WHAT WILL THE TOOTH FAIRY DO?

Lynn Ruth Miller

 

Most people can’t even think what to hope for

 When they throw a penny in a fountain.
Barbara Kingsolver

There is talk on this side of the pond, of getting rid of money. “Today, only 7% of all transactions in the United States are done with cash, and most of those transactions involve very small amounts of money.“ says the internet blog, The Economic Collapse. “Our financial system is dramatically changing, and cash is rapidly becoming a thing of the past.”

 

These days, it costs more than it’s worth to manufacture the cash we stuff into our wallets and bulging coin purses. In America, it costs 11.18 cents to mint a 5 cent piece and a penny costs 2.41 cents.  It isn’t much better in Britain.  Although the Royal Mint will not reveal how much it costs to mint 1p, rumor has it that the cost from manufacture to distribution is approximately £3.

 

That doesn’t make sense.

 

Besides the cost to make them, there is the threat to our health and well being.  Coins and bills land in thousands of pockets, are touched by millions of hands and no one ever cleans them up.  The bills are tattered and full of germs; the coins are not only cumbersome but they create embarrassing bulges that aren’t what you think they are.

 

When coins were first invented, everyone thought it was the greatest idea since the fig leaf.  Coins didn’t rot or die on you.  Their value didn’t deteriorate with time.  You could stick them in the bank and they would be there for years and still have value. You used them to reward children and toss in fountains.  You stuck them under pillows when children lost their baby teeth and you put them in your shoe for good luck.

 

What will happen to the Piggy Bank when pennies are no more? When I was a child, this was the time of year when I began stuffing pennies in the little ceramic pig I got for Christmas last year so I could buy my Mama a present for Christmas this year.  Every day, I would put in a penny I had earned for helping her bring in the groceries or drying the dishes (now you know how old I am) and by December first, my little pig was bulging with the hard earned cash I had fed him. I would go to the jewelry store, hand the clerk my piggy bank and say, “What can I buy my mother with this?”  She and I would smash the bank and pile the pennies into columns of ten and then tabulate the results.  One year, I was able to buy my mother a silver candle snuffer and another time, I bought her a lapel pin with a little blue stone in the middle…all with the money I earned doing chores.

 

Children these days would either have to type in a code on their cell phones or swipe a credit card to pay for that special something they want to buy for their parents.  It just couldn’t give them the same sense of accomplishment.  Every penny I gave that saleslady had a story behind it. All a credit card has is an APR.

Say good-by to wallets when cash is no more.  You can keep all your credit information on your cell phone or slip your credit card in your pocket.   Profiles will be slimmer and, because seeing the cash, made you realize how much you were actually spending, expenditures will go up.  But who cares?  It’s all just numbers and as every politician knows you can make numbers say anything you want.

 

The good news is if you keep your pennies stashed away in a bureau drawer, they will become valuable relics from another time, like vinyl records and rotary dial phones.   Your heirs can sell your stash for at least 500% of their face value.  That should pay for your casket!

When I was young I thought that money

Was the most important thing in life;

Now that I am old, I know that it is.
Oscar Wilde

 

