July 27-August 2, 2006
Culture Shock
This Week in A & E
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Daniel Johnston is an absolute friggin' goldmine of emotion. Due to his medicated, bipolar, hallucinating brain, he really has no sense of dreams vs. reality. However, he can write a song that will make you cry. The recent documentary, The Devil and Daniel Johnston, was as disturbing as it was beautiful. His art, work and life are an absolutely mind-bending enigma, and I love it. I do find it disturbing that he has been exploited over the years, but in some way everyone who hears or meets him is deeply affected.
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The last time I felt such utter frustration at the news coverage of mainstream U.S. media was at the beginning of the Iraq war. There was a one-sidedness to the point of being unethical. I tried the BBC and Deutsche Welle, which were less biased but certainly slanted. And then I came across a Peabody Award-winning program from San Francisco-based Link TV (www.linktv.org) called Mosaic. The program features selections from daily TV news shows from throughout the Middle East, from Tel-Aviv to Tehran. And now that the fire is closer to home and my country, Lebanon, is being massacred daily, I am glad at least to have Mosaic, while Philadelphia and the rest of the world watch blithely.
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Lately, I've become obsessed with the life and music of Thelonious Monk. I like that he embraces and embodies the philosophy of "Ugly Beauty." His sound switches effortlessly from a light, melodic tinkling to a percussive, sour smashing of the piano keys. I watched two documentaries: Thelonious Monk: American Composer gives the typical PBS treatment with interviews and clips (good for practical historical reasons). Another, Straight, No Chaser, revolves around unearthed film footage of Monk. That one's great because it shows a more intimate portrait that sheds light on Monk's schizophrenia, showing where his musical approach may have originated. I've never seen or heard an artist own his art like Monk.
