For more than 20 years, MusicalSoCal.com (MSC) and its predecessor have been producing stage-musical works. Adjusting to ongoing changes among stage, video and film production, MSC is in the process of altering its output to conform to the new reality. The first step in this process has been to create a video presentation of MSC’s one-man musical, “Blues, Booze and Attitude,” which is now available on Video on Demand (VOD).

In the video, Tommy Dodson repeats the stage performances he gave in Los Angeles, Long Beach and San Diego. Utilizing basically the same stage format, Dodson artfully masters the piano, vocal and dramatic requirements of the piece. Action takes place during the Great Depression. Thad Johnson, who is a popular church musician and vocalist, ekes out a living for his family by taking on the persona of “Spats Dollar,” who plays piano and does raunchy vocals at a local bawdy house. Veering slightly from the stage presentation, Tommy extends his talented output by also adopting the character of the church’s pastor, into which he—off-script—injects dialog and characterization drawn from personal experience.

All of the music produced by MSC is the original composition of Tommy Dodson, who is a noted cabaret performer in SoCal, including, currently, Palm Springs. For several years he toured the world with Crystal Cruises as a featured artist. Tommy also creates the arrangements for MSC productions, performs the instrumentation and most of the vocals. Yours truly provides the librettos, dialogs and lyrics.

Tommy Dodson and I created MusicalSoCal.com. All of our efforts would have gone to naught without the constant and complete devotion of Richard Taylor, an exceptionally talented sound and video engineer. Richard also directs stage, and now video, productions.

Horace Birgh has been a true and faithful friend of our efforts from the beginning. Not only does he provide moral support, he assists in so many of those behind-the-scenes, administrative functions without which we would be stymied and at a loss. Apart from those quotidian chores, Horace has contributed to the artistic quality of our work by providing his mellifluous tones as voiceover for many of our projects.

In a further attempt to hone our output to the demands of today’s zeitgeist, MSC has invented the “Micro Musical Video.” The idea is to take the stage-musical concept and pare it down to a VOD bite-size, for easy consumption. Two such ideas are in current production:

1. “Oney” was an enslaved, mulatto girl, assigned to pamper Martha Washington. With micro-musical intensity, we tell her tale of permanent escape to freedom.
2. Denise Bravell, a totally blind colleague of mine at the Braille Institute for the Blind, has written a hauntingly beautiful song that we intend to use in conjunction with a micro video dance performance. Mike Hadley lends his beautiful tenor voice to the lyrics I was honored to provide, under the title “Twilight in Chiaroscuro.”

Musical SoCal invites input from my Idiot Free Zone readers and members of other groups.

So after a late start, the season finally caught up with us here in Wisconsin. A whole bunch of Robins who decided to stay around have got to be regretting that decision after a week of single digit temperatures. At least one Heron and a couple of Kingfishers that decided to stay around for the open water have got to be rethinking a few things about now. 

February in Wisconsin is pretty gray and cold. Despite that I have a few shots to share of the landscape and atmosphere of the last few months.

My favorite dairy barn. I've shot this grand old structure in every season.

Stopped me dead in my tracks. So green for January!

Frost. Gone by mid-day but I got it.

Leave it to these guys.

I found this on a hike and had to wonder how long it had been there? 

Ice clings to the edges of the Oconomowoc River.

Twas the season. Rural Wisconsin.

Happy Valentine's day! Rubicon Wi.

