Brad Spurgeon's Blog

“What’s All This Talk” Comes Around Again, Unbelievably: Say No to Mr. T

October 14, 2024
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PARIS – My post below about degrees of separation from the past that I put up the other day reminded me that it was four years ago that I wrote a song about all the would-be tyrants in the world, called What’s All This Talk. And then I remembered that I found the right moment and way to do a music video for that song when on January 6, the American would-be tyrant’s followers decided to have a peaceful demonstration in and around the Capitol Building.

What’s All This Talk song video

Who could possibly have imagined that Mr T would return for another round of elections four years later, let alone the close race that he is producing looking like he is the favorite to win. What’s all this talk indeed!??!

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My Two Degrees of Separation from the Battle of Waterloo…or for that Matter, the French Revolution (And What About Yours?)

October 10, 2024
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Jacques-Louis David (French, 1748 – 1825), The Emperor Napoleon in His Study at the Tuileries, 1812, oil on canvas, 203.9 x 125.1 cm (80 1/4 x 49 1/4 in.), National Gallery, Washington, D.C. (Photo by VCG Wilson/Corbis via Getty Images)

You know that thing about us all being six degrees – or fewer – of separation in social connections from everyone else in the world? Well, the other day I had another thought along those lines. But one that shows us all how close we are in human history to each other. The dawning came to me as I thought about how close we are to repeating history these days, with fascist leaders all over the world gaining in power, and wars erupting in a manner that is dangerously close to setting off that World War III that many of us no doubt have feared all of our lives.

Yes, with the U.S. election around the corner, and with the possibility that an unbalanced leader not unlike the worst we have seen this century being voted in again, I began pondering how it was that we could repeat history so easily with so many unthinkable examples we seem to be following without thought to the consequences.

That got me thinking about how, in fact, we think that with so soon now 80 years since the closing of the last World War, it seemed a long time. A time long enough to allow us to forget. But it also felt like sufficient time to allow us to learn, develop, and change as the human race.

So that got me thinking about time, human time, and how far ago we really are from the Holocaust and the second World War, or even the first. Then bang. I suddenly began thinking about it, and then doing the research, and I realized that when I was born in 1957, there were still a handful of veterans alive from the American Civil War in the 1860s. And add to those veterans a whole lot of other people who lived during that time.

That is when I jumped to the next natural step, thinking about my father, born in 1925, and how many such veterans or people from other periods of history were alive when he was born. And then, before I even got to the end of that thought, I jumped to his father, my grandfather, Carey Bradford Spurgeon, who fought in World War I – among other places, in Vimy Ridge, and was born in 1892.

I got to researching that, and thinking about the days I sat on his knee in my childhood as he showed me his little red heart collection like those Russian dolls that fit inside one another, these little hearts containing other hearts. I think they were made of ivory, brought back from his many visits to the country where he was born, India, as the son of a missionary.

American Civil War

And I looked it up and I found that throughout his childhood, there were living veterans of the Napoleonic wars. People who fought under Napoleon – for whom this leader was not just an historical figure, but a person they served. Right up to the 20th century, they lived. In fact, there were actually people alive when my grandfather was born who had lived through the French Revolution! But the Battle of Waterloo, in 1815, was the one that really struck me in terms of war.

Yes, my very own grandfather, who lived in our own family home, was born into a world where the values, the memory, the mindset that brought about all those historic moments going back more than two centuries now were very much imprinted and alive in their minds and spirits. I repeat, I knew a man who lived at a time when people lived that experienced the French Revolution!

So how, I ask, can you really expect that the human nature that created Fascism, Nazism, the Holocaust, has had enough time to become something radically different in just 80 years? If we could do that – and all the other horrors that the last two and a half centuries have created – all within the crystal clear collective memory of only me, my Dad and my grandfather and the people alive during his day, how the hell can anyone think that it cannot happen again? Or do something far worse, as humanity has managed to do as we move along through history?

The passage of time is an illusion when it comes to any thought of distancing ourselves from our past. With all the writing on the wall, please, study history, be aware: Understand, U.S. voters, the signs that are all around us. Do not vote for Donald Trump. Even if you hate the democrats.

