KENNETH ATKINS: A POET FOR STARDUST

Kenneth Atkins recently (2022) published his epic review of his personal life journey as GOD IS MY CO-PILOT, a title borrowed from a 1945 film starring Dennis Morgan based on the 1943 autobiography by Robert Lee Scott, Jr. 

Scott's narrative unfolds as a vivid account of the Flying Tigers and the US Army Air Force in China and Burma during WWII. I remember the film well as I saw it when I was ten years old at the Paramount in Amarillo, Texas. The film affirmed that the fall of Japan signaled the end of World War II.

Atkins' narrative is a chronological account of his life anchored on three pillars: The Spiritual Realm, Family Love and Support, and a History of Academic and Scientific research, development, and implementation.The book sometimes becomes a somewhat dense read amid so many acronyms (more correctly, initialisms) such as NACA (National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics),  OAST  (Office of Aeronautics and Space Technology), SSEC (Solar System Exploration Committee), etc.

I met Kenny in high school. I was music and he was sports. He was a pitcher for Amarillo High School, but it was music that brought us together. We were in high school choir, and in a quartet. But somehow, a musical I was writing, Gotta Sing! was approved as an official school production even before it was finished.  I remember developing the music and rehearsing in an elegant basement with a grand piano belonging to a cast member on an idyllic tree-lined street. The show was still in development and although I usually did lyrics for my songs, I was feeling pressure of producing new songs quickly. As I was working on a song, Kenny Atkins suggested some lyrics and they fit perfectly. In our minds Gilbert and Atkins became the new song team in town, and we had a brief delusion of being Broadway bound. 

At the time, I recognized Ken's gift as a poet... He had a sense of substance and craft, and a poetic awareness that emerges in his extended autobiography filled with technical and scientific data. It is a rare combination: poet and engineer, maybe a bit like Chaucer (Canterbury Tales) who was a poet and engineer, supervising construction of buildings and the repair of the banks of the Thames river. He also wrote a treatise on astronomy. Chaucer was the first to publish in Middle English, a departure from England's  official languages of Latin and French. Kenny, like Chaucer, has that rare sensibility of knowing the cosmos as a poet and engineer.

But there was the secret Ken that I never knew. I never guessed his love of flight and his secret flying lessons near Palo Duro Canyon. 

Palo Duro Airport near Canyon, Texas was 19 miles from Amarillo on a two-lane highway that unfortunately killed many of our classmates in accidents who had overdosed on the freedom a driver's license brings to a teenager. It was a deadly drive, and I drove it several times a month because we printed the high school newspaper at a press in Canyon City. There is an alternate drive that goes more directly to the canyon, but it is very slow. Little did I know that Kenny was making the same trek to take flying lessons at Palo Duro Airport, which he picked so that no one would know he was learning to fly.

Palo Duro Canyon is a beautiful surprising landscape carved out of the Texas Plains, created during the last glacial retreat 20,000 years ago. It is a beautiful experience to visit the canyon as you see the flatlands dissolve into the panoramic vista of a canyon laced with vivid colors, 120 miles long, up to 20 miles wide, and 820 feet deep, with a few areas that are more than 1000 feet deep. No doubt seeing it from the air must have been a mystical experience for Ken in his first adventures skyward.

I am disappointed that I never knew of Kenny's first real love: flying. I might have pursued flying lessons to know the freedom and exhilaration of flight.

But as he headed for St. Louis for engineering and flight, I headed for Texas Tech for an inspiring arts encounter with my mentor Dr. Gene Hemmle. 

I was disappointed that we lost touch after high school. We led very different lives. His was disciplined and progressively grew in skills and reputation in the aviation field, leading to his engineering prowess in space flight research. Ultimately he achieved his pursuit of space research and the successful mission of Stardust, the rocket that literally returned to earth the dust from exploding stars --- Reality erupting into Being.

For Ken, Stardust was a mission into the heart of creation, a mission of discovery revealing the underlying motive of such an amazing quest is "Eternal Love." 

I have slightly short-changed his description of a growing family that formed the bedrock underlying his achievements. Without the enduring filaments of family growth, love, and support, there would be no meaning, no knowledge. Ultimately, all knowledge is personal.

