So what is there to say about our delightfully gonzo enclave this week that hasn’t already been said?  There is still oil destroying the natural aquatic resources of our vast gulf at an even greater rate than was once anticipated, it is hotter than hell outside, and the news media continue to focus on a singular murder case with extreme focus to the exclusion of many other events because of a small thing called ‘celebrity.’  Also, the sky continues to be blue.

So first to the business-side of this column, the bread and butter of my (and by extension your) cultural diet, the fine arts: ballet, opera, orchestral symphony, and theatre (translation: theater).  As was mentioned last week, it’s off-season for a while now, which means the serious immersion stuff is ages away, when we’ll discuss operas and symphonies at length, learn vast amounts about dead people who made stuff, just dig really deep into the history of the arts and pour over the results with nerdy glee.  My arm hairs are getting all prickly just thinking about it.  Alas, it takes time to put on a stage production or symphony, which means in the meantime we have to make do with local theater productions of a smaller scale, and less hoity-toity (read: not quite so classically stylized) but no less interesting instrumental concerts.  The phrase “make do” is something of a misnomer, because it implies that we’re settling for less, which we aren’t: it can’t be stressed enough how important locally-helmed small-budget theater productions are to our culture.  While some might be a bit silly or heavy on the obvious “boardiness” of the sets, they show a wide array of untapped talent, and ingenious fiscal pragmatism, something which is sorely missing from the more lavish things that get thrown our way.  Less can often times be much, much more.  Support local artists in any capacity, and travel a little out of the way to see something which you might not otherwise.

If you, like me, had car trouble over the weekend (I should have listened when the mechanic told me duct tape on the radiator was a stop-gap measure, at best) you will’ve woefully missed the Chickasaw Civic Theatre’s production of ‘South Pacific.’  Except, you haven’t!  Dun dun dunnnnn… it’s still continuing into this weekend as well.  So you, like me, can try once more to catch it on the 28th, 29th, or 30th.  Having enjoyed this troupe’s work in the past, I anticipate a good show, and look forward to seeing the other productions they have planned over the summer.

Last week we also briefly mentioned the Opera’s free-of-charge ‘Night Of Song’ which is coming up on the 21st of June, one of four being featured sporadically between now and September.  If you’re similarly far-sighted (nerdy performance art types like ourselves tend to be), the Symphony has put up a briefing about its schedule for 2010-11, which starts in September.  It’s always good to plan early, if for no other reason than to show your geek alliance to those providing us entertainment.

Now we move away from the more technical stuff, and slow things down a bit.  It’s occurred to me that this column, still in its infancy, is a great opportunity to introduce younger people to a cultural immersion that they might feel excluded from, or feel unwelcome from becoming a part of.  There is a general attitude among people who don’t attend things like opera or ballet that it is a snobbish cultural pursuit, that it galvanizes the public into an “us” and “them” set of ranks.  In my life I’ve even seen it referred to as a form of cultural warfare, a dividing mark that is exclusionary.  And while there are some real jerks up their own symphonies when it comes to elitism in the fine arts, the truth of the matter is that on the whole it’s a richly loved and warmly inviting cultural tradition dating back hundreds of years.  Like the wonderful Vivace! program from the Mobile Opera, I see this column as a great way of informing young people (myself being within that category) of the history of these traditions by discussing important historical works and figures, and the cultural impact of these performances and people.  Over time I see this as a really great way of creating a broad but practical reference guide for those new to the theater, so that everyone can feel a bit more included, and not so afraid of the social intricacies people often allign with such a hobby.  But before I do that, I’d like to talk about my own interest in these things, and what got me into it.

I, like most of the people I am friendly with, was born in the very rural outskirts of Mobile, to a family without a lot of money or expertise in such things as fine art.  I was a strange child (I think many kids who like more technical art forms tend to be weirdos), and had a bizarre fascination with the intense detail of the way the world works.  I was attracted to opera, initially, because of a concert I saw on public television in my great-grandmother’s living room when I was a much smaller version of the person I am now.  It was of Maria Callas singing ‘O Mio Babbino Caro’, and although I’m still not sure which performance it was I saw because of my young age (although I think I’ve narrowed it down as there are not very many that exist on tape, sadly), it struck me as something completely atypical to what I’d known up to then as music.  Her voice was peculiar to me (there are some hardened opera vets who will use that word as a pejorative, but I mean it lovingly) and there was a wistfulness to the performance that touched me in a way that pop music just hadn’t.  Looking back at that moment I can see that it was a turning point for me, and would lead to a long (if spotty) relationship with opera that would see me fall in love with it, then turn away from it when it was deemed “uncool” and especially geeky by my punk rock friends, only to fully embrace it again in adulthood as something that I now feel an especially close kinship with.  From that early television performance my interest grew broadly in all directions.  Suddenly I began to learn about classical music and operatic productions, and from there connected back to an earlier love of mine, ballet (another thing I regretfully became shamed of when it marked me as “other” amongst my male classmates as a youth).  Nowadays I look fondly back on that time, and how naive I was about it.  But it makes me smile, because it gives me a connection to that young version of myself.

Just as it connects the dots between me aged 10 and who I am in my twenties, there is a continuity to these art forms that connects who we are as a society in the present to the people we were fifty years ago, a hundred years ago, two hundred years ago.  Like many new to the world of opera or ballet or any form of performance theater, at first glance it was overwhelming, obscure, even intimidating.  And it is all of those things, rest assured.  There are performances being staged today that date to before the birth of the last century, there are hundreds and thousands of singers and dancers and performers who have come and gone, all having a moment of notoriety and fame and even tabloid scandal, only to fade into the annals of history and under the shadow of obscurity once more as another generation emerged in their place, and more disposable pop culture took the various genres’ spots in public attention.  But that doesn’t mean you can’t still be a part of it.  And so that’s where we’ll pick up next week, and begin discussing the more important figures in the history of opera, ballet, and symphonic music.  Because despite how it’s viewed through the prism of stereotype and cultural disdain, the high art world is full of diversity, of people who were embraced because of their “otherness” as opposed to some sort of white, elitist activity to the exclusion of the strange or the bizarre.  It’ll be fun, I think, and hopefully funny (I can never pass up a pun or a vulgar joke, luckily), and the end goal is that you might gain an appreciation for something you didn’t think you’d like, and learn that it is a world that is remarkably more modern and “young” and experimental and even politically progressive than it is given credit for.  And hopefully it can be tied back to the wonderful productions we’ll be seeing staged here in Mobile in the coming year, and those that have been put on in the last half a century.  The last thing it’ll be, though, is snobby, because I am not remotely a snob; I am lowbrow, I am ribald, and I love MS Paint far too much to pass up a sight gag.

So please stick around.  I know it’s a worthwhile cultural pursuit deciding whether Steve Nodine is actually a murderer or (like a certain person typing on this keyboard at this very moment) simply apt to open a particularly fizzy red drink in his car at the worst possible moment, and I encourage you to continue to gawk at the spectacle of political corruption because it is a worthwhile pursuit.  But so is this.  Until next week, stay safe, don’t get all oily, and whatever you do stay the hell away from Baldwin County.  Nothing good ever happens across the bay!*

*j/k, j/k