EVERYONE about knows the transformation of Ebenezer Scrooge. Dickens also wrote a justifiably less-well-known Christmas story, The Chimes, in which an economist, Filer, appears a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.

An early attempt at the Gradgrind character in Hard Times, Filer, like Thomas Malthus, clearly believes the poor will always be with us and will always be miserable. He justifies Carlyles dismissal of political economy as the dismal science.

Yet economics need not be like that. Throughout his two main works, Theory Of Moral Sentiments and The Wealth Of Nations, Adam Smith maintained a confident optimism that society would improve over time. Knowledge, embodied in literature, would overcome ignorance and superstition and would lead to the widespread cultivation of public virtue.

As 2021 stutters to its locked down close, and we invest hope in 2022 as the year of renewed liberty, in which we reduce the pandemic to a mere annoyance, let us look back to the Scottish Enlightenment for inspiration about how to build a better country. This week and next, I am setting out ideas which might go into a book.

Edinburgh in the winter of 1746. The city occupied by British government troops. The council dismissed for surrendering the city too readily to the Jacobites in September 1745. The university suspended for fear of its students spreading sedition. And a young man, Adam Smith, barely 23, launched his career by giving public lectures on rhetoric, the ancient art of arguing well. The Jacobite rebellion of 1745-46 had come surprisingly close to displacing the Hanoverian King George II. British involvement in European wars had left Scotlands military defences almost completely unmanned. The Jacobite army had been able initially to evade the four UK army regiments in Scotland and then to defeat them humiliatingly.

But the rebellion had been a last, desperate gamble. As the rebel army headed south, it became clear that its cause lacked the popular support necessary for it to succeed. The final defeat at Culloden bound Scotland firmly into the United Kingdom.

Over the next four decades, clever Scots took part in what we know as the Enlightenment. Meeting together regularly, often in supper clubs, they argued over almost every subject, but most frequently about the principles of a science of man, and how to apply those principles so that society would be well-ordered.

That is the context in which we should read Smiths books. In Robert Heilbroners phrase, he was the first of the worldly philosophers.

Sir John Sinclairs work has enabled historians to deduce much about the state of Scottish society

READ MORE:From a stock market crash to Covid what to expect in 2022

This is to think of the 18th-century Enlightenment as an intellectual response to nearly two centuries of simmering religious conflict, which had often spilled over into civil war. Across the Holy Roman Empire, the Thirty Years War, in which one-third of the population died, was an experience never to be repeated.

In this Age of Reason, the political context in Scotland gave a distinctive edge to discussion. For young men such as Adam Smith, direct experience of violent conflict was a seminal experience. They saw it as a disastrous failure of politics. They aimed to learn from it, and to ensure that it would never happen again.

An important element of that was the need to secure what we might now call losers consent. The Jacobite defeat on the battlefield meant that the problem was to define how to manage Scotland as a stateless nation.

FORMER rebels could be part of the ongoing debates. And if they could argue well, and persuasively, then their ideas might be adopted. The ideal, then, was inclusion.

In this intellectual ferment, knowledge became almost entirely secular, with the assumption that people should be able to find natural causes to explain everything which they observed. God was departing; literature was in the ascendant.

Imaginative projections, predominant in classical thought, could have no place. David Hume famously dismissed such metaphysical thinking, arguing instead that knowledge required experience and observation.

Reading The Wealth of Nations, a modern economist will be struck by the lack of such evidence. Adam Smith spent years carefully refining his argument. He had a fund of anecdotes, but very little systematic data.

Quite simply, at the time, there was scarcely any available to him, especially when compared with astronomys basis in more than 2000 years of careful observation. Enlightenment scholars realised that they needed to initiate a similar tradition as part of their social scientific enquiry.

And so, in 1790, Sir John Sinclair of Ulbster began what should be considered as perhaps the ultimate expression of the Enlightenment: The Statistical Account Of Scotland. He sent a questionnaire to the minister of every parish in Scotland, inquiring about its history, topography, climate, settlement, industry, customs and much else happily mixing up anything which might allow him to set out the wealth, and wellbeing, of the country. Over the next decade, he was able to compile the responses, which were eventually published as 21 volumes of essays.

With its hundreds of participants, and free-form replies to the questionnaire, it was an early attempt at citizen social science.Sinclairs work has enabled historians to deduce much about the state of Scottish society in the 1790s. Yet, acquiring such an understanding requires a huge amount of work because its compilers had no template of how to collect and present data. In all its glorious complexity, it is at once fascinating and infuriating.

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Let's look to the Scottish Enlightenment to help build a better country - The National

INTRODUCTION

It has been an enormous project to regain the spirited momentum that many arts and cultural organizations in Utahs creative industries had amassed before the pandemic brought everything to a ground stop in the early spring of 2020. With resilience and durability exercised to their intrinsic advantages for respective organizations, many creative producers also have used the moment to take more risks, forge new alliances and expand their networks. They also are producing work that jolts audiences back into thinking critically about their worldviews and supporting efforts that seek to put real action into the talk about fortifying equity, diversity, access and inclusion in the realm of creatIve expression.

Utahs politics may be stuck in reverse but the states demographic portrait continues to change dramatically. The 2020 census showed Utahs population grew by 18.4% over the last decade, making it the countrys fastest growing state, easily outstripping the national pace of growth in the same period, which was 7.4%. By the end of this decade, many cities and towns in Utah will see a new generation of potential leaders with far more enlightened and earnest perspectives about the states history and its capacity to make way for a population that looks far different than at any point in the last 125 years when Utah was granted statehood. There already is growing pressure to push the way toward greater sociopolitical enlightenment, even as the antediluvian resistance fights desperately in a last stand to sustain the status quo. It is through the infrastructure of the arts and cultural communities where that pressure could mobilize fresh thinking and different mindsets.

The entrepreneurship of Utahs arts and cultural industries has meant that the state performs well above its per capita expectations, a point frequently made in The Utah Review. With resilience, there is durability and a recognition that locally produced work is indispensable not only because it is home grown but also because it is translatable and transferable to other communities in the epiphanies that spring from original work. Regarding durability, several organizations this year either have marked or about to mark major anniversary milestones. The Utah Museum of Contemporary Art (UMOCA) marked its 90th anniversary this year. Salt Lake Acting Company is celebrating its 50th anniversary. Three organizations have marked or are about to celebrate their 45th anniversary: the Gina Bachauer International Piano Foundation, NOVA Chamber Music Series and the Utah Arts Festival. Plan-B Theatre completed its 30th anniversary season.Pygmalion Productions, a theatrical company founded in Ogden and dedicated to stories about women by female playwrights, also marked its 25th anniversary in 2020 as well as its 15th year as one of the companies in residence at the Rose Wagner Center for Performing Arts.

Dance continues to wear the empress crown for the performing arts in Salt Lake City. Ballet West premiered a free, public documentary series of nine episodes on social media platforms In The Balance: Ballet for a Lost Year about the behind-the-scenes preparation for a November 2020 concert production that almost was canceled because of the pandemic. The twin giants of contemporary dance Repertory Dance Theatre (RDT), which marked its 55th anniversary last season, and Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company returned to live performances in superb fashion. Ririe-Woodbury opened its 58th season with new works by Daniel Charon, the companys artistic director, and Keerati Jinakunwiphat, a young Thai-American choreographer who dances with Kyle Abrahams A.I.M and was named in Dance Magazines 2021 25 to Watch. RDT opened its 56th season with a concert of dance works by Lar Lubovitch, one of the countrys most distinguished choreographers. Last month, the company brought Virginie Mcne from the Martha Graham Dance Company to stage two works from the 1930s by the legendary choreographer. Also, internationally renowned choreographer Ihsan Rustem, who is based in Zurich, set a new work for RDT dance artists.

