A Review (of sorts) of HYDROGEN JUKEBOX at Tri-Cities Opera
About a year ago the news first hit that the last opera of the 2016|17 season was Hydrogen Jukebox (a collaboration between Philip Glass and Allen Ginsberg).
Many years ago, the annotated edition of HOWL came into my possession. I learned the words. At stop signs along my drive up the lake to the little suddenly co-ed college I learned the words and on the long stretches between I spoke his words. (now I mostly speak Neil Gaiman’s words and my belovedest is tired of In Relig Odhrain.)
I traveled after that. Because of that?
Perhaps. Who knows what bounces around and connects in the mind.
Along the travels, things went. As things do. I literally tore pages from the book because things had to go, stripped away by miles and time. I ripped out commentary and background and left the pages where I went and never threw them away but gave them to the universe until all I am left with is his words. Ginsberg’s words: Typed and handwritten (or scrawled one says), formatted and finished.
My beloved spent time on the beaches near L.A. and there he met a man who would only call himself Michelangelo. He was an old man. He sat and watched the ocean. He used to have money, but now had just enough. He steered conversation gracefully and gave beautiful intriguing thoughts. Who ever knows who another person is sitting on a bench under the trees near a skate park in the breeze salt perfumed untamed edge of the sprawling civilized world west.
If you are near Binghamton.NY or just want to roadtrip with an experience at the end — Go get tickets for the Hydrogen Jukebox playing at the Tri-Cities Opera on Clinton Street. It is only playing for two weekends — 4 performances.
The intimate space has only seats 180(ish) & it is staged traverse style with Ginsberg’s last apartment in the middle and audience on each side, close as kicking (but don’t).
Once you’ve seen, if you see, you will know how our souls weave in, with the stories we have and the story that is told in wonderful and unexpected ways.
And you will find how your story weaves in.
There are pieces of us that are part of this production. Copied pages from that very book of Annotated HOWL. The journals are my own — which is strange and comforting. I thought of it before journals were requested — of putting them on Ginsberg’s shelves but it was contrived and it was hubris and I did not.
Then they were requested — journals not just to sit, but to be held, opened, read by imago Ginsberg and a collection of gloriously skilled young actor|singers who I each think of as friends and fellow artists before an audience near enough to touch. They needed this thing and we had mine. Orange leather bound from traveling with some of my favorite ink drawings. Flowered cover with I don’t even know what or when. bound collections of hand made paper from a leather cover I lost the first time I tried fishing and I didn’t even catch a thing. Someone picked it up and has my words from that time. The older ones are looked at and read as though they were his words. Allen’s drawings. Ginsberg’s thoughts.
Pieces of pieces that were pieces and became something else that is the same thing.
Art from of mine and of my belovedest’s from our walls are on his walls my kneeling rug is in his living room. I offered a donut to the buddha and burned nag champa when I set up the mock version in my own paint dock a hundred years ago last month before we knew much more than the where and not the what or what it would become as we made new things: bound books for lack of money and for love and time and stitched and stapled.
What we created — all of us — and what we gave and what we made new and what we destroyed: The microcosm, the story of the story within the story, the meta and every person who walks through that apartment, smells the coffee and sage and hears the words and music (background|focus for all that was and is making legend, making blackstar) will exist in their own metamorphosis of connection, collection, the knocking down within and making anew that creates peace
in the moment
of silence and black.
HYDROGEN JUKEBOX tri-cities opera / Binghamton, NY — April 21, 23, 28, 30 2017. $40–50
AmarA*jk is the scenic designer in residence at Tri-cities Opera. Next Project: INSTALLATION| music — a 10 day paint & music performance installation at the Bundy Museum, Binghamton, NY and live stream. @AmarAartist twitter AmarAjk.weebly.com