Even though there are uses of the word stardust as early as 1400, "stardust" served as a timely poetic quest for existence in Hoagy Carmichael's lyrics for the song "Stardust:"

And now the purple dusk of twilight time
Steals across the meadows of my heart
High up in the sky the little stars climb
Always reminding me that we're apart

Love is now the stardust of yesterday
The music of the years gone by

Ken, the engineer/poet in search of meaning, was at the helm of humanity's search for reality and meaning, an attempt to reconnect with origins of ourselves and the universe. Stardust is one of our ultimate quests in search of meaning. The frequencies of stars are our new music of years gone by...

For Ken, his record of Stardust reveals the Universe as Love, an infinite truth inviting us to consider a deeper awareness of who we are and where we are going.

THROUGH THE WORMHOLE TO THE WORLD OF NANCY LAMOTT

About a year ago my music streaming service featured a singer I had never heard of: Nancy LaMott. She was singing, "I Have Dreamed," one of my favorite Richard Rodgers' songs. It is from The King and I, a Rodgers and Hammerstein classic. LaMott's treatment was so original, it was as though I was hearing the song for the first time. 

Later, I learned that LaMott's pianist and arranger was Christopher Marlowe, and as I listened to song after song it was clear that Marlowe not only understood the nuances of LaMott's voice, he was in love with the incredible expressive range she could attain vocally and emotionally. Consequently, it doesn't matter if there is an orchestra, one or a few instruments, or just Marlowe and LaMott, something emerges that is singular, original, and inspiring. This team found a path unlike any other duo, but make no mistake, Nancy LaMott's charismatic presence shines through as the brightest star in a constellation, harmonizing with the universe, but sadly it was to be like a shooting star with its brilliant streak across the universe, and then vanishes. She died at the height of a career that was soaring.

The miracle is that there were luminaries who recognized this rare phenomenon, and made sure her work was recorded. The producer/composer David Friedman set up a record label for LaMott. He wrote many of his songs just for LaMott. Jonathan Schwartz, the radio personality, featured her on many of his shows. Friedman wrote some of his best songs for LaMott including Your Love, Listen to My Heart, and I'll Be Here with You. She came to the attention of Peter Matz, who featured her in a concert in  Los Angeles, and later, orchestrated her fifth album Listen To My Heart. Fortunately the vision of these composers/arrangers scheduled her in recording studios enough to produce three more albums posthumously.

She became a close friend of the actor Peter Zapp. He was always at her side, and stayed with her through her battle with cancer. They married an hour before her death in 1995, such a tragic loss to the world and to music.

All of this is background to my adventure with Nancy LaMott. At first, it was as though her art invaded my consciousness, but later it was as if I had fallen through some wormhole and became vividly present in every syllable Nancy LaMott sings. But I also observe that I am just as moved by the pianist Christopher Marlowe and his highly original settings that bring out the best in LaMott. 

Technology opens dimensions that we enter even though we don't immediately perceive the difference from the three dimensional world we occupy. Some refer to it as a fourth dimension, as Time, but Time itself has many dimensions. Our attempts to characterize Time as linear is both naive and comical. We perceive that technology is transforming our world, but the rate of change is so astonishing that we need other tools besides logic, artificial intelligence and wishes. 

We know that somewhere in the answer is our ability to be fully in the moment. Awareness is a dimension that transcends all others. We don't fully understand the mind that mercurially transcends boundaries to enter new dimensions available only through conscious awareness. ALL KNOWLEDGE IS PERSONAL. We don't comprehend how this connects one to the many, or connects us to each other. My own sense is that Entanglement is a universal Thread connecting everything to everything, constituting Infinity...experienced personally as conscious awareness. 

This is an elaborate way of saying that through the artistry of her voice, and the concinnity of Christopher Marlow's interaction with LaMott's exceptional talent and her unlimited expressive range, connect infinite, yet singular moments as sound in time... Infinity expressed in singular beauty, thrilling and touching us with an awareness of who we are and where we are traveling emotionally in our moment of being there with LaMott and Marlowe.

Words cannot replace music. 