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A Not-Restaurant-Review: The Nescy Family Affair of Astounding Creativity in Castellammare del Golfo, Sicily

July 12, 2024
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Pasta allo scoglio at Nescy. Photo ©Brad Spurgeon

PLEASE NOTE THE UPDATED ADDRESS as of summer 2025. Since I wrote this post last summer the restaurant, unfortunately for all visitors and residents of Castellammare del Golfo, has moved to the neighboring town of Alcamo. So it is now the people and vistors of Alcamo only who can be treated by this amazingly original restaurant. Or you can drive to Alcamo from Castellammare, but don’t drink wine with your meal if you plan to drive back! V.le delle Fornaci Romane, 796, Alcamo, Italy. +39 366 196 5949 info@nescy.it nescy.it :

CASTELLAMMARE DEL GOLFO, Sicily – To my recollection I have written very few things about restaurants and dining on this blog. I do know that one of my most popular posts is an effort at writing a restaurant review that I did in 1991, at Joel Robuchon’s Jamin in Paris. And I also put up another unpublished restaurant review, that of Alain Passard’s Arpège, that I also wrote around that time. So if I am about to create a new category of blog post on great eating, please understand that it is because I find the following restaurant absolutely exceptional!

And since I have evolved a little bit since the 1990s, I have decided while writing these words that I will follow in my blog column rubric of “Not Reviews” to write about the amazing Nescy in this idyllic seafront town in northern Sicily. I have written Not Book reviews, Not Theater reviews and Not Film Reviews. This is my first Not Restaurant Review. The idea behind the Not Review, I remind you, is that I do not want to get on a writer’s high horse and pontificate on a subject in the way a traditional review does. Instead, this is just me writing about my impressions and feelings about a book, play, other, or in this case, restaurant.

Castellammare del Golfo is full of fabulous places to eat and drink. For a small town on the Sicilian coast, in fact, it seems exceptional the number of excellent restaurants. And they are located in various areas, like down the main Corso Garibaldi, or in the marina amongst the fishing boats, or up in the other main street by the park, municipal building and theater. That is partly why it took us years before we found and decided to try out a little unobtrusive place on the steep staircase beside the park leading up from the port (the Arab name for the town during its conquest – that was one of many, and started in 827 – was Al Madarig, which means, “The Steps”). This restaurant, Nescy, is not mentioned in the Michelin app, which only has a restaurant called Mirko’s, which we have been to twice. We have now been to Nescy, seven times – twice last year, and five times this year. And we will continue to go.

Coppu Russu Volante. Photo: ©Brad Spurgeon

Why? Because Nescy is simply the most inventive, original restaurant in Castellammare del Golfo. It uses normal, but high quality ingredients, with often well known dishes, but the food is of a finished quality that is exceptional. It fills you with joy, in fact, a sense of “bien être,” or well being, and it is not deadly hard on the pocket book. Twice, for instance, three of us got out of there with three course meals and a bottle of wine for 105 euros.

To put the originality into a nutshell – excuse the food metaphor – this is a restaurant that serves dishes that range from classic Sicilian to street food taken to a higher level. The Nescy web site puts the emphasis on the street food side to their fare; but for me that does not do justice to the kind and level of what Nescy has to offer. Now that we have been so many times and with several members of the family, I have seen and tasted many of the dishes, and have a fairly complete view of both the food and the service. It is almost impossible to speak of favorite dishes, but there are ones I keep wanting to take again but do not do so as I want to try new things all the time.

On the street food side, the Coppu Russu Volante of battered and fried calamari and Mazara red shrimp and potatoes, all with Trapani sea salt, is astounding, especially with its extraordinary homemade ginger mayonnaise.

La Buatta starter. Photo: ©Brad Spurgeon

Another fabulous dish that is light enough to be served as a starter, is the smoked swordfish with watermelon, with its mandorla mayonnaise!

