Reading about Daniel Patrick Moynihan in the New Yorker inspires writing. He wrote as a politician intent on shaping the world about issues that concern everyone. His efforts will help restore Penn Station's glory, and the new Penn Station, invading like an alien utility into the interior of the massive 10001 post office, will bear his name.
I remember that post office as the place where Robert O'Connor's father worked. We would go to the local Blarney Stone nearby... A comparable building may be the Union Square Consolidated Edisons Building, tucked away.
In other news, preparing a production of A Question of Solitude, with a great ensemble, by the way, I'm lately getting in touch with my solitary self. That means evaluating, too, the possibility that my creative work is entirely personal and has little to offer others, let alone even improving my own life. But that is the challenge assumed by all artists. I'll continue to move forward.

I should reiterate here that Michael Douglas was the subject of this blog's first post. I knew Eric Douglas and that helped draw my attention to the rest of his family.

A limited update follows, because a public posting means that I can even access it... After contributing a suite of music to Maria Micheles's Around the Night Park directed by Richard Vetere at Theatre for the New City, I'm participating in the premier of Myron D. Cohen's The Last Lafayette with two songs written for the script. That will have three performances in three different venues, The New York City Bar Association, The Lambs, and the Cold Spring Public Library... next will be a first staging of the musical playscript, A Question of Solitude. And I have a bit of running around tomorrow with the help of Public Transportation... Hope everything's going well with you... Peter

I woke up at 4:15 last night to catch the rest of samson and the vampire woman... I'm sure I've got the title wrong but I was surprised at how readily accessible are the details of this legendary film. The CUNY station ran it... I only watched a few moments. It uses Samson, or rather, Santos's, actual wrestling matches... Then I saw Diane Arbus be Nicole Kidman in Fur... I didn't get to Robert Downey's Elephantisis... Again, there's something about Ms. Kidman I just plain like... she really became quite intimate for Mr. Kubrick and then was really giving her all in that Moulin Rouge musical... damn that botox.. oh, and she did a good job in that spanish ghost story... the visitors? My big issue as a couch potatoe was that Fox Movie Channel is now a pay channel... I'm already paying almost 100 a month for media content they should be paying us to digest... then I went to bed with the air conditioner on and the dreams that followed, other than seeing my grandmother pass away before my eyes with a vision of her in the basement of fox funeral home... anyway, the place I keep going to while asleep is accessible through floor boards... I get in through a cellar hole... we live in a communal building that has secret entrances I access through the ceilings and floors, there are holes near the walls... It was dangerous to arise from them. I had to be careful... How I manage to live with these people I'll never know... there is clearly no supervision... nobody's presence can be traced there... we're off the grid so to speak... Meanwhile, the tall woman next door (in this imaginary village) opened her doors to the cast of Night Park, they all got to see her home and receive a grog bag while I was stuck waiting outside... Wow, a grog bag, whatever that is...

Re: SideWalk July 1st Schedule wow Last night at Webster
Posted by dizozza on 7/2/2010, 2:08 pm, in reply to "Re: SideWalk July 1st Schedule wow Last night at Webster"
There is a pristinely clear recording of our set last night -- of the invasion of the sound spectrum by four Steppes! was that 8 distinct sounds sources? at least... Thank you, Ben! The major moments for me as an audience member... Nan's song, How High Does Your Ceiling Go...beautiful! Nan's rapid performance nuances in her rap songs confirmed for the friends I was sitting with that they were in the presence of a unique and magical artist. And then Tanya O'Debra ran the spectrum of acting and singing, including the birth of Cher, The Bohemian Girl, with "Gypsies Tramps and Thieves," a major song and a personal favorite... THANK YOU! (I refer to it with reverence in our opening number, Almond Eyes...) Tanya, I will accompany you with live piano if you want. When is the next chapter? Sarah M-Kelly opened at the piano... with a sound of sarah mclaughlan in the air... That was Mike Hill's observation. My frame of reference is the song, " I can't make you love me..." yes? "Let's give them something to talk about!" no... Later that evening the science jerks gave an audio visual lecture on the thermodynamics of rock guitar/vocal... So a pretty wild program night with many suprise audience members. We had a reunion with Jean Free whom I hadn't seen in like 25 years...30? On facebook Jean alerted me with a quote from night of the living dead that he was coming in from Minnesotta...so I naturally thought another person at the bar earlier that night was Jean Free! and that person convincingly played along. I even acknowledged his father for helping establish the solo Michael Jackson venture for Epic records -- off the wall?... yes, i'm off the wall... He said, are you sure you remember me? I kept giving him more memories... like remember when we met Warhol backstage with The Clash... see I'm quite the name dropper... Oh boy... Anyway, I dedicate our show to the establishment of a long overdue federally funded banking program, Truth in Sarcasm... because there is... Peter Dizozza
Link: WIKIPEDIA ENTRY

