Pivoting

A documentary film-maker recently observed to me that "the way you get out of a film is not always the way that got you in". I think I knew what he meant. Back in 1996 I had wanted to write a dramatisation of the whole life of T.G.H. Strehlow. It was not until some years later that I wrote something that I could complete (Journey to Horseshoe Bend) which was based on only ten days in Strehlow's early life.

Apparently, this kind of re-focussing has a term - 'pivoting'. You start off intending to do one thing (and I think by definition not getting anywhere) and end up refining your intention which then produces a successful outcome.


I've been thinking about this in relation to Abraham Lincoln. It took him nearly three years of warfare to refine the purpose of the US Civil War in the Gettysburg Address as "dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal". Until then the war had been about preserving the union - not exactly a galvanising invitation.

I also wonder whether 'pivoting' took place in the creation of the Spielberg film, Lincoln. Back in 2009 I read that Lincoln was to be based on Doris Kearns Goodwin's Team of Rivals. It's a wonderful book - a four-or five way biography describing how Lincoln chose his cabinet from among his nomination rivals (Seward, Chase, Stanton, Blair); an influence on President Obama - but (I wondered) how dramatic?

Lo and behold, the film is actually about Lincoln's effort to try to ensure the congressional vote for the 13th amendment (making slavery unconstitutional) before the war is won and people such as the pro-slavery Unionists decide there is no longer any urgency to do anything. How smart is this from a screenwriting point of view? - suddenly there's a race on, the pressure's up. I noticed in a recent edition of The New Republic that the screenwriter Tony Kushner acknowledges Michael Vorenberg's book about the passage of the 13th amendment Final Freedom as one of "20 or 30 books that were significant to me" though he denies that it was his principal source (Doris Kearns Goodwin still gets the screen credit for 'parts of' Team of Rivals). But, I wonder, at what point did Kushner and Spielberg decided to focus on the 13th amendment fight? How did this come about, and was it an example of 'pivoting'? I could look into this and find out I suppose, but for the moment I'm content to speculate.

And this is something else I'll speculate and pivot on. I reckon the next Lincoln film could be based on Nora Titone's My Thoughts Be Bloody. (The title is a quote from Hamlet.) Titone's book covers the rivalry among the Booths, the greatest theatrical family of the 19th century. Edwin was the greatest actor of his generation, inheritor of his father Junius's mantle. Younger brother, John Wilkes couldn't hold a candle to him.

Edwin Booth as Hamlet, c.1870. Photograph J. Gurney and Sons, New York

John Wilkes, Edwin and Junius Booth Jr in Julius Caesar, 1864

Yet, John Wilkes worked out how to upstage his brother once and for all - the Confederate sympathiser shot President Lincoln on Good Friday, 14 April 1865. It was a dramatic last act, as Booth jumped from the presidential box to the stage at Washington's Ford's Theater and spun around to the audience with the phrase "Sic semper tyrannus" [Thus to all tyrants], forever fusing the Booth name with villainy.


Can you imagine this as a film, since so much of Titone's book is also about acting as it was practised in those days?

"Shall we have an editor?" (with apologies to John Jay, who originally wrote "a king")

Apparently, Thomas Jefferson used to send people copies of his draft of the Declaration of Independence. He didn't like Congress's edited version. Bill Bryson once observed that Jefferson, like most writers, thought his version was better than the edit; and that like most writers...he was wrong.

I was discussing editing with a former newspaper editor only yesterday. We both agreed that we could cut a piece to any length, maintain the tone and weight, and convey the same depth of research that had gone into the original longer draft. But editing is more than that.

Some of America's greatest politicians have been great editors (is there something in that?). There is a book called Ask Not by Thurston Clarke which examines the editorial work John Kennedy did on his first inaugural address (of course the title of the book comes from the speech's famous phrase - 'Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.') And one of the highlights of Garry Wills' Lincoln at Gettysburg is the side-by-side comparison of Secretary of State William Seward's draft of Abraham Lincoln's First Inaugural Address and Lincoln's touch up.