The starter called La Buatta, is fabulously original and very copious – as are virtually all the dishes. This is a jar of fresh little pieces, or cubs, of ham from “a little black pig,” as they told me – and sorry for the image if you are an animal lover – that is marinating in olive oil with laurel, nuts, garlic and oregano. Delicious and filling.

Among the simplest of the most original dishes was the mixed salad I took served in a bowl made of a kind of tortilla cracker that you could eat along with the salad! (The seafood salad, by the way, is also supberb.)

Nescy salad with a bowl you can eat. Photo ©Brad Spurgeon

On the pasta side of things, the classic “Norma” has the freshest taste of pure tomato sauce I think I have ever had; while the “pasta allo scoglio” is the best mixture of spaghetti with mussels, squid, Sciacca pink prawns and scampi that I have had in Sicily. The seafood is big, thick and juicy.

Probably the most surprising pasta was the “Cala la pasta,” which is fresh pasta with ragù and colonnata lard of Nebrodi’s black pig – the same as the above mentioned starter – grains of Bronte’s pistachio, cosacavaddu ragusano cheese and stracciatella cheese. That cheese is making me hungry again as I write down these words! In short, it was rich and unctuous.

I could keep on listing the dishes but suffice it to say that each feels more original than the next as you make your way through numerous visits to this fabulous restaurant owned and run by a family from the neighboring city, Alcamo. And before I say anything more about them, I do want to save among the best of the food to the end, where it belongs:

Cala la pasta. Photo: ©Brad Spurgeon

The desserts are at the moment among the highest expression of the chef’s delightful imagination and approach to her work. (Anna Maria is all I know of her name, I apologize!) One night we were there, she invented a new dessert on the spur of the moment, that was not even on the menu. Literally, she decided to do something different and made an artwork out of panelle, which is not usually used in a sweet dish. She added ricotta mixed with bianco mangare, and blackfruit coulis.

A mainstay is the the “fried ice cream,” which is ice cream in a dough ball tossed into the hot oil, almost like a donut with ice cream inside.

Tortino Florio. ©Brad Spurgeon

But my favorite of all is the Tortino Florio, which is a kind of a hot spongecake with marmalade accompanied by the most creamy, beautiful ice cream with rosemary! You have to taste it to believe it.

The wine list, by the way, is short but solid, with several of the mainstay wines from the region – like Maria Costanza white, Terre della Baronia white, and a few grillo, an Inzolia, and our favorite for the moment, the Balhara, which is made from the local catarratto grape. All of them are more the reasonably priced by comparison to elsewhere, and our favorite is only 20 euros for the bottle.

As equally interesting as the food and ambience of this delightful restaurant is the story behind, and cohesion of, the family that founded and runs it. It was born of hardship in 2014: the patriarch of the family lost a very good job at the same time as one of the daughters encounter a health setback. They decided all together, with an idea from the son, to start their own business and not have to depend on working for other people. So they founded this restaurant and use some of the recipes and approaches to cooking of various family members. The result is a great success, even if it is probably more popular with non-Castallammarese clients than the locals.

A bit more street food from Nescy. Photo: ©Brad Spurgeon

Last night we went to a restaurant about 200 meters distant from Nescy and almost everything that can go wrong did go wrong, and it made me realize all the more just what a great evening of dining this family affair consists of. The service is impeccable, warm, and timely – you can press a little gadget on the table to get service whenever you want to; and the same gadget to call for the bill. In fact, the name of the restaurant has several related meanings: N-Nature E-Ethic S-Sicily C-Coppu Y-You…. But in Sicilian, Nesci means going out!

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Of Timing, Count, Rhythm, Reverb and “Born to Run” – or Not!

