![]() ![]() They live in a shared shack, or a final vestige of the commons. ![]() He and his small band of followers, who by then have adopted some kind of dress and mode of worship to distinguish themselves, promptly have a mass burning of Lutheran (or Anglican) hymnals and literature. So he promptly breaks away to create the Community of True Inspiration or God’s Real People or We are the Realest Ones, etc. There should be no mediation between man and God, no tyrant king bequeathing spiritual access. So-and-so Jansson or Van Wort of somewhere-or-other, Sweden or Germany or England, decides the Lutherans, or the Anglicans, were sent by the devil. Ralph Waldo Emerson famously wrote a letter to Thomas Carlyle in 1840, saying, “We are all a little wild here with numberless projects of social reform … Not a reading man but has a draft of a new community in his waistcoat pocket.” He wrote this letter while he himself was experimenting at Brook Farm in Western Massachusetts, and while the country was entering into what writer Amanda Kolson Hurley calls “Peak Commune.” There is a lot of layering in the story of utopianism in America, and the general thrust of that unfolding sounds a little like this: There have, to be clear, been a lot of such experiments, especially in the mid-19th century. You’ll often find that, for instance, a permaculture intentional community in rural Oregon today bought the land from the Jesus People Shiloh Youth Revival in the 1980s, and that they bought it from some descendants of the Aurora Colony, and so forth. The weird thing is you don’t have to do that much digging before you hit another stratum. Once an 18th- or 19th-century utopian community had cultivated a tract for communal living, unsurprisingly, the land was primed for the next generation’s version. Byrne's persona became sunnier and more communal, as you could see in Jonathan Demme's great 1984 concert film Stop Making Sense, where Byrne and his fellow Talking Heads exude sheer collective joy.The physical layering of utopian life on particular plots of land is not so unusual in the United States. What liberated him seems to have been his encounter with Black music, both American funk and the complex rhythms of Brazil. With his on-stage tics and spasms, he seemed a bit like Psycho's Norman Bates, if Norman hadn't turned into his dead mother but instead gone to art school. Back in his early, post-punk days, he was almost a parody of the nerdy, angst-riddled white guy. In a way, the show echoes Byrne's own artistic transformation. While Byrne starts alone on the stage, by the grand finale, he and his co-stars are marching through the aisles singing the cheery song "Road to Nowhere." Everybody's together on-screen - even the audience. It's about men and women from a diversity of races and cultures coming together to create something new, alive and beautiful that helps people connect. It's the show itself.įor Byrne, utopia is about embracing difference. Yet his vision of utopia is not any kind of political program. And yes, Byrne points out that many of his cast members are immigrants, as is he - a naturalized American born in Scotland. Yes, he gives a little speech about the need to vote - but he doesn't say who for. You'll be relieved to hear that Byrne is not hectoring. It's about conjuring an image of an American utopia. In fact, the show isn't actually about burning anything down. The answers range from the welcoming good spirits of "Everybody's Coming to My House" to the rowdier energies found in Talking Heads' party song "Burning Down the House." American Utopia features a series of songs that ask questions about the meaning of home. Thanks to wireless technology, everyone moves around the stage in seemingly total freedom.īyrne's work has long been obsessed with the many ways of being imprisoned - in oneself, in an addiction to things, in a meaningless life - and equally attuned to different forms of escape. He's gradually joined by his equally barefoot co-stars, also uniformed in silver-gray suits, who sing, dance and play hand-held instruments as they perform nearly 20 Byrne songs, from his Talking Heads classics to his more recent solo work. First Listen Review: David Byrne, 'American Utopia'Īmerican Utopia starts with Byrne, barefoot in a silver-gray suit, holding a model of the brain and pondering different ideas of connection.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |