[Book Reviews] War and dancers
So very behind on book reviews that I'm clumping them together by topic. All the poetry is next, though Martha Graham's autobiography below (which I *loved*) could really have gone in either warriors or poets.
I picked up Harvey Molotch's "Against Security: How We Go Wrong at Airports, Subways, and Other Sites of Ambiguous Danger" from Bruce Schneier's favorable review of it. I had the fairly strange experience of reading it, substantially agreeing with more than half of the author's recommendations, both with and without my professional hat on, and then getting to his final chapter about Hurricane Katrina and suddenly being all, "No. NO. No." The vehemence of my disagreement with his concluding chapter recommendations there caused me to go back and re-evaluate my prior agreement... was there something that I missed? (And, largely, no -- it's a matter of filters. When we mostly agree, I tend to gloss over the parts that I non-strongly disagree with. "Okay, he's wrong there, but these other four things are good ideas!" It takes a hard stop to make me re-evaluate like that. The disagreements were there all along, they were just minor or dismissably infrequent until they weren't. Almost no one gets their policy way *all* the time, so some wrong is acceptable. Heh.) But he has interesting things to say about how structuring your society as a police state and treating the public as distrusted possible hostiles rather than as citizens vested in the outcome not only create a society we find less pleasant to live in, but also can actively impede security doing an effective job. With my professional hat on, I have assuredly seen these cases.
Molotch calls for the use of individual wise judgment in cutting through red tape, and the ability of people on the ground to see what's actually going on and be the ones making the snap decisions when something goes badly. When you have smart people on the ground, this is good, and I'm generally in favor of people who know better disobeying orders to save lives and do good. The difficult point that he doesn't well address is -- do you actually know better, or do you just think you do? I have been in emergency situations where you really do need people to just follow orders because there isn't time to argue about it, you'll all die if you stop to have the argument. And I've been in emergency situations where the existence of bureaucracy and slow or bad decision-making at the top stymied an effective response, misdirected resources, and could have cost lives. So, much like civil disobedience... if you're going to buck the system and go ronin, are you prepared to live with the penalties of being wrong? (I would be *fascinated* to see a good study on learning and correct/incorrect estimation of defying orders there. Does Dunning-Kreuger rule? Do people too incapable to know they're incapable disobey more, to the cost of everyone? Or do people who are prepared to go against the weight of procedure, bureaucracy, or law have a better-than-average chance of being right in their judgments?) Molotch mostly showcases the successful rebels, and that's a compelling story. But how do we isolate and repeat those good bottom-up decisions in a way that improves the general outcome? If I knew that, I'd be a director or a strategist. [grin] Three and a half well designed restrooms out of five; I would totally be happy with Molotch's genderless restroom.
I picked up Rosie Garthwaite's "How To Avoid Being Killed in a War Zone: The Essential Guide for Dangerous Places" in Ireland as an airplane book... you get some very strange looks reading that book in an airport. Garthwaite has gone to great trouble to assemble an impressive group of people who have spent a lot of time in places where most folks really do not want to be. The credentials of her sources were convincing -- all of those folks have lived far, far more dangerous lives than I have, and that made me concede the "I am listening to the voice of experience" right off the bat. About half the material was stuff that I already knew; there is nontrivial overlap between wilderness rescue and self-sufficiency under fire. There are places where the difference might well have gotten theory-me killed. (Do not bring a detailed map, or a compass? Okay, people might shoot or kidnap you as a spy if they find those on you when they search you, I get that. But then how do you figure out where you are or how to get out of there? Aiee.) I particularly appreciated her inclusion of how gender affects this; it was nice for me that the book was written by someone who shares my problems of gender perception there and has figured out some coping techniques in hostile places. Also good: her section on how "we're alive! we're alive!" post-crisis adrenaline can generate intense bonding and sometimes flings or relationships which defy one's entire, er, other plan for life. That's something that happens often enough that it's worth including in the planning stage before one goes haring off somewhere superdangerous. So the book seems very useful to me, not least in convincing me that I don't want to go anywhere that I am regularly going to be shot at. [rueful grin] Four and a half "Really? THAT is your plan?"s out of five.
