DanielSonenberg.com

Hey - here's something REALLY cool. If you go click here, you can read the entire Action Comics #1. Somewhere in your travels you've probably heard tell of this one - it's the June 1938 comic book that introduced the Man of Steel, Supey himself. It's a high quality scan, and very enjoyable, and you'll feel like you can reach into your computer screen and pull out the genuine document. And too bad you can't, because if you had a first pressing, it'd be worth close to a cool mil. But what's really shocking is this: who is Superman's first big tackle? Lex Luthor? Bizarro? Doomsday? None of these. It's....a Washington lobbyist. I kid you not. And if the makers of the new movie, Superman Returns, would have borrowed that plot, their story would have been more interesting than the dull semi-plot they've imposed on their confection. Two nights ago, disappointed that the premiere was too late for my bedtime, I went out and rented Superman II, for old time's sake and to sort of get into the mood. And while it's a bit more campy than I remembered, it's also quite definitely the best superhero movie ever. Pure, unmitigated story. All scenes help develop the plot. Superman saves France from a nuclear bomb by flying it off the planet, and its ultimate explosion releases three diabolical Kryptonian criminals, Ursa, Non, and General Zod, who had been condemned to float around space forever in a two dimensional square mirror. While they make their way to earth to conquer, Clark Kent and Lois Lane go to Niagara Falls (just like we did) to investigate a honeymoon scam, and Lois figures out that Clark's the big guy. And their love just oozes out, so Supey goes and gives up his power and then the Kryptonians take over the world, and it all leads to a great, great denouement, if such a word can be used in this context. Christopher Reeve and Margot Kidder are perfect for their roles. Brandon Routh and Kate Bosworth, in the new flick, can't really compete. They're too young, for starters, and they look young. Christopher Reeve just looked ageless, you know? Like a super hero. Even still, though, Bosworth and Routh have a game go of it, but the movie is ponderous, almost plotless, and rather a bore. Alex liked it, I think because it's kind of a chick flick. But I like chick flicks too. Ah well...I had my hopes up.

Forgive me if this image offends. It shouldn't. I can think of no more direct, succinct, and powerful dramatization of the principles upon which this country was founded. You burn the cloth, but cannot turn the soul to ash, and your attempts to conquer the spirit of this great experiment in democracy by annihilating its coat of arms just makes us stronger. Right? Because in so doing, you are demonstrating - perhaps unbeknownst to you - the core freedom that we Americans have always imagined to delineate our society from others of the world. It's the hallowed freedom to express uncongenial ideas forcefully. And to express, in bold terms, displeasure with our government, and even with our constitution. This act may not always be done in the spirit of mockery. It may indeed be undertaken under great spiritual stress - a desperate cry of rage to a country that has seemed to lose her way. And by means of such violent protest, yet again a reaffirmation of all that is, or was, sacred in this land. Now our senate has come within one vote of outlawing this free speech, in a misguided attempt to spare the feelings of our veterans (more of whom we are creating, and killing, by the truckload, but never you mind). Isn't this the very thing they've fought, and are fighting for?

Hey, ever wish that you could get to this blog without having to filter through the rest of my boring website?
Here's the permalink, if you will: http://www.usm.maine.edu/~dsonenberg/Blog/Blog.html.

He had a name like the Devil's guitar man - Robert Johnson - and took everything in stride. He could poach an egg like no-one I've ever known, and he'd be up at any hour, without complaint, to drive to the bus or the plane, or the brutal 5am train out of Lynchburg. But mostly Robert held court at Friday night poker, down at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts in Amherst, VA. One night we decided it was drag poker night - so the collective lot of us, writers, artists, composers, misfits one and all, ambled into the Episcopal Thrift Shop in town to buy dresses, suits, tiaras. I suppose on some level it was just a test to see how cool, how unflappable, the old man really was. I say old, but Robert was ageless, timeless, a rock, a spirit, an eternally gentle and welcoming soul. And unflappable he was. I mean, the sight of me in a baby blue evening gown and lipstick is enough to generate big league fear, but Robert just glanced up as we marched in, momentarily raised an eye, and then reached for the poker chips, wearing his trademark grin. Every now and then, to be sure, you could get his attention with a particularly daring bet. The last time I sat at the table, one in our midst was dealt a particularly fine hand in Robert's favorite variant, "Four and Four." After she began the betting by throwing a blue, twenty-five cent chip into the pot, Robert exclaimed in shock, "A whole quarter?!" Belly laughs all around, and all most certainly WITH, not AT. And how could I have known that that would be the last Friday night game? How could I have been ready this afternoon for the email that told me, with great sadness, that Robert, who loved to drive and did it well, had taken his last spin 'round Mount San Angelo and was now motoring beyond. It's a blow to the gut is what it is. A particularly unanswerable emptiness, compounded by the fact that we, Alex and I, won't be able to properly mourn for the man until we're nestled in those Blue Ridge Mountains once again, for three or four or five weeks, communing with the cows and the wondrous skies and bales of hay, and feeling the depth of his absence. To VCCA colonists one and all, and to Dorothy, Robert's wife and our dear friend, we stand with you in grief.

