He’s not strange. He just wants to live his life this way.
It’s been a few days, so I wanted to give you some of my thoughts/reactions/reflections about the Archbishop Tutu event.
Today, I will talk about the structure and flow of the event itself.
The event began a few minutes late and I suppose they must have been having some problems backstage because there were awfully long pauses between the different parts of the program.
First on the bill was President Loewenstein to welcome and introduce the evening. He made a couple of humorous remarks about the tension and issues that we’ve been experiencing over the past week or two. I thought he handled it well.
Next was a dance performed by members of the MJC Off-Balance Dancers. Ok. I am the first to admit that I don’t get dance. I certainly didn’t get this one. I don’t think I’m the most cultured guy in the world, but neither am I a Visigoth. Rather than go on and on about the dance, I’ll just say that it came across at pretty pointless. Was it supposed to be telling a story? Conveying an emotion? Making me squirm and look at my watch? Well, it only did one of those things.
Then we had a set of songs performed by the MJC Chamber Singers. They sounded good, but I couldn’t understand the words they were singing. And they knew that the words were unintelligible because they made a point of reading the texts of the songs after they sang them. So, pretty harmonies but boring performance. Hey, I was a music major. I sang in Chamber Choir. It was BORING. It’s much more fun to sing in 4 or 8 parts than it is to listen to it. Yeah, there are people who love listening to choral music. I’m not one of them. For me, this was more pointless filler before we got to the good stuff.
Finally, we arrive at something that was interesting. MJC professor of English and slam poet, Sam Pierstorff, had composed a poem for the occasion. I always enjoy Sam’s poems and especially his delivery when he performs them. He prefaced his poem by making a simile. Ubuntu, a person is a person through other persons, was like the Kevin Bacon connection. It was analogous to the way that an actor is an actor due to his relationship to Kevin Bacon. His specific example: Elvis Presley was in Change of Habit with Ed Asner, who was in JFK with Kevin Bacon. Therefore, Elvis has a Bacon number of 2. Sam went on to say that in 2009, Kevin Bacon emceed an event at which Desmond Tutu was the keynote speaker. Therefore, the Archbishop has a Bacon number of 1 and because we were all in the room with him tonight, we could claim a Bacon number of 2! Haha! Very amusing! (Although I would quibble with the conclusion. I would say that those who appeared on stage can make the claim, not those of us in the audience. But it was all in jest anyway.) Then Sam performed his poem. I would reprint the text, but it’s so much better to see/hear him perform it. So I won’t.
The next thing that was supposed to happen was a video tribute to the MJC Television/Film department Archbishop Tutu. But instead, the man himself came out on stage. He spoke for 45 minutes or so; I really wasn’t paying attention to the time. He had a nice delivery, somewhat slow paced, and was frequently amusing. He used a lot of biblical references and talked a lot about God. The last 10% 5% of his speech was about the evils of defense spending, about how global warming is a fact (a FACT, mind you), and fossil fuels are bad. Well, I feel that with these points, he strayed off message a bit. But I’m certain many others will disagree.
After the Archbishop was done speaking, President Loewenstein came back to thank everyone for attending. But before he got to the podium, the video started! Oops!
Part II tomorrow.
Tags: postaday2011