Most depressing read goes to Nick Turse's "The Changing Face of Empire: Special Ops, Drones, Spies, Proxy Fighters, Secret Bases, and Cyberwarfare". It's a very short book, not even a hundred pages, and it's clearly a collation of short essays he's already written. Turse isn't really a reader's writer -- this is a bare recitation of facts studded with footnotes, declarative sentence after declarative sentence makes for a very dry read. It took me nearly half the book to really get into it. It's covering many of the lesser-known current assignments of the US military overseas and the shift in foreign policy that accompanies the greater use of automated drones and special force missions rather than boots on the ground traditional warfare. While that is a posture that sounds more appealing to many than our current freehanded international interventionism, Turse's thesis is that it's a different kind of empire-building. While I was aware of many of the covered events and the ongoing argument about the use of cyberwarfare in government, much of what he covers here is not discussed much if at all in the American mainstream press. I found myself profoundly disheartened by the sheer number of cited American operations in (according to Turse) every other country in the world. That's not very respectful of the sovereignty of other nations, and is not the policy I would like to see us pursuing. The future here is difficult to avoid, though -- having the technology to lightly (if expensively) automate warfare is substantially driving the thinking of American leadership here... as far as we can tell, which isn't all that far. Turse's other point about the invisibility of many of these operations from the American public also bears thinking about; I wonder if citizens of other countries are actually more aware of these stories than American citizens. Perturbing; three and a half spy planes out of five.
On to my favorite of this batch, the accidentally-received autobiography of Martha Graham, "Blood Memory". I was trying to order Neile Graham's collection of poetry "Blood Memory" at the time, and received this instead from my seller. I have since received a fantastically awesome autographed copy of the intended "Blood Memory", but I kept this one out of curiosity. I'm so glad I did! I didn't know a lot about the history of contemporary dance, or about Martha Graham herself, aside from a vague sense that she was a cool artsy feminist sort. Reading her autobiography, I found myself cheering. She writes about dance as a martial artist writes about their art.
The only thing we have is the now. You being from the now, what you know, and move into the old. ancient ones that you did not know but which you find as you go along. [snip] It is the state of complete simplicity costing no less than absolutely everything, of which T.S. Eliot speaks. How many leaps did Nijinsky take before he made the one that startled the world? He took thousands and thousands and it is that legend that gives us the courage, the energy, and arrogance to go back into the studio knowing that while there is so little time to be born to the instant, you will work again among the many that you may once more be born as one. That is a dancer's world.
She doesn't apologize for her art, and I love that.
All the things I do are in every woman. Every woman is a Medea. Every woman is a Jocasta. There comes a time when every woman is mother to her husband. Clytemnestra is every woman when she kills. In most of the ballets I have done, the woman has absolutely and completely triumphed. Why this is so, I do not really know, except that I am a woman.
Her sense of social justice was years ahead of its time -- I particularly appreciated her anecdotes of checking herself out of the Algonquin hotel in solidarity after they refused to let a Black ballerina have a room there, and of her deliberate snubbing of the Nazi government prior to the 1936 Berlin Olympics.
Late in 1935, I received an invitation to dance with my company at the International Dance Festival that was part of the 1936 Olympic Games to be held in Berlin. The invitation was signed by Rudolf Laban, president of the Deutsche Tanzbuhne, by the president of the organization committee of the Eleventh Olympic Games, and by the Reichminister of Volksaufklarung und Propaganda -- Dr. Joseph Goebbels. [snip] It never entered my mind even for a second to say yes. How could I dance in Nazi Germany? I replied:
"I would find it impossible to dance in Germany at the present time. So many artists whom I respect and admire have been persecuted, have been deprived of the right to work for ridiculous and unsatisfactory reasons, that I should consider it impossible to identify myself, by accepting the invitation, with the regime that has made such things possible. In addition, some of my concert group would not be welcomed in Germany. They are Jewish." When I was told they would be perfectly immune, I said, "And do you think I would ask them to go?" The Germans said that in that case that they would ask an inferior dance company to represent the United States. I said, "Do. But just remember this: I hold the official invitation and I will publish it across the country to show that Germany had to take second best." No American dance company went to the festival.
