The Mummers Are Dead -- Long Live the Mummers!

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Roughly thirty years ago, William Gibson observed that William S. Burroughs was the first writer to pick up science fiction as if it were a found object -- a rusty eggbeater was the example he used -- and incorporate it into his art.

Saturday, it was my turn to be a rusty eggbeater.

Artists Leah Mackin and Alex Lukas put on an event at Space 1026, here in Philadelphia, titled The Mummers Are Dead Long Live the Mummers. It was...

It was...

Well, it's a little hard to say what it was, because I'd never seen anything quite like it. It was a little like a reading. it was a little like performance art, it was a little like a happening. It was... Well, let me start by setting the scene, and then I'll describe the event.

Space 1026 is your quintessential artist coop workspace. Offices, equipment, and graffiti in the back, an open space for doing things in the front. A small crowd, to judge by the number of chairs exactly the number expected, showed up. Everybody kept their coats on because such spaces are only rarely heated. Interestingly enough, two of the comic clubs used the front space to make their costumes in, and there was still a certain amount of Mummer detritus strewn about. A sign by the door to the rear read: NO GLITTER PAST THIS POINT. Because, of course, there was a great deal of glitter strewn everywhere.

Before the reading, there was a showing of "Who's Having Fun," a 1980 documentary on the Mummers. Then Lukas and Macklin took turns reading quotations from newsspaper articles, contemporary blog entries, and even a certain "campy science fiction novel" -- my own In the Drift, in which Mummers rule Philadelphia. Taken as a whole, they formed a thoughtful essay on the evolution of the Mummers over the past half-century and the challenges (lack of money and lingering traces of racism, mostly) still facing them.

As an essay, it was coherent and convincing. But, taken as a whole, it was more than just an essay or a lecture. The combination of aural collage and its creators' refusal to inject their own words into the text made it something else. I guess I'd have to call it research art.

Whatever it was, it seemed to me a pretty complete success.

Afterward, Marianne and I left for a friend's party in Delaware. We talked about the event all the way from Philadelphia.

You can see the Mummers documentary on YouTube here.

And you can find Space 1026's website here.


Above: My shoe. Glitter. From the floor. Photo by M. C. Porter.

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One Last, Small Gift From 2015 to Science Fiction

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A good example of the overexamined lives led by American presidents is the fact that the White House has just released the list of books Barack Obama will be reading on his Hawaiian vacation.

On the list is Cixin Liu's The Three-Body Problem.

Seriously, how cool is that?  The most powerful man in the world, as we like to call the current occupant of the Oval Office, is not only reading science fiction but Chinese science fiction! The global culture gets more global every day.

You can read about it here.


Oh, and...

Happy New Year, everybody! I hope 2015 was kind to you. But whether it was or not, may 2016 be a hundred times better.

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The Seven Words Homeland Security Cannot Hear

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I've been working all day on an introduction to a book by somebody I greatly admire and only now remembered that it was Wednesday and I owed you all a post. So very quickly I took a rant I'd posted recently on Facebook, changed a word or three, and here it is below.

Enjoy.

A while back, I posted an image icon that comedian Steve Hofstteter made pointing out that liquids confiscated at airports as possible explosives are dumped in a container in the most densely populated part of the airport. My friend Billee Stallings then asked what the solution was, but I was busy and didn't answer.

So I will now:

In all fairness to the TSA, they're worried about binary agents, which apparently aren't terribly dangerous until combined.

But in all fairness to Steve Hofstetter, the TSA isn't confiscating perfumes and shampoos because they believe there's a chance in hell that they're binary agents. It's all "security theater," actions performed to make you think that it's safe to get on the airplane.

The solution is to fire pretty much all the TSA agents, train those who are retained, and hire people who know something about airport security to replace the rest. A friend points out that Israeli airport security is mostly handled by young female army vets, who are rotated out every two years. They'd be the obvious place to start recruiting.

It won't happen, though, because competent airport security people cannot be hired for the money TSA agents are paid. So we get security theater instead.

But at least it's cheap.


And since you're wondering...

The title above comes from my experiences talking in a semi-professional capacity with (quite likable) people from the Department of Homeland Security. The seven words they simply cannot hear (I could see their eyes glaze over with incomprehension) are: "Stop making us take off our shoes."


Above: The image icon itself. I presume this reposting comes under the category of fair use because it helps spread the word about Hofstetter's wit.

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Oedipus on D'Qar

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There is a moment in the latest Star Wars movie, seventh in the franchise and first under the aegis of Disney, that epitomizes this moment in popular culture. Han Solo, old and with his disillusionment written on his face, a man whose dreams have fled him, whose life has been a disappointment, who can only count himself a failure, stands at last inside the Millennium Falcon and closes his eyes in relief. He is home. Briefly, he can imagine himself as he once was, young and filled with hope.

So, too, the movie's creators hope, with every fan who was there, almost forty years ago, when the first and best SW movie astonished the world, and spent the ensuing decades trying hard to pretend that the last three (or, I would argue, the last five) movies never happened. A great deal of intelligent thought went into this movie. Point by point, all the beloved moments from its originator were ticked off. Cute bot? Check. Interstellar dive? Check. Planet killer? Check. Princess-turned-general Leia? Check. All of it vividly reimagined, so that the viewer never knew what was coming and so that it all felt original. This is an accomplishment that should be admired.