Independent dance concerts also have become popular in the area. For example, Dan Higgins is an RDT dance artist in his eighth year with the company and who is about to take on a new role in the company next year as both guest artist and resident choreographer. This year, he co-produced two concerts, as part of the RDT Link Series. The first was in June with dancer and choreographer Laura Brick where the two artists gave the first live dance performance in the Rose Wagner Center for Performing Arts since the pandemic shuttered public shows. The second, in November, was co-produced with Rebecca Aneloski, featuring new works by And Artists and Higgins.

Salt Lake Citys independent theater companies also are setting the pace for staging works by Utah playwrights, particularly those by women and persons of color. Plan-B Theatre and SLAC are among the foremost leaders anywhere in the country on this metric. Likewise, NOVA Chamber Music Series, with the unique arrangement of having members of the Fry Street Quartet as its music directors, is in the midst of an already thrilling season best described, in the words of Robert Waters, the quartets first violinist, as not your grandparents chamber music concerts of Mozart and Beethoven. There is only one Beethoven work in the season and two works from before 1700 and just a handful of works from the 19th and 20th centuries, including Clara Schumann, Prokofiev, Brahms, Dvok, Bartk and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. One work is a 1944 string trio written by Gideon Klein which is believed to be the last piece of music he wrote while imprisoned at a Nazi concentration camp. The rest is an impressive bounty of 21st century composers, with a solid representation by female composers. For example, female composers Clarice Assad, Gabriela Lena Frank and Jessie Montgomery will have works performed on two separate concerts.

These accumulating developments sharpen a point that has become central to The Utah Reviews chronicle of the artistic and creative works placed under the aegis of the Utah Enlightenment. As mentioned in previous years, they do more to serve than the purpose of art for arts sake. They elevate the contemporary experience with the sum of its tensions, problems, conflicts, disappointments and crises to an enthralling sensation of healing, revelation, atonement and empowerment.

This years list includes nine first-time mentions. The following top 10 moments are not ranked in any particular order.

TOP 10 MOMENTS OF THE UTAH ENLIGHTENMENT IN 2021

One of this years Utah Arts Festival highlights came in the form of an outstanding dance commission concert produced by Allison DeBona and Rex Tilton, Ballet West artists who also are the co-founders of the artmotion Ballet School. Their efforts set new standards in the festivals dance commission program, with five works, some of which were performed with live music, and featuring Ballet West artists, including company soloists and principals. In particular, Experience by Chase OConnell was a spectacular closer in every regard. OConnells work made full effective use of the Festival Stage, featuring 18 dancers and three pairs of principals. OConnells choreography magnified the inherent value of the recorded music including Architect, by Kerry Muzzey in a Chamber Orchestra of London recording and Ludovico Einaudis In a Time Lapse, Experience. There is a special gift in a choreographer who elevates music that sometimes can seem quite so ordinary to enrich the dimension of its emotional pull, and the movement set for this piece accomplished that with abundant results. The three pairs of principals were excellent but the performance of Katlyn Addison and Hadrial Diniz stood out especially.

The year heralded the confirmation of a golden age of public and street art with large murals being produced for shows including the Utah Museum of Fine Arts (UMFA), Utah Museum of Contemporary Art (UMOCA) and Ogden Contemporary Arts (OCA). Making an impressive presence in all three venues is the locally based trio known as the Roots Art Kollective (RAK) Miguel Galaz, Alan Ochoa and Luis Novoa.

It was RAK which helped organize the UMFA mural project 2020: From Here on Out, as artists were selected by a committee of community partners including Artes de Mxico en Utah,The University of Utahs Department of Art and Art History, University Neighborhood Partners and the Utah Division of Multicultural Affairs. As UMFA senior curator Whitney Tassie said in a prepared statement, We developed this exhibition with Roots to acknowledge the great work being created as well as to continue important local dialogue.

RAKs murals signify the expanding cultural presence embodied in the tectonic shifts in Utahs demographics and the blossoming prospects of the Utah Enlightenment. For UMOCAs All Wall exhibition in the museums main gallery, RAK produced a commanding piece titled, Colibr dorado. Effusive in radiant optimism, there was the hummingbird, a symbol of a new joyous day, emerging from the pandemic.

For the UMFA piece, easily triple the size of the UMOCA mural, the trio created Fuerza del Amor, which includes beautifully rendered graphic text on opposite sides of the mural. On the left, in English, is the phrase, Find strength in love to heal, while on the right, in Spanish, the text reads, Encuentra fuerza en el amor.

For OCAs exhibition Vida, Muerte, Justicia | Life, Death, Justice, they produced Amor Eterno, resplendent in the incorporated symbols of the Day of the Dead in Aztec mysticism and Monarch butterflies, the definitive representation of transformation in life. Following a signature trademark in their other murals, RAK turned to musical lyricism in Spanish with calligraphy inspired by songs such as Facundo Cabrals No soy de aqu ni soy de all, Chavela Vargas Las simples cosas and Juan Gabriels Amor eterno.

RAKs work has an unmistakable signature attached to it, in its many iterations, which reflect core interests of each artist. The RAK artists have developed a symbiotic relationship over the last five years. As Ochoa says, We really have a strong sense of trust with each other. Indeed, their murals convey a potent sense of lyricism, fueled in part by their interests in older generation Mexican songs and music as well as their home countrys canon of poetry. RAK also produced murals for two SLC homeless resource centers, a project coordinated by the Salt Lake City Arts Council.

Utah filmmakers are continuing to gain attention in numerous venues. Winning the Fear No Filmmaker Award in the Utah Arts Festivals 2021 Fear No Film slate of short films was Luis Fernando Puente for La luna y el colibr (The Moon and the Hummingbird). Representing the film school at Brigham Young University, Puente helmed the film as an outstanding allegorical narrative highlighting the tensions of immigration as seen from those who migrate. It is not political but it emphasizes what is at stake personally, as immigrants wonder if they can truly let go and move on and perhaps deciding if staying with loved ones is more important than their destination of migration. Puente recruited a richly talented crew, which included Oscar Ignacio Jimnez, one of the states most sought after directors of photography for film (e.g., The Killing of Two Lovers, which premiered at Sundance in 2020 and was among last years Top 10 Moments of The Utah Enlightenment).

Puente, a Monterrey native from the Mexican state of Nuevo Len, recently surpassed the crowdfunding goal for his Kickstarter project, which will lead to a new narrative short film, I have no tears, and I must cry. In this film, he crafts a narrative about a young woman, a recent immigrant to the U.S., and her husband, who is an American citizen. The film talks about the anxiety and stress of waiting for the immigration process to proceed on a timely basis. Puente is a filmmaker to watch closely and the production team he has assembled for this project, which includes Jimnez, assures that this latest short film will become a major award-winner on the festival circuit.

Last season, Plan-B Theatre premiered works by several Utah playwrights in audio-only productions. Among them was Matthew Ivan Bennetts Art & Class, which was inspired in part by a 2017 incident at Lincoln Elementary School in Utahs Cache County, which led to art teacher Mateo Rueda losing his job. Rueda came under fire when he showed his students reproductions of classic art works, some of which portrayed nude figures, that were pulled from The Art Box postcard collection in the schools library.

As The Utah Review noted in April, in a long string of original productions written by Utah playwrights, Plan-B Theatre has scored many grand slams. Bennetts plays are part of that impressive record. But, in Art & Class, extraordinary for many reasons, Plan-B set a new height of excellence. Bennetts Art & Class stands with Eric Samuelsens Borderlands (2011), one of the companys most successful productions and one of the greatest works of the Utah Enlightenment.

Bennett stands out for his facility as a playwright to synthesize the relevant problems and issues that truly matter in Utah but also impart timely lessons that extend well beyond the Land of Zions borders. In Art & Class, the emotional battles ultimately intersect and become intertwined between and among all four main characters, notably as issues of immigration, academic freedom, unintentional racism, self esteem, grief, social status, faith, suicide and addiction join art censorship and aesthetics in the plays holistic canvas. Bennett wisely leaves the ending open, inviting listeners to discuss and suggest where the story goes after the 110-minute audio production has ended. The cast delivered an exceptional rendering in the audio production, even more remarkable given that, at no time, were the actors ever in the same location during recording: Flo Bravo (as Luca, the teacher), Bijan Hosseini (Riley, as Lucas husband), Roger Dunbar (Leland Hess, as the school principal) and Stephanie Howell (Mindy Van Tassel, the parent who brings the matter to the schools attention). Indeed, it is a play that should receive a fully staged production. Its dramatic punch is astounding.