Her description of her interactions with Helen Keller is also not to be missed. She dealt with art fraud, collaborated with many other famous artists, rubbed shoulders with many unexpected luminaries of the twentieth century, mentored Madonna, won the Medal of Freedom, fell profoundly and intensely in love, and then survived its wreckage. She stared down a rowdy Italian audience by giving the a commanding gesture to stop, mid-performance, and they did. They roared for her and her company when the lights came up and no one bowed. She met the Pope. She nearly caused a car accident in Japan.
After we left the theater I turned to a friend in the taxi we hailed and said, "She never would have been a great dancer. She doesn't move from her vagina." The Japanese taxi driver nearly swerved off the road. "You understand English?" I asked. He turned and smiled. "Yes, ma'am. I was raised in Brooklyn."
Her writing on aging, on being unable to do the things she once could do with her dancer's body was particularly poignant. I appreciate the forthrightness with which she wrote about how her choreography changed in that regard, and how she struggled with the desire to dance versus what her body would let her do. It maps to a lot of the thoughts I've had about disability and fluctuating states of capability. But she isn't always poignant about it.
When we got to know each other, Tudor came backstage to see me after a performance, and was less than pleased with what he had seen onstage. "At last," he said to me, "you have compromised." And with that, I turned around and kicked him in the shin. He stayed until everyone had left to apologize, and although I should have apologized as well, I didn't, but I loved and honored Antony.... When it is a dancer's time to leave, then he leaves. I never force anybody to stay. When a dancer wants to leave, I say, "Go. It is your time. But the door is always open. You will always be welcome." And that has happened. It is happening now in my life. When it is time, it is time.
She died later that year. Martha fucking Graham.
This entry was originally posted at http://ivy.dreamwidth.org/320634.html and has
comments there. Please feel free to comment on either site; comments rock.
I picked up Harvey Molotch's "Against Security: How We Go Wrong at Airports, Subways, and Other Sites of Ambiguous Danger" from Bruce Schneier's favorable review of it. I had the fairly strange experience of reading it, substantially agreeing with more than half of the author's recommendations, both with and without my professional hat on, and then getting to his final chapter about Hurricane Katrina and suddenly being all, "No. NO. No." The vehemence of my disagreement with his concluding chapter recommendations there caused me to go back and re-evaluate my prior agreement... was there something that I missed? (And, largely, no -- it's a matter of filters. When we mostly agree, I tend to gloss over the parts that I non-strongly disagree with. "Okay, he's wrong there, but these other four things are good ideas!" It takes a hard stop to make me re-evaluate like that. The disagreements were there all along, they were just minor or dismissably infrequent until they weren't. Almost no one gets their policy way *all* the time, so some wrong is acceptable. Heh.) But he has interesting things to say about how structuring your society as a police state and treating the public as distrusted possible hostiles rather than as citizens vested in the outcome not only create a society we find less pleasant to live in, but also can actively impede security doing an effective job. With my professional hat on, I have assuredly seen these cases.
Molotch calls for the use of individual wise judgment in cutting through red tape, and the ability of people on the ground to see what's actually going on and be the ones making the snap decisions when something goes badly. When you have smart people on the ground, this is good, and I'm generally in favor of people who know better disobeying orders to save lives and do good. The difficult point that he doesn't well address is -- do you actually know better, or do you just think you do? I have been in emergency situations where you really do need people to just follow orders because there isn't time to argue about it, you'll all die if you stop to have the argument. And I've been in emergency situations where the existence of bureaucracy and slow or bad decision-making at the top stymied an effective response, misdirected resources, and could have cost lives. So, much like civil disobedience... if you're going to buck the system and go ronin, are you prepared to live with the penalties of being wrong? (I would be *fascinated* to see a good study on learning and correct/incorrect estimation of defying orders there. Does Dunning-Kreuger rule? Do people too incapable to know they're incapable disobey more, to the cost of everyone? Or do people who are prepared to go against the weight of procedure, bureaucracy, or law have a better-than-average chance of being right in their judgments?) Molotch mostly showcases the successful rebels, and that's a compelling story. But how do we isolate and repeat those good bottom-up decisions in a way that improves the general outcome? If I knew that, I'd be a director or a strategist. [grin] Three and a half well designed restrooms out of five; I would totally be happy with Molotch's genderless restroom.
