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Utopian Turtletop. Monsieur Croche's Bête Noire. Contact: turtletop [at] hotmail [dot] com

Sunday, September 16, 2007



My beloved spouse and I heard Martin Sheen speak at a fundraiser for a housing nonprofit on Friday.

He talked about his commitment to lefty Catholic causes, antiwar and antipoverty especially. He first made the connection to lefty-activist Catholicism when he was working for the avant-garde Living Theater for poverty wages, and its co-director, Julian Beck
, referred him to his friend’s soup kitchen, and his friend turned out to be the radical Catholic activist Dorothy Day -- a connection which surprised me.

In all his rambling stories, I kept noticing his vocal tonal range and nuance -- musicianly, actorly things -- he was good -- and a much more interesting role than I’d ever seen him play -- a self-deprecating egotistical radical wealthy celebrity, full of joy and grief and compassion and goofiness -- very funny, and very moving, and well modulated between the serious and funny. He opened his talk with a prayer by Gandhi’s friend the Nobel-winning poet Rabindranath Tagore and it was to blow one’s hair back -- he rocked it.

(Friendly correspondent Helen Radice’s father William translated the Penguin Selected Tagore, worth checking out.)


* * *


Playing a lot of music right now, which is good. Making up songs left and right, on the spot, instantly forgettable, in the moment, really enjoying it -- and hoping to finish up some polish-able pieces too. Jamming with the 4-year-old opens up the sound-ducts too -- the joyful noise of sound for its own sake -- what noises does this instrument make?

Other stuff going on too, so light blogging for the foreseeable future -- cheers --







Comments:
Kind regards
 
Thanks! And kind regards to you as well.
 
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