1
wanted
to wash

you weeping
white mini

skirt so short
& white

wanted
to wash

you from within

held brush
against back

biting tongue
so taut

i wasn't
breathing
any more

just murmuring
against white
wall with
white painting

weeping
white

so

white
fanon fought

we would be

released in rings
of circles

from your feet
to these lips

these
beautiful
lips

i still

possess
while dying

it is so
easy to remember

way we walked
into each other

weeping
futures

thrown
from crevasse
with other
wings

that was
yours or mine

body bleeding white
on white

transparent
too

that was so
hard falling

& falling
so
hard

in that
country i came
from

fields
prisons
& oceans

telling truth so
crudely you cannot
listen & i can be
left
to this solitide

that keeps on

getting me
through
baby

i built
beds death beds
from those tears
those incalculable
tears
tore

after me
in milan
montreal
stockholm
hong kong
berschtesgaden

here
& there

witnessing you white
so white

weeping skin

from
my
back
my broken back

carrying
arms
i would always
carry arms

never left
your bones

i beat out
sounds
in strangers cities

so they would
remember

you who
built

a tank
of me

a tank
that weeps

a tank
that fires

directly

course i say
so coarsely

coughing
red
brown blood
into white basin

not knowing

whose
body
is being

this night
white
so
white

bent
over basin
crying centuries

trying to climb

back
black

into you

ô darlin
into you

close
to tuo

tou still

showing last

scenes

from
this
or
that

scripture

2

stripping
skin

rolled
between teeth

your tongue
turning

& turning

come
come
coil to coil

coil
to
spring

spring
to sweat

drink
each other

whole
waves built
up in

us in
side out

of hole
whole
worlds
evaporated

under your arms
tangling
torsos tearing
apart all
affinities
being
certain

sperm sustain
interrogation of i
& i & you
& you

way we became
white

sheets flying
over oceans

licking
our
locks

on
end

to end

believe our bodies

ô believe

our bodies
pain
so pure
pure as powders
covering
our
calculable
carcass

until
time bent

way to window

i never
wanted

to look out

to gaze
at anything
other
than white wing

you became bird
of flight
of light

inside
me i
was
never
foolish enough
to think
i was anywhere
beyond cusp
of you

you who
came
right in
felt about
& furrowed
what
i had
forgotten

never
forgotten your
ghost's
grandeur

legs
on ladder

crying
christ's
last words

tho
you
never forgave

knots
men make

imagine it
art

you
came
down

lips
upon lips

hip
cascading
over hip

wearing
each other
out

inside
out

offering oracle
totem
of torsos

we were
skin seas
of skin

see see
johnny garfield
might have
whelped to
some hood

but
we
clean

come
knocking
at door
of that
danger

& other
innocent
crimes conceived
on lake

sperm
sustains

who were we
holding then

weep washing

triangle terror
takes
to
end

of end
just

so just

just so

sperm sustains
breath

before
after

night
tore
into us

as it always
did
entangled

in tears
of rope

palace
we shaped
with rhythm
of our loving

prayers
drowning
out

declarations dread
demands

we were winds
darling nature
no

no
kingdom
we
came
from

from where
we came

barely human

saliva
sperm

bloodbath
i became
every night

i went out
alone

coming back another
construction

your teas
sewed skin
back

to skin
back

to
bones

we
washed
together
in
bath

bath bloody
boat

swimming out
to one
another

another

this
night
red brown basin
clean with chemicals

that
in another

time
would have run
like rivulets

through
veins

remember

i so
clean

blood left
by another
sortie

can you
place that
cannula
carefully

breathe
on little reed

you took from
mekonng

make
me
melody

darling tune
time
now
no
later

now no
later

3

bedded
in death

bed white
as water

scattered sheets
of paper
paid for
with pores
since start

some pool
of blood
rusted hospital
for old
soldiers

strutting
corridor
to
corridor
without limbs

sticks
& stick

calipers
clicked
& clicked
their crazy
beat

scrawl
your name

over
&
over

again
& again

hearing you
incant

name
i once
possessed
possession

fates lost
one morning
somewhere near soil

forest you furnished
with paintings

you proceeded
to burn

one
by

one

letting tongue
loose
inside you

legs
wrapped
wave after
wave

over
& into us
us

one
arm
behind
back biting
lips
& cheeks

until my blood
ran into you
mouth & teeth
red
red
so red
carnal
calisthenics
cleaned of all
except
alphabet
of
anatomy

dared
to dive

deeper
than diagrams
described

following fingers
to each part

we practised

over
&
over

again
& again

presuming
you would

pick up
brush

but

but
you turned
into corridor

clouded by emanation

so sombre

so difficult
to define
features

except that
of phantoms
attempting

without art
to find

where you
were

only
odor
of semen
sustains

then you went
up
in white
smoke

pity pity

we will
not return

to chelmno

we will not
meet again

hearing how
we fell

in forests
we are

here
together
still

still
come

cold
wraiths
will wrap
what
is left

over
&
over

again

infinity passes
you
in
inches

simple
measure

maelstrom
melbourne
early eighties
simple

measure

longitudes learnt
from
latitudes

wherever
we lay

down
down
further
into
one
another's
fathom
further
tongue
& teeth
digging
their
way
down
downward
wet
we
were
so
wet
with
each
other
wet
with
each
other
beginning
to bathe
within
walls
of
one
another's
want

want
washed
us
away
washed
away
where
no one
waited
to
see
how storms
swim

how storms swim

wouldn't wait
to be

washe
we were
so
far
down
wids
were
of liite
concern
carnal

whether
we
would
ever
escape

or would

want

to
turn

against
time

time
too

hollow

her

ô her
worlds
rubbing

her & man
i am

Image: improvisation 240 pour le mémorial de l'abolition de l'esclavage

 

 

The ongoing literary controversy over Harper Lee's newly discovered manuscript, Go, Set a Watchman, seems to mimic our attitude of downplaying the true, racist nature of the American experience – both pre- and post-1776.

The Harper Lee novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, was published in 1960. Since then, it has been an icon of modern American literature. It created an offshoot, cinematic icon when Gregory Peck was chosen to represent Atticus Finch, the noble protagonist of the book. The locale of the story is a small town in the southern U.S. state of Alabama. The narrator is a young girl, Scout. She and her brother spend adolescent time spying on a weird neighbor. Their widowed father is Atticus, who is a lawyer. He is a paragon of fairness and justice. He challenges the starkly racist societal norms and the Ku Klux Klan when he defends a Black man unfairly charged with rape.

Currently, Harper Lee is 88 and under hospice care. Until recently, To Kill a Mockingbird was her only known novel. Mysteriously, a novel she previously wrote suddenly surfaced. It is now published, with the awkward title, Go, Set a Watchman. The publication of this previous effort of Harper Lee's has provoked an odd, emotional controversy. There are reports that some are so offended that they refuse to read the new novel. What could evoke such a discordant tone surrounding the discovery of a new novel by the sainted, one-book wonder Nell Harper Lee? Delusion – the same auto-deception that underlies most of American national thought.

The until-now unpublished, Go, Set a Watchman, seems to be naught but an earlier telling of the Atticus Finch story. In that telling, Finch is the bad guy. Seared into the American literary mind is an Atticus Finch into whom many of us seem to have posited what we deem to be the best of ourselves. Now, we are confronted with an Attacus Finch, a racist – the very essence of that against which the Attaicus in our attic fought!

William Lloyd Garrison, the 19th century super abolitionist who spent a lifetime challenging the bigoted minds and souls of his fellow Americans, might say: Let us stop deluding ourselves. We are what we do; not what we imagine. The society got off on the wrong foot, and now that, finally, we are in step, we tend to ignore our earlier stumbling.

We can only speculate as to why the earlier Atticus was rejected and the noble Atticus put forward. Could it be that he was whitewashed in order to counteract the very ugly sentiment then emanating from the South and Southie? If so, it would be consistent with our national tendency to paper over racially spotty walls.

It is hoped that Harper Lee, in her dotage, may be able to appreciate the exposition of her earlier – perhaps more genuine --- recollection of her childhood.