In its return to live concerts this season, the Gina Bachauer International Piano Foundation has organized a series that stands out among the memorably innovative of recent years. The opener was a blockbuster featuring the husband-and-wife piano duo of Ran Dank and Soyeon Kate Lee. The concert also featured a world premiere: Texu Kims Flow and Composition for solo piano. It coincided with the awarding of The Barlow Prize, one of Utahs signature composer commission programs. Chosen from among 574 submissions coming from 41 countries, Kim, a San Diego State University music faculty member who also is among the most recently prodigious recipients of commissions, received the $12,000 prize from The Barlow Endowment for Music Composition at Brigham Young University.

Lee produced a memorable premiere of Kims work, born out of a deep love for both artists Korean culture. In particular, Kim musically interpreted the motions and technique of Korean calligraphy, also known as Seoye and which involves both Hanja and Hangul. This is the instinctive love of a tradition that stands out for more than its elegant technique. There are multiple dimensions of how this particular form of calligraphy has evolved in modern Korea, retaining its classic artistic structures but weaving in appropriately the new lines of influence. It was a perfect moment in the series return to live performances. The Bachauer series is a stellar fixture in the Utah music scene and its 45th anniversary season is an exciting celebration that will continue through the upcoming spring.

Since Jorge Rojas left his position as director of education and engagement at UMFA to devote more time to his work as an independent artist, teacher and performer, the momentum has expanded rapidly. Born in Mexico where he also went to art school, he has divided his time between Salt Lake City, New York City and Seattle. Last spring, he installed Flower of Life, among the largest corn mandalas he has ever created, at UMOCA. As The Utah Review noted at the time, Rojas is driven by the sacred geometry that leads to the ancient symbol of the Flower of Life. It is perhaps the purest icon shared among all ancient civilizations and faiths, rendered by each in their own unique expression. Made entirely of corn kernels placed by hand, the mandala epitomized an extraordinary exercise of patience. In preparing to install the largest corn mandala of his career to date, Rojas engaged in a ritual of fasting, meditation and prayer. He burned incense made from Mexican resin, a substance of sacred significance to the Maya and Aztec civilizations. His personal meditative care was crucial to the eye for detail needed in installing a mandala on a 10-foot by 10-foot platform. Taking two full days to install the mandala, Rojas and his two children were joined by UMOCA curator Jared Steffensen and his assistant. Up to an estimated 200 pounds of seeds were used.

Rojas is a multidisciplinary artist who works in numerous genres and media. For example, he has performed as the Tortilla Oracle, which was inspired by his experience of reading tarot cards. As the Tortilla Oracle, Rojas asks individuals to place their hands in mixing a ball of masa dough, which is then made into a fresh tortilla on the spot before he performs divinatory readings.

It has been a year of many highlights for Rojas. Last summer, he became the first artist-in-residence at the Kimball Art Center in Park City, incorporating a new edition of a project he initiated in Houston. The genesis came from Rojas engagement with the 1949 novel Hombres de Maz by Miguel ngel Asturias, the Guatemalan writer who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1967. It is centered around the belief that the peoples flesh was made from corn.

During the fall, he joined Mara del Mar Gonzlez-Gonzlez, assistant professor of global modern and contemporary art history at Weber State University, in curating the exceptional exhibition Vida, muerte, justicia: Life, Death, Justice: Latin American and Latinx Art for the 21st Century at Ogden Contemporary Arts. Just recently, Rojas and fellow Utah artist Vicky Lowe returned to the States after representing Utah at the Binational Convention of Mexican artists in the U.S., as arranged by the Instituto de los Mexicanos en el Exterior SRE. They met with other Mexican artists at the Mexican Embassy in Mexico City.

Creative entrepreneurs are becoming prominent in numerous fields of art and music. Among them are Zac Ivie and Dumb Luck, hip hop artists who performed at this years Utah Arts Festival. The musicians are outstanding exemplars of the resilience that artists have demonstrated during the last two years when a pandemic scotched live performances. Ivies indie label Get Write Records has become a valuable conduit for Utahs hip hop artists, as they become more visible and significant in the local music scene. Many locals know Ivies All for U, which was released in 2019 on the day of the Pac-12 championship game pitting The University of Utah against Oregon (which unfortunately the Utes lost). Ivie performs with Ocelot, whom he describes as a great MC, which included an appearance at the recent Das Energi Festival at Saltair. Ivie has opened for many outstanding hip hop artists, including Talib Kweli, Ghostface Killa and Hieroglyphics. Next month, during The Sundance Film Festival, Ivie and Ocelot will join artists including Chali 2na, who has been associated with the groups Jurassic 5 and Ozmati, and DJ Logic in a Jan. 27 show at The Cabin in Park City.

Dumb Luck, who has performed with Ivie, also has been on the stage with artists including Elzhi, Bronze Nazareth and George Watsky. His output suggests a wide range of traditional hip hop styles along with boom bat beats and punch lines which can evoke either gripping raw emotion or lyrics where he is comfortable poking fun at himself. Ideally positioned for the duality of his artistry, his latest music signifies the results of a long, steady evolution as a self-taught musician who absorbs the trial-and-error lessons with growing skill and confidence.

Before returning to live performances, dance companies tinkered with the concept of virtual programs to explore dances complicated relationship with filming, which started historically by archiving performances. As The Utah Review explained last winter, while creating dance specifically for the screen already had been gaining traction long before the pandemic hit, many choreographers also were interested in finding a third way. This led to a hybrid approach that strives to replicate as best as possible the kinetic effects and impact of a live stage performance of dance.

A memorable example, Ririe-Woodbury Dance Companys Home Run delivered on its title promise eminently in an hour-long film that comprised six pieces presented as if they would have been part of a documentary film festival program. Five of the six pieces were premieres, including works by Molly Heller and a series of three short compositions created by pairs of Ririe-Woodbury dance artists. Daniel Charons Winter Light was inspired in part by the energy of absorbing the cold open sequences, for which the popular West Wing television series was known. The work was a veritable showcase of the movement excellence that one links directly to Ririe-Woodburys core of six dance artists. Charon filmed, edited and scored the music entirely for the piece, which was performed in The Monarch complex space in Ogden, Utah. This piece alone was worthy to be submitted to any shorts program for a documentary film festival.

To reiterate a point made several months ago in The Utah Review, there is no pending question that would challenge the assertion that Roger Beningtons Psychopomp deserves a place in the Utah Enlightenment canon.

The 2017 play received its U.S. premiere in Salt Lake City, with Paul Kiernan in the role of a Mormon father whose personal and economic fortunes have collapsed. Kiernan was joined by Tyler Fox, who took on the role of a son whose own troubles point to a deadend that he sees as inescapable. Both actors gave brilliant performances to a brilliant script.

Benington led Tooth & Nail Theatre for many years before moving to New York City. The script was commissioned in London for production, which premiered at the Canal Cafe Theatre. The SLC venue carried a bit of irony, as it was once the gym in a former Mormon chapel, now known as The Art Castle, owned and operated by Utah Arts Alliance. The space is surrounded by closets, which served handily critical elements in the plays storyline.