SideWalk July 1st Schedule wow Last night at Webster
Posted by dizozza on 7/1/2010, 2:14 pm
Last Night in The Darkroom... Happy Birthday, Timothy! Now it's July 1st, your Steppes for the night are = Mike Hill Peter Dizozza Kat Yew Annie Levey At 9PM we're playing at SideWalk on a great bill and here it is: 8pm - Sarah Marzalek-Kelly 9-Peter Dizozza Mike Hill Annie Levey and Kat Yew (THE STEPPES) 10-Nan Turner (nan solo like hans) 10:45-Tanya O'Debra (reading the next installment of her CHER MUSICAL.) 11:30-The Science Jerks (chris anderson &co.- what will he do next?) STEPPES SET LIST We are the Drivers Someday Love Cinco de Mayo The Good Life Gone Away See Me Through Forgotten Cat Let Me Be (With You) Out of My Mind Straight for Your Heart PLUS SideWalk of New York Speak Low Bok Choi Plus special guest audience members, you!!! 94 Avenue A at East 6th Street 212-473-7373 don't you know... Peter 917-915-7635

Perhaps before turning to internet movie database or some other links that come up through a click on the google page I can consider what I actually thought of the unique film from 1962 called Jules and Jim, a flamboyant work and one that anticipates some of the charming interaction I know from ken Russell's films. These unique individuals following their own call somehow disappoint me in the end when all that is left is an expression of underlying tension and hostility, or something else I can't understand, in that they drive off a cliff, basically, and that the rules of what can be done with their ashes must be followed... who are these people, and what is the meaning of the German heritage of one of them, well, I suppose he is austrian, and a second world war is brewing as the lifestyles come to an abrupt halt. There is such happiness, joy and beauty experienced in the end result of the film. It is flashing about at images, ever unexpected and certainly there is great sadness in what seems to bring us back to reality, that there is an underlying tension fomenting...Maybe there's something else there. I wish there was because the vision was beautiful, or, what may be my own limitations, hauntingly familiar, and as I am a product of that familiar behaviour, I'd like to see a thriving outcome... well, bringing me back to my own perceptions versus reality. My favorite scene is the slap followed by the laugh. There is a moment of antagonism, one of several where Jules says something that offends Catherine and in my present state I am unable to recall what the comment was. She slaps him. he laughs and the all three laugh... the threesome is a French genre when I think of films of Bertrand Blier, which I haven't thought of for some time. There is another moment when she throws herself in the water... Ms. Moreau, after hearing quotes from Beaudelaire following their attendance of what might have been a strindberg play. the flamboyant Ken Russel style now seems to have its origin in Truffaut. All in all, a yearning arose from the film, and for that I'm grateful.

EDIT of January 4th, 2010: I have expanded the short last sentences of this post.

