Tooth and Relevance

So- today I got to cracking again with Sam Shepard's Tooth of Crime and just trying to work all the kinks out as it goes in conjunction with The Bacchae. Tooth is not the easiest to understand; the jargon Sam uses in this post-apocalyptic musical alternative reality where Rock Stars declare "turf" and battle each other with song is rather in tune with or akin to the patter that Joss Whedon used in Firefly- kind of back-alley gangs slang if you get my drift. So a few re-readings go a long way, to understand what's both being said and left UNsaid and what is being alluded to. I've read numerous articles on Tooth and tried to decipher the musical reality in order to create the visual one.

One thing I read that I kind of disagree with is that, when it came out, everyone said Tooth of Crime was a show "about fame" and how it destroys the famous and causes them to become deluded. I highly disagree. To ME, Tooth cannot be about anything but RELEVANCE and becoming irrelevant in society as art forms grow, change and morph to fit the needs of the society they are in. As I cross towards my 26th birthday and find that I have more in common with other people my age or older, I find myself greeting new demons of questioning the relevance of myself as an artist and storyteller, and identifying that fear in Hoss. I also find myself recognizing the face of the younger generation in Crow, but also realizing that Hoss and Crow are constructs towards a greater truth.

I read this article about the dying art of film yesterday and it really fed into this aforementioned reflection. Though I agree that the way this author talks makes it sound as if the film industry is in far more dire circumstances than reality would have you believe, I do mourn the passing of the "old" way of doing things in the arts. I don't think it's just nostalgia- the old things WERE better. They were thought about with more depth and worked out through hours of labored imagining, uninterrupted by a multitude of technological distractions and the laborer without a sense of urgent ADHD that prevails throughout most of society nowadays.

Yup. So why is it that we don't want to preserve the "better" old ways of doing things? One cannot argue that the "blues" of the Hoss generation technically trumps the "Crows" of todays' musicians who pick and scavenge the cords of musicians past in order to pick their bones clean. One cannot argue that "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" is a better film than "G-Farce" (the hamster movie in 3D). Why don't we want things to be "better"?

Maybe we're all too distracted. Great art comes from allowing oneself to be "bored" and listen to the muses. You really can't hear the muses over text-messaging.

Just a thought... Until next time...

<3 J