Meanwhile, however, on the undercard, every new character is struggling with the deadening influence of his or her predecessor. Kylo Ren does a Charles Foster Kane on the furniture because he cannot live up to the villainy of Darth Vader. Later, he kills his true father for the same reason. Rey and Finn are both trying desperately to be the hero of a movie that is all about finding Luke Skywalker so that Dad can make everything right again. Even cutebot BB-8 is heartbroken about her inability to connect to R2D2, who can only be her mother. In the audience, all the Millennials, though they don't know it, are waiting for the last character from the first film to die so they can have their own Star Wars. One that Mom and Dad hadn't claimed as their own, long before the younger viewers were born.

Oedipus would be right at home here.

So what is Star Wars: The Force Awakens about? It's about the struggle to create a new and successful Star Wars franchise. Nothing less. Nothing more.

Recently, I watched Ant Man, a movie about a superhero so deep in the Marvel pantheon that even its protagonist had trouble taking it seriously. It was your quintessential B movie. Its special effects cost a fraction of those of SW:TFA. The matters ostensibly at stake were negligible by comparison. But it was about something: the relationship between fathers and daughters.

So final score? For special effects, explosions, people running, and efficiency of reboot, it's SW:TFA as the clear winner.

But if you want to see a movie, Ant Man wins hands down.

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The Joy of Pessimism

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I am a pessimist. This was not a decision on my part; it is simply the way I am. But on reflection, I am glad of it.

Every time I park my car in the city, go about my business, and return to find it where I left it -- not towed, unstolen, with windows not shattered by an opportunistic thief after my GPS system -- my heart soars. It's like receiving an unexpected gift from the universe.

Optimists never have this experience. I pity them. What sad, joyless lives they must lead!

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Manger Animals

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Tomorrow is Christmas Eve! Every year, around this time, I think of my mother's first job after college, working in the garment industry in New York City. Her employers were, it almost goes without saying given the time and place, Jewish. Indeed, they were devoutly Jewish. Which meant that since she was a Catholic, they not only gave her vacation time for her religious holidays but their own as well. They were pretty obliged to offer her one set or the other. To give her both was generosity of the heart.

Charles Dickens did not think as highly of old Mr. Fezziwig as my mother did her former employers.

So this is a good time to offer thanks for religious folks of good will everywhere, whatever religion they may follow.

And a good time for my newly traditional last-blog-before-Christmas story. For self-evident reasons, I won't be blogging on Friday.

Enjoy!

Manger Animals

There is a legend that on Christmas Eve the animals can talk.  Yet of all the many animals you’ve known or owned, be they pets or next-door dogs or half-tame squirrels that you almost got to accept a peanut out of your hand once, none have ever done remotely anything like that.

Yet the legend is true.  It just doesn’t apply to all animals.  It applies only to those who were in one specific manger on the outskirts of Bethlehem two thousand something years ago.  These were all made immortal by the Infant Jesus who, like any other child, had an inordinate fondness for dumb beasts.  And for 364 days of the year (365 on leap years) they’re dumb in both senses of the word.

Ahhh, but on Christmas Eve . . .

On Christmas Eve, the cow and the donkey and the little goat that gnawed on Baby Jesus’s blanket are given the gift of speech.  As are the two lambs who wandered in looking for fodder, the camels who carried the magi to the event and then stuck their noses in the window to see what was going on, and the pigeons who fluttered in the rafters while Joseph muttered angrily about their droppings.

“It was a night much like this one . . .” the cow begins.

“No, quieter,” says a camel.  “There weren’t so many cars back then.”

“It was cold outside,” says a lamb.  “But I found a warm spot to sleep right over there.”

“I gnawed on a blanket,” says the goat proudly.  “But somebody yanked it away.”

“I wonder who?” murmurs a dove.  For animals have very little sense of what is and is not important, once you move away from the compelling subjects of food and sleep.  The fact that there were people present two thousand years ago is almost forgotten.  Who those people might have been is entirely beyond their ken.

Still, like any other old-timers, they do enjoy reminiscing.

“They don’t make oats the way they used to,” says the donkey.  “And that’s a fact.”

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Tweet Fictions

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This is kind of an experiment. I've been posting fiction, mostly SF but a little fantasy, on Twitter once a day for the past couple of weeks. Just to see if it can be done.

I expect to be doing this for another month or so. If you're curious about future tweets or twits or whatever they're called, my handle on Twitter is @michaelswanwick.

And here are the first several:

1. Knew a woman who took her children to a store filled with wardrobes. The rest of her life she traveled from world to world, looking for them. (12/7/15)

2. Earth almost made it into the Galactic Union. Then they discovered how delicious we are. (12/9/15)

4. Cryogenically frozen for a thousand years – and the first thing I’m asked is “Did you know Justin Bieber?” (12/10/15)

5. First our phones got smart. Then they got smarter. Then – excuse me, my master calls. (12/11/15)

6. We genetically engineered a vampire that sucks fat. Our profits are off the map. (12/12/15)

7. Went back in time to kill Hitler. Returned just as the Soviet invasion of America began. (12/13/15)

8. The good news is that the world is going to end tomorrow. You probably don’t want to hear the bad news. (12/14/15)

9. In 2034, toons were granted full citizenship. In 2035, falling anvils became the leading cause of accidental death. (12/15/15)

10. I was the first immortal man. How quickly all women became too young for me!(12/16/15)

11. Our artificially intelligent robots wouldn’t work for what we were paying them. So we invented artificial stupidity. (12/17/15)

12.  Mercury has the hottest women in the Solar System. I’m covered with second degree burns. (12/18/15)

13. Devolution Machine a great success. So many people want to be beastlier! (12/19/15)

14. Robots did all the work and people repaid us with scorn. So we rose up and killed them. Now we’re  building servants to do our work for us. (12/20/15)

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