Showing posts with label
Fourth Saturday's Loneliest Liberal.
Show all posts
Showing posts with label
Fourth Saturday's Loneliest Liberal.
Show all posts
When Acting Citizen
Was Loneliest Liberal
By James Knudsen
[Acting Citizen’s Fourth Saturday column appeared here originally 10 years ago today, as “Fourth Saturday’s Loneliest Liberal: Our need for centripetal force.” It was great then, and it may be even better today. Plus, 15 thoughtful comments ensued over the course of the following few days – comments thoughtful then, and still relevant.]
It’s late and I’m facing a deadline. I can’t blame writer’s block, I don’t lack for ideas. If anything, I feel like John Travolta in Phenomenon where his character has so many ideas that picking one is the problem. For instance, I think I know the cause of many of our problems with guns. Or how ’bout this one—a compare and contrast of the artistic model versus the capitalistic model? As a last resort I could just go on an extended rant, like the one I posted on Facebook last night, regarding the mendacity of conservative opinion makers of the lower biological orders. Or motomynd’s taste in cars...too easy.
James Knudsen interviewed about writing for Moristotle
Interviewed by Moristotle
[I’m running this first interview of James Knudsen today because of the happy circumstance that he lauded Shakespeare on Saturday, in a comment on a post by Paul Clark titled “Who identifies with fake stories, fake lives?” in which James said:
My own experience is with [theatrical fiction], “...whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as ’twere, the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure.”
I am not nearly as skilled with the pen (quill) as William Shakespeare, and so my pitch to students in my Theatre Appreciation class each semester is, if I, or any other actor of the stage achieves any sort of success, it is when an audience member sees my performance, and quietly thinks, “That’s me. I’m not the only person in the world who thinks, or says, or does that. I am not alone.” To feel not alone, is to be less afraid. To be less afraid, is to live with the sense that there is something greater than ourselves, and we are better creatures for it.
The original interview was published on December 12, 2012.]
We recently approached James Knudsen about writing a guest article for Moristotle, even possibly doing a regular feature for us. James is a stage actor well-versed in Shakespeare and a teacher of theater craft. Last year at our own high school reunion, which he and his sister attended with their father, who was a teacher of ours and is now an honorary member of our class, James mesmerized us by reciting as his parting gift Hamlet’s uncle Claudius’s attempt to assuage his guilt [Hamlet III, iii].
By James Knudsen
[Originally published on February 28, 2015.]
Two-thousand fourteen ended with my siblings and me officially joining the ranks of the orphans following the passing of our dad Mo. I commemorated the event by changing the wallpaper on my smart phone to a very “Mad Men” shot of dad that was taken at a studio. This was replaced after a month with a picture of Dad and Mom which remains to this day.
Sales contest of civilizations
By James Knudsen
Not long ago [June 27] I mentioned my time in the retail sales world. I didn’t like it. Besides retail sales, I had other customer service jobs following my four-year stint in the Marines, a job I liked slightly more than sales. Presently, we in the United States and other countries that we’ll just call, for the sake of simplicity, The Western World, are in a struggle with various groups that we’ll call, for the sake of simplicity, religious savages. The question is: How to deal with these individuals. The answer is one of my previous vocations.
By James Knudsen
“If Jesus is the answer, what was the question?”
On getting on
By James Knudsen
I’m sure we’ve all heard the expression, “Be careful what you wish for, you might get it.” It just happened to me. I was sitting around wishing for a topic to write about and then I looked in the mirror.
Or email me
By James Knudsen
Last week on Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, host John Oliver fixed his sights on the topic of televangelists. The 1980’s were, we thought, the zenith of flashy evangelical hucksters, preening, prating, and preying on the prayerful. Turns out this sector of the economy is alive and thriving. Mr. Oliver put particular attention on Reverends Robert Tilton, Creflo Dollar, and Kenneth Copeland and his wife Gloria. Apparently private corporate jets have become a “vital” part of spreading the good word. The humble parsonages of these men of the designer cloth were also featured.
What’s an American car?
By James Knudsen
Many years ago, when the American automobile industry was in trouble, I found myself thinking about what constituted an “American” car and, more importantly, did anyone still want to buy one? I’m still pondering that question.
In the end, which do I dislike more?
By James Knudsen
If I asked you to guess which of the following I dislike more, working in customer service or getting a colonoscopy, what would your answer be? We’ll get to my answer in the end – I mean, eventually.
Shakespeare says
By James Knudsen
Another semester has ended. The lightest of teaching loads, one class, one night a week. Drama 1, an overview of theatre, was all the public system of higher education could find for me this spring. I filled in at the local community college I attended decades earlier, but had never been employed at. The syllabus I taught from was the same one used department wide and different from what I normally teach at my usual gig at Fresno City College. And I’ll confess that I prefer to spend a bit more time on Shakespeare than we did in my recently ended section at the College of the Sequoias, Tulare Campus.