The first song I heard from LaMott on my music server (by chance) was I Have Dreamed, one of my favorites of Rodgers and Hammerstein. It begins with a simple arpeggiated piano accompaniment, elegantly subdued as though we were hearing this in the dusk of evening, her voice is soft, contemplative as she intones "I would love being loved by you." As the verse begins with "Alone and awake..." we feel her isolation dissolve in her growing awareness of her connection to her absent love. Her dreams awaken her awareness of the reality of her true love, sharing their place in a welcoming universe. In "How you look in the glow of evening," her dream transforms into the presence of their love. LaMott achieves this through control of the color and strength of her voice...achieving a subtle but effective climax as she returns to and concludes with the original, softly nuanced  "I would love being loved by you."

This was followed by LaMott and Marlowe's collaboration of It Might As Well Be Spring. LaMott's simple straightforward articulation of this classic seems to come to a close as though a brief interlude in a set of songs.

But no--- Marlowe provides a most provocative bridge that seemed to say isn't there a bit of Gershwin sleeping inside this Rodgers and Hammerstein classic? Instead of closing, the piano gradually explores Rhapsody in Blue fragments. Quite possibly hasn't Gershwin replaced Marlowe at the keyboard? As Lamott returns, this transformation seems to triumph in slight references to Gershwinesque idioms, trills, arpeggios, minor thirds all underscoring the innate restlessness of someone under the spell of Spring Fever, even though "it isn't really spring." Give Christopher Marlowe an academy award for this gem. No orchestra... just Marlowe and LaMott making a miracle.

OK. "If they asked me, I could write a book" about the genius duo of LaMott and Marlowe. I am tempted to describe their collaboration that combines two Sondheim songs, Good Thing Going/Not A Day Goes By, but just find this and listen to this genius duo assisted by the eloquence of a cello. You will discover new things in this song that might not have existed even for Sondheim. 

The beauty of music performers is that they keep unveiling new meanings to songs we know and love as they pursue these classics in a new time and place. This trio, revealing nuances and depths of Sondheim, add to the luster of memory and anticipation of new, personal discoveries.

I admit I get lost in the cabaret brilliance of Nancy LaMott and her collaborators. 

But I also suffer a bit of anguish and regret. Nancy LaMott was reaching the zenith of her career and a leading performer in the cabaret scene of New York City, just minutes away from where I was living and working at New York University.

I never knew what I was missing and what I missed, until now.

 

 

WARKENTINE'S REMARKABLE ANAÎS NIN FANTASY IS STUNNING SUCCESS

On March 13, Ellen Warkentine presented a fantasy drawn from the copious writings of Anaîs Nin in her production of NIN DESCENDING A STAIRCASE presented at the charming, diminutive bar called SINGLISH on 13th Street in New York City. In another lifetime, the location of Singlish served as the site for Anaîs Nin's printing press, and headquarters for her literary activity and iconoclastic lifestyle.  Warkentine selected the writings and organized them into a dramatic structure performed by three actors, and one of the most original bands to ever perform Off-Broadway.

Although this production enhances the thesis work for Warkentine's Masters Degree at NYU's Gallatin School, this is a thoroughly professional production mounted at a level far beyond most Off-Broadway offerings.  Warkentine is a composer, singer, poet, and writer. Each of her creative roles is professional and artistically insightful, as she crafts a masterpiece of her own from another artist's ouevre that resonates with her own sensibility.

The audience is brought into the work at the beginning by walking up the stairs of the tiny bar to begin the performance and descending the stairs to punctuate the ending. Every element of the production is coordinated to shape the character of Nin as revealed through her writings.

Warkentine shapes a distinctive profile of Nin drawn from Nin's own extensive writings. Nin's writing career spans many years and she may be the most prolific female author who ever lived. Indeed her extensive works appear more copious than most male authors. She was constantly writing diaries, essays, novels, and exchanging letters with many authors and artists, including Henry Miller.

