Ifigenia in Aulide

Posted on by Liz

Last weekend I saw another opera production by Ars Minerva, Ifigenia in Aulide. I saw Circe a while back and it blew my mind! Ifigenia did not disappoint as with minimal staging and what must have been a tiny budget (for an opera) Ars Minerva was absolutely brilliant. It was like a mindfuck gem of genderbent baroque. If you know me you know those words are like catnip to a cat! Lots of operas have some sort of Furious Woman number (what my friend Lisa called a “rage aria”) but this was like one giant long rage aria. Like Hothead Paisan from 1738 came to visit. (You realize if we have any call to be Hothead nowadays, some chick from Italy in 1738, or Greece in 408 B.C., has several orders of magnitude more reason.) The music was composed by Giovanni Porta and the libretto by Apostolo Zeno. (Of course, I read about them on Wikipedia from the program notes before the show. Thank you Wikipedia!) I am not going to perfectly remember things, but here is a stab at a synopsis.

First of all there was an ominous “chorus” of people on stage a lot of the time in purple satin hooded robes and creepy tragedy masks. They also made me think of the kodama from Spirited Away. They were characters, chorus, props, and sort of the zeitgeist, very well done. I’ll say more about them in a moment!

We encounter Elisena who has been captured by Achille in battle (in either Lesbos or Thessaly, but I never got that quite straight.) She is now enslaved and worried about her fate. If she ever finds out her real identity she will DIE. Teucro loves her and she loves Achille.

I enjoyed the costumes and makeup very much by the way – each character was dressed in a distinctive color combo of velvet, some with a sort of tinfoil (but much classier) hats with very lovely styling — the warriors Achille and Agamennone with helmets and the Queen and Princess with more Lothlorien style elegant crowns. Ifigenia in particular had a cool Isis/Hathor crescent moon on top of her Galadriel headdress, kinda giving the impression of Cretan horns or a Minoan statue. Very beautiful! Ulysses and Teucro strode around in combat boots. Elisena had a super sexy red dress and no crown. They had unusual & gorgeous cyberpunk style makeup that matched their outfits – big asymmetrical swoops and hash marks accentuating cheekbones or facial lines – and Elisena’s face smudged in red like she was both enraged and had been running around like a maenid in the woods drinking blood. OK, now you have the fashion picture!

Achilles shows up and sings to Elisena about how he loves Ifigenia and is going to marry her. Omg, awkward. Elisena then gets a damn good rage aria! She was going full tilt about how she would sacrifice herself on the altar in a blaze of bloody glory rather than watch her beloved Achille marry stuck up Ifigenia! Foreshadowing much?!

Actually, I wish I had the libretto and translation. By the middle of the opera I was picking up the Italian a lot better and thinking of how I would translate it myself. (I love to do songs and, with this sort of opera, half the words are going to be glory, sigh, lament, beloved, and weep, so you’re basically half done from the get-go.) The translation grew on me towards Act 3 and I thought it had some amazing moments so I’d like to read through it with more time and a dictionary and grammar at hand.

Ulyses then struts around explaining to Agamennone that they had to sacrifice Ifigenia their beloved daughter. The sacrifice for fair winds must be a princess of the blood of Helen! (GEE I WONDER WHAT ELISENA’S SECRET IDENTITY IS.) He is challenging Agamennone’s masculinity and leadership and sense of duty to the Greeks and (male) honor as he tries to amp him up and fails.

Ifigenia dances around like a modern dance music box ballerina sweetly singing of her innocent love and how being a dutiful daughter means her loving parents picked a good husband for her who is a hero and who she luckily came to fall in love with. Yay she is going to be a happy bride etc.

I forgot in my comments on the fashion and headdresses to mention the subtle brilliance of how Achille had her hair (up in a top-and-back ponytail, like the decoration on a greek helmet in itself!) There were lots of little details like this in the production that made me so happy. (ACHILLE WAS SO BRILLIANT OMG and you could tell she was running everything and the genius behind it all – from her mastery of the entire thing)

I think at this point Ifigenia has heard a rumor that Achille is actually going to marry Elisena instead of her. She has a rage aria and goes off in a huff. (Or maybe this was later?)

Achille and Elisena have a scene. He beats her up and it is quite horrible. The production somehow makes it clear that the whole opera is about toxic masculinity! Achille somehow did the most Liquid Sky level authentically horrible lesbian rape scene I’ve ever seen while singing GLORIOUSLY at the top of her lungs, manhandling Elisena, throwing her around by the hair, and tracing down her body with swordpoint. (!!!!!!!!!!)