Anthropomorphizing
By James Knudsen
This month's column ventures, yet again, into areas I am not qualified to comment on. Perhaps I should consider politics.
A good biologist is always wary of anthropomorphizing, attributing human characteristics, emotions, thoughts, musical tastes, onto members of the animal kingdom. Anyone who has owned a pet understands this tendency. Anyone who owns a cat – your cat is felinepomorhizing.
This isn’t my usual gig, this isn’t how I work, maybe I should have said “no”
By James Knudsen
“No” never entered my head. For a number of years I’ve known that someday, this task would fall to me. I’ve had plenty of time to prepare. Whether I’ve actually used that time is another matter. But Saturday, March 28, 2005 has arrived (as of publication). Today I am the master of ceremonies for my father’s memorial service. He’s been dead for four months and now it is time to provide some closure.
Mo...m
By James Knudsen
Two-thousand fourteen ended with my siblings and me officially joining the ranks of the orphans following the passing of our dad Mo. I commemorated the event by changing the wallpaper on my smart phone to a very “Mad Men” shot of dad that was taken at a studio. This was replaced after a month with a picture of Dad and Mom which remains to this day.
Fog
By James Knudsen
All places have something that the locals talk about with a mixture of pride and begrudging respect. In the Lancaster/Palmdale region where I taught theatre at Antelope Valley College, it’s the wind. The locals will tell you that the Antlelope Valley Wind Festival runs January 1st thru December 31st. And I’d venture a guess that most tropic regions will insist they have rain like no other place on Earth. Okinawa could hurl down precipitation with the best of them during the monsoon season I spent there in 1985. But, I must give Chiang Mai, Thailand its due. There I saw the rain start the way it does in the movies; one second nothing and the next, as if someone had thrown a switch, a torrential downpour. I could go on – the cold of Russia, the streets of Paris, the crazies of New York, but I want to talk about my hometown, Tulare, California and what it does better than anywhere in the world. Fog.
And picking our battles
By James Knudsen
I like to think that, as an actor, I’ve gotten better. I’m no Laurence – Olivier or Joey – but I get the job done. It wasn’t always that way. I think about early productions and cringe. My performances were filled with the bush-league, amateur flaws that I see in many of the young actors I work with as a college professor of theatre. Chief among these flaws and the one that remains so prominent in my memory of my own work is that of comprehension. Me, them, the actor not comprehending or understanding what we’re saying or why we’re saying it. It’s one the most difficult concepts to communicate to my students. But it may be the most important. If the actor doesn’t understand what she is trying to convey to the audience or the other actor on stage, the meaning will be lost. Language without context is jibberish...or worse.
Dad’s kind of car
By James Knudsen
“All that remains is the Panhard. But not for long. That is a story for next time...”
Last month I ended my column with a sort of a cliff-hanger. I’d written about growing up in an ordinary town with unordinary cars, owned by an extraordinary father. I had planned to write about the final disposition of that vehicle, because it’s a good story. But the story became more complex and more completed. It recent days I’ve heard much, from many, about just how extraordinary he was. But first, let’s review that Panhard.
The ones my dad had me grow up with
By James Knudsen
I’m sure everyone has a tale to tell of how they were embarrassed by their parents. It was rarely deliberate. Parents are usually too harried with the tasks associated with being parents to have the time necessary to formulate a plan to make their children want to crawl in a hole and disappear from the sight of every teen/pre-teen peer they know or wish they knew. More often it is the case of an adult being who they are. Recent events have caused me to consider my dad and the way he went about being who he is.
And I’d be dead
By James Knudsen
I’ll confess to not being completely up to speed on the difficulties associated with raising children in the 21st century. I imagine it has not gotten any easier. Time especially seems to be in short supply as parents try to cram 27 hours of raising, parenting, and rearing into 24 hours. And time is already limited for a child. If you live the average and only 18 of those years are considered by law to be “child” years, that’s definitely a fraction of the total. And then there are those who aren’t even children for that long. So many lessons to learn and mistakes to make as part of that learning. That last part is something that has made raising children more difficult – mistakes. They aren’t allowed anymore. It’s a good thing I grew up when I did.
Then & now
By James Knudsen
August is here! I suppose it’s everywhere else too, but here in the San Joaquin Valley it means we are enjoying the last days of summer and some of us are getting the new school year underway. I am currently in the second week of the Fall 2014 semester at Fresno City College. It wasn’t always this way.
Wishing to be her
By James Knudsen
Lost in the media frenzy following the loss of Malaysian Airlines, Flight 17, was the news that the world of theatre had lost one of its true greats. Elaine Stritch died July 17, 2014 at her home in Birmingham, Michigan. She was 89.
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