2003
DECEMBER
NOVEMBER
AUGUST
MARCH
JANUARY
2002
APRIL
2001
DECEMBER
APRIL
1, 2003 [Tuesday]
Alexa [my daughter] is with me again. She seems to have had a fabulous
time with my folks at Camp Keystone. It's only been a week since I've
seen her but she looks all grown up to me [at 23 months]. We attended
story time at the library—a perfect activity. Then Victor [nanny]
came and Alexa was thrilled to see him again, as was her mommy.
MORE ON CIVIL WAR:
• Decision to SECEDE was made by an elite few, not supported by a popular
vote in the six original Confederate states. Hm. "In other
words, fewer than 700 mostly wealthy and upper-middle class men had
decided the destiny of nine million people without benefit of an election." —Kenneth
C. Davis, Echoes of PROJECT PAPERCLIP
• WAR BY TRAIN—movement of large numbers of troops by train=technological
advance in warfare. World getting smaller due to industrial/technological
advances [as in development of rocketry].
• INNER CONTRADICTION: Fighting for liberty by defending enslavement
of others. No wonder we're so confused as a nation.
• Look at William Howard Russell's dispatches to London Times.
• MASON-DIXON LINE: Honors British ASTRONOMERS Charles Mason and Jeremiah
Dixon who, in 1763 surveyed the boundary of colonies Maryland and Pennsylvania.
During Missouri Compromise debate in 1820 Mason-Dixon line became border dividing
free states from slave states. The stars bear down on earthly matters.
What
was the extent of the cosmic interest of M&D? Simple border demarcation
to settle private dispute becomes FAULT LINE of most significant historical
event in USA. Unintended cataclysmic consequences of presumably benign
action. How are the forces of history channeled through unsuspecting
human beings going about their daily tasks?
Parallel histories: COMMUNIST MANIFESTO [Karl Marx, 1848]. RUSSIA
FREES SERFS, [1861]. Particularly how do these events resonate on
US-USSR Cold War and space race? Part of Soviet propaganda during
Cold War was to show the terrible injustice and inequality of US racial
conflict, especially glorying in school desegregation problems.
Chris Coleman, Portland
Center Stage [PCS] Artistic
Director, took me out for an extraordinarily delicious meal tonight. We
so rarely have a chance to
be
together, this
was a welcome
treat. Of
course current events dominated conversation, how buffaloed we are
by what's happening in this country and our spinning-out-of-control
world. And lots about the business of theater. I could never
do what he does at PCS, shouldering the institution, keeping all the balls
in the air, answering to all the different constituencies, the 24/7 of
it all, and trying to make "art" all the while. I asked
him about growing up in Georgia during the '60s and '70s, what
kind of tensions he experienced relative to race relations, integration,
etc. He said he didn't really remember anything significant,
which surprised me. He's on his way to Russia tomorrow to attend
an international theatre festival—a
week in St. Petersburg. What a dream. Though, couldn't pick a worse
time to be an American abroad.
APRIL 2, 2003 [Wednesday]
Alexa woke at 6:30 this morning but didn't go back to sleep as she
did yesterday. Fortunately it's not too painful. Coooold
day and damp. A great boon: Peter Ganim, my muse and soul-mate from
Atlanta/Actor's Express era, is here playing Jack Tanner in Chris' production
of Man and Superman. [I'm envious of that]. Our
lives converge in Portland, and we pick up right where we left off. He
meets Alexa for the first time, and the two of them get on famously. Warm.
Happy.
WORK
Under WHO KNEW?: The King of Siam offered to send President Lincoln
a herd of fighting elephants to aid Union war effort! Lincoln graciously
declined, said that the weather "does not…favor the multiplication
of the elephant." How bizarre would that have been to see Siamese
fighting elephants on the Civil War battlefield. Worlds collide. So
what inspired such an offer? Mrs. Anna? Scenes and melodies
from The King and I flash through my mind. Strange
pop culture, mid-20th century reference to the events. Rogers and
Hammerstein sitting there with Anna and the King of Siam and Uncle Tom's
Cabin constructing a Broadway musical. [What does any of this
have to do with my project? Probably nothing but the odd associations
and juxtapositions tickle me. If I were Elizabeth Le Compte I wouldn't
give a shit, and it would all end up in the piece as a strange and
fabulous brew. Oh well.]
