allanhunter.net Blog

Last night I was delighted - deep delight is about the only way I can describe it - to give a presentation to some of the people at JFK University at the Pleasant Hill campus. Anyone who is at all interested in personal development should take a close look at the programs offered here, especially those based at the school of Holistic Studies, which includes such programs as Transformative Arts, and Transpersonal Psychology; and the whole wonderful list is described as the Arts and Consciousness Programs.

It made me giddy with joy just to now such a place exists.

And what wonderful people came to the talk! I knew I was in an extraordinary place from the moment Patty Morris welcomed me, and when Marilyn Fowler appeared that
impression was confirmed.

This roomful of people who think differently about what makes for fully-actualized, fully healed human beings, was an inspiration to me. There is something beautiful about those who have taken the individual path of learning and discovery. While that road may be hard and challenging it is never tawdry, dull, or depressing.

Today, writing this, I feel privileged to have been given the chance to stand before these good people and share a few of my ideas and to enjoy the discussion. Today I realize how truly moved I feel by this experience.

Thank you, Julie Stiles, for making it possible. Thank you everyone for the work you’re doing. Peace really does have more of a chance with you all working towards it.

If you thought that my travel plans would result in some long silences here, then you’d be mistaken. The home fires are tended by much missed loved ones (I know - I didn’t get around to fixing the switch on the washer, but if you just press hard on it and then turn…. there’s never time for everything, is there?).

Meanwhile I am steaming around here getting a good lesson in many things. Today I crossed the Golden Gate Bridge and looked back on San Francisco from the barren, tussocky bluffs that are the ‘wrong’ side of the bay. This is a city that is actually beautiful, and not just large, impressive or over-awing. Hibiscus bushes, fig trees and lush buildings that command fabulous views - and on the far side of the bridge something closer the the yorkshire moors with the spirit of an untamed Heathcliff roaming about them.

How does one make sense of this? Or does one just wonder and enjoy? The latter, I suspect.

Since I’d spent part of last week visiting the Loeb institute at Harvard and thinking about ephemeral art in cities this is not an idle question. Why is it that some cities cry out for art, and others seem already to have it?

More on this when I have a clue about it.

I won’t be taking part in the Boston Marathon this year. I have some other plans. Over the next few days I’ll be doing a little traveling. I’ve an interview booked with New Dimensions Media in California on Wednesday, and on Thursday I’ll be at JFK University presenting ideas from “Stories We Need to Know” Julie Stiles was the person who set up that evening and very many thanks go to her for that. Gail Torr, my Publicist, set up the New Dimensions event. I’m not entirely sure if the radio program go out ‘live’ or whether they tape it ‘live’ and then broadcast it - so I can’t tell you when to tune in or log on. Their website will give all the necessary details for the full hour interview and the shorter version they also like to do afterwards. That’s a lot of talking. I’d better have a few jokes ready.

Traveling is always good for us. Lawrence Durrell put it this way: We think we go to places and do things, but what really happens is we go to places and they do things with and through us. It’s a persuasive thought, and it removes the ego part of ‘tourism’ because it demands that we ask who we become in this new place, mixing with these new people. That’s a more searching question than the more usual one: what do those people do over there (and why don’t they do it our way)?

This week sees Passover, the Boston Marathon, and Earth Day. All of them commemorate significant re-framings of who we are. Passover was about being a chosen tribe; the Marathon invites us to think of people running on roads, not cars; and Earth Day is a plea to remember our precious planet. It should all be very interesting….

Yesterday’s Globe had, on page B4, a small item about Prime Minister Brown’s visit to the US.  One could easily have missed it.

Brown’s carefully nuanced speach said that even if armed interventions had worked in Serbia he was there to say that Britain did not believe this was a policy for the future, even though Britain and the US had to ’stand together’ against terrorism.

Reading between the lines I’d say that Britain, which is basically the only firm fully-supportive ally the US still has outside its own borders - is saying that it won’t be doing that any more, thank you.

Doesn’t this strike anyone else as ominous?

I wrote to PBS inviting them to take a look at this blog so they could learn a thing or two about how their Masterpiece Classics are being received. I doubt that my message will get beyond the first layer of flak-catchers: polite people who send back calmly-worded acknowledgments that the comments will of course be read in the higher echelons.

I wondered if, perhaps, ‘Masterpiece Classics’ had been designed on the placebo principle: namely that if enough people think it’s actually a true rendition of a serious piece of literature then they will be transported by what they view - - even if the program concerned is a ghastly travesty of what it purports to depict.

The question then becomes: where do these placebo-ed viewers get themselves transported to? It cannot possibly be the same place as the authors were aiming for. Perhaps the American Public has become sufficiently unreflective that just the mentioning of words like ‘Masterpiece’ and ‘classic’ will produce a misty eyed dribbling response, in the same way that words like ‘patriotism’ and cyphers like ‘9 -11′ proved to have such predictable responses. I prefer to think that we are more aware than that, and especially those people at PBS.