Lohengrin
SF Opera Performance, October 20, 2012

The concept of love put forward in Lohengrin is that of a fragile flower very dependent upon maintaining illusions. Love is equivalent to blind Faith in goodness and constancy that must be absolute and unquestioning. But the underlying anxieties of this kind of naive faith ultimately undermine it and do it in. Lohengrin echoes Christianity in its demand for simple faith and the basic concept of a man is sent from God to rescue a damsel in distress, accused of a terrible crime. He saves her, not through self sacrifice, as in the Christian model, but through militaristic combat — a Wagnerian variant on the Christian theme. Superior prowess on the battlefield saves the girl from her enemies and wins her love. The woman’s love is the hero’s reward for her rescue from desperation. But there is one condition. The woman cannot ask her rescuer who he is or where he comes from. She has to take him completely on faith and let his actions of rescue and his superior strength in battle be the sole foundation of her devotion and love. If she is to question him and demand to know more of who he is, then he will be forced to leave her and renounce her. It is love founded on the most narrow, simplistic grounds and maintained with a gun pointed at the woman’s head, so to speak. Love can only be maintained with the woman in a desperate position of neediness with the man serving as the heroic figure of strength who magnanimously saves her from perpetual impending catastrophe. Love as worship of the conquering hero. While a woman may feel grateful to be delivered from impending doom — at least for a time — she will soon feel the extreme vulnerability of this position of helpless dependence, as the opera demonstrates. She will question her own worthiness of the man’s continuing love, she will want to broaden the base of the relationship and feel more appealing to the man beyond mere helplessness and need. She will feel the fragility of the connection to him. She feels vulnerable to his tiring of her and moving on. She seeks to strengthen her position through a greater understanding of the man, who he is, and what his own needs and vulnerabilities are. The message of Lohengrin is that this is a destructive tendency, that love can only be this primitive, blind devotion stemming from a condition of imminent undoing. Love between a man and a woman essentially depends on a woman being in a perpetual state of crisis. But on the other hand, if the woman gets to know who the man is and where he comes from, then she will realize that he is not the invulnerable hero, not the idealized figure of goodness and strength that he presented himself to be, and thus her love and devotion will be annuled. The man’s insecurity and feelings of unworthiness are activated upon a deeper probing of his true self. It is a very pessimistic outlook on relations between the sexes. Love can only be born and continue within these very narrow confines of faith sustained through willful ignorance, and that fragile foundation gives rise to the anxieties and demands that sabotage and destroy it. It is an outlook on life that is essentially dark and tragic — and a little silly too.
A few quibbles with the San Francisco Opera’s performance.
This production of the opera is set in a modern context in modern costumes, although Wagner’s original conceptualization set it in 10th century Saxony. On the cover of the program is a photograph by Erich Lessing of the destruction of the Stalin monument in Budapest, Hungary, during the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. The idea according to Director Daniel Slater is that a contemporary setting would make it “more exciting and relevant for the audience.” Well, most Americans living today can probably relate to the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 about as well as they can relate to 10th century Saxony. Many of us would be surprised to discover that there was a revolution in Hungary in 1956. And where is Hungary, by the way?
There are some militaristic and nationalistic elements in the opera that resonated well with the National Socialists, but you have to keep in mind that Germany did not even exist as a unified nation at the time this opera was composed. Invasion from the East was a long standing European fear that would be readily grasped by any European audience. The fact that this was a pressing matter in the 10th century would not be peculiar to that time or have any compelling significance as a factor in setting the opera in that time and place. I think Wagner’s purpose in setting the opera long in the past, aside from these nationalistic overtones, was to give the opera a context where the kind of romantic idealizations in the personal sphere that the opera treats would have traction for the viewer free from the distractions of a contemporary political and social context. Moving it forward in time and bringing up contemporary political issues in my view disrupts the essential focus of this opera on the nature of human relationships. True, the opera takes place under the threat of impending war. But this was a condition of European life as far back as one cares to look. So in that sense it did not matter when the opera was set, this background factor of imminent war was going to remain a constant in whatever time period it occurred. Wagner set it long in the past precisely to expunge the contingencies of the immediate contemporary circumstances. Bringing the opera forward and setting it in our own time defeats that artistic purpose and makes the whole thing sort of confusing.
Director Slater sees Lohengrin as a problematic character who renounces his godlike status in order to experience human love with Elsa. This is based on musings external to the opera itself. Within the opera there is nothing problematic about Lohengrin. He was sent on a mission by the Grail. He fulfilled the mission, he accepted Elsa as his prize, he accepted the leadership position as a warrior, he laid out his conditions, and he stuck to them steadfastly and departed without any apparent signs of misgiving. Slater says he is seeking redemption through Elsa’s love and is willing to sacrifice his immortality to achieve it. There is nothing in the opera to substantiate this view. Within the opera, Lohengrin is a knight in shining armor coming to the rescue of a damsel in distress and then to lead an army into battle. Slater puts him instead in a leather trench coat, which tends to deemphasize his heroic qualities. But counterculture figures don’t usually lead armies. I’m not sure that it works. Lohengrin is not Hamlet.
Generally the staging is rather static and unimaginative. At times it gets dull because there is not enough activity in the staging or aesthetic interest in the lighting to sustain one’s attention. The lighting in the first act is bright and harsh. The early part of the second act feels a little cramped against the front edge of the stage. In the original conception the swan was supposed to pull a boat down the river bearing Lohengrin. Slater gives that up and opts for much less impressive imagery of a static pair of wings from which Lohengrin emerges. At the end the long lost Gottfried reappears as a small boy from the transformed swan. But it doesn’t make sense that Gottfried should reappear as a small boy. He disappeared years ago as a child. His sister Elsa has grown into a mature woman. He should be contemporary with Elsa. Furthermore, he is supposed to arrive ready to lead an army into battle, to step into the role being abdicated by Lohengrin, but he can barely lift a sword. What is Slater seeking by casting Gottfried as an 8 year old boy? Some sort of cutesy sentimentality? A child’s appearance at the end of this dark, gloomy opera trying to wave a sword is a rather ridiculous juxtaposition if you ask me, and I take it to indicate that he completely misunderstands what the opera is all about. This is not a child’s opera at all and introducing a child as a final punctuation mark on this tragedy is a colossal malapropism.
What works in this opera is the music. If it wasn’t for the music, it probably wouldn’t even be staged. The orchestra, the singers, the chorus, did a superb job and made it a musical success, even if it left much to be desired as a dramatic production. Wagner’s great creativity and strength was as a composer of music more than as a dramatist or as a prophet. It is clearly evident in this dark opera and in its problematic staging in this San Francisco Opera production.