Here I am at Niagara Falls. It was a gray day, so I've gone into Photoshop to add all sorts of vomity colors so you can look at it and think, gee, if only Dan had left the picture plain it'd actually be kind of nice. You hold on to that vision. We found ourselves here Saturday morning, in a white rented Pontiac Grand Prix. Several days earlier, Wednesday, to be specific, we left Portland, Maine on a 3:30 bus to Boston, in order to catch an 8pm plane to Toronto. We were on our way to celebrate the life of Manya Sax, survivor of the Russian Revolution and, much later on, grandmother to Alexandra Joy. At approximately 4:30pm, A.J., who had until one second previously been fast asleep, sat bolt upright and announced "we forgot the passports." We calmly surveyed our options. Once upon a time a driver's license would get you into our friendly Northern neighbor, but those days ended about five years ago. So we rode on to Boston, hopped on the return bus to Portland, picked up our car at the bus station, drove home, got the passports, reserved a rental car, drove to the Portland International Jetport, got the rental, left our Subaru in the long-term lot, and at 9:38pm we were, to borrow from Willie Nelson, on the road again. At approximately 5:16 a.m. on Thursday morning we pulled off of exit 42 of the New York State Thruway, and made our way to the Ramada Inn in the town of Geneva (coincidentally, the location of Hobart, alma mater of Alex's brother Ian). At 5:40 a.m. our heads hit the pillows, and at 7:30 a.m. our alarm went off, and by 8:28 a.m. we were back on the thruway. At about 12:15 p.m. we arrived in the lovely city of Toronto, fresh as a cuke, ready to mourn. And good thing, because the funeral started at 1. We were at the funeral, then at the cemetery, and then sitting shiva for the day - Jews understand better than most that mourning is about eating, and eating smoked fish to boot. Anyway, I'll have more details about our adventures in the coming days, provided nothing exciting happens before I get the chance to expostulate on the travel theme. The end of the story is that we left Toronto at 6am, left Niagara at about 11:30, left Hamilton College (Alex's alma mater) at about 4pm, and coasted into Portland around 10:20, none the worse for wear. (That's actually a phrase that sticks in my head from a little $3 book we bought about people who've gone over Niagara in a barrel. As you might imagine, it really only worked to describe a small minority of that population. And it doesn't really work to describe us the other night either, but it sure rolls off the tongue). For now, rest in peace Manya. I'm glad I had the chance to know you, and to say farewell.