I picked up Rosie Garthwaite's "How To Avoid Being Killed in a War Zone: The Essential Guide for Dangerous Places" in Ireland as an airplane book... you get some very strange looks reading that book in an airport. Garthwaite has gone to great trouble to assemble an impressive group of people who have spent a lot of time in places where most folks really do not want to be. The credentials of her sources were convincing -- all of those folks have lived far, far more dangerous lives than I have, and that made me concede the "I am listening to the voice of experience" right off the bat. About half the material was stuff that I already knew; there is nontrivial overlap between wilderness rescue and self-sufficiency under fire. There are places where the difference might well have gotten theory-me killed. (Do not bring a detailed map, or a compass? Okay, people might shoot or kidnap you as a spy if they find those on you when they search you, I get that. But then how do you figure out where you are or how to get out of there? Aiee.) I particularly appreciated her inclusion of how gender affects this; it was nice for me that the book was written by someone who shares my problems of gender perception there and has figured out some coping techniques in hostile places. Also good: her section on how "we're alive! we're alive!" post-crisis adrenaline can generate intense bonding and sometimes flings or relationships which defy one's entire, er, other plan for life. That's something that happens often enough that it's worth including in the planning stage before one goes haring off somewhere superdangerous. So the book seems very useful to me, not least in convincing me that I don't want to go anywhere that I am regularly going to be shot at. [rueful grin] Four and a half "Really? THAT is your plan?"s out of five.
Most depressing read goes to Nick Turse's "The Changing Face of Empire: Special Ops, Drones, Spies, Proxy Fighters, Secret Bases, and Cyberwarfare". It's a very short book, not even a hundred pages, and it's clearly a collation of short essays he's already written. Turse isn't really a reader's writer -- this is a bare recitation of facts studded with footnotes, declarative sentence after declarative sentence makes for a very dry read. It took me nearly half the book to really get into it. It's covering many of the lesser-known current assignments of the US military overseas and the shift in foreign policy that accompanies the greater use of automated drones and special force missions rather than boots on the ground traditional warfare. While that is a posture that sounds more appealing to many than our current freehanded international interventionism, Turse's thesis is that it's a different kind of empire-building. While I was aware of many of the covered events and the ongoing argument about the use of cyberwarfare in government, much of what he covers here is not discussed much if at all in the American mainstream press. I found myself profoundly disheartened by the sheer number of cited American operations in (according to Turse) every other country in the world. That's not very respectful of the sovereignty of other nations, and is not the policy I would like to see us pursuing. The future here is difficult to avoid, though -- having the technology to lightly (if expensively) automate warfare is substantially driving the thinking of American leadership here... as far as we can tell, which isn't all that far. Turse's other point about the invisibility of many of these operations from the American public also bears thinking about; I wonder if citizens of other countries are actually more aware of these stories than American citizens. Perturbing; three and a half spy planes out of five.
On to my favorite of this batch, the accidentally-received autobiography of Martha Graham, "Blood Memory". I was trying to order Neile Graham's collection of poetry "Blood Memory" at the time, and received this instead from my seller. I have since received a fantastically awesome autographed copy of the intended "Blood Memory", but I kept this one out of curiosity. I'm so glad I did! I didn't know a lot about the history of contemporary dance, or about Martha Graham herself, aside from a vague sense that she was a cool artsy feminist sort. Reading her autobiography, I found myself cheering. She writes about dance as a martial artist writes about their art.