Containing myself with difficulty . . .

Elisena is now super, super pissed. Bloody rage is sung. Her face goes through another 50 levels of insane and vengeful. I have to suppress the urge to cheer for her beautiful rage. She orders Teucro to go disrupt the wedding. Teucro, throughout, gives the impression of a smirking, drippy, creepy harasser, basically in a virtual fedora, oozing “m’lady” at the Renaissance Festival right before he mansplains to you why you should totally enjoy him stalking you. It made Elisena’s rage even better.

Ulises comes back to infuse Agamennone with more toxic masculinity. He must show his wife and daughter what’s what! While singing, Ulises threatens the purple robed masked chorus, grabs one, and beats (her) up. Just to give Agamennone a little example of the proper manly warrior king way to behave.

Agamennone then abuses Klytemnestra, singing Obey me!

Klytemnestra then has like, infinite rage arias and reprises of her rage!!! Oh, she’s pissed!

Angstamennone has some more nail biting freakouts! I think he changes his mind like 3 times about whether to send his wife and daughter home, or what.

Ifigenia desperately hopes it is all a lie. SHe offers herself to Agamennone while Klytemnestra continues to rage and says in despair that only death is left to her. I can’t remember their exact works but the trio (what do you call it when it is a duet but 3 people singing at once in counterpoint?) was really beautiful and moving. Agamennon freaking out with guilt, Ifigenia saying she would kiss the beloved hand that killed her, Klytemnestra giving epic side eye to her abusive murderous husband who cares more for war and its honors and duties than for his family.

I kind of lose the thread here, but Elisena runs off to tell the troops in the camp about this horrible plan to sacrifice Ifigenia. Achille sits on a rock with Ifigenia for their romantic duet. Ulises and Achille face off with swords! “A armi!!!” Achille slayed me with her singing again.

At several points when there is tension – like with Ulises arguing with Agamennone – or Klytemnestra and Ifigenia singing about duty and love – The chorus in their fated robes grab onto someone in the throes of their dilemma & sway with them – making me think of all the forces of culture and custom and public opinion operating to fuel their moral decisions. It was done so perfectly! Holding them back, seemingly sympathetic or supportive at times, but then entangling them in terrible complexity!

Klytemnestra and Ifigenia get another amazing duet where as they reach towards each other singing of their mother and daughter love, they are torn apart by the chorus at this point!

Elisena sings of her sudden pity for Ifigenia who is actually very noble in her willingness to be sacrificed for the common good (well, for … for someone’s good)

I think Klytemnestra had like 5 more rage arias in here. I loved her singing so much. She could just keep going forever, a beautiful voice, and her acting was great, giving the impression of someone super delicate, fierce, and tough all at once.

Then something happens offstage. Ulises runs in reporting something about how fierce Death has arrived for Ifigenia. BUT as you may suspect Elisena’s secret identity is that she is Helen’s secret daughter from another marriage and was originally named Ifigenia too. And she has just bloodily driven a dagger into her heart on the altar as the sacrifice. We see her at center stage kneeling with her head swathed in red gauze by the purple-robed Fates. Ifigenia and Achille are happily married. Everyone (except Elisena) sings a happy love song but you can cherish the rage in your heart for all the despairing girls who cut themselves you have ever known, because you know Klytemnestra is going to stab SOMEONE whose name starts with an A some years later no matter what ironic syrup is pouring from her mouth.

I can’t really speak to the excellence of the singing or music but I loved it a lot. The musicians were fabulous, I loved the theorbo & cello, harpischord also, and several times (especially with Achille, Klytemnestra, and sometimes Agamennone — and with Ifigenia’s song to her mother — Madre delitta, abraccia mi!) I would get the head to toe shivers involuntarily from the beauty and inevitability of the singing, or how the music all came together.

I also don’t know how the opera was originally intended to be performed but figured some of the parts played by women were meant to be sung by castrati. It really came out well. I wish this opera were running much longer so I could persuade everyone I know in town to go see it! Or that there were a video of it! Also, I have a total crush on Céline Ricci now as I picture her poking around in dusty music library basements (or the equivalent — like i like to do with poetry anthologies) and finding this stuff, seeing the potential in it, and making it real!

Infrastructure adoption

Posted on by Liz

I just went out in a light drizzle to check the storm drain nearest to my house, which I signed up to maintain a while back on SF Adopt-a-Drain. From this site, I get an email when major rain is coming. I forgot to respond to the last one, and then had to cross many intersections around Mission and 30th, enormous, roiling, leafy rivers which my new chair with its excellent clearance plowed right through. Finally as I came to “my” adopted drain I stopped (safely on the curb) and dug out all the leaves with my cane, flipping big globs of trash awkwardly onto the sidewalk where I left them neatly piled. (Unwilling to go so far as to go home and get a bag.)

Well, for a few minutes there I felt like my friend Crystal who keeps getting written up in the news either for shoveling snow in her neighborhood or for politically rustling everyone else up to properly clear the sidewalks.

My suspicion is that the guys in the restaurant on the corner saw me do this and came out to clean the drain afterwards. (Cannot help but be aware that many people would interpret my doing this normal and minor civic action as somehow full of pathos.)

The streets do get swept here every two weeks (by the absolutely adorable streetsweeping machines that I love to watch – what – I love trucks!) but since it’s a very long hill, a lot of leaves pile up during the first few rains. I’ll see tomorrow if the river re-appears or if the drain needs clearing again!

Another good “help maintain the city” tool I like and use: SeeClickFix. It is an interface to the city’s 311 service for reporting all sorts of issues. You can use the SeeClickFi phone app to take a photo and report stuff like sidewalk cracks, potholes, garbage, trees that need maintenance, and so on. Some of “my” issues get fixed and some don’t, but on the whole it’s a pretty nice interface where it is easy to see if there has been any action, or if others in the neighborhood agree about the issue.

Excerpt from A House by the Sea

Posted on by Liz

Reading Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction and loving it. Some great stories and essays – I have more to say in detail but for now a quick note and an excerpt from P.H. Lee’s “A House by the Sea”, which describes the life of the former residents of a certain basement in Omelas.

Do you believe it now? Can this really be how they live out their lives, so close to the City that they can hear the bells clamoring and the processions proceeding? Can they really live together, in a house by the sea? No? Let me tell you this, then. There used to be a doctor—a nice man with a real white doctor’s coat, who still lives in the City—who came out to their house every Wednesday to check up on them, but that didn’t work out, because he kept feeling uncomfortable and trying to euthanize them. So now, whenever one of them gets sick, a woman comes in on the train from Vallcoris. She doesn’t have a doctor’s coat. She just has a sweater. She doesn’t know about the basement, she doesn’t know about anything, not really. She just takes their pulse and asks them to cough, and leaves them with prescriptions, and no one tries to euthanize anyone.

Putting this in a sort of mood-file in my imagination, along with the title story of The Open Cage by Anzia Yezierska.

By Degrees and Dilatory Time by S.L. Huang, and Nisi Shawl’s The Things I Miss the Most also struck me as amazing – exploring the complexities of feelings about our bodyminds over time.

The ways of maps

Posted on by Liz

A friend was asking me some questions today about intersections of disability, gender, and the internet. What happens when creators of the web, or of applications, bring their identities to bear? Are there interesting examples?

I get asked questions like this fairly often: Show me a disabled woman of color who is like, inventing some entirely alternate reality! Or, something along the lines of, give me the name of someone who is “just like so-and-so famous white guy, but a (disabled) woman of color”. No one I can think of ever quite fits the requirements, in part because the questions are framed from a point of view of what we have now and the point of diversity is looking for something different outside of that frame! The differences may not be what you expect or want them to be. It is hard to answer the questions but I always try to offer some thoughts – usually just a few names or pointers to interesting web sites.

One aspect I could point to as a general principle, though, would be to look for people who are consciously creating experiences or works that are multi-layered and can be experienced in different ways. For example looking at the Disability Visibility Project, you can say, well, what is this? It offers many different experiences: blog text or Facebook posts, with image and video descriptions; podcasts with transcripts; oral histories, interviews, and personal connections; Twitter chats that connect people over an hour on a very low barrier to entry public discussion using particular hashtags. Or, thinking of Kinetic Light’s Descent: it’s a dance performance where there’s meticulous attention to the performance venue accessibility, audio descriptions, music, poems, narration, and 3-D printed representation of the stage for tactile participation. Doing those things is quite radical and yet it doesn’t mean inventing a new kind of internet or a whole new technology. It is bringing the tools to bear that we can and bringing all of our awareness into the game.

In theory, those tools could be built into our expectations of what an app, a web site, a video, or an image, are and how they are experienceable (or consumable, if you want to think of it as consumption, which I’m not sure that I do). They may be there, but they are not integrated as they might be (for example, have a look at the WordPress Gutenberg debacle!) And, in fact I think Kinetic Light has an app in development that is intended for use by other performers or performances, that would allow for the different “channels” of experience to be presented more easily (such as translations, transcriptions, descriptions, music, or other dimensions of experience).