Four words, friends, and I'm not ashamed to say them: Iced. Caramel. Soy. Latte. Double shot, made with expertise, even love. Double shot? Why no, a single is fine. Oh no you di'nt. A single can't carry even the smallest of iced drinks. You wind up with coffee milk, and who wants coffee milk? No sir, not I. So in this sunny little closet on the hill, a concoction of the almost-vegan gods (almost because the caramel has dairy in it, sister). To be sure, the evil Seattle corporate coffee collective is here, but we locals, we Mainers, hardy and sensible lot that we are, pay them no mind whatsoever. A cold day indeed it will be before we meekly cross that threshold. So summer is here and Hilltop Coffee is its delightful self but in peak form, and the winds of joy are circulating with force in this artsy little enclave of Munjoy Hill. The San Francisco of Portland, I like to say. And the annual gentle stream of visitors has begun. Chip Whitesell and Gunny Sen, from Montreal, with bagels and biscuits. Montreal bagels are small, slightly cakelike, almost entirely unsalted, and really quite delightful. Would I take them over the best of New York bagels? Well maybe not the "Absolute" best, but certainly over the coffee cart/Deli balloons of fluff, and any day of the week over the Maine also-ran variety. Chip is on the faculty at McGill, a published expert on the music of Joni Mitchell and writing a book to boot. So Joni, who was rated the no. 9 best living songwriter in a recent Paste Magazine article (I'd probably put her around number 3, but oh well), was in the air and wouldn't you have loved to be a fly on the wall for that business, eh? We ferried en masse out to Long Island - not the one where I grew up, but its less inhabited namesake in the shimmering and glorious Casco Bay. And then with our dear friends safely on the road to Brunswick, I hit the Bay in earnest with Doug from Truth About Daisies. We paddled out in kayaks to a completely uninhabited pair of islands called the Brothers and had ourselves a picnic and brisk 30 second swim, and paddled back, me flush with the realization of my great ambition to become a seafaring kayaker. You put up with the endless May rain, the mud season, the slight isolation, the dearth of pizza by the slice, for this. A nice day in Maine is the pearl in the oyster, an unparalleled, gleaming affair that shuttles bliss through the bloodstream and sanctifies the spleen. But work we must, at least from time to time.

As this summer gets under way I'm catching myself thinking about another summer, exactly half a lifetime ago. It was 1988, high school was done, and I was spending lots of hours lounging in the freshly built swimming pool at my mom's place in Glen Cove....drinking Miller Genuine Draft, reading Jack Kerouac, deeply in love for the first time, and getting serious about song writing. As I recall, I wrote about 8 songs that summer, but two have been pretty persistent hangers-on all these years. "Instigation Blues" is now featured in the From The Vault! section of the site (in a 1990 performance). The other was "Amazing Mistakes," a song written about some of the characters involved in the sex scandal made famous by the film Capturing the Friedmans, which had just played out in my former hometown of Great Neck. Maybe I'll post that tune some time too. The photo here, by the way, is from the May 3, 1991 edition of the Bard Observer, and it's me playing an Earth Day gig in front of the dining commons. It's one of a very small number of photos I have of myself from the period. I know you care.

Well, since I alluded to it below - my opera - and since I've been meaning for there to be some ink spilled at this location in its honor, and since I've really nothing else to talk about (although I'm meaning to write a post about my fourth grade teacher, a sort of revenge piece, stay tuned) I'll mention a bit about the grand opus in progress. Man, I see what they mean about writing operas. I mean how long can the words "in progress" carry any sort of real weight on my c.v., you know? But Josh takes some living with. The opera is called The Summer King, and it's about the life and death of Josh Gibson, who was one of the great Negro League baseball players. If you know your baseball you've heard of him or shame on you. He was a catcher, but famous mostly for his bat. Although many Negro Leaguers were called "the Black Babe Ruth" at one time or another, Gibson probably deserved it more than anyone else. Or maybe the Babe was the "White Josh Gibson." Among Josher's most notorious, and perhaps most apocryphal feats are 1) hitting a ball clean out of Yankee stadium; and 2) Killing a ball out of a park in Pittsburgh, and then at the next day's game in Philadelphia, after a ball came out of the sky and landed in an outfielder's glove, being told "You're out yesterday in Pittsburgh." Surprisingly, it's the first of these events (and not the colorful and ubiquitous second) that plays a central role in the opera. Gibson's much debated 1930 homerun out of Yankee Stadium becomes a kind of metaphor for the entire Negro League history, shrouded as it is in mystery, hearsay, and scant public record. Gibson may have hit 800 or more home runs in his life, perhaps more than 80 in a single season. He also hit for average, and grew to be a more than decent catcher. Ultimately, however, the relentless grind of life in black ball began to wear away at the hulking slugger, and he became increasingly attached to alcohol and hard drugs. He also may have been diagnosed, in about 1942, with a brain tumor. The picture I've posted here gives a taste of Gibson later in life, somewhat bloated, still an accomplished trash talker, and delirious. He ended up dying in 1947, only months before Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier with the Brooklyn Dodgers. In the months leading up to his death, teammates and friends overheard him having imaginary arguments with Joe DiMaggio, and some have maintained that he died of a broken heart, for note having been The One.