The only thing we have is the now. You being from the now, what you know, and move into the old. ancient ones that you did not know but which you find as you go along. [snip] It is the state of complete simplicity costing no less than absolutely everything, of which T.S. Eliot speaks. How many leaps did Nijinsky take before he made the one that startled the world? He took thousands and thousands and it is that legend that gives us the courage, the energy, and arrogance to go back into the studio knowing that while there is so little time to be born to the instant, you will work again among the many that you may once more be born as one. That is a dancer's world.
She doesn't apologize for her art, and I love that.
All the things I do are in every woman. Every woman is a Medea. Every woman is a Jocasta. There comes a time when every woman is mother to her husband. Clytemnestra is every woman when she kills. In most of the ballets I have done, the woman has absolutely and completely triumphed. Why this is so, I do not really know, except that I am a woman.
Her sense of social justice was years ahead of its time -- I particularly appreciated her anecdotes of checking herself out of the Algonquin hotel in solidarity after they refused to let a Black ballerina have a room there, and of her deliberate snubbing of the Nazi government prior to the 1936 Berlin Olympics.
Late in 1935, I received an invitation to dance with my company at the International Dance Festival that was part of the 1936 Olympic Games to be held in Berlin. The invitation was signed by Rudolf Laban, president of the Deutsche Tanzbuhne, by the president of the organization committee of the Eleventh Olympic Games, and by the Reichminister of Volksaufklarung und Propaganda -- Dr. Joseph Goebbels. [snip] It never entered my mind even for a second to say yes. How could I dance in Nazi Germany? I replied:
"I would find it impossible to dance in Germany at the present time. So many artists whom I respect and admire have been persecuted, have been deprived of the right to work for ridiculous and unsatisfactory reasons, that I should consider it impossible to identify myself, by accepting the invitation, with the regime that has made such things possible. In addition, some of my concert group would not be welcomed in Germany. They are Jewish." When I was told they would be perfectly immune, I said, "And do you think I would ask them to go?" The Germans said that in that case that they would ask an inferior dance company to represent the United States. I said, "Do. But just remember this: I hold the official invitation and I will publish it across the country to show that Germany had to take second best." No American dance company went to the festival.
Her description of her interactions with Helen Keller is also not to be missed. She dealt with art fraud, collaborated with many other famous artists, rubbed shoulders with many unexpected luminaries of the twentieth century, mentored Madonna, won the Medal of Freedom, fell profoundly and intensely in love, and then survived its wreckage. She stared down a rowdy Italian audience by giving the a commanding gesture to stop, mid-performance, and they did. They roared for her and her company when the lights came up and no one bowed. She met the Pope. She nearly caused a car accident in Japan.
After we left the theater I turned to a friend in the taxi we hailed and said, "She never would have been a great dancer. She doesn't move from her vagina." The Japanese taxi driver nearly swerved off the road. "You understand English?" I asked. He turned and smiled. "Yes, ma'am. I was raised in Brooklyn."
Her writing on aging, on being unable to do the things she once could do with her dancer's body was particularly poignant. I appreciate the forthrightness with which she wrote about how her choreography changed in that regard, and how she struggled with the desire to dance versus what her body would let her do. It maps to a lot of the thoughts I've had about disability and fluctuating states of capability. But she isn't always poignant about it.
When we got to know each other, Tudor came backstage to see me after a performance, and was less than pleased with what he had seen onstage. "At last," he said to me, "you have compromised." And with that, I turned around and kicked him in the shin. He stayed until everyone had left to apologize, and although I should have apologized as well, I didn't, but I loved and honored Antony.... When it is a dancer's time to leave, then he leaves. I never force anybody to stay. When a dancer wants to leave, I say, "Go. It is your time. But the door is always open. You will always be welcome." And that has happened. It is happening now in my life. When it is time, it is time.
She died later that year. Martha fucking Graham.
This entry was originally posted at http://ivy.dreamwidth.org/320634.html and has
comments there. Please feel free to comment on either site; comments rock.