NIN DESCENDING A STAIRCASE is presented in seven scenes performed without interruption.
      1. Sabina (A Spy in the House of Love)
      2. Lina (Little Birds)
      3. Djuna (Four Chambered Heart)
      4. Lillian (Ladders to Fire)
      5. Lilith (Winter of Artifice)
      6. Djuna 2
      7. Stella (Stella)

The scene names seem more like a cryptic code instead of a dramatic structure, but actors and musicians reveal the substance of the narrative that discloses Anaîs Nin, unpacking the events and relations in her life to achieve an apotheosis of self awareness and insight. Nin's life of protest, writing, and iconoclasm culminates in her own understanding of her contradictions as Stella, resolving her enigma in a celebration of understanding and forgiveness.

Elizabeth Stahlmann as a facet of Nin as Sabina, opens the first scene in a monologue that sets the tone of rapidly changing, volatile emotions. She is a liar to herself and the world ("wash your lying eyes and face"). Stahlmann is a major talent. Clearly this is an Off-Broadway performance worthy of an Obie or Tony Award. Her expressive range provides a stunning control of her voice, her facial charisma, and imaginative gestures. Her technique as an actress is what makes us believe by the end of this production that she has achieved a spiritual awakening by examining her life and works. By the end of the performance, Nin as Stella has achieved celebrity, but even more, she is spiritually aware, "melting everyone" and artistically fulfilled.

Equally accomplished, Anna Crivelli (two faces of Djuna) as the Lina facade of Nin "is a liar who can't bear her real face in the mirror." Her interaction with Stahlman is flawless and convincing as a foil of introspection in the gathering awareness of Nin whose passion for life has evolved into an artform. Djuna struggles with conflicting desires in a search for "peace in simplicity." The deft direction of Jesse Rasmussen (who is also a co-creator) is clear as the interaction of Crivelli and Stahlmann becomes so entwined through gesture and fluid movement that they metaphorically and visually become one.

With a performance filled with women, Leland Fowler, an accomplished actor with a rich background from Shakespeare to modern classics in Off-Broadway and Theater Festival venues is much more than a "token male" among a bevy of exceedingly accomplished females. As Jay, the Lie Detector, he shines the light of truth on Nin's fantasies. He is a powerful and demanding presence, but adds an air of the calm inquisitor in search of truth.

A word about the band of musicians, instrumentalists who also provide a song as explication of Nin's emerging realization of her existence as an artist. The instrumental/vocal ensemble, Ellen Warkentine, piano et al, Eve Elliot piano, accordian, et al, Hanna Rose Dexter, Bass, and Daisy Castro, Violin, all perform songs that contribute to the narrative structure in a much more integrated way than a traditional Greek Chorus. Each song seems an introspective journey through the inner terrain of Anaîs Nin.

Billed as "A Site Specific Cabaret," this Off-Broadway production by Ellen Warkentine in collaboration with Jesse Rasmussen, this reflection on Anaîs Nin's creative journey transcends traditional staged drama, almost like the Happenings that occurred in New York City in the 1950s. This was the milieu of Nin as an artistic genius and historian of a creative epoch of American artists hailing a new era of making Art.

                                                                                 ...Jon Vance

NEW YORK STORIES: MULBERRY STREET

The plane had circled JFK for three or four times. Passengers aboard the flight were quiet, almost somber, resigned to the indignity of a delay after traveling from Korea halfway across the planet in less than 12 hours riding a tailwind as they crossed over Canada.

Jerome was traveling light, but he was in no rush. For a while he stared out the plane's window, trying to recognize Long Island landmarks. He really had nothing to rush home to, if this really was home.  He wasn't prepared to be back in New York. But in just a short while he would be at Washington Square, trying to make sense of the past ten months.

Jerome was struck by his awareness of feeling so solitary. When they finally landed, he gathered his bag, passing through customs quickly and without incident... unless you counted the slight tug at his heart as he passed through the exit where he had embraced Cassandra for the first time when she arrived like a angel come to save him from himself.

There did not seem to be many people at the taxi dock. His suitcase was quickly stowed and suddenly he was hearing the driver ask if he preferred a route into the city. Jerome replied "Your choice," and they were off on the beltway to Manhattan.