It’s part of a bigger concern, isn’t it? Are we a nation of educated people who think critically and question with all the energy our freedom allows? This weekend is the anniversary of the shoot-out at Concord and Lexington in 1776 that was part of establishing that freedom. One could say it’s fitting point at which to reflect as to whether or not we have allowed that freedom to wither and die.

Perhaps the comment I left yesterday wasn’t clear enough. Forster’s novel was published in 1908. It is, therefore a huge liberty of the adapter to bring the action up to 1923, with a sad Lucy Honeychurch appearing again in Florence to attempt to recapture something she had lost when George was killed in the conflict of 1914-1918. It turns the whole into quite another story, one that Forster could not have predicted and didn’t try to.

I struggle here to make a meaningful comparison, although it might go something like this; imagine a production of “Romeo and Juliet” in which the final scene jumps forward fifteen years and we discover that the whole city has been hit by the plague, and practically all have died except the Prince, who then decides to marry lady Montague.

In the PBS production the gross dramatic effect was chosen over the actual story. Forster gives us a George Emerson who has some truly interesting things to say about the status of women and the way they are treated by men. He gives us a Cecil who can learn from Lucy even as she rejects him.

The book is, in fact, a far richer tale.

Since the novel concerns itself deeply with telling the truth and with seeing the truth, and then endeavoring to live that truth, it is unfortunate that the adapters preferred to turn it into a very simple tale indeed. And is that not a kind of lie, too?

By now some of you will perhaps be thinking that all I do is watch PBS in order to say critical things about it. I hasten to point out that I do have a life in which I go to parties, laugh, meet friends for dinner, stroll out on balmy spring evenings and so on. And then, I also like to find out what the station that bills itself as dedicated to education, as non-commercial, as dedicated at least some of the time to the masterpieces of literature, is actually up to.

So I tuned to ‘Room With A View”. This is a short novel, and easily compressed into 90 minutes. Even so, the Andrew Davies version managed to truncate huge chunks of plot and coarsen the texture of the rest. It then spent 10 minutes of screen time with an entirely invented ‘unhappy’ ending. So we lost a lot of E. M. Forster and gained a large amount of undistinguished Davies. This was a poor trade.

If a work is a ‘masterpiece’ - whatever that means - and PBS decides it to be worthy of that title, then why are masterpieces to be hacked about like this? Would it be permissible to rewrite the entire ending of the Odyssey just for the heck of it and still call it the same work?

Purists are out of style. I’m not a purist. But I recognize a poor adaptation when I see one. And I remind myself that once upon a time I was involved in the production of an interactive computer version of “Macbeth” that was a shameless travesty of anything Shakespeare ever wrote. Why did I let myself be talked into that one? What could I have been thinking? Or was I simply giving in to the trends of the times? I suspect that somewhere along the line I had simply given up expecting that enough people still read Shakespeare seriously any more, and so no one would care. Thus I know my own failings on this one. And I have no wish for them to be perpetuated by others, either.

E. M. Forster was wiser than most of us when it came to his writing. We need to honor that. As Langston Hughes said. ” You done taken my blues and gone…”

Yes indeed.

I’ve now had a chance to finish re-reading “Sense and Sensibility” after viewing the PBS version, which was most enjoyable. I’m struck now by how much of the dialog was invented. It was tastefully done, but still…. In addition I’m disappointed by the dialog that was used, but truncated.

For example, when Willoughby appears late at night to confess his deeds to Elinor, the editing of that speech served only to obscure the main fact. He may be sorry, he may even be suffering, but he has not ceased to place himself at the center of the universe. He does not care what his effect has been on the Dashwood family (whose names he may have ruined) nor does he care for what he may have done to Marianne (who may be dying). All he cares about is whether or not someone will see how he’s suffering. This egoism is reinforced by a segment left out in the TV version, where he explains that Mrs Smith, from whom he was to inherit his fortune, actually offered to reinstate him if he’ll marry poor Eliza and make an honest woman of her. And he turns the offer down!

Why does this matter? Because Austen is showing us that love can be many things, and that sexual attraction, liveliness, and romance are all very well but they count for little if there is no genuine desire by the lover to consider the personal well-being of the one loved. Marianne wants only the best for Willoughby; Brandon wants only the best for Marianne; Elinor wishes only for Edward’s best interests; and Edward wants only to honor his word in the best interests of Lucy. But Willoughby wants only what’s best for Willoughby. And he’s not the only one. It’s an important point we can carry into the present day. When we say we care about someone are we looking out for our own convenience or for what will allow that person to be the best possible version of him or her self that is possible?

Austen is a serious meditator on love. It seems a pity to miss out a major component of her thinking as a result of the adaptation process. It leaves the reader/viewer thinking that Marianne and Elinor settle for second best, when the exact opposite is the case.

And this brings me to the point I was turning over yesterday. In a novel it is inevitable that a TV series or movie has to invent and adapt. Much of the information Jane Austen gives us is through observing the thoughts of her characters. it doesn’t exist in dialog. So invention occurs. In a play all the words that are spoken exist in the text, and can either be used or cut. They are seldom invented out of thin air. In contrast John Adams’ autobiography tells us a great deal of what he did and saw, but clearly it was not designed as ‘art’ and so the inventors of the world step forward to turn it into ’story’. And these days that notion of story is dependent upon what they think will sell. It’s as brutal as that.

The British poet George MacBeth some forty years ago sold many copies of his poem ‘The Three minute George MacBeth Macbeth’ and created a career around it. Shakespeare was reduced to three minutes - less if one read fast, as MacBeth frequently did - and we all laughed. What fun! Like Woody Allen speed reading “War and Peace” all he knew by the end was that it was about Russia.

Great writers, the truly great ones, need to be read slowly and in detail, and pondered upon. They are valuable because we know in our bones that they have reached out and touched something important, they’ve felt the breath of God on their faces. They are valuable because they’ve done what we couldn’t, but they’ve brought back the information we need so we can learn.

When the Greeks first put on the plays of Sophocles and others, and the theater at Epidavros was filled for performances of “Oedipus the King”, this was not a casual night out for the citizenry. This was a religious festival and you had to be there to learn its lessons or the High Priest would send his minions out to make sure you attended; because it was good for you. It wasn’t just so you could talk about something after a date, it was good for your soul, for your understanding, and therefore for the way you could relate to the world. Art made civilization worth having.

We have more art today, and more freedom. But are we wiser?

I watched part III last night (thanks to Mary Lou for alerting me to the HBO special menu) and reached the end of the episode confused. The program was devoted to Adams’ visit to Europe, how hard it was to leave his home, and how he hadn’t hit it off well with Franklin. Chief episodes included a chase and fight with a British ship, the amputation of a crew-member’s leg, and the general debauchery of the French Court.

I was puzzled because Adams’s trip to Europe involved the bloodless capture of a British ship (not the ghastly mess depicted) and because the writers seem to have rolled his two trips to Europe into one, thus compressing the political intrigues into something that seemed rather sketchy at best.

I’m not sure that I was able to learn anything worthwhile from the time I spent in front of the TV, unless one counts that time I spent checking my history books in disbelief.

To relate the story of Robin Hood with such freedom from accountability to history is, I suppose, permissible. No one has any proof that Robin ever existed. But we have ample proof that John Adams did, and some of his history deserves to be told straightforwardly. After all, he did help to create the USA; he was a president and a vice president; and his son was also.

How can we assess anything accurately if we don’t have a credible account to work from? How can we revisit that terrain when a newer account seems hell-bent on subverting all that went before?

Ah well - that’s entertainment.

I was having an email exchange with one of the people who was at one of my presentations. We were looking at the idea of how the Warrior-Lover gets to be in that space, and why big business seems to want executives who are Warrior-Lovers but only in the sense of them loving to make money and being willing to fight for that cause. That, of course, has a tendency to slip into mere Orphan thinking. The consolations of money and prestige are insidious, and they are consolations for the weak ego.

So here’s a thought. The task of the Pilgrim is to explore the wound she has. We all have a wound or two, and for some it’s obvious, for others less so. Some of us were abused as children. Others were hurt in far less obvious ways, but we were still hurt.

The challenge is to see what that damaged part of the psyche is and to heal it, turning the damage into strength. For example, some of my students at Curry College want to be grade school teachers. Fairly often they say to me that they had such horrendous experiences as children in school (not being understood, not being heard, feeling dis-empowered) that they have now determined they will go into education so that no one will ever again have to suffer as they did. It’s a big claim. What I love about it is that their woundedness has become the source of their ambitions. Where they have been hurt they will be strong. Every day they’ll go to work knowing exactly why they do it and why it’s important to them and to others. Every day they’ll be choosing a healthy response to past misfortunes. Each and every one of those days, therefore, they’ll be acting on the impulse to be healthy, and to stay healthy, and to live their healed selves out loud, proudly.

Healing is not just something that happens out of the public eye, or in a hospital ward, tucked away. Healing is what we choose every day. We earn it every day, over and over, when we choose not to go into that place of damaged ego.

We can also do the opposite and choose our woundedness every day. That leads to helplessness. I don’t recommend it.

Put another way: if I fall down my front steps I can choose to spend the rest of my life complaining about the steps, the fall, and the bruises I suffered. I’ll give my mind over to the fall. Perhaps I’ll write to my insurance company about it and spend a lot of time doing that. Yet I can also decide to repair my front steps, make them safe for everyone and anyone, install a hand rail, and each day I leave the house I can walk down those front steps with pride, saying to myself that I’ve got a much better set up now. I’ll devote the same amount of mind-space to the topic as before, except this time I’ll feel good about it. The exact same amount of energy is involved, with an entirely different result.

You choose.