Seward, for example, wrote: "The mystic chords which, proceeding from so many battle-fields and so many patriot graves, pass through all the hearts and all the hearths in this broad continent of ours, will yet harmonize in their ancient music when breathed upon by the guardian angels of this nation."

And Lincoln lifted it to: "The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."

I guess what I'm getting at is that an edit can ratchet up the meaning. The example I can think of with real punkt is again from the Declaration of Independence. In the great clause about all men being created equal, endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, among them Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness, Jefferson originally wrote: "We hold these truths to be Sacred and Undeniable..." In a hand that looks like Benjamin Franklin's, "Sacred and Undeniable" is crossed and above the line someone has written (a word that is perfect and unarguable): "self-evident".

Which first - music or words? (thoughts stemming from Rodgers & Hammerstein)

In Ethan Mordden's book, Rodgers and Hammerstein, I just read the phrase, '...all the lovely and characterful music in the world can do nothing till it has something honest to work with.' He's praising Hammerstein's words of course (books and lyrics for Oklahoma!, Carousel, South Pacific, The King and I). But I kind of agree with it, because I think he's lit on one of the most powerful tools of a librettist - context. The context in which the music is played can affect its impact.

In our symphonic cantata Journey to Horseshoe Bend I had the lines:

But God cannot be known
Nor made to answer men.
No use in us demanding
The meaning of our pain.

At one stage this was in the words of the pastor, Carl. It's his opinion. It was later placed in the mouths of the chorus. There it suddenly became editorial, as befitted what I thought of as part of the core meaning of the work.

This may not exactly be context. But changing location or time of night or day can alter the effect of a scene as effectively as this.

I have two much-treasured instances of music that hooked me at least as much because of the context in which I heard them.

In Alice Springs at Easter in 1981, I happened to pick up on one of the Melbourne radio stations 2,258 kms (1,403 miles) away that year's Bayreuth Festival production of Wagner's Parsifal. I wasn't listening to it on the best of equipment but it sure was a moving experience in my little flat in the backyard in Willshire Street. I don't know if I would have found it more moving if I'd actually been sitting in the Festpielhaus in Germany.

Also, when I was a kid, Radio 3DB in Melbourne used to broadcast a concert at 11 o'clock Sunday nights. I was supposed to be asleep in bed, but I would sneak a small transistor under the blankets and tune in, with the volume down low. One night I forgot to put the radio on until about 11.50. When I located the station I was knocked out; it was spectacular - like Catherine Wheels going off in my head, plumes of flame spinning from revolving wheels. It was the climax to Scriabin's Poem of Ecstasy.

Alexander Scriabin who thought he would write a piece that would end the world, but died instead from an insect bite

I've loved the piece ever since. It may not be a flawless masterpiece (although close), it may not have enough intellectual content for the real aficionados, and I was listening to it on a crappy tranny. But it's one of the best musical experiences of my life. And I think a great deal of the overwhelming experience lay in the fact that I heard this gigantic outpouring in an unexpected context, listening 'illegally' in the cocoon of my bed.

I sometimes wonder if contemporary opera suffers from the fact that we've gotten used to thinking that the effect of the piece comes down almost solely to the music, and not the music and action and words working in tandem to be more than the sum of their parts. The music provides the emotional content perhaps - it's the verb - but it doesn't guarantee the whole effect.

And in fact, I question whether words cannot sometimes match music's emotional impact. Let me move on to another tangent. Could any music match the majesty of Abraham Lincoln's words to Mrs Bixby (which I quote as well I can from memory to prove how they ring):

'Dear Madam

I have been a paper in the files of the Adjutant-General of Massachusetts to the effect that you are the mother of five sons who have died on the glorious field of battle. I feel how weak and fruitless are any words of mine that could seek to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming, but I cannot refrain from tendering to you the humble thanks of the republic they died to save,' etc...