LINCOLN ON A TIGHTROPE: "Focused solely on winning the war,
Lincoln had to contend with his powerful abolitionist supporters who wanted
him to make it clear that the war was being fought to end slavery. Knowing
that emancipation was not why most men fought for the Union and fearful
of losing border state support, Lincoln was reluctant to turn the war into
a struggle for the freedom of slaves. As long as he maintained preservation
of the Union and the end to the rebellion as the cause, he could control
opinion in Congress and the country."
HORACE GREELY: Founded NY Tribune, abolitionist, challenged Lincoln,
voice of conscience, employed Karl Marx as European correspondent. Newspaperman.
Possible character—good intersection of people, places and ideas.
What is the German opinion of the Civil War and slavery?
1860s: LUDWIG II OF BAVARIA and RICHARD WAGNER. Look
at this relationship. How aware of Wagner's work were people in US?
Did it resonate in specific ways for one side or other?
ANTI-SEMITISM IN AMERICA: Jews became scapegoats, blamed for country's
economic and political woes. 1000's of Jew enlisted,
fought mainly for Union cause. Grant’s General Order No 11: "The
Jews as a class violating every regulation of trade established by the
Treasury Dept., are hereby expelled from the department within 24 hours
from receipt of this order." [What does this mean?] Jews in Confederacy
more threatened and hated.
"Let the black man get upon his person the brass letters 'US,' let
him get an eagle on his buttons and a musket on his shoulder and there
is no power on earth which can deny that he has earned the right to citizenship
in the United States."—Frederick Douglass
"Use all the negroes you can get, for the purpose for which you need—but
don't arm them. The day you make soldiers out of them is the
beginning of the end of the revolution. If slaves will make good
soldiers our whole theory of slavery is wrong."
—Howell Cobb, former Governor of Georgia. re: freeing
slaves to serve
in Confederate army
"Twenty Nigger Law:" Owners of 20 or more slaves exempted from
military duty. What are the implications and resonates of the acceptance
of blacks into military? The Union Army needed more soldiers, so
opened the doors to a new supply. Now African Americans can take part in
struggle
for freedom and saving the Union, thus "earning the right to citizenship." But
also they are simply reduced to cannon fodder, sent into battle by white
officers. One of an endless number of betrayals. This is freedom.
JOHNNY
NICHOLAS: "Black
American Flyer" mentioned in accounts of concentration camp Dora.
Turns out he's Haitian, passing himself off as American doctor [of which
he was neither]. Was living in France, active in Resistance, arrested
by Gestapo and sent to Dora. In the camp, gave comfort and assistance
to sick and dying prisoners. I'm intrigued by this guy. He
was probably the only black man in the camp, maybe the only black man some
people there had known. Why does he say he's American? Does
he think that’s safer? Or does it have something to do with
his notion of what America means and some sort of yearning for that? WWII
was impetus for integration of US armed forces. Tuskeegee Airmen. How
does Johnny Nicholas connect to Apollo?
IDEA: Maybe we follow one soul from Africa to Alabama [enslaved]
to Civil War, to WWII pilot, to NASA astronaut to 1st person on Mars…?
APRIL 3, 2003 [Thursday]
Michael [my husband] is coming late tonight and will stay with us through
the weekend. Hallelujah. Relief to have the family together
for at least a few days.
Meeting with Mead Hunter, PCS Literary Manager. Mead has been at
PCS only a few months, but he and I have known each other about 10 years.