Benington laid out a finely nuanced critique of Mormonism that navigated away from the doctrinal pillars, which formally bind the faith to its members. Instead, he zeroed in on the irreconcilable paradoxes of satisfying the cultural demands of perfectionism, which eclipse a sincere pursuit to accept the confessional premises of faith on its most basic spiritual expectations. Both father and son were so pained by the sting of their respective failings to achieve the idealized form of perfectionism that they became ever more endangered and vulnerable to the lure of shapeless, faithless excuses, which permitted them to avoid a serious personal reckoning with their greatest shortcomings. Mormonism is no different than any other confessional faith in falling short to provide perfect answers to personal or spiritual crises or to soothe the pain of loss, disappointment and rejection. In Psychopomp, the multidimensional betrayal engulfed and blinded both of the characters, thereby shutting them off from attempting to find solace as a path toward abittersweet, poignant sense of atonement.

One of the most successful immersive theatrical experiences of the year came from the Myriad Dance Company. The dance artists handled the challenge of the immersive performance experience with excellent results in its restaged production of Overslept: Obscura. The show was presented at Dreamscapes, the immersive art museum at The Gateway, which has been an ongoing project of the Utah Arts Alliance and Utah Artists and Builders. In fact, this was the last show at The Gateway location, as Dreamscapes is expected to reopen in the summer of 2022 in a new venue.

A splendid show, it allowed audience members to freely explore the museums spaces as dance artists performed choreography that followed a story outline and text elements set by R.J. Walker. Audience members embarked on a journey akin to that of Professor Liddell, a character clad in fancy lounging pajamas and whose dreams encompassed his search for the ideal person of his romantic desires.

The company had premiered the show last May but then decided to restage it, based partly on audience feedback. The prevailing vibe in Overslept: Obscura was actually lighthearted, coy, coquettish and teasing. Professor Liddell as with so many of us is confounded by the complications of distinguishing romantic idealization from fantasy. It was one of the most gratifying experiences in the Dreamscapes museum for a theatrical production.

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Lots of new energy: The top 10 moments of The Utah Enlightenment in 2021 - The Utah Review

Let's share hope for enlightened New Year

U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson said of his friend Rep. John Lewis, who both lived through segregation and have now passed, both so deeply respected, "John and I represent how things can change if people really want them to."

Perhaps we can hope for a sliver of light in the coming year, in which those who represent us can take a step to find enlightenment, common ground a miracle awakening where leaders might put country over party.

I don't want to believe that the example of statesmen like Republican Isakson and Democrat Lewis, representatives who crossed the aisle to talk to the other side and actually talk, are gone forever, replaced with those who live in the dark, and don't work for us anymore, but rather for special interests themselves.

I'm probably naive, but I need to see past the despair. I don't know that I can stand another year of ugly partisan warfare. Pray for courage that some may walk into the light.

Kerry Lansford

Food co-op would be community boon

Chattanooga needs a food co-op. A community-run food co-op that is open to the public allows access to more sustainably sourced local foods, and it helps stimulate the local economy because the money made in the co-op would get recycled into the Chattanooga community. This community-run grocery store would give opportunities to local farmers and businesses to sell their products and give consumers a way to give back to their community.

A co-op would allow Chattanooga residents to be more sustainable shoppers and would help decrease plastic and packaging waste by allowing members of the community to shop in bulk. Access to high-quality organic produce is expensive in grocery stores like Whole Foods and Publix, and shopping there helps the corporations. The only other option for locally sourced organic produce is the farmers' market, which is not accessible to many people because it is only open a couple of days a week and there are many people who work during the hours of operation. Co-ops offer higher quality food at lower prices and provide community support.

Reagan Madden

Dual justice system continues in U.S.

A far-left North Dakota man with ties to Antifa was convicted in federal court of destruction of government property for attacking a Republican U.S. senator's office with an ax. He was sentenced to probation and fined $2,784. And, the FBI gave him back his ax. A man wearing buffalo horns (Chewbacca Man) walked into the Capitol on Jan 6, never attacking or hurting anyone and didn't destroy any property. Yet, he got sentenced to 41 months in prison.

With clear and convincing evidence, Kyle Rittenhouse was found not guilty and that he acted in self-defense in his trial in Wisconsin. The far left and the fake media still call him a murderer. On the same day of the Rittenhouse verdict, a Black Florida man was found not guilty via self-defense in the shooting death of his girlfriend. This was despite the fact that he was shooting at police officers and was in criminal possession of a firearm. Not a word from the fake media that this guy is a murderer.

This should convince anyone that there's a dual system of justice with political persecution against conservatives and Trump supporters.

Gary Hayes

Ooltewah

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Opinion: Let's share hope for enlightened New Year and other letters to the editors - Chattanooga Times Free Press

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Photo-Illustration: Vulture. Photos: HBO

The Character: Kelli Prenny, the fourth corner of Issa Dees close college friend group. Always prepared with a clever quip or comeback, Kelli was originally introduced as the party friend; in the final season, shes California sober (minus Champagne, which aint alcohol), on a path to enlightenment, and intent onbecoming BFFs with all her friends moms.

The Actor: Natasha Rothwell, 41, a longtime improv performer and comedy writer whose rsum includes a stint on SNL. She was the first writer hired on Insecure and was later cast as Kelli after a table read during the shows first season.

Essential Traits: Unfiltered, off-the-cuff one-liners; a ride-or-die mentality for her friends (keeping it real when theyre out of line but going to bat in front of enemies); an inexplicable beef with Issas brother, Ahmal; the life of the party, whether shes drinking and flirting or stoned at her goddaughters birthday celebration.

When Insecure was pitched and picked up by HBO, it was a show focused on best friends Issa and Molly navigating life and love in Los Angeles. Fresh off writing for SNL, Rothwell took a meeting with HBOs comedy chief Amy Gravitt, who identified Rothwell as a good fit for the room. Rothwell then spoke with creator and star Issa Rae and showrunner Prentice Penny. I didnt know if I was gonna get it, but I knew I loved talking to both of them and their thoughts about this world they were gonna create, Rothwell remembers. She was the first writer hired for the writers room, before Kelli was even the seed of an idea.

Once the room was assembled, writer Ben Dougan helped formulate the origins of Kelli Prenny. There was a need to fill Issas world with real people aside from Molly and Lawrence, Issas longtime boyfriend, and Dougan pitched Kelli as the eye-roll friend: a truth-teller who says what she thinks and thinks what she says. Initially, eye-roll friend was supposed to be judgmental, which ultimately became a version of Tiffany, says Dougan. Then we started using the phrase eye-roll friend in a different way: like the friend you roll your eyes at.

Establishing Kellis voice was crucial to understanding the character and her function within the larger story. Dougan recalls a few lines of dialogue from a now-scrapped dinner-party episode in the first season that helped solidify who Kelli was. In the episode, Issa and Lawrence decide to throw a party to prove that they are adults. They get a new couch and attempt to repaint the walls, but in true Issa fashion, she only has time to paint one wall. She tries to pass it off as an accent wall, but Kelli sees through her bullshit and was scripted to call her on it: What happened, you run out of paint? When Issa asks everyone to take their shoes off upon arrival, Kelli retorts: Oh, youre a shoes-off bitch now? The writers room recognized that Kelli could be the straight-shooting friend to push buttons. Not in a mean way, but in a loving way that only a friend could, says Dougan.

Rothwell on set in season four: When Natasha was cast, she took the character to entirely different levels, says Insecure writer Ben Dougan. Photo: Merie Weismiller Wallace - SMPSP/Merie Weismiller Wallace - SMPSP

When Kelli arrives onscreen in the third episode of the first season, Racist As Fuck, she is clearly filling the role of the funny friend who is boy-crazy and looking to take advantage of the open bar. Rothwell brings a confident, warm energy to the role; Kellis antics are positioned as funny party stories and she employs her signature comedic timing to rag on her friends, from awkward bitch Issas attempt at open-mic rapping to Tiffanys flawless-ass face. But even in these somewhat broader, clich character lines, Kelli immediately shows a thoughtful, more feminist side when she holds court about the type of man shes looking for. Kelli is sexually free and wont compromise when it comes to dating; from her first scenes, shes the confident friend who will speak her mind no matter the circumstances or outcome.

