterranean setting. Costumes, except for Herod, were “beige”, most looked like old workout clothes. The set worked wonderfully for the all sorts of scenes: crowd, groups and solos. The ramp coming from stage rear at an angle was used for entrances (King Herod with gold cape 50 feet long) and exits, and as a dining table for the last supper sequence. The tableau was an homage to da Vinci’s The Last Supper.
The ramp staged like DaVinci's Last Supper
The music combines rock and roll with jazz, funk, and lyrical ballads ("I Don’t Know How to Love Him"). As usual, every performer and every instrument was miked, which gave a sameness to the sound. The lyrics are difficult enough to understand because they are sung quickly. And, when there was a crescendo of voices and orchestra, the person running the sound board did nothing to modulate the mikes – deafening. I would have benefited from reading the libretto prior to the performance. But it did not dawn on me that understanding would be so difficult.
Overall, I enjoyed the performance. Now, I’ve seen every Andrew Lloyd Webber musical. Wasn’t on my bucket list, but great fun.