Category: Arts and Letters

Set Design and Long Day’s Journey Into Night

When the play ends it is well past midnight. The three men, exhausted by drink and confession, are spaced about the living room in the semi-darkness like gutted animals. Over their heads the addicted mother moves around the upstairs rooms rummaging among her belongings for trophies of her lost youth. She has been offstage for the entire fourth act. The men are suddenly alerted by her footsteps as she starts to come downstairs. O’Neill has meticulously prepared for this moment, drip-feeding the audience little by little with the information that will give it power. It is one of the most extraordinary moments of theatre in twentieth-century drama, and the most honestly earned, and it is achieved simply by someone turning on an electric light.

I need to digress for a moment to describe our set in a little more detail. It consisted of a living room beyond which, through folding doors, was a more formal space with a suite of furniture and a piano. The position of the four folding doors was slightly different for each scene. In the last act only one of the panels was open and the piano was out of sight. Michael Annals had supplied a wonderful detail to his design. Above the folding doors was a fanlight of fretworked wood. When the light was turned on by someone whom we cannot yet see but can only be the mother, the pattern of the fanlight reared up out of the darkness and a column of light spilled into the room through the one open panel. In performance, both onstage and in the auditorium, there was a silence so dense with anticipation that you felt you could slice it.

Then suddenly, out of sight, we hear the piano being played, a clumsy, childish attempt at a Chopin waltz. I’d insisted on live music, preferably played on a piano that needed tuning, and we’d engaged the vocal coach, Chuck Mallett, to supply it, which he did with great skill, mimicking the arthritic fingers which were meant to be doing the playing. The music abruptly stops and the audience’s anticipation is now informed by misgiving. The mother, holding her wedding dress over one arm, steps into the open panel of light. Connie looked exactly as O’Neill describes her: ‘The uncanny thing is that her face appears so youthful. It is a marble mask of girlish innocence.’ Lost in the past and oblivious of her family she begins to recount her life as a young girl in the care of the nuns at her convent. She drifts across the room not addressing but by turns in the proximity of each member of her family. Finally I had her arrive stage right beside the rocking chair, which in the previous scene had been displaced from its usual position close by the oval table and now stood isolated some yards away. As Mary recalls her girlish vocation to be a nun she sinks into the rocker, facing the audience.

Stage Blood: Five tempestuous years in the early life of the National Theatre
Michael Blakemore

What’s so funny ’bout peace, love and understanding?

Elvis Costello opens his L A show with “What’s so funny about peace, love and understanding?”

[image or embed]

— Rick Hasen (@rickhasen.bsky.social) June 21, 2025 at 9:22 PM

As I walk through this wicked world
Searchin’ for light in the darkness of insanity
I ask myself, “Is all hope lost?
Is there only pain and hatred and misery?”

And each time I feel like this inside
There’s one thing I wanna know
What’s so funny ’bout peace, love and understanding? Oh-oh
What’s so funny ’bout peace, love and understanding?

And as I walk on through troubled times
My spirit gets so downhearted sometimes
So where are the strong, and who are the trusted?
And where is the harmony, sweet harmony?

‘Cause each time I feel it slippin’ away, just makes me wanna cry
What’s so funny ’bout peace, love and understanding? Oh-oh
What’s so funny ’bout peace, love and understanding?

So where are the strong, and who are the trusted?
And where is the harmony, sweet harmony?
‘Cause each time I feel it slippin’ away
Just makes me wanna cry

What’s so funny ’bout peace, love and understanding? Oh-oh
What’s so funny ’bout peace, love and understanding? Oh-oh
What’s so funny ’bout peace, love and understanding?

10 Nonfiction Books on Law, Crime, and Punishment

Selections mine, summary by Wikipedia, except where noted. Ordered by date.

Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders – 1974
Helter Skelter: The True Story of The Manson Murders is a 1974 book by Vincent Bugliosi and Curt Gentry. Bugliosi had served as the prosecutor in the 1970 trial of Charles Manson. The book presents his firsthand account of the cases of Manson, Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel, and other members of the self-described Manson Family. It is the best-selling true crime book in history.

One L – 1977
One L tells author Scott Turow’s experience as a first-year Harvard Law School student. The book takes place in Cambridge, Massachusetts where Harvard University is located. First years, or One-L’s as they are often called, all face similar issues in their initial year of law school. Harvard, known for its reputation as one of the best law schools in the country, takes only about 12% of applicants.

Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets – 1991
Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets is a 1991 non-fiction book written by Baltimore Sun reporter David Simon describing a year spent with detectives from the Baltimore Police Department Homicide Unit. The book received the 1992 Edgar Award in the Best Fact Crime category.

Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing – 2000
Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing is a nonfiction book by journalist and professor Ted Conover published in 2000 by Vintage Books. In the book, Conover recounts his experience of learning firsthand about the New York State prison system by becoming a correctional officer for nearly a year. Conover sought the job of correctional officer after the New York State Department of Correctional Services denied his request to shadow the department’s employees in a journalist role.