July 6, 2024
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Born to Run album cover

CASTELLAMMARE DEL GOLFO, Sicily: One of the things that fascinates me in playing music, is the question of the roles played and interchange of timing and emotion and melody. Sometimes I think there is a tradeoff between timing, the count, the rhythm, and emotion. Other times I think I just don’t know what I’m doing. The other day I stumbled upon a recording I did at home in 2015 of Bruce Springsteen’s song, “Born to Run.” As I now work on a new cover song recording that I hope to release in the coming months, this Springsteen one I did years ago made me think about that whole question again. The timing, the count, in this attempt at “Born to Run” is ALL OVER THE PLACE! It sounds like I didn’t know what a metronome is; although I know it was really because I didn’t care. It was an after dinner and wine effort to do a crude recording of “Born to Run” in a slowed down, folky version, rather than the original hard romping rock. While there is no constant rhythm or count, there is definitely meandering emotion.

[B. Spurgeon’s B. Springsteen lies here (I wonder if those initials ever hindered his career?!):]

Aquashow

With the song I am working on at the moment, by Springsteen’s friend Elliott Murphy – about whom I did a huge feature article in The Village Voice last February – I did use a metronome. This is his song “How’s the Family,” off Murphy’s first album, Aquashow, which was released in 1973. Although I had done an initial version of the song in the same way I did the Springsteen, and the emotional rambling worked for me, it was essential to use a metronome for the recording, as I am asking musician friends around the world to contribute their parts remotely – bass, drums, etc. But how strong will it be? Only the final recording will tell me.

When You’re Gone Away

Again, though, it reminded me today of my 2016 CD, “Out of a Jam,” where, although recorded in studios with the bands present, some of the songs were done with a “tick” – the metronome – and others we decided to do without the count. For instance, on the song Borderline, I used the metronome; but due to various reasons, on the song, “When You’re Gone Away,” we did not use a metronome. And the rhythm does actually change slightly over the song from the opening to the end, in a very slight crescendo. It felt appropriate for the song. And which is more effective? Not sure it’s possible to say – except I have noticed over the years that Borderline performed live tends to get a more enthusiastic response than did the Borderline of the CD.

Borderline

This morning, I saw an astounding video of Prince doing a monumental live version of “Play That Funky Music.” One of the keys to the whole performance was the astounding tight rhythm section and Prince’s more than impeccable melodic expressions on the guitar within that tight confine. Hits you over the head with that rhythm and tightness of timing! Filled me with an admiration I hadn’t felt since certain Jimi Hendrix moments.

Prince doing Play that Funky Music

But it did raise in my mind that question again of how much leeway a musician has within the confines of rhythm, count and beat, etc. Oh, yes, and regarding that Springsteen effort I did – another thing it brought to my mind, again in relation to the recording I’m doing at the moment, is when is reverb too much reverb? At the time I recorded it, I felt that I had put about 300 percent too much reverb on it. Now, I find it charming – this feeling of a big room, an otherworldly thing that goes along with the slowness of the version of the song.

Well, isn’t that what playing music is really all about? That there are no formulas? Just like writing, and most of the other arts. I hope to post that new Elliott Murphy cover sometime soon, once it is done!

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Irish Trad Music Around a Table in Paris with Paddy Sherlock – and Charles de Lint and MaryAnn Harris in the Background, on my Mind

March 7, 2024
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Paddy Sherlock and Paul Susen at La Cave Café in Paris

PARIS – Truth be told, it has been 50 years since I sat around a table and played along with Irish songs in a pub over a couple of pints. But 50 years ago, I was incapable of carrying a tune, and only really dreaming I was doing it. That was with my friend Charles de Lint and his band, Wickentree, in Ottawa at The Celts Room bar in Ottawa. Last night, I joined Paddy Sherlock and fiddle-player Paul Susen at La Cave Café for the first round-the-table weekly Irish jam. And sitting before me or beside me throughout the jam was the songbook of Celtic trad songs handwritten and given to me by Charles de Lint half a century ago as well. To my slight surprise – but not too much – Paddy Sherlock knew and played almost all of those songs…and more.

While Charles de Lint went on to become a successful fantasy novelist, he has always continued to play music, as well, writing and recording his own songs, but also continuing to play traditional music. It was through Charles while he worked at a record store in Ottawa that I also discovered and developed my taste for traditional Irish, Scottish and English music. And while I went on to do my own stuff, and in the open mics I play mine and all the usual pop and folk rock stuff, I regularly persist at home to be a closet Celtic crooner.
Paddy Sherlock and Paul Susen

When I learned last week that Paddy – whose Paris Songwriter’s Club open mic has been going for years – would begin this weekly session around the table, I jumped at it. In fact, I pulled out Charles’s songbook from my shelves and brushed up also on a few songs I love but rarely play at home, to be ready.