It was raining. Jerome had always liked New York in the rain. Before he moved to New York, he would write short stories about the lights glittering in the rain on New York streets. Once in Manhattan, he realized his stories had failed to capture the magical quality of the lights glistening on the streets... with the rain, the city was quieter and more intimate. He thought about the first time he had walked down Fifth Avenue with Cassandra shortly after she had arrived in August. It began to rain, and she saw a street vendor and bought an umbrella. "It's so romantic," she whispered, "walking with you on Fifth Avenue in the rain..." She smiled as she pulled him under the umbrella, and he felt her bonding with him.

Jerome was so lost in thought that he scarcely noticed as the taxi crossed the Manhattan Bridge and turned onto Canal Street. His heart began to beat faster as he recognized many places in Chinatown where Cassandra and he had shopped and an array of restaurants they had explored together. "What is this?" he thought, feeling a surge of anxiety as the taxi slowed and made right turn turn up Mulberry Street.

"No! Not this way!" he thought to himself. This was certainly not the expected route to Washington Square. His heart almost skipped a beat as he suddenly found himself on Mulberry street where Cassandra and he had lived from the first day she arrived. "Why did the cab take this route? I wasn't prepared for this..." He felt agitation, a pang of anxiety as they passed the Airbnb where they had begun their life together and then crossed Grand Street where they had walked hand-in-hand so many times. The first time she took his hand, she held it as though she would never let go.

Jerome wondered why he was so distressed. The days spent on Mulberry Street were the happiest of his life. He remembered before Cassandra arrived, walking on a summer day in late August along Houston and turning right at the Puck Building to wander south on Mulberry. He snapped photos and shot short videos as he walked along the street. 

Gradually he could feel the pull of Little Italy as he neared Grand Street, Indeed, the decorations were up and there was a festive atmosphere for the upcoming celebrations for  the Feast of San Gennaro in September. It seemed as though the festival was already beginning, but Jerome remembered how crowded Little Italy would be at the height of the celebration. There were performances, processions, contests, music concerts, and dancing in the streets...but the food was the real miracle of the Feast of San Gennaro, a festival held every September in Italy to honor Saint Januarius, the patron saint of Naples and Little Italy. 

Finally, Jerome sat at an outside table of a small restaurant On Mulberry near Grand Street. The sun was blazing overhead, but he could detect the smell of September in the air. He could sense Cassandra's arrival with the coming of Autumn, the ripening orange trees on Mulberry street, and the miracle of a renaissance about to change his life.

ZEN, ARCHERY, ECKER & DERNINI

I started to take a journey... the same journey I took maybe thirty years ago. I knew that I was attracted to ZEN because in some small way, it seemed similar to Phenomenology, which I had been introduced to by my colleague who seemed almost like a Zen Master to me. David Ecker taught in the art department at NYU Steinhardt. He was an arts craftsman and art philosopher. I had completed my doctorate at Columbia University, and never once had any class introduced or discussed phenomenology. In some ways David Ecker was my Zen Master who led me through endless inquiries that opened my world.

We had many adventures together, and they alone would be worthy of discussion and documentation, even now. 

I happened to try the Audible book for Zen in the Art of Archery.  Forget it! It's better to let your imagination conjure up the sound of the master's voice. The reader on Audible distorts his voice to attempt to sound like a Zen Master, but it just doesn't work for me.

But I am sympathetic to Herrigel's quest. He made many assumptions about what the experience of learning Zen through what the Japanese consider a deep and profound art grounded in the way of Zen...much more than a philosophy. There is a spiritual connection that is difficult for those of us who have been biased by Western philosophy and assumptions. 

David Ecker is no longer with us. But his presence lingers. He pursued the creation of knowledge through experiments such as Navigating Global Cultures. It so happened that a marvelous artist and inquirer, Sandro Dernini, came to study with David Ecker in the Art Department at NYU . I was fortunate enough to tag along and help in the launching of marvelous experiments in art as a way of knowing and inquiring---of ART as the disruptor.

So my journey here was originally planned as a shared adventure, but it fell by the way because Time had other plans. I pause now in the debris of a botched beginning that turned into a new opportunity of discovery. I see many of my past mentors in their separate journeys, but somehow beckoning me to be out and about. Life is perpetual discovery, uncovering each moment as immortal.