Rothwell never had aspirations to join the cast. Though she is a seasoned performer and never hid that part of herself, she was focused on bringing her best writing to the show, as it was her first scripted series writers room. So she pitched jokes and focused on crafting the seasons arc, while often doing bits that showed off her comedic timing and improv skills. She loved to perform in the room as much as she loved to pitch jokes for the show, Dougan remembers. Rothwell would use the office phone to place fake calls whenever a joke she pitched landed or bombed; when it bombed, shed take the phone and turn away from the rest of us, and pretended to field a call from her agent saying she just got fired. It was hilarious.

Rothwell read for the part of Kelli during the productions first table reads, bringing the spunk and perfectly timed line delivery needed for the role. Even though writers in the room often read for different parts, somehow, Kelli always belonged to Rothwell. I started reading for Kelli in every episode she appeared in. I wasnt suspicious or even excited about the prospects. I had pretty serious blinders on, Rothwell recalls. It wasnt until Rae and Penny asked her to play the part three months later that she realized the character was hers.

Rothwell wasnt scared to take the role, but she was nervous it might pull her away from the writers room. I was relieved when I knew I was going to be able to do both and felt supported, she says. Rothwell not only managed both, but thrived while pulling double-duty. The character we were initially brainstorming wasnt one-note, exactly, but served a specific function. When Natasha was cast, she took the character to entirely different levels, Dougan says, noting that Kellis distinct voice became fully formed with Rothwells performance and ad-libs. She took the ball and ran with it.

Once cast, Rothwell says she put all of herself into Kelli, though their personalities manifest in very different ways. Both have filters, but Kellis is more porous than Rothwells. Both are loyal, unapologetic, and opinionated, but the degrees to which those qualities come to the surface are varied, and Rothwell found it rewarding as a performer to calibrate parts of herself that made Kelli feel real. The Venn diagram of Rothwell and Kelli has many overlapping portions some obvious, some subtle which ultimately led to a more nuanced portrayal of the character.

Still, Rothwell had to establish her actor boundaries separate from the characters. In one season, someone pitched a scene in which Kelli would have a nip slip, which wasnt something Rothwell felt comfortable doing on camera. I was like, I think thats great for the character, but the actress is not gonna do it. I spoke with her, Rothwell remembers joking. However, set pieces occasionally made it into the script without her express approval. When Kelli gets fingered under the table at the diner in season-two episode Hella L.A., Rothwell had been in another room working on a different episode. When we went back to read each others scripts at the end of the day, I remember [everyones] eyes on me as we were doing the table read. When we got to the page that it happened, they just started laughing. I was like, Its too good not to do.

Its no secret that improv was encouraged on the Insecure set, and Rothwell improvised for every episode she appeared in. When you understand the psychology of a character, its really easy to improvise from their point of view, she says. Youre just reacting to the world around you like they would. It doesnt require a lot of exposition, and youre not forcing a joke. Youre just responding organically and honestly.

In the season-one finale Broken As Fuck, the four girls go to Malibu for Kellis birthday, but tensions simmer in the group. After an awkward drive and an uncomfortable decision about the weekends sleeping arrangements, Issa snaps at Kelli about her inability to shut up. Do you hear yourself? Issa asks. Kelli retorts, Of course I do, I have a podcast. That was a Rothwell improvisation: The scene actually ends on the page a couple of lines before, but the director didnt cut. Issa started that improv run by saying Do you hear yourself? That was unscripted. So I was like, Whats the most Kelli response possible? Of course, Ive got a podcast. I thought it was just a throwaway. I had no idea it would actually make the episode. Years later, fans were delighted when the podcast Prennys Preguntas got its own scene in the season-five premiere.

Season two made Kelli into a meme. When the gang attends an art exhibit in Hella Questions, the conversation turns to Issas hope for a reunion with Lawrence. After Kelli accidentally breaks the news that hes dating someone else, Issa insists she doesnt want any details about this other woman. Supportive, Kelli remarks, You know what that is? Growth, with a hand gesture that resembles a flower blossoming. A natural hand-talker, Rothwell included the movement in the first and second takes, dropping it for the third in order to provide some variety for the editing room. But director Penny, sensing a winning bit, encouraged Rothwell to follow her instincts after the third take.

A comedy with its fair share of drama, Insecure needed a character like Kelli to cut through tense moments. Her antics (and Rothwells line readings) offer some of the most quotable, laugh-out-loud moments in the show; from getting Tased and peeing her pants at Coachella to adopting a British accent to impress a boy at Issas block party, Kelli is the character whom fans are constantly clamoring around for a spinoff. She also has an ongoing, inexplicable beef with Issas brother, Ahmal, which Rothwell believes stems from an unrequited crush before Ahmal officially came out (Hell hath no fury like a Kelli scorned).

But Rothwell and the other writers wanted to make sure Kelli was more than just the wisecrack. In his notes, Dougan has a quote written down from the early days of her conception: Shes used for comic relief, but there are things she says that have meaning. Infusing her with depth was critical. I didnt want her to be the butt of a joke, Rothwell says. I never wanted her to be hypersexualized. I didnt want to fall into clichs or stereotypes.

In Rothwells hands, Kelli contains multitudes: She is unapologetic and irreverent, she has no filter and is self-possessed. But at the end of the day, she is deeply kind and caring, she says. Kelli is there for Issa when her friendship with Molly is crumbling, nudging Issa to reach out and make amends, even though its the last thing she wants to do. In the season-five premiere, she offers advice to Molly about how to restore their rapport, citing rough patches in her friendship with Tiffany that they worked through.

For Dougan, striking this balance was one of the harder parts of writing for the character. Its easy to take things too far. The biggest challenge was pulling back and remembering that Kelli is a real person. In the season-two finale, Kelli tries to run a marathon but has to stop midway when she gets her period. Its a moment of character building that shows Kellis life is more put together than what Molly and Issa perceive: Shes not only drinking heavily and trying to get laid, shes out here training for a marathon and striving towards personal goals when shes offscreen. Thats a situation where we had jokes that were all blood-related, like calling it the Red Wedding, Dougan says. But at the end of the day, it was a real moment where Kelli had a goal she had been working toward and didnt achieve, and she was disappointed. We didnt go all the way, and it was more satisfying as a result.

The final season has seen substantive growth for all characters, including Kellis own journey toward enlightenment. Shes abstaining from alcohol, asking herself (and her podcast listeners) deeper questions about life, and searching for her true happiness. For a season that tried to answer questions like What do you want your legacy to be? and Am I happy?, Preguntas was a good framing device, Rothwell says. I was super excited to have Kelli shepherd us into that idea for the last season.

Even though fans never saw as much of Kellis world as they would have liked, Rothwell thinks that means shes done her job. I take it as a compliment that Ive created someone whos interesting, and whos full and rich enough that [viewers] know theres more to her.

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Originally posted here:
How Kelli Prenny Went From Insecures Eye-Roll Friend to Zany Voice of Reason - Vulture

I was 25, and watched the film alone at Sterling Cinema in South Mumbai. It was that sort of a film; you remember details. As the fourth instalment of The Matrix releases now, many years after the trilogy was completed, let me remind you that in 1999, The Matrix was a global spiritual experience. I have met people who have missed its entire subtext and who think it was just a confusing greenish sci-fi film, but they are very few.

Before I walked into Sterling, I had not read a word about the film. So, a few minutes in, I was stunned. Or consumed by a great spiritual smugness. You see, the film was about me.

At 17, I was Neo in Madras; there was even a Morpheus. What happened was, one day, when a friend and I were alone in a big house something significant occurred. He started looking weird. Then he told me nothing is as it appears; there is something else out there. I got it immediately.

We were not so cool as the characters in The Matrix only because we were tropical, and did not require so many layers of black clothes. In fact, my Morpheus and I arrived at the theory that it is hard for people in cold nations to attain enlightenment because they are forever in the frivolous self-regard of excess costumes.