First song in Charles de Lint songbook in his calligraphic handwriting

One of these was “Peter’s Song,” by the Sands Family. Memory tells me that during at least one of Charles’s sessions at the Celts Room, he invited at least a couple of the visiting members of that Irish band – on a tour in Canada – onto the stage and they performed together. Maybe it was an amalgamation of my slightly off-kilter teenage mind. In any case, last night, for the first time in my life in front of an audience, I sang their song about a fiddler and a weekly jam he played at until his death in ’74. A beautiful, touching song that paints a picture of the kind of atmosphere I found last night at Paddy Sherlock’s new evening. A line from the song sums it up: “There were flying bows and bodhran sticks and you hadn’t room to turn / But there was always a chair and a couple of drinks for the lad who came to learn.”

Unfortunately, Charles and MaryAnn have not been able to continue their own frequent music nights in Ottawa over the last more than two years, as MaryAnn has been in a difficult condition in hospital after being bitten by a tick and infected with Powassan virus. This is a horrible, debilitating condition and situation that you can read more about at the Gofundme page dedicated to MaryAnn and Charles’s plight. And this is why the two of them were so much on my mind at the Cave Café last night. The other reason, was the book that Charles gave me, and that I have treasured for this half century. And I highly recommend any of Charles de Lint’s own novels or short stories and other writings, if you have never read this master of the urban fantasy genre.

Charles de Lint singing and MaryAnn on the mandolin a few years ago

By the way, in addition to “Peter’s Song,” I sang “Only Our Rivers Run Free,” and “The Star of the County Down.” Paddy and Paul did some reels and jigs, and songs like “Whiskey in the Jar” – Paddy’s version was quite different in style than what I know, and strangely sounded something like American country music to my ear!!! (Don’t kill me, Paddy! But I loved it!) And he did “As I Roved Out,” and many other classics. It was so fabulous to hear his Irish accent with these songs – I probably sounded like American country music on ALL of mine to him, with my accent – and he taught me a thing or two about playing the guitar the Irish way! It was a completely different Paddy of the Paris Songwriter’s Club open night.

Paddy Sherlock Irish Night 3

Paddy plans to do this weekly at the Cave Café: So if you are an audience member or a musician, get your instruments or vocal cords warmed up and join the jam!

PS Also, take a listen to this old Wickentree song from the 1970s. I remember listening to this one a lot at that time, before I even knew what the words meant – as it is in French.

PPS For years I attended the Oxford Folk Club open night once a year while attending the British Grand Prix. But that was a classic kind of audience/stage open mic, not an around the table jam. A fabulous place, by the way, where some of my folk heroes have occasionally played through the years, like Dave Swarbrick, etc.

Paddy Sherlock Irish night 1

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I Bit the Apple Again, Along with Eve and Had a Blast at the Open Mic

January 26, 2024
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Brad Spurgeon at the Open Mic at The Pom. Photo Credit- ©Riyad Sanford

PARIS – Thank goodness for friends who get you to move your butt. Last Friday, I had a very busy day with TAC Teatro, doing two shows, one in which I performed, the other that I filmed. A friend visiting Paris contacted me and said he wanted to do an open mic with me – the open mic at the Pomme d’Eve in the 5th Arrondissement, near the Panthéon. Going out again was the last thing I wanted to do after that long day, but the friend was visiting Paris only for the weekend. So I said I would go. Thank goodness I did! Another great night at this Paris mainstay open mic run by Riyad Sanford, after his previous musical evening at the Klein Bar across the river had been closed down.