Waking up in the early hours of the morning I turned on the TV and saw the end of The Pianist, a mostly silent journey through towns in spectacular states of destruction, before the arrival of the Russions. The closing credits feature a close up of a pianist playing what I thought was a concerto... it's a chopin polanaise for piano and orchestra. The first words spoken thereafter on this IFC channel were announcing an upcoming show... Someone in the ad asked, "Isn't masturbation a form of prayer?" reminding me of the play I'd seen earlier, Viral by Mac Rogers, a Gideon Production. Playwright Mac Rogers articulately takes his audience on a descent into a realm we'd never imagine entering. As it confronts someone's need for suicide, it addresses the state of mind of one who is there... In fact, I thought that state of mind would pervade into others, but no, it is unique to the one character, and the transformed character is a woman who grasps her own identity by rejecting the temptation of the soon-to-be-deceased. I so respect and admire the ambitous scope and risk of the work. Last year's Hail Satan was uniquely humourous in its conviction. Here again there is attention to boss helper domination, but the whole viral enterprise is so enobled that I was forced to confront my general confusion about suicide... The one thing I know in my life is that I'm going to die, so the need for acceleration escapes me. Our material presence exists as a blip in time, although I'm sure it's eternal in some other dimension...Moving right along to the standard fare that inspires me as I attempt a musical coherency for A Question of Solitude was the further return on TV of the Kubrick film, Lolita... You can turn to a Turner Classic movie on demand menu and press play... I always identify Lolita as containing the great example of a real time scene... the diary discovery into the car accident... Seeing th 20 mintues last night I remembered the forbidden nature of human attraction surpassing unhindered attraction. Then I thought, oh, yes, of course, Pianist Director Roman Polanski suffered some euro-ostracism in America for a collision similar to Humbert's... My exposure to Lolita was at an age of, well, 15. At for the quote from the IFC channel that "masturbation is a form of prayer," as it relates to the play, "Viral:" Viral addresses that the collective observation of an event (a suicide) can be achieved through the use of RECORDING EQUIPMENT. It announces a market for recordings documenting the passing from the body of life. The willing participant in a documented suicide is the gold mine. With not a hint of cancer or some other slow torture to rationalize the death decision, the decider decides on suicide... We confront the right to die against the right to life... Our presence or absence makes a great difference in the material world...

Just to change what has been my latest Michael Douglas blogpost, I'm writing now. The East Village was quiet over the 4th of July weekend because the fireworks moved to the west side, a great idea whose time has come, thanks to the anniversary celebration of Henry Hudson. The Hudson River is majestic; The East River is turbulant!

My minimal Time Warner Cable report for the weekend includes some thanks... The Sundance channel permitted an on demand broadcast of "The Man Who Fell to Earth and feel from grace and skimmed both his knees...

oh those days. I really went to the movies then. It was 1976, the 200th anniversary of Independence Day. I remember seeing Taxi Driver, The Fury and Carrie...

I was reading online the various biographies and descriptions of the great acting foursome, David Bowie, Candy Clark, Rip Torner and Buck Henry. My discovery this weekend (Aside from the possibility that the anxiety conveyed by David Bowie was real.) was the musical contribution of John Philips to the MWhoFTE soundtrack. Do you remember when a full length screening of that movie became available? I had already seen it a few times at two hours and loved what I saw... It lacked 20 extra minutes.

I acknowledge that the story of alien discovery and wonderment came to me, not by way of the 1963 novel, but through Alexander Keys' scholastic books publication, The Forgotten Door. Another movie broadcast this weekend was Escape to Witch Mountain, also based on a book by Alexander Keys, which also has a likeable cast.

I don't want to leave out from this litany of titles, The Wild-Eyed Boy from Free Cloud, a song by David Bowie.

The mob chases the alien to the mother ship, or the door, which is why I connect most with The Forgotten Door.

As for Nicholas Roeg and his hilarious casting, I still love the transition scene from space mission to the hidden hotel room. There's a fellow who dives in and lifts his wife out of the pool and onto the pool deck...I thought it was filmed in reverse, but it looks like he really did that.

Another great movie document broadcast on demand this weekend was Oshima's Cruel Story of Youth, an important telling of the doomed lovers' story. It is sad, as is the Man Who Fell to Earth, and equally colorfully vibrant. The Man Who Fell to Earth, though, at its most morose and awful, and it reaches uncharted depths, is just too much fun.

You know, Mr. Bowie got to work with Oshima on Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence.

Well, I'm sure there are great movies coming out today... I'm just at least 20 years behind, and even when I do see them it's just as likely I will hate them. In fact, hating the movie experience tends to be a good indicator of how much I will love it later... The best recent example is There Will Be Blood.

I also saw a dvd of Orlando, which also plays with agelessness through the passage of time. I think that is a good barometer of the opposite level of cinematic dedication. Everyone can parade around, but if you want to see people in a movie, see The Man Who Fell to Earth...