In Sterling Cinema, I thought that only I and very few people knew that the world around us is just a simulation, and that there was a way to find the truth. I was a bit surprised that Americans knew this too, but I was confident they were also very few. I thought most people will not get the film. They were, after all, like the extras in Matrix, too deep in the simulation to see the outer halos of reality. But then, in the coming days, I realized that everyone got it. I was very annoyed and disappointed. Everyone got it? That easy?

Even so, I discovered, there were two kinds of people. A majority who knew the theory of spiritual awakening, and those who had a closer experience with it because of a certain mental state, mental disorder, sorrow or drugs. People who want to believe in an alternate reality are people who do not enjoy the original reality.

The idea that the observable physical world is not real has corroboration in religion and other stories. And even in some theories postulated by scientists, which are often misconstrued as scientific theories. But the first three Matrix films were a corroboration at unprecedented scale and its impact was deep because it was not a farcical film. Even though it was made by the persuasions of mainstream entertainment, it was unafraid of complexity. It was a film that was prepared to fail.

The true power of spirituality, or philosophy, which is often spirituality for atheists, is in the vagueness of its meaning. As a result, it allows people to misunderstand its creators and messages. Misrepresentation is how people project their own character on to something else, and start admiring that thing without realizing that they are only loving themselves. The film gained from this, as people attributed their own meanings to its many allusions.

The Matrix is about our quest for something better. The film could have followed the formula laid out by all religion: Show truth as a paradise, something infinitely better than what a prophet persuades people to flee. But in The Matrix, the real world is impoverished, tough and grim. All it has going for it is that it is real. That is the films greatness. It showed truth need not be utopia.

The most convincing idea of the film is its argument that when people have to choose between an unreal paradise and a very real hell, many will pick the unreal paradise. But then there will be some who will choose truth above everything untrue.

Not all ideas in The Matrix are spiritual, or even philosophical. It hints at phenomena that happen in the real world known to us but do not always see. In the film, the matrix is a computer simulation created by advanced machines that have taken over the world. It has inbuilt flaws that allow the rise of human rebels and even rogue programmes. To that end, the matrix is a lot like capitalism. Every time it creates an affluent paradise, people grow disenchanted, they long for conflict, and humanitarians from well-off families arisebeneficiaries of inequality who wage a moral war against inequality. Thus it was not unnatural that Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels hailed from affluent families. And that after them, generations of academics and writers who called themselves Marxists were usually from wealthy families.

There is a scene in the second edition of The Matrix, where our hero, Neo, meets The Architect, the computer programme that has created the matrix. Neo, who is leading the human revolution against the machines, wants to know, Why am I here?" The Architect gives a tangential answer, You are the eventuality of an anomaly"

It is the same in real life. All our heroes who lead the war against capitalism, too, are creations of the very system they wish to dismantle. Their job is not to destroy capitalism because they cannot. Their job is merely to manufacture the hope that capitalism can indeed be destroyed. By promoting mediocre foes, capitalism ensures more threatening enemies never rise.

Manu Joseph is a journalist, novelist, and the creator of the Netflix series, Decoupled

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How The Matrix was a massive spiritual experience - Mint

Today, as we reflect on COP26, it is fitting to ask what we can learn from Adam Smith, one of the great pioneers of the Enlightenment and a former lecturer at the citys historic university.

How might Smith have explored the climate emergency?

First Minister Nicola Sturgeon believes that Smith would have supported regulation.

We cannot know exactly how Smith would have responded to the climate emergency, but given his support for reasonable protections against, for example, abuse of monopolies it seems likely that he would have supported regulation to guard against the destruction of the planet, she wrote in the foreword to a series of essays reimagining The Wealth of Nations in the 21st century.

Expert authors from three continents have drawn on Smiths themes to reflect on the climate crisis.

For example, for those who say achieving net zero is too difficult and too expensive, sustainable fund management pioneer David Pitt-Watson hypothesizes what Smith might say.

Ultimately wealth depends on the accumulation of capital to make workers productive if nature withdraws its capital, no prosperous future can await our children and the economic gains of the last 250 years will all be lost, he argues.

Former Malaysian Central Banker Dr Zeti Aziz believes a 21st century Smith would be a strong voice and advocate for the protection of the environment, including to the risks that may have intergenerational implications leading to higher overall costs to our planet and humanity.

As we look back on what the Glasgow climate summit did or didnt achieve, it is worth remembering what is at stake here the world we leave to future generations.

For us at the Global Ethical Finance Initiative (GEFI), one of the overwhelming takeaways from COP26 was just how important finance and financing nature will be for the journey to net zero.

Research by the World Economic Forum has estimated that an incredible $44 trillion of economic value generation more than half of the worlds total GDP is moderately or highly dependent on nature and its services and is therefore exposed to nature loss. Whether you are talking about algae carbon sequestration, womens empowerment, indigenous land rights or how to create a green jet fuel, much of the conversation in Glasgow was focused on the topic of finance.

The key question is how can we change the financial system to better include nature?

While new public funding pledges were made, in the context of the undelivered $100bn climate finance for poorer countries and the covid pandemic, it is easy to remain sceptical. John Kerry, US Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, highlighted the role of private finance on the first day of the conference, warning that no government in the world has enough money to fuel this transition as rapidly as we need it but the private sector does.

While there is disagreement on whether The Glasgow Climate Pact was a success or not, COP26 has demonstrated that it will matter more than ever where we put our money.

Money will be our vote as private citizens, as businesses and as countries. It is the driver and the tool we can use to put pressure on moving things into a higher gear.

Or indeed the thing that will hold us back.

The debate is now one of innovation and transition namely to the way we include, or continue to exclude, nature from financial accounts, and whether our traditional investment models can accommodate new parameters such as nature, biodiversity loss and social impact.

Despite the recognisable complexity of practical implementation and the interdependency of climate and nature, momentum is building around the critical need for markets to better align to a net zero world.

Although GEFI has been looking at financing nature since 2018, regular COP participants expressed their delight that nature has finally being catapulted up the formal agenda.

This was noted as being a step change in comparison to previous COPs.

It was also evident that the nature conversation has moved beyond a collection of environmentalists, scientists and policy professionals with financial institutions and corporates willing not to only listen and learn but consider the practical steps they must take to address climate change and protect nature and biodiversity.

Another common theme, despite the criticism that this COP was too exclusive and elitist, was that young and indigenous communities are key to solving this crisis and their voices must be heard.

Indeed, some argue that, as those most impacted by climate change today and in the future, they should be leading the conversations. They should not just be in possession of just a seat at the table, but rather the entire table.

The question that echoed around the GEFI HQ during COP26 was: is it all too late?

Having explored the halls of the Blue Zone and Green Zone, as well as hosted an array of events throughout the two weeks in November, we face a dichotomy between those who contend that solving the nature crisis is complex and others convinced that it is pretty simple.

So here too is a lesson from Adam Smith and the Scottish Enlightenment.

The 21st century is once again faced with a period in history where scepticism to authority of all types and the power of reason is in question.

Once again, we are tasked with a simple but powerful challenge: to use evidence, truth and reason to address the greatest problems of our times.

The legacy of COP26 must be to prove that we can rise to the climate challenge.

Sam Wheldon-Bayes is an analyst at the Global Ethical Finance Initiative (GEFI) and editor of The Wealth of Nations in the 21st Century

Link:
Sam Wheldon-Bayes: What would Adam Smith have made of COP26? - The Scotsman

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Lonnie Wilson / Oakland Tribune Staff Archives - MediaNews Group/Oakland Tribune via Getty Images

Madden NFL, one of the most popular video game franchises in history, has sold well over 130 million copies since its 1988 debut. And yet, says Fox Sports reporter Tom Rinaldi with amazement, There are people that dont know John Madden is a real man.

For anyone sadly in need of enlightenment about the name on the box as well as those who already revere Madden as coach of the Super Bowl XIwinning Oakland Raiders and the only color analyst to announce for all four major broadcast networks there is All Madden. This documentary profiles the figure who, intones Fox sportscaster Troy Aikman onscreen, was the authoritative voice for our sport and in a lot of ways still is.

