"Streamers" at the Huntington Theater

Leaving aside our reactions that David Rabe's play is full of stereotypes and cliches about young men in a barracks waiting to be sent to Vietnam, and that we are subjected to a series of dutifully instructive scenes meant to inform us about the nature of manhood, expressed and repressed homosexual identities, and the madness of war, and that the play careens toward a violent melodramatic climax that is completely nonsensical, and that this is not a play I would choose to see on Thanksgiving weekend...I do think there were solid theatrical moments here. Men do go crazy from something--from fear. Whether it's fear of being sent to Vietnam, fear of the two comically psychopathic sergeants, or fear of not being a man acceptable to the army and your bunkmates, the fear and menace is palpable.

If only Rabe had worked on the play a few more drafts.

The Brookline Chorus's "Carmina Burana"

The 22nd movement makes your heart race -- Tempos est iocundum, "This is the joyful time." The chorus sings, baritone sings, the women sing, the children sing, the men sing, then everybody sings, and we lead right into the soprano singing the brief 23rd movement, Dulcissime -- "Sweet boy, I give everything to you."

Then comes the 24th, Blanziflor and Helena, about the victory of these two lovers (about whom we know nothing), about the victory of love, both sensual and spiritual, as your reward for enduring all of Fortune's struggles, deprivations, failures and sacrifices.

And with hardly a pause, we come down into the final 25th movement, O Fortuna, a reprise of the very first movement, but bigger, more ominous. The bass drum pounds. We're back where we started, back on the Wheel. We pick up tempo and sing hushed and curt, semper crecis, aut de crecis, "Ever waxing, ever waning." And we're back again, resigned to accept a new round. When we boom out the final massive wall of sound, we're proclaiming our willingness to endure, to keep turning on Fortune's Wheel.

Last Saturday night (November 17), when our director Lisa Graham cut the air with her baton for the final note of this Brookline Chorus concert, there was a second of silence in the huge church. Then the crowd jumped to its feet. They didn't just clap, they jumped up yelling. I've never seen a crowd at a classical music concert get to its feet quicker. From where I stood on the top riser with the other basses, it looked like a rock concert audience. But better dressed.

For a second, Lisa looked drained. She faced us. Then she smiled and spread her arms out, as if to thank and hug everyone around her. She's tall, with long arms and fingers that seemed to stretch further with the rising noise from the crowd. The soloists (David Kravitz, baritone, Kristen Watson, soprano, Matthew DiBattista, tenor -- all great that night) bowed, the percussionists bowed, the pianists Jenny Tang and Eliko Akahori bowed, the chorus clapped and nodded (we can't bow, we don't have enough room on the risers).

This was joy, this was why we make music.

We're having an open rehearsal and auditions Tuesday night, November 27. You can find out about us at The Brookline Chorus website. Our March concert has Bach cantatas and a Britten piece, and in May we're performing parts from Duke Ellington's "Sacred Concerts." If you want to ask me about the chorus or the concert, you're welcome to leave a comment.

Jerzy Kosinski's "Blind Date" and a definition for pornography

It's been thirty years since I read "The Painted Bird," or "Steps," but I immediately recognized the narrative style that grabs you from the first paragraph and doesn't let go.

The main character is Levanter (don't recall if he has a first name). The book pieces together sketches of his life, many of them revealing aspects of a personality that do not seem possible to abide in the same person. He seems to be rich. He sometimes acts with savage, unfeeling cruelty to people who have not harmed him -- a rape (meticulously detailed by the narrator), a hideous murder of a supposed spy. He also acts with sensitive warmth and compassion, with no memory of that other Levanter. How can this be? Is it possible for these two beings to not be in communication with each other, while sharing the same body?

Kosinski makes me squirm. Reading the rape scene is like suddenly being expected to find pleasure in the degradation and humiliation of another human being. And Levanter seems to find that pleasure. Something about Kosinski's details puts the reader in that position. Is that his intention, to expose the reader unexpectedly to a pornographic event, and to make the reader squirm, as if to say, "You've been accepting degradation and humiliation all around you, all your life, and you just let it pass. How can you?"

It's more than Kosinski simply instigating a physical sensation in the reader (repulsion, confusion), just for the sake of creating a riveting literary effect. I'm just not sure what it is.