Lincoln, whose prose could be more majestic than music. Alexander Gardner's 1863 portrait

Who gets close to Lincoln? Bach? but not in an exact setting of these words.

Nah, opera is meant to be an ensemble effort, truly a gesamtkunstwerk. Musical theater is.

From sea to shining sea

I was interested to read on the plaque below these bells at San Juan Capistrano that they were rung by the president of the United States, 'Mr Richard M. Nixon' and his wife, "Mrs Richard M. Nixon' in 1969. What struck me was the use of the 'mr' and 'mrs' prefixes. They are certainly less grandiose than what I was expecting, and I wonder if that has something to do with the times in which this plaque was struck. Apart from the glaring contradiction of Vietnam, were those times at least in some sense less imperial?
I enjoy being in this most southwestern corner of America. There is a prevalence of Spanish, as we seem to be wearing through to the deep-set footmarks of Portola, Fr Serra and others. As we booked accommodation in New York next month and were talking about things going on in faraway rocky Maine, I wondered how imperial and united this country really is these days. I remember thinking, when I watched some mayors debating on TV a couple of weeks ago (from memory there were the mayors of Atlanta, Washington, Cleveland, New York...), that each city may find its own solutions to the country's infrastructure shortfalls, and that maybe the country will devolve into city states. I am aware that in places Lakota may be as prevalent as Spanish, or Chinese or Vietnamese (though are there still Acaghchemem speakers - pronounced A-harcha-mum - around here?). There is far more variety and mass packed into this continental space (a factor certainly in squeezing up excellence.)
Outside the walls of the former mission was a plaque explaining that the mission was returned to the Catholic Church from the Forster family by proclamation of President Abraham Lincoln on 18 March 1865. Another thing struck me about this. Lincoln never made it this far west. But in the dying days of the Civil War, back east so, so far from here, such was the extent of his continental reach.

Two footnotes:
1. I found on Wiki-pedia that the Acagchemem language was recorded by Anastacia Majel and John P. Harrington in 1933 and that the tapes resurfaced in 1995. The language is being re-learnt by a number of members of the tribe whose number of enrolments now stands at 2,800.
2. During his presidency, Nixon maintained a 'White House' not far from here, at San Clemente. It's out on a headland which was pointed out to me the other day.

In the course of a day

On the way out this morning, a woman said to Kate, “Girl, where’s yo gloves?” “And what about her hat?” I said. “ExAAAC’ly”, she parried. Here’s an example of the quick-witted good humouredness here. As I was about to cross a street later on, I stopped. A lorry looked like it was going to turn left in front of me. The driver indicated “I’m going straight ahead”, and I waved thanks. He beamed. The courtesy here is worth remarking on. Cars stop for you before you step off the kerb. People smile when you acknowledge them. I wonder if in some way the courtesy compensates for other harshnesses of the society. Kenneth Clark, who wrote Civilization, put a lot of store on good manners.

It’s very welcoming I have to say. Though I have vivid flashes of Australia. Yesterday, turning into Shattuck Ave after coming out of the movies, with the Berkeley hills rising up above the roadway, I suddenly thought of Bowral when you turn onto the main road. And this afternoon, when I looked at the palms on the waterfront at Oakland I thought for a split second I was in St. Kilda. But I’m not nostalgic. It’s simply vividness of memory, because I’m too happy to be homesick. I have waves of excitement like the first waves of love. Apart from anything else, it’s too rich here to pine for anywhere else.

We went down to Oakland CBD today. I left Kate in a store fossicking amongst racks of jackets and jeans (‘chaquetas’ and ‘pantalones vaqueros’ as they were also signed) and went down to The Blue Bottle to have a coffee. Some cafe owners in Sydney told me that this is the only place in the States which serves coffee as good as you get in Australia (and I can believe it; much of the coffee around here is bitter and weak). I was working on my piece on La bohème. On how it’s so touching, and how so much of that emotionality is due to the shaping of the libretto. The music yes, but the dramaturgical plotting of Mimi’s decline. This feeds into my customary question about the true importance of the script in an opera. Granted, it’s the music that really carries the day, but does music always trump words? Can any composer, say, ever match the majesty of Lincoln’s prose? (“The mystic cords of memory, stretching from every patriot grave…to every living heart and hearthstone across this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of Union when touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature”?)