(Credit: Dennis Desprois/Getty Images)

Madden has made an outsized contribution to our obsession with professional football. Visual broadcast features we now take for grantedthe ever-illuminated first-down line on TV screens, use of the telestrator to illustrate the movement of plays came to the fore because of his enthusiasm.

The film goes deep on Maddens life and broadcasting career, decades of which were spent alongside Pat Summerall in the booth. The Hall of Famer would joyously shout Boom! and Doink! when the play demanded it, but he also pitched products with the best of them, not to mention plugging his personal favorites, such as his beloved Thanksgiving Day turducken.

Madden gloried in players who toiled with guts and grit, and most poignant in the show are comments from current and former NFL stars such as Tom Brady, Peyton Manning, and Lawrence Taylor. Of the 38 various interviewees, We did not get a single no, notes Rinaldis codirector, Joel Santos.

Madden himself, 85, sits down too. What comes across is a picture of a very real man; being singled out by him was as valued by athletes and coaches as getting invited to Johnny Carsons couch was to comedians. Says Santos: Theres no one that has had more of an impact on the NFL than John Madden.

All Madden, Documentary Premiere, Saturday, December 25, 2/1c, Fox

Original post:
All Madden Pays Tribute to One of Footballs Biggest Icons in Fox Sports Doc - TV Insider

As I watched James Lapines new musical, Flying Over Sunset, at the Vivian Beaumont, trying to summon some empathy with its subject matter, I started thinking through my own quite limited history with hallucinogens. Sunsetdirected by Lapine, who also wrote the book, with music by Tom Kitt, lyrics by Michael Korie, and choreography by Michelle Dorranceis the fictionalized story of three celebrities dropping LSD in the nineteen-fifties, searching for God knows what: tie-dyed enlightenment, perhaps, or an eased and possibly clarified relationship with the past, or maybe just simple fun. The writer Aldous Huxley (Harry Hadden-Paton), the actor-dancer Cary Grant (Tony Yazbeck), and the polymathic diplomat Clare Boothe Luce (Carmen Cusack) get together (theres no reason to believe that they did this in real life) and trip their extraordinary lives away (this, apparently, they all did), letting the audience see, often in fervent color and off-kilter motion, the troubled consciousnesses that vibrate beneath their well-maintained personas.

A long time ago, I munched on a few handfuls of fetid mushrooms and brought on personal crises of my own design. There werent many bright colors, but some theretofore unnoticed textural quirkson clothes, on faceswent wild with deep, scrutinizing, photographic detail. For many hours after those visual effects had faded, I haunted the hallways of my mind, regretting how many memories Id retained and neuroses Id cultivated. Mostly, I regretted eating the things at all. Nothing happened that Id want to put onstage; certainly, nobody sang.

While watching Sunset, I wondered whether its creative team had subjected themselves to some first-person experiential research when it came to LSD. (Lincoln Center Theatres in-house magazine features testimonials by the writers Deborah Kass, Francine Prose, and Gregory Botts on trips past; Lapine has spoken in interviews about his own youthful experiments.) Some of the productions other sources are made clear. In a composite scene early on, Aldous delivers a speech against the banning of his book Brave New World. Cary gives a press conference announcing his retirement from show biz, and defends Charlie Chaplin against charges that hes a Communist. Clare, DwightD. Eisenhowers nominee for Ambassador to Brazil, undergoes a rough confirmation hearing.

Part of the plays premiseor maybe its just what I wish it had managed to tease outis that LSD leads its users to a softer kind of questioning. Aldous and Clare are close friends of Gerald Heard (Robert Sella), a practitioner of the Hindu Vedanta philosophy and a forerunner of the consciousness movement, who serves as their guide while on the drug, always nudging them to sit cross-legged and chant as its effects gradually set in. Cary first hears about LSD from his wife, whos using it in her sessions with a Freudian analyst. In one scene, we see Cary bargain his way into the analysts sedate office, employing flattery, charm, and, before long, flat-out yelling, to get his hands on this stuff hes heard so much about.

Those two initial settingsspiritual and clinicalopen up two ways of thinking not only about the effects of LSD but also about the reasons that a desperate celebrity, rich but lost, might turn to it for answers. In Flying Over Sunset, though, all roads lead back to rote biography. Aldouss wife is sick and soon dies. Clares daughter has been killed in a car crash. Carys impending divorce has him ruminating on his tough childhood. As the characters trip onstage, these episodes and their central personaethe wife, the daughter, Carys young selfreappear over and over, with variations so slight that, often, they might as well not exist.

The presence of Gerald Heard made me think of J.D. Salingers God-obsessed Glasses, whose interest in the ancient Indian Vedas and Upanishads, and in Christ, made them vibrate with the kind of unself-conscious talk of higher things that might have done the likes of Aldous, Clare, and Carya morose bunch herea bit of good. But, instead of engaging one another in earnest conversation, the characters spend the majority of the show inside their own heads.

In recent years, Lincoln Center Theatre has presented two plays about the rocky terrain and the stubborn mysteries of the spiritual life: Tom Stoppards The Hard Problem, about consciousness and religious devotion; and Chris Urchs The Rolling Stone, about homophobic violence in a religious milieu in Uganda. Flying Over Sunset might have completed a kind of trilogy, but its insistence on one-to-one biographical causalitythis drug for that problemdesiccates its surface-level allusions to spirituality.

Perhaps thats why the show feels so earthbound despite its many references to flight. Sunset has a fairly formulaic approach to music: every dose gets its own song. The pattern is established from the start, when Aldous is in a drugstore with Gerald, sweating through the beginnings of a high that will continue through a mountain hike with his ailing wife. He gets fixated on a picture in a book: Botticellis The Return of Judith to Bethulia. The scenic designby Beowulf Boritt, perhaps the most consistently excellent part of the showshifts and the painting comes to life. Here comes Judith accompanied by her handmaiden, with the head of Holofernes in tow. That ecstatic visual idea gives way to a pretty but mostly conventional bel-canto number, through which we get the point that we keep on getting: Aldous is excited by what he can see under the influence, but haunted by the changing circumstances of his life.

Hadden-Paton is sympathetic as the nebbishy, intense Aldous, and Yazbecks tap-dance numbers with a young version of Cary (Atticus Ware) are the highlight of Dorrances choreography, which otherwise uses taps rudimentsfootsteps and their attendant natural rhythms, implicitly connected to the motions of the heartto establish a theme that never really makes it through the noise. Cusack sings well, but the effort is wasted on songs that sound like tropes.

One thing that I found mystifying was how un-weird the score ishere, as in few other musicals, there was a chance to dabble in abstraction and, even, atonality. Instead, the songs are fairly standard-sounding, give or take a fractured chord or two. If a drug musical cant sometimes sound weird or off-putting, which can? The closest Flying Over Sunset gets to true surreality is when Cary, a guy with mommy issues who is consumed with masculinity and its meanings, dons a body stocking and a cap and flails around, having become a facsimile of the phallus that possesses so much of his thought and his posture. The moment is brief, and the altogether too long two hours and forty minutes of the show roll on.

In an interview, Allen Ginsbergover whose work and person the idea of drug-induced inspiration has always hovereddenied the notion that there was any special relationship, positive or negative, between tripping and excellence in art. I think the myth put forward by the police that no creative work can be done under drugs is folly, he said. The myth that anybody who takes drugsll produce something interesting is equal folly. He did admit to having written the runic, nature-obsessed poem Wales Visitation under the influence of LSD:

What did I notice? Particulars! The vision of the great One is myriad smoke curls upward from ashtray, house fire burned low The night, still wet & moody black heaven starless upward in motion with wet wind.