The Last Face You’ll Ever See: The Private Life of the American Death Penalty – 2001
(Amazon summary)
In fascinating detail, Ivan Solotaroff introduces us to men who carry out executions. Although the emphasis is on the personal lives of these men and of those they have to put to death, The Last Face You’ll Ever See also addresses some of the deeper issues of the death penalty and connects the veiled, elusive figure of the executioner to the vast majority of Americans who have claimed to support executions since 1977. Why do we do it? Or, more exactly, why do we want to?

The Last Face You’ll Ever See is not about the polarizing issues of the death penalty — it is a firsthand report about the culture of executions: the executioners, the death-row inmates, and everyone involved in the act. An engrossing, unsettling, and provocative book, this work will forever affect anyone who reads it.

The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron – 2003
The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron is a book by Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind, first published in 2003 by Portfolio Trade. In 2005, it was adapted into a documentary film, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room.

McLean and Elkind worked on the book when they both were Fortune senior writers. McLean had written a March 5, 2001 article for Fortune called, “Is Enron overpriced?”

The book is not only about the Enron scandal, but also describes the authors’ effort in following the developing story as it happened. It is based on hundreds of interviews and details from personal calendars, performance reviews, e-mails, and other documents. BusinessWeek called it, “The best book about the Enron debacle to date.”

Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bronx – 2003
Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bronx is a 2003 narrative non-fiction study of urban life by American writer Adrian Nicole LeBlanc.
The book, LeBlanc’s first, took more than 10 years to research and write. Random Family is a nonfiction account of the struggles of two women and their family as they deal with love, drug dealers, babies and prison time in the Bronx. LeBlanc began the long period of research after reporting on a piece in Newsday about the trial of “a hugely successful heroin dealer” named George ‘Boy George’ Rivera.

Blue Blood – 2004
… Blue Blood (2004), which covers Conlon’s years in the NYPD, his work conducting street-level narcotics enforcement in the Housing Bureau, his family’s law enforcement background, and various anecdotes about the history of policing. The book received a favorable review on the cover of The New York Times Book Review, debuted at #9 on the Times Best Seller list, and remained on the list for two weeks.[citation needed]

Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption – 2014
Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014) is a memoir by American attorney Bryan Stevenson that documents his career defending disadvantaged clients. The book, focusing on injustices in the United States judicial system, alternates chapters between documenting Stevenson’s efforts to overturn the wrongful conviction of Walter McMillian and his work on other cases, including children who receive life sentences, and other poor or marginalized clients.

The Second Chance Club: Hardship and Hope After Prison – 2020
(Amazon summary)
A former parole officer shines a bright light on a huge yet hidden part of our justice system through the intertwining stories of seven parolees striving to survive the chaos that awaits them after prison in this illuminating and dramatic book.

Prompted by a dead-end retail job and a vague desire to increase the amount of justice in his hometown, Jason Hardy became a parole officer in New Orleans at the worst possible moment. Louisiana’s incarceration rates were the highest in the US and his department’s caseload had just been increased to 220 “offenders” per parole officer, whereas the national average is around 100. Almost immediately, he discovered that the biggest problem with our prison system is what we do—and don’t do—when people get out of prison.

Experience and Emotion

Get cut off in rush-hour traffic and you may feel angry for the whole trip, or even snap at a noisy child in the back seat.

Get an unexpected smile from that same kid and you may feel like rush hour — and even those other drivers — aren’t so bad.

“The thing about emotion is it generalizes. It puts the brain into a broader state,” says Dr. Karl Deisseroth, a psychiatrist and professor at Stanford University.

Deisseroth and a team of researchers have come up with an explanation for how that happens.

The process involves a signal that, after a positive or negative experience, lingers in the brain, the team reports in the journal Science.

Experiences themselves act a bit like piano notes in the brain. Some are staccato, producing only a brief burst of activity that may result in a reflexive response, like honking at another driver, or smiling back at a child.

But more profound experiences can be more like a musical note that is held with the sustain pedal and still audible when the next note is played, or the one after that.

“You just need it to be sustained long enough to merge with and interact with other notes,” Deisseroth says. “And from our perspective, this is exactly what emotion needs.”

To get from experience to emotion, the brain hits ‘sustain’

Stanley Kauffmann on Marlon Brando

The Young Lions, 1958

I have had a chance to watch Brando’s career from its beginning because he made his professional debut in a children’s play of mine at the Adelphi Theater in New York in 1944. His role consisted of being hit on the head and falling down; but he managed to find a way of falling down that, without being obtrusive, was individual.