Prior to this he was the Literary Manager at Audrey
Skirball Kennis [A.S.K.] Theater
Projects in L.A., and
he's been at the inception of The
Akhmatova Project and Apollo
Part 1, both of which were developed by my company [Critical Mass
Performance Group] and shown, at Mead's invitation, at A.S.K.'s
Common Ground Festival. I'm hoping this history works to
my advantage, and that Mead doesn't panic as I now sputter and
babble aimlessly about the new project. I tell him how the research
is going, he asks me questions for which I have no answer—like
what is this piece. Fortunately,
we're at the Hotel Mallory. Lunch in the old hotel dining
room, a time warp, part of a lost world. Geriatric, hushed, all
gold and green and beige, fossilized waiters, great napkins with graphic
of chandelier
[saved for future art project]. I love this place. I digress.
Reading Stanley Elkins' Slavery: A Problem in American Institutional
and Intellectual Life. Trying to get inside this issue. So
far, not much.
APRIL
8, 2003 [Tuesday]
INTERVIEW WITH NELSON JONES. Nelson is a PCS Board Member who is especially
enthusiastic about the theater, and has been particularly supportive
of my work here, which of course, endears me to him no end. It turns
out that Nelson was in the Air Force in the early '50s
and worked under one of the recently arrived German scientists. He
offered to talk to me about it, and I jumped at the chance to hear
about his experiences as all of my research, thus far, has come from
printed matter.
One of the things I love about Portland is the user-friendliness of
the city. Nelson gave me instructions for traveling by bus to his house,
and it worked without a hitch. Nelson's house is filled with art
he's collected over the years, much of it from Mexico. It's
a warm and lively place, just like Nelson.
Not exactly sure what to ask—I'm not a very experienced interviewer,
and I don’t want to be too intrusive. This is not a good strategy,
however, for getting the goods. Fortunately, Nelson was very forthcoming
and gave me a lot of information:
Beginning in 1951, Nelson worked for the School of Aviation Medicine
at Randolph AFB, San Antonio, TX. This was established as a showplace
to train Army Air Cadets how to fly. It was a beautiful facility for
VIP/high ranking people, and was very segregated by rank. San Antonio
and environs had and still have a large German population, which I think
began in the 19th century. I remember seeing a lot of German names and
businesses when I visited San Antonio years ago.
The main person Nelson worked under was Werner K. Noell, a neuropsychiatric
technician who was brought to the U.S. from Germany after the war. He
did research on the effect of various drugs on airmen, as well as measuring
the retinal response, in rabbits, to light.
OK, some of the most heinous crimes committed by the Nazis were the medical
experiments done on concentration camp prisoners, particularly in area
of aviation medicine. I have the sick feeling that Dr. Noell might have
been involved in that, but when I look him up later, I can't find
any mention of him in my research. Also, I know that von Braun was present
for the first testing of high altitude nuclear explosives—a kind of
antimissile defense in the late '50s. [Fantastic book: Sputnik:
The Shock of the Century by Paul Dickson details
the Sputnik phenomenon and the era.] One of the things von Braun said
was
being tested
[in an
effort to camouflage the darker objectives of the project] was the degree
of retinal eye damage caused by this type of explosion, using rabbits
as the subjects. The rabbits, whose blink response was too slow [and
similar to humans'] suffered the fate of burned retinas as a result
of the explosions. So I wonder if Dr. Noell's work was a precursor
to these nuclear experiments. Nelson didn't know, but said that
von Braun was around Randolph AFB in the early '50s when
Nelson was there.
Werner K. Noell, according to Nelson, was the most feared of the Germans
at his facility, fierce-tempered, tyrannical, "typically Germanic," with
a dueling scar on his face [the implications of that are just creepy].
But Nelson found him wonderful to work for. He was a real research scientist,
very serious and rigorous, and treated Nelson very well, ultimately influencing
his rapid promotion to sergeant, and arranging for Nelson's honorable
discharge. I wanted to know what Nelson might have understood, at the
time, about Noell and his background. Nelson said he'd asked peripheral
questions regarding Noell's pre-USA life, for instance, had he
been "close to the party" and Noell said yes. Nelson did
not wonder how or why Germans were in the country working for the US
Air Force. He thought probably Noell had been a Nazi, but didn't
know what that would have meant; he was not very aware of what had gone
on in Germany during the war. Nelson was from a Kansas farming community,
bigoted parents, knew one black person, no Jews, and was essentially
[according to him] self-involved, especially with his sexuality, so wasn't
paying much attention to the world around him. Did he think it was a
good thing that the Germans were working in the US? Yes, especially Dr.