In any case, Gibson has fascinated me for years. He is a stark contrast to his seemingly more operatic counterpart, Jackie Robinson. Jackie was such a noble figure. Heroic, driven, composed. A titan among men, who understood his historic responsibility and, against terrifying odds, rose to the charge. I don't know if any other human could have done what Jackie did that first year, the '47 season - withstanding the taunts, the death threats, the endless screeching epithets. Certainly not Josh. For Josh, being a great ballplayer was enough - wasn't that answering the call of history? Sure, he would have liked to have been chosen by Branch Rickey in '46, but by then Josh was in his mid-thirities, addled with injuries and worse, bloated, and living too far on the edge. It was not in Josh's horizon, nor in his ambitions, to be a pioneer - forging the way for his plethora of talented brethren. He did his pioneering with his bat - and were he white, this would have been enough. I mean can you imagine? His name would be a household word. He'd have a candy bar. I think in some ways Josh felt the swirling winds of history too late to raise his sail.

So the opera. I worked out a treatment with the poet Daniel Nester, who then wrote several drafts of the libretto. As is often the case between librettists and composers, Dan and I had a bit of an artistic parting of the ways, but the bulk of his excellent writing remains, with some inferior finishing touches by yours truly. We first cobbled together about an 18 minute scene, and you can hear all of it in the listen section of this site. This was for a workshop sponsored by American Opera Projects. We were working under great time pressure, so we didn't come up with a treatment for the whole opera, and the result is that this quirky little operatic chunk stands alone as a kind of suite: a meditation on Josh Gibson before our thoughts had fully congealed. Most of the music will not survive in the final version of the opera (except for the aria, which you can also hear on this site). The Summer King Suite, as that bit has come to be known, was performed in a staged version in March 2004 at the Manhattan School of Music, with some wonderful performers and under the inspired direction of Caren France, who works in the opera division there. Anyhoo, the opera occurs as a series of nested flashbacks, beginning in a barbershop in Brooklyn, 1957. It is ten years after Jackie broke the color barrier (and after Josh's death), and the year the Dodgers are leaving town, and a young exuberant barber gleefully sings along with an old chestnut that pops up on the radio: "Did You See Jackie Robsinon Hit That Ball?" (by Buddy Johnson). This prompts his elder colleague, a former Negro Leaguer himself, to wax philosophical about the great Josh Gibson. Eventually his reminiscing yields to a vision of the 1930 game at Yankee Stadium, told in pantomine with an exuberant sportscast through a bullhorn. Additional flashbacks find Josh, on his dying day, wracked by visions of his past - his first love, his triumphs in Mexican winter ball, his legendary acumen at trash talking, and ultimately, his most famous home run of all. Did he or didn't he? You'll need to stay tuned.

I've a long way to go. Have written some of the second act, which had a workshop reading by AOP in New York in April, 2005, and am now working on the first act. A portion of this will be presented in a concert performance up here in Maine on March 9, 2007, on my Faculty Recital, with a big 14 piece ensemble and a bunch of singers (the singers part is kinda standard for operas). There will also be workshop performances (piano/vocal, I fear) and maybe a libretto reading in NYC in the 2006-07 season (sponsored again by AOP), and perhaps another staged bit at the Manhattan School. It's an odd feeling to be with a single project for so long - a leap of faith, I suppose. The writing is going well, and taking me to some strange places (why does Debussy pop up in everything I write lately? I mean, what did HE know about baseball?) but it is a joyful pursuit.

You read this whole thing??? You weirdo!

Wow - I left you with the anchovies for four whole days. Euphoria, no? I'm back. But I've got nothing much to say, at least nothing particularly ordered or purposeful. Alex and I have quit TV. The first step was admitting we had a problem. We don't have cable and don't get such great television reception, but our problem became the television show on DVD, and we consumed voraciously, working our way through Battlestar Galactica and Six Feet Under, while also watching fuzzy renderings of 24, and all those lookalike cop forensic shows...CSI, Without a Trace, who knows what. Three episodes into The Wire and Alex diagnosed that it had been some time since we had, say, read a book - and our sleep habits were deteriorating. So cold turkey we quit, with the single exception of 7pm TV news (either News Hour or 60 Minutes). And what has happened? A whole civilization has flourished in our midst. I'm reading the Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test for the first time, in preparation for the seminar I'll be teaching in a couple of weeks: Sounds of Change: the Counterpoint of Music and Meaning in the 1960s. You would think with a title like that we'd be turning folks away. Not so. Enrollment is low, and perhaps because until about a day ago the course was listed in the on-line catalogue as: Sounds of Change: Counterpoint. I mean what sort of class is that? Sounds kind of like a self-help book by Palestrina. Now that's all cleared up, and we've quit tv so our brains are expanding, and I'll be able to expostulate. We're also thinking of buying an Oddfellows Lodge. But that's for another time. Alex meanwhile is painting and scrounging around antique shops for architectural fragments. It rains every day, forever and ever, so we're both depressed. But if I'm really in need of a smile, there's always The Old Negro Space Program (which is at least tangentially related to the opera I'm writing).