The intensity that Flying Over Sunset tries to illustrate with its always capable and sometimes spectacular sets is seldom found in its dialogue or its songs. The play is based on a groovy idea, but it indulges in the myth that Ginsberg warned against: drugs alone dont make for interest. To reach across the gulf between stage and seat, inner experienceaddled, enhanced, or otherwiseneeds more upward motion, more of the stark feeling of wet wind. More particulars!

Read more:
The Bad Trip of Flying Over Sunset - The New Yorker

Imagine it is a regular Sunday morning. Youre at your kitchen table, chomping through some toast, drinking coffee, and watching TV. Suddenly your fingers twitch. Your mug shatters on the floor. Your body tenses and goes cold.

ITS TIME TO KILL! a gravelly, rumbling voice pounds through your head. THE PORTENTS ARE DELIVERED. THE SEALS ARE BROKEN. THE HOUR IS HERE, MORTAL!

The moment passes as quickly as it came. You feel exhausted to your bones and you sit there, mute and frozen in panic. What just happened? The black sludge of your coffee pools around your bare foot, and you reach for your phone. Luckily, youre a god-fearing member of your church and you have the priests number saved. After a few rings, he answers.

Father, I think Im possessed. I need you to exorcize me, you whisper.

He says hell be there shortly.

Unlike some church doctrine, exorcism actually has a lot of biblical authority. In Marks gospel (generally considered the earliest gospel), Jesus performs his first miracle when he exorcises a spirt at a synagogue in Capernaum. For much of the gospel, the only ones who recognize Jesus power are demons. The gospels seem to imply that Jesus became famous as much for his exorcisms as his ministry. In fact, the Pharisees (the villains to Jesus hero) accused Jesus of being in league with Beelzebub, the prince of demons to command demons so easily, he must himself be demonic, they thought.

At the time of the New Testament, illnesses were thought to be caused by demonic possession. This belief fed the burgeoning business of exorcism well into the mediaeval period. Hearing voices, having seizures, or being overcome by insatiable and uncontrollable urges might all be attributed to satanic influence. If a loved one had any kind of mental illness, youd likely go to your priest over a physician. Richard Burtons epic 1621 work The Anatomy of Melancholy goes into a huge digression about the varieties of demonic possession. In it, he mentions how devils and demons cause an entire compendium of mental illnesses, but also that anything objects and animals included can be possessed.

As Agrippas dog had a devil tied to his collar; some think that Paracelsus had one confined to his sword pummel; others wear them in rings, Burton wrote. (Quite amusingly, one emperors dead wife apparently had a demon confined to the wart in her neck.)

While the work of ancient (but pagan!) scholars like Hippocrates and Galen was still available in treating mental health, physicians simply didnt know what to do, for the most part. Even in our post-Enlightenment and scientific age, we largely only treat or manage the symptoms of mental illness; we do not cure it. Its no wonder, then, that people turned to their priests for help it was the only option.

In the gospels, exorcism is seen as a kind of extraordinary measure or treatment for the possessed. But as Christianity battled to become mainstream, exorcism took on a new purpose. In an effort to combat rival theologies and the sinful paganism of other cultures, exorcism came to be lumped together with the baptismal process. As early as the 3rd century, baptism was used as a way to convert heathens and rid them of any foreign, false religions demons.

But exorcisms for the possessed were still a huge part of the local clergys job description. Given this, its unsurprising that there were almost as many methods of exorcism as there were priests. However, there were a few noticeable trends.

The first is that water and salt are often used. A 12th-century manuscript features the use of salt and water with the following words (the cross represents the moment the priest must draw the sign of the cross): I exorcise thee, creature of salt, by the living God +, by the true God +, by the Holy God +, by the God who by the prophet Eliseus commanded thee to be cast into the water.

The second is that Biblical or canonical incantations are spoken. There were often certain prayers uttered: the Lords Prayer, Hail Marys, and so on. The Catholic Church still governs the rites and processes of exorcism from the 84-page document De Exorcismis et Supplicationibus Quibusdam, which can be bought online.

The third feature of exorcisms it that they involve some kind of sacred object or relic. Most often this will be the crucifix, but it might be some holy relic, or some otherwise blessed trinket that the exorcist has used to great success before.

But what actually happens today if youre to undergo an exorcism? Well, the first thing to note is that much will depend on who you go to and which Christian denomination you belong to. Methodists, Baptists, and Lutherans all have their exorcistic wings, but lets assume you want a vanilla deliverance. You choose Catholic.

The Roman Catholic Church revised and updated their rites of exorcism in 1999. The Cardinal who oversaw this revision said it has more sober language, with fewer adjectives than in the previous one. But the basic set-up is exactly the same.

You, the possessed, are typically seated or laid down and will have prayers spoken, chanted, or sung over you. The priests or pastors present will be regularly making the sign of the cross, and holy water (and salt) will often be used. There is sometimes someone present who has the gift of discernment who will be able to see the presence of the demons (and also angels), who might be able to steer the rite. The priest will often lay hands on you as they say the requisite prayers.

The 1999 revision does make substantial efforts to say that exorcism should not be a substitute for medical help, and that possession is not the same as mental illness. Exorcism is one thing, psychiatry another, Cardinal Medina said. If the exorcist has doubts about the sanity of a possessed person, he can consult a specialist. It can be a collaboration.

But that does not mean that exorcism is always only a harmless placebo that you might as well try. In his book American Exorcism, Michael Cuneo offers accounts of women being pummeled to death in San Francisco and a Korean woman being trampled to death in Glendale during exorcisms. Most disturbingly, he describes how a five-year-old Bronx girl died after her mother and grandmother forced her to drink a lethal cocktail containing ammonia, vinegar, and olive oil and then bound and gagged her with duct tape. The two women claimed that they were merely trying to poison a demon that had infested the little girl several days earlier.

The fact is that while official Catholic exorcisms might be relatively harmless to believers, the business of unlicensed and unofficial exorcists risks exacerbating mental illness and disfiguring or even killing those they profess to help. The mentally ill are not possessed and demons do not cause epilepsy, depression, bipolar disorder, or voices to be heard. To argue otherwise is dangerous and cruel.

Jonny Thomson teaches philosophy in Oxford. He runs a popular Instagram account called Mini Philosophy (@philosophyminis). His first book isMini Philosophy: A Small Book of Big Ideas.

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Exorcism: The history of purging demons, from the New Testament to today - Big Think

Japan poetry and a life blighted by ill-health: Masaoka Shiki (1867-1902)

Lee Jay Walker

Modern Tokyo Times

The final years of the life of Masaoka Shiki (1867-1902) were filled with pain and long-lasting suffering. Ultimately, his life was cut short from the ravages of tuberculosis and other ailments that stemmed from this.

Shiki understood the frailty of life concerning the death of his alcoholic father when he was a small child. Also, unlike his alcoholic father, his grandfather was a Confucian scholar who installed a different way of life. Therefore, Shiki understood the chaotic nature of life when only a young child.

His childhood at a time when the Meiji Restoration of 1868 was altering the political, religious, and social landscape generated a wealth of emotions and passions. In time, this would bless his poetry.

From 1888/1889 onwards, the shadow of tuberculosis blighted his life. Yet, despite the pernicious shadow of death for someone so young and the pain he felt in the last 7 to 8 years of life he bravely endured and focused on poetry and other important matters.

Despite horrendous adversity concerning his health and the economic angle of supporting people he still emerges to be one of the masters of haiku. Hence, his name echoes alongside the esteemed names of Matsuo Basho, Kobayashi Issa, and Yosa Buson.

Shiki wrote, Until now I had mistaken the Enlightenment of Zen: I was wrong to think it meant being able to die serenely under any conditions. It means being able to live serenely under any conditions.

His short life created more decades of poetry than his actual age when he passed away from this earth. Hence, his legacy remains potent today.

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[Masaoka Shiki: His Life and Worksby Janine Beichman, p. 129.] Translation by Janine Beichman

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Japan poetry and a life blighted by ill-health: Masaoka Shiki (1867-1902) - Modern Tokyo Times