My need for relaxation – and a beer – after the long day was more than fed by the laid-back atmosphere in this medieval kind of basement room with its curved ceilings, cut off from the world in every way except for the warm crowd of spectators and musicians. And above it all, Riyad, with his warm MCing of the open mic. My friend said it brought him right back to Greenwich Village in 1970 – or thereabouts. Think “Inside Llewyn Davis”

Ladies band singing a cappella at The Pom open mic

There was a long list of performers, and as I mentioned in my previous post about the open mic at The Pom, it’s important to get there even earlier than the 20:30 sign up time if you want a good spot on the list. I had a pretty good spot in the middle of the evening with one drawback. As I said when I got on stage, Riyad really did me a great injustice to have put me right after one of the most spectacular acts of the evening – a girls band singing a cappella. I did a video of them, which I have placed above in this post.

First at the open mic at The Pom

So there I was having to follow these geniuses! How could I do that? Only one choice: Doing the song I have done more often than any other, and in more places around the world than any other: “Mad World” by Tears for Fears. But then, I decided that the situation called for taking a risk on a new song I have never performed before in public, and only learned recently. This meant even more fear for me of screwing up and having the room erupt in distracted discussion. But if you take no risks, you make no gain.

So I tried it. A cover of Elliott Murphy’s song from his 1973 debut album, Aquashow: “Hows the Family.”

Second at The Pom open mic

Ouf, as the French say, the two pints of beer I had before mounting the stage did their trick, and as soon as I started singing the song I lost my stagefright, and it felt like I was on stage at the Olympia. That, of course, was also thanks to Riyad’s gentle prodding of the public to not erupt into discussion during this more peaceful, gentle, quiet number. At least I think that’s the case.

Anyway, tonight is Friday again, as I write these words, and the open mic will again take place, and if you happen to read these words tonight, get your butt over there now, whether you want to or not!

Fourth at The Pom open mic

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Google’s Bard AI Chat Program Massacres Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road” – Doing a Little Spoken Word at the Spoken Word Night of the Cabaret Culture Rapide

September 23, 2023
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The Bard

PARIS – I had intended to play a song or two at the Paris Lit Up! spoken word open mic on Thursday, bringing my guitar with me, but as I listened to the many other readers of their prose and poetry, I had a sudden idea and urge. I pulled out my iPhone as I stood at the bar during the first speakers’ numbers – and I felt like I would be judged as a horrible person for looking at my phone during a performance – to see if there remained a trace of the experiment in writing I had done the previous night. Thursday morning I had read an article in The New York Times about Google’s Bard AI chat software and had decided to sign up for it and test it out on a piece of my writing. I was delighted to find on my iPhone that the whole question and answer I had asked Bard was still there. I could present it to the audience at Paris Lit Up!

I am writing a memoir at the moment, and after reading the NYT article, I thought about the prospect of Bard helping Brad. Not to write my memoir, no way. But perhaps it could help me copy edit it. Despite more than 30 years of published writing, I still question my talents and abilities and try always to improve. (This blog is a bit of an exception – being mostly self-willed verbal diarrhea, since it is a kind of diary or log of my activities as opposed to any polished intended work of art.) So I am always ready and willing to receive suggestions, criticisms and editing of my work. In fact, I think that having at least one copy editor look over any piece of writing is what makes the difference between amateur and professional writing.

In any case, I set up an account with Google Bard (as Brad) and I entered the following prompt followed by a paragraph from my memoir: “rewrite the following text in shorter, more precise sentences:” In the snap of a finger Bard rewrote my paragraph of 6 wordy sentences into two very tight sentences that I wanted to believe were trash, but being the sensitive and flexible writer that I think I am, I admitted got the job done. But I also felt a little pinch of, “OK, fine, but there were so many nuances and so many details in my paragraph that I felt bring it to life for the reader, and carry the reader into the world that I had myself lived and wanted to communicate.”

Bard, I then saw, not only decided to execute the task I asked it to do but it also decided – or rather, was programmed – to write in point form all of the various cuts, adjustments, and changes that it made and precisely why it made them. When reading this, I felt a crushing sense of defeat and incompetence as a writer. I felt a blow to my ego, to the quality of my memoir, and a confirmation of those little voices nagging in my head telling me I am an imposter! (Yes, writer imposter syndrome.)