Anyway, I was sitting there and I thought, FDR’s presidential yacht is moored in Oakland. Why not wander down a couple of blocks to see if I can find it? (which I did eventually). But at first I walked out onto a pier and there in the distance off to the east were snow-capped mountains. I’ve never seen this before - snow-capped mountains rising behind a city. I suppose if I’d spent any time much in Hobart or Canberra this’d be nothing new, but you won’t see this most places in Oz.

On the way to the pier I’d passed this shanty-type building. I hadn’t paid it much attention. But on the way back, I read some plaques: Heinold’s First and Last Chance Saloon, registered as a site of national interest, etc... Built out of the remains of an old whaling ship, it has been in continuous operation since 1883. But here you go - it is immortalised in Jack London’s books and is where he used to meet his seafaring mates for a drink. Robert Louis Stevenson used to drop in as well (though I’m not sure if it was at exactly the same time).

This is the sort of thing I stumble across in the course of a day. There is really so much going on. And such linguistic richness – “Girl, where’s yo’ gloves?” “Pantalones vaqueros”. At the very least I hope I’ll learn a greater eloquence from being here.

A few stops on

Over at the Presidio yesterday, a guy asked us where we were staying. When we said, "Oakland," he said, "Whoa, it's the fifth most violent city in the US." And, admittedly, when we arrived here we were shown which streets belonged to gangs. When I said, "West Oakland", he said, "That's worse".

But I had it wrong. We're more like northern Oakland, up the top end of Piedmont Ave, where the cafes are frequented by students availing themselves of the free Wi-Fi.

We loved the Presidio - sweeping views up and down the coast (over the Golden Gate, too, of course), 'historic' (remnant?) forests on some of the slopes, sea birds hovering in the thermals, city workers jogging in their lunchtime... We were intrigued to find that you can rent there. It'd be a beautiful place to live.

On the way out on the shuttle, I noticed streets named after little-known (outside the US) early 19th century presidents - Pierce, Franklin, Fillmore. I noted that the 'golden gate' itself was named by Fremont, who later became the first Republican presidential candidate, in 1856, and a Union general in the western theatre during the Civil War. All this kind of located the Presidio for me in history. Lincoln Boulevard up there then has a certain poignancy. Lincoln never made it this far west, and I remembered how I had read that he and his wife, Mary, were planning a grand tour when he left the presidency. But of course he was assassinated not long into his second term.

Back in the city itself I realised that I am growing to love the linguistic richness here - the lilt of the African-American banter of the guys picking up a load for UPS, the guys digging up the street speaking Spanish, the ads on the BART which are not even translated into English. Hey, the Presidio was founded by the Spanish in 1776.

When we got back on the BART to come back to this side of the bay, there were no seats on the train. One woman had her parcels on the only available seat. Kate looked at it, and the woman flared up, "Are you gonna say, 'EXCUSE ME'?" I was about to stop Kate - after all why should she apologise to someone taking up a seat for her parcels. But Kate said excuse me, and the woman said, "That's alright."

She had the words 'bitch' and 'nigga' tattooed on one of her forearms, and I imagined that they may have said, in full, "I'm not your bitch; I'm not your nigga", though I couldn't see the part of her forearm which was resting on her legs.

Emerging from bay tunnel, a friend of the woman's came over. Saying "excuse me", she reached across Kate and said "You getting off?" tapping the shoulder of her friend who was moving around to the music in her earphones. She said nothing, but when the train stopped she got off with her parcels - at West Oakland.