TOPDOG/UNDERDOG

By Suzan-Lori Parks

Directed by Timothy Douglas

Starring Biko Eisen-Martin & Bowman Wright

Being black is not a matter of pigmentation –

Being black is a reflection of a mental attitude.
Steven Biko

Be prepared to be spellbound from the moment Biko Eisen-Martin walks on the Marin Theatre Company’s stage until the climax of this disturbing, all too real drama, two and a half hours later. You will see and actually feel this story of two brothers barely scavenging their way uphill through one disappointment after another not because of their lack of ability or ambition, but because of what they are and what they have been.

 

Booth (Biko-Eisen Martin) is living in a one room tenement flat with no running water that his older brother Lincoln (Bowman Wright) is sharing with him because Lincoln’s wife has thrown him out of his former home.  Booth’s is the only bed and Lincoln sleeps in a recliner.

 

The brothers have managed to survive a rollercoaster childhood. They were abandoned by both parents two years apart; first their mother then their father.  Lincoln, at sixteen, was forced to watch out for Booth who was only 11 years old.  Throughout this play, Lincoln continues to worry about his younger brother. He still feels responsible for Booth’s well-being and he shields him from unpleasant truths.   He gives him the food he prefers, gives him money not just for rent and utilities but for special treats that Booth doesn’t really need.  Booth’s talent is stealing and he is so light-fingered he can take any product from anywhere undetected.  Lincoln’s talent is dealing cards but he has given up that kind of life for a conventional one with a real job with benefits….and he isn’t doing very well.

 

His job is Impersonating Lincoln the day he was assassinated.  He has to whiten his face to resemble the famous president  and he is being paid less than the going rate for his services because he is black.  He swears he likes his job because it gives him time to think about things and compose songs in his head, but he is worried he is going to be replaced by a fabric dummy.  The real reason Lincoln clings to the daily grind that is wearing him down is his determination to live the conventional way with a steady job, one where he isn’t depending on his wits for fast cash.  Before he started this job, he was a highly successful dealer in a Three Card Monte scam.  Three Card Monte is a con game that no one can ever win.

 

The game is as much a performance as it is a contest that proves the hand is always quicker than the eye.  Lincoln was so quick with his hands that he was the best on the street.  He made more money than he could spend and he felt good about himself.  His luck seemed eternal until his mark, Lonny, the man who starts the betting and keeps the game moving, was killed.  In that moment, Lincoln saw the game for what it was and he knew he wanted no part of it.   Still, dealing is his special gift and he is proud of what he could do.  “Lucky?” he says.  “Aint nothing lucky about cards.  Cards aint luck.  Cards is work. Cards is skill. Ain’t never nothing lucky about cards.”

 

Booth doesn’t share his brother’s sense of right and wrong and he is desperate to earn the kind of money his brother once did on the street. .  He believes the two of them can start their own game and earn a living together.  Booth is sure he can be a dealer because he is so quick and facile with his hands.  He is so adept at stealing that he managed to get both them both new suits, a room divider, a blanket and food.

 

This play is dialogue driven and the plot takes its shape from the brothers’ rapid fire conversation.  The acting is beyond wonderful and the two men manage to make their characters loveable and very vulnerable.  We know that they are trapped their life because of their color and because of the disruptive, chaotic childhood that prepared them for nothing but a desperate, frustrating fight to keep their heads above water.  The author Suzan Lori Parks says “There is no such thing as THE Black Experience.  That is there are many experiences of being Black which are included in the rubric….What can theatre do for us? We can tell it like it is, tell it as it was, tell it as it could be.”

 

And in Top dog/ Underdog that is just what she does, using rich and textured dialogue delivered with consummate skill by Martin and Wright.  Make no mistake.  This is not a play about being black.  It is about being poor and underprivileged.  It is about living on the edge of society, never feeling that your humanity gives you privilege.

 

This production sparkles and moves at so rapid a pace one cannot believe over two hours have passed since the play began.   Timothy Douglas’s direction is a masterpiece of movement and staging.  The men co-ordinate their actions across the stage as if in a macabre dance.  As their dialogue bounces off one another, we relive their hopes, their disappointments and we ache for them.  We watch in terror as they deceive themselves and each other leading them both to their own inevitable destruction.

 

I realize that I’m black, but I like to be viewed

as a person, and this is everybody’s wish.
Michael Jordan

 

Topdog/Underdog continues through Oct. 28.

Marin Theatre Company, 397 Miller Ave., Mill Valley.

Tickets  $36-$57. (415) 388-5208. www.marintheatre.org.