[A reminder for those in or near New Jersey: The Dollar Bill Benefit, featuring John Easdale and a lot of out-of-work (and some working) disc jockeys, will be happening this Friday at Tradewinds in Sea Bright, NJ. Click here for details. -Ed.]

Sound And Fury, Signifying Sound And Fury
by Your Diva, Robin Pastorio-Newman

Your Darling, Your Diva, Your One True Love, frustrated with the empty noise of FM radio and the itchy feeling that decent art and heart-rending music elude us, devoted a weekend to being the artist she is, and for Heaven’s sake, Britney Spears is NOT. In the hubbub and hubris, one series of events, crowded and smoke-filled, stands out for its bizarro world twist, and what in Great Caesar’s ghost happened to Superman? An art show at the Fringe in Newark, where over the space of three hours every conversation included chatter about bin Laden and Britney Spears. A Mars Needs Women show at the Court Tavern, where the band played 2 Britney Spears songs. An after-hours party, where the two paper doll avatars in every conversation offered two faces: bin Laden and Britney Spears. Oh, dear. Wildly different focus groups - or in this case, unfocused groups - and we can only agree on the mortally serious and artistically egregious.

Think of the superabundance of puzzling awards shows on television: who are these people, these academies, and how much money do awards portend? It’s that time of year. Award shows stand between you and your Neilsen-validated Ally McBeal viewing. What does it mean? Forget it. Forget trying to figure it out. It’s like trying to see that third revolution in a tutu-ed triple axel. You have to take the commentator’s word on the thing too fast to see with your eyes unless you understand the physics and mechanics with your body, and neither of us will without traction. So. Awards shows. Frivolous pop stars and elusive desert tyrants. Beyond our comprehension, so let’s think about us. Isn’t this cozy?

Americans hunger - apparently - for the superficiality of the newest, hottest, latest thing, and conversely for something real and permanent. We could argue this all day, but our daiquiris melt, and arguing is for temperamental underachievers. My sweet, indulge Your Tasty Antipasto when she says there’s too little genuine feeling, too much stimulus, too rapid processing of significant events, too much artificial experience, and a pernicious diposability of interchangible comparison-shopper lives. What’s a rock-climbing mallrat to do?

Once upon a time, Rita Dove, former Poet Laureate of the United States of America, told a charming story about her daughter, who recorded the silences between tracks on vinyl records. Inspired by this unique child, Your Lean Lamb in Mint Jelly proposes a wild idea. It’s so crazy Buddhists had it first, but we’re modern Judeo-Christians on the U.S.’s frenetic East Coast, oui? So it’s just retro-funky enough to appropriate. Let’s try -

It sounds crazy. Let’s try -

Let’s try quiet. Turn off your radio. turn off your TV. Turn off Britney Spears and Osama bin Laden. Turn off the input that makes what you are interchangable with everyone else you know and the everyone you don’t. What does the quiet say?

Tell me.

©2002 Robin Pastorio-Newman