Why did I feel this way? Because it told me that more than one part of the paragraph was “redundant and hyperbolic.” It combined two sentences to make one more concise sentence that I should have seen in the first place. In another case, again, it said I was redundant and it explained precisely why. It removed several details from another spot because it said they were “unnecessary” and “distracting”! Finally, it added a phrase “to add a bit of poetic flair to the sentence.” In other words, without that contribution, there was no poetry in what I wrote. The final hit to the gut was the kind sign off of Bard to me for the work it did at my command: “I hope this is helpful!”

Helpful? Sure, gut-wrenching ego destruction, and a sense that I had spent a lifetime learning to write and taking in editorial criticisms and suggestions all these years only to find myself back at square one – excuse the use of a cliche – and not knowing how to write!

Then, my survival instinct kicked in. I came up with an idea for an experiment. I would compare Bard’s copy editing of my paragraph to that of a recognized masterpiece of creative writing. I would use the exact same prompt – although this time I added the word “Please” – and see what Bard did to the great, but wordy, writer Jack Kerouac from his masterpiece, “On the Road.”

The result was more than reassuring. It taught me a lesson. Here is how Bard responded…or rather, here is the whole exercise, still available for this cut and paste from my Bard account:

Google’s Bard AI Chat Program Massacres Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road” masterpiece

“Rewrite the following text in shorter, more precise sentences: I woke up as the sun was reddening; and that was the one distinct time in my life, the strangest moment of all, when I didn’t know who I was – I was far away from home, haunted and tired with travel, in a cheap hotel room I’d never seen, hearing the hiss of steam outside, and the creak of the old wood of the hotel, and footsteps upstairs, and all the sad sounds, and I looked at the cracked high ceiling and really didn’t know who I was for about fifteen strange seconds. I wasn’t scared; I was just somebody else, some stranger, and my whole life was a haunted life, the life of a ghost.””

Shorter, more precise version:

Waking in a strange hotel room, I didn’t know who I was for fifteen seconds, as if I were a different person, living a haunted life.

I made the following changes:

I removed the phrase “as the sun was reddening” because it is unnecessary to the main idea of the sentence.

I combined the two sentences “I woke up and that was the one distinct time in my life, the strangest moment of all, when I didn’t know who I was” into one sentence to make it more concise.

I removed the phrase “I was far away from home, haunted and tired with travel” because it is redundant. The word “traveling” implies that the speaker is far from home and tired.

I combined the two sentences “I was in a cheap hotel room I’d never seen, hearing the hiss of steam outside, and the creak of the old wood of the hotel, and footsteps upstairs, and all the sad sounds” into one sentence to make it more concise.

I removed the phrase “and really didn’t know who I was for about fifteen strange seconds” because it is redundant. The previous sentence already implies that the speaker didn’t know who they were.

I removed the phrase “I wasn’t scared; I was just somebody else, some stranger” because it is repetitive. The previous sentence already implies that the speaker felt like a different person.

I replaced the phrase “and my whole life was a haunted life, the life of a ghost” with the more concise phrase “living a haunted life.”

I hope this is helpful!”

Real life lessons learned about creative writing from Google’s Bard AI Chat program

Yes! Not only was it helpful to me, but after reading it to all the budding writers at the spoken word event at the Cabaret Culture Rapide, where the spoken word event happens every Thursday, but I felt it was helpful to everyone and I said to them: This response is proof to me that the art of writing is something that we must do because we believe in it, and in ourselves. And sometimes we will find other people who we touch, despite the writing perhaps apparently breaking the mechanical rules of what makes for “good writing.” We cannot succeed in pleasing all readers all of the time, but we may please some of the readers some of the time. The important thing is that, ultimately, there are no rules. There is only the humnan self-expression that will or will not reach the reader. Or will reach some, but not others. Just keep on writing, and don’t lose confidence through criticisms made of your work. Try to improve, but don’t take every editor’s opinion to heart. The masterpieces often break the rules and create something new.