Brando has evolved a personal style which relies largely on understatement and the liberal use of pauses. Often the effect is heart-breaking; remember the poignancy he gave the vapid monosyllable “Wow” in On the Waterfront when he learned that his brother was threatening his life. Occasionally the style lapses out of meaning into mannerism; some of Sayonara could have used compression. But in essence he reflects in his style—as actors often do—a prevalent artistic vein of his day. Kemble exemplified the classic, elegant eighteenth century, Kean the wild, torrential romantics of the early nineteenth century, Irving the elaborate majesty of the late Victorians. I compare Brando with these luminaries only to draw a parallel. He is a taciturn realist: an epitome not of that joyous realistic revolution which swept away the humbug that obscured the contours of the world but of that generation born into realism which has seen its world with harsh clarity, whose work is to reconcile itself to that world’s revealed boundaries and to find its triumphs inwardly.

https://newrepublic.com/article/115297/excerpts-reviews-stanley-kauffmann

Synchronicity II, Scottish Loch Connection

“Synchronicity II” – what’s with the part about the Scottish lake?
I just downloaded the Police’s “Synchronicity II” off iTunes. As I listened to it, I got to wondering about the lyrics. The verses portray the mundanity of life, but the choruses talk about something happening in some faraway Scottish lake. What’s the connection?

Mr.Blue_Sky
Sting is comparing the man about to mental with the monster in the lake about to attack some poor hapless schmoe in the cabin near the lake.

At least, that’s the way I see it.

Revtim
I took it as the Loch Ness Monster, which represents the narrator’s rising insanity.

vibrotronica
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronicity refers to Carl Jungs “acausal connecting principle.” Basically, everything is interconnected and things that seem like coincidences really aren’t coincidences. The two story threads of the song–a man’s mundane day and the Loch Ness monster doing…whatever the hell she’s doing–seem to be totally independant phenomenon but are actually connected by a mysterious “spooky action at a distance” force. Hence the title.

Futile_Gesture
The idea of Synchronicity is that everything is interconnected, no matter how irreleveant to each other they may appear. “Synchronicity II” is the tale of a stressed-out man playing his part in the rat race and supressing his anger and rage. Consequently this rage manifests itself as something stirring many miles away in a dark Scottish lake.

https://boards.straightdope.com/t/synchronicity-ii-whats-with-the-part-about-the-scottish-lake/297472/8

See also: https://www.reddit.com/r/ThePolice/comments/l1zic3/meaning_of_synchronicity_ii/

Rock and Roll – Led Zeppelin

It’s been a long time since I rock and rolled
It’s been a long time since I did the stroll
Ooh, let me get it back, let me get it back
Let me get it back, baby, where I come from

It’s been a long time, been a long time
Been a long lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely time
Yes, it has

It’s been a long time since the Book of Love
I can’t count the tears of a life with no love
Carry me back, carry me back
Carry me back, baby, where I come from
Whoa, whoa, oh

It’s been a long time, been a long time
Been a long lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely time

Oh, seems so long since we walked in the moonlight
Making vows that just can’t work right
Oh yeah, open your arms, opens your arms
Open your arms, baby, let my love come running in
Yeah!

It’s been a long time, been a long time
Been a long lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely time
Yeah, yeah
Yeah, yeah

Ooh yeah, ooh yeah
Ooh yeah, ooh yeah
It’s been a long time, been a long time
Been a long lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely time

NOTE – Bold lines for lyrics I couldn’t make out previously.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_and_Roll_(Led_Zeppelin_song)

RIP – Marcel Ophuls

Filmmaker Marcel Ophuls has died at the age of 97. Recognized as one of the great documentarians of his era, he died on Saturday, as confirmed by his grandson, Andréas-Benjamin Seyfert.

Ophuls demanded — and commanded — his audience’s attention, in 4 plus hour documentaries like The Sorrow and The Pity and Hôtel Terminus.

Ophuls knew that by creating hours-long documentaries, he ran the danger of “not only seeming pretentious, but being pretentious.” But, as he told NPR in 1978, “there’s a relationship between attention span and morality. I think that, if you shorten people’s attention span a great deal, you are left with only the attraction of power.”

https://www.npr.org/2025/05/26/683323335/marcel-ophuls-dead

Acting and Presentness – Emma Stone

GROSS: Where does acting fit into this? Like, when you are acting – when you started acting as a kid – you were 11, I think, when you started performing – do you feel like you were escaping yourself and therefore out of your anxiety and escaping your body ’cause your body became controlled by the character?

STONE: No. If anything, the opposite. I felt like I – and I’ve understood it more over the years because I think – I’ve heard a lot of actors talk about – and maybe that’s because they’re doing these big, dramatic, kind of cathartic roles. And I’m drawn much more to comedy, or now, dark comedy. I felt like every reaction in my body is permitted. All of my big feelings are productive. And presence is required, so it’s like a meditation because anxiety lives solely in the past or the future – you know, either future tripping or past tripping – you know, things you can’t control on either side. And acting requires you to be so present, to listen, to be looking at the other person, to be living in the experience and living in your body. And that was the huge gift of it to me and remains the huge gift of it to me to this day.

GROSS: But that’s the thing. Because it’s, like, your job…

STONE: Yeah.

GROSS: …It gives you permission. It makes it obligatory to be in the moment.

STONE: Yes. Yes.

GROSS: It’s like, you can’t say, well, I can’t control it ’cause I’m worried about the past. It’s like, your job is to focus on now.

STONE: Exactly.

https://www.npr.org/2024/03/08/1236564681/how-poor-things-actor-emma-stone-turns-her-anxiety-into-a-superpower