Noell. He didn't know whether Noell had been involved in human
research during the war [didn't know at the time that that had
gone on], but thought he was capable and would have done it if that was
what was called for. I asked the obvious hypothetical question: If he
had known that Noell had been an ardent Nazi and participated in human
experiments in the camps, or committed some other war crime, how would
that have affected him? And Nelson's obvious answer: "It
would have made it very difficult for me to work with him." All
the questions asked with hindsight, so how relevant are they? I felt
a bit like I might be sullying a cherished relationship for Nelson, by
talking about this man in the context of war crimes and covert operations,
etc. It's a delicate negotiation sometimes. Maybe it's my
own paranoia about the project.
I'm very interested in Nelson's perception of things at the
time. And I'm fascinated with Nelson's relationship with
Noell—that he found a mentor/father figure in this generally tyrannical,
unpleasant person. His commitment to and enthusiasm for the work no doubt
gave him access to the more human side of Noell. And Noell knew Nelson
was homosexual and didn't seem to have any issues with that. Which
is particularly striking, given the Nazi's effort to rid Europe
of homosexuals during the war. This is a point that is especially compelling
for me and could have resonates in the piece: What was the German experience
in the US, in coming to terms with the diversity of this country after
the Nazi program of "racial purity." Or did they come to
terms? I suppose it would have depended on their attachment to the Nazi
ideology.
It was so illuminating to speak with someone who had had actual contact
with these Germans, and to get a hit of what it was like for him as someone
not privy to the inner workings of the worlds of the military or politics
or intelligence—just a young man from Kansas. Even though he had
nothing to do with the rocket program or those scientists, talking to
him made the subject more real for me.
APRIL
10, 2003 [Thursday]
"Ideology in its most inclusive sense is a massive end-product—a
configuration, a total gestalt—of a society's historical
experience, its norms, its values, its fears and prejudices, its material
interests, and its habits of mind. The world-views of societies or of
groups within societies, are inferable not only from their formal writings
but from their bodies of law, political arrangements, asocial customs,
ceremonial behavior, imagined crises."—Stanley Elkins, Slavery:
A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life
TERRITORY=A moral metaphor for the future of America. Territorial expansion=physical
and moral expansion. Extrapolate to ideas of CONQUERING SPACE and the
metaphoric value of this to Cold War ideology.
Understanding what ideology is and how it functions during certain periods
of history is key to figuring out what this story is and how to tell
it. Stick with the ideology/territory thread. This could lead into the
heart of the labyrinth. Maybe.
APRIL
11, 2003 [Friday]
Last day in Portland for this period. Can't believe three weeks
have gone by; feel that I have really let this time get away from
me, that
I have not attacked my work with anything approaching vigor, nor
have I progressed much farther in my thinking from the time I arrived.
I feel
lost, and frankly, not up to the task of putting the disparate pieces
of this project together. Have rarely felt so ignorant, and out on
a limb.
Picked up a book of essays by Julius Lester, Falling Pieces of
the Broken Sky, and was immediately engaged—by his writing,
his ideas, his personal story, his subject matter. He's written about
the Civil
Rights Movement, the Holocaust, and even about space exploration.
How fortuitous that I should find this convergence of ideas at this
time,
in one place, from the mind of an African-American-Jewish-Civil-Rights-Leader.
I'm led in several seemingly meaningful directions.
"We climb mountains because they are there. Carl Sagan contends
that we must explore space because 'the exploratory instinct is
deeply
built into us and possibly an important part of the success of
our species'…What "success" have
we as a species achieved? We have not learned to live with ourselves
and one another. What Sagan defines as the 'exploratory instinct'
may be nothing more than 'flight response,' the compulsion
to flee the dilemma of being human, to escape the terror-filled
encounter
with ourselves that is the only means by which we can be human…[perhaps].
We have projected our need for a messiah into outer space, hoping
that something or someone will come and we shall yet be saved…"—Julius
Lester
On that note, I shall conclude.