Well friends, no need to ever return to New York! I've finally found these suckers on line. Even cheaper than at Zabar's. At Capri Flavors you can order twelve 2 oz. tins for under $24 - I'm not sure about shipping costs. I like to support local business, but the one supplier I've found in Portland, Micucci's, hasn't been able to get any from their distributor. You can buy larger containers and glass jars, but I don't recommend it. Anchovies have always seemed to me to get nasty once spending time in the fridge. These should be eaten out of the can, or used in recipes, in one fell swoop. I repeat what I said somewhere below - you think you don't like anchovies only because you haven't tried Agostino Recca. (The other good way to have them is to buy, from an Italian specialty store, the salt packed variety, and then rinse and filet them yourself - a tremendous amount of work, and not appreciably better than these guys). You might be able to track them down in select stores in NYC. In Astoria, our Korean grocer had them, and he stocked them for me and one other patron, who would buy them by the armload. He thought we were both nuts.

Here I am at the scene of the crime - darling Eunice must have heard my complaint. (Do any of you not know where this pic was taken?) Rest assured, the shirt has a much more novel effect up here in Maine!

Good friends,

This first post of the month of June necessarily archives the flurry of activity with which I closed my May blogging. Go have a look - I really got going for a moment. Our trip to New York filled me with blogging energy, and I had a whole bunch more posts I was thinking of writing. One about Zabar's, another about going to a Yankee game, which I did, and still another about New York ping pong. And I'm not saying these posts won't some time materialize. But now that I'm back in Maine where it rains always (except, apparently, for the gorgeous several days that occurred while we were away), I'm in a more quiet and innig sort of mood. Pounding away, once again, on the opera, and trying to be disciplined about social commitments and frolicking - not so hard right now, since you'd sort of need an ark to venture out into the world from here.

Well, before they're totally gone from my mind - some final, scattered NYC thoughts.

If you go to Zabar's for smoked salmon, take a number, but then wait for David to become available (when they call your number, just go up to him and say "I'm waiting for you, ok?") He's the one with the big thick mustache, long salt and pepper hair in a pony tail. Been there forever. Cuts like nobody's business. He's moody - can be a delight or somewhat sullen - but no-one can slice a salmon like him. Oh, and ask for "Norwegian," which is dryer than the standard Nova (unless you like the oily stuff). If David's not there, try to wait for the oldest fish cutter available. I swear it makes a difference. Then walk to the shelves just to the right of the smoked fish counter where they keep all the canned fish products. Get about five cans of D'Agostini anchovies, which come in a white can and are imported from Sicily. You think you don't like anchovies because you haven't had these (I used to be able to get them up here at Miccuci's, but they've been sadly out of stock for over a month). Mix em in w/ all kinds of cooking, or just eat them out of the can. OR, do this thing, which I got out of an Iris Murdoch novel (The Sea, The Sea). Make some dark toast, butter it, and then mash the anchovies into a paste on the toast. Don't try to substitute another brand, or it'll be nasty.

Yankee game. Had fine fun with my friends Anton and Eunice, but always feel completely abused when I go there. Paid $42 to watch the Yanks pummel the Royals. Refrained from the beer, which was $8.75. But did manage to get, for $25, my Johnny Damon Yankees shirt. I'm wearing it right now - but you can't see it. Hey Eunice, where's that photo? If you're in Maine, you'll be seeing a lot of this tee.

Anyway, that's all I've got for now. I know I haven't updated the "From The Vault" section like I was supposed to...temporary technical difficulty over here. So listen to DGW for a little longer before it's zapped.