I want to say more about that but first a little digression as the thought I was leading to is more about geography and embodiment. I think of all the efforts people are making to improve maps. What is shown on maps, in what level of granularity, how do we represent it. This depends deeply on our physical embodiment and how we traverse the landscape. A map is not just a door or a path – it can show something of the ways we might want to be in it (or not). I care not just about stairs and ramps and elevators, but about texture, cobblestones, bricks, gravel, dirt, grass, marble — for navigability but also for enjoyment or to prepare myself for extra pain. The SoundPrint project maps for noisy or quiet environments. We care about hot and cold, sunlight exposure, whether there is a view, a feeling of claustrophobia or limitlessness, whether children can run free or can be easily entertained and accommodated, and certainly about how easy and fast it will be to go to the bathroom. I think of projects like wikimapia which were going to gather photos and impressions from many people for particular points in space, and of my dream project of creating beautiful and useful MUD-like text description overlays on precise points in every direction, which could deepen over time as places change, to retain the ghosts of the past.

Work from home looks

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I really enjoyed these cartoons today:

There are 4 pages of work from home outfits of uncanny accuracy to how I normally dress at least, until noon or so. Some details vary, but I totally put my hair (short as it is) into a top of the head ponytail and I tuck my tattered pajamas into my (too big, mens’) socks. The t-shirt boob tuck is also just TOO REAL. I did wear actual pants today. My t-shirt is one that I got in 1988 at the Guinness factory in Dublin which has miraculously survived all this time with no holes and amazing softness.

The artist has an adorable etsy shop!

Rambling a little

Posted on by Liz

I’m curious to read the Commonweal series by Graydon Saunders going off a friend’s description and from the reviews. Everyone seems to agree it is strange.

First, imagine that you’re reading Master & Commander, except without any of the introduction to workings and terminology of a Napoleonic war era British navy sailing ship provided to the viewpoint character dr Stephen Maturin. Instead, it would be like reading the first person account of the operation by captain Jack Aubrey, written for people who are already familiar with both the world he exists in and the structure and organization of a military outfit.

and then

It’s military fantasy with no gendered pronouns (no, really), an interesting look at systems of government, obvious affection for the smallest details (you like logistics? get yer logistics here) that meant I came away feeling like I knew a whole lot more about artillery than I did when I started.

That’s plenty to get me interested!

This book isn’t on Amazon and so after a bit of digging around, I bought it from Google Books, found the epub download link, converted it in Calibre, and emailed it to my Kindle. That’s also how I read book manuscripts that people send me and stuff that I download from the Internet Archive or Project Gutenberg.

I had a good day today. Went to the doc for some routine tests and vaccinations, worked from a super nice cafe in the Castro where I could see the vintage F train cars go by, did some shopping & home again to work for the afternoon. It’s still such a relief to be able to breathe freely and see the blue sky after two weeks of wildfire smoke & filter masks.

Other people’s reactions to me in the Model CI continue to be odd, quite different from their reactions to me on the TravelScoot. I think it is a return to being perceived as more disabled in some mainstream (and likely quite wrong) way while the TravelScoot as I’ve observed many times tends to be seen as some sort of quirky toy, a hipster affectation, no matter how obvious it is I walk with a cane or how many blue accessibility symbol stickers I plaster all over it. The Model CI just reads as “wheelchair” though a fairly slick looking one so it is a quieter interaction and people are more embarrassed to either look at me or meet my glance. I got followed around a store for a bit as they tried to obliquely figure out if I was about to shoplift madly or what. (What.)

I figured out a really good setup for the undercarriage with a big sturdy shopping bag that has 4 handles. Carabiners clip the back handles to the spots where the rigid plastic basket would clamp on. The front handles looped around the nubbly posts at the front sides of the seat which are meant to have maybe a light and a coffee cup holder (they will have those soon, as soon as I can get to a bike shop for the holder and charge my new bike light).

In the barrage of horrible events

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It keeps coming into my mind today how “we” are tear gassing asylum seeking families with children at the border today.

Ridiculous, and horrifying, as I picture the minds of the people who fired tear gas at the crowds today, at children. I don’t usually get all “think of the children” because violence is horrible for anyone. Here, I do feel some particular outrage. It is so terrible to think of disrespecting someone who walked across half a continent to get to the border. Instead of the respect and safety and asylum they could be offered, “we” met them with this brutal cruelty. It’s shameful.

The only comforting thing is hundreds of “us” on this side of the border marched in support and welcome.

I don’t know what to do in practical support myself, but am writing Feinstein, Harris, and Pelosi and will look for somewhere effective to donate. More to CARECEN seems good. Also thinking about Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project. Whoever seems like they know how to help the most effectively right now. And I will just keep on doing my part in the world I guess.

Warcross is awesome!!!

Posted on by Liz

Warcross continues to deliver the goods! I love this book. The gamer/hacker heroine in her ripped up jeans and flannel shirt has now gone through the first draft for the Great Games or whatever they are called, and was picked first to be on the Phoenix Riders team even though she is a lowly level 28. The captain of her team, Asher Wing, is a wheelchair user, which made me instantly happy. I was trying to figure out from the description what kind of chair he had and I am thinking powerchair since his headrest was mentioned. Another named character on an opposing team was a former Paralympian.

Scenes of clever hacking… loving descriptions of leaping around and fighting in the Game . . . And she has moved from her first swanky hotel room to some sort of team training mansion where she has a suite with a rooftop patio with her own private infinity pool.

They have also been to a great party at a disco which was seamlessly wheelchair accessible with great augmented reality. There are so many adorable details like that there is a (female) character named Hamilton.

I also dig that we see more of Emika’s motivation and backstory for the high school hack that got her arrested.

This is like the perfect antidote for the boring sexist barfbag that was Ready Player One. It’s assuaging my soul!

Secret Tides of Rebel Librarians, and a powerup

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Some recent books.

I re-read The Black Tides of Heaven (and then The Red Threads of Fortune) by J.Y. Yang, sparked by a Habitica challenge. I love the characters & their angsty drama, and the worldbuilding & politics and the magic/tech system.

Property of the Rebel Librarian by Allison Varnes. A fun book about a bookish middle schooler fighting oppression and censorship. The adults are so over the top, firing the librarian & throwing away most of the books in the library. Books are contraband! I enjoyed this and followed its shout outs to …

The Secret Horses of Briar Hill by Megan Shepherd. Saw someone say that it is as good as The Secret Garden. It didn’t quite get there for me, but it is lovely — its heroine is a girl in a TB hospital for children out in the country in England during WWII. A depressing atmosphere of coughing, greyness, blustery winter, eating soup made from half-rotten onions. She sees winged horses in the mirrors, writing letters with the Horse Lord. Where it fell a little short for me is in her dealing with her trauma – and her actual changes of heart as well as everyone else’s. That, and if you can’t put a piece of paper colored with pencil out in the snow and rain how were the other things surviving? (Sometimes, I can’t help logicking the fantasy novels. Sorry.) It’s a good book.

A book I didn’t much like – Blue Collar Space. Old school feeling, along with the old school annoying gratuitious sexism to where there are theoretically equal women on the spaceships but somehow their agency is always undermined – they have to be rescued or are helpless or they do the thing by accident – they don’t quite achieve the asimovian squeal but it’s there…. absolutely maddening. Oh no wait, the one story with the teenage girl talking to her Daddy DID achieve it. I nearly forgot. Anyway, this book can bite me.

Currently in mid-read of Warcross by Marie Lu. Oh wow! This is the most ridiculous and indulgent book ever! Our heroine is an older teenager desperately trying to survive her first year out of “group homes” and deal with being in debt, about to be evicted. She is a badass hacker and bounty hunter of the world’s most popular game, Warcross, which EVERYONE PLAYS. Did I mention she has a skateboard and rainbow hair and a fabulous, meaningful, full sleeve tattoo?

I have just got to the bit where she has gotten off the private jet and is in a swanky hotel in Tokyo, freaking out at all the delicious room service food, and the comfy bed, and how the city is much more integrated with the Game – you level up constantly just while living your life, and the virtual overlay of people and buildings and the entire city is gorgeous – their pets, their levels and achievements, their weird outfits, virtual environments — Really makes me hark back to how people thought VR or AR was going to be.

I mentioned the skateboard? And how she wakes up in the hotel and puts on her only outfit which happens to be WHAT I WEAR ALL THE TIME ie a tshirt, ripped jeans, and a red flannel shirt. Thanks Marie Lu for gratifying my every desire in this weird dystopian future. Yes. More fantasy novels with soft hotel beds, a view of a glittering city, room service fried chicken that is better than anything you’ve ever eaten, and a pleasant “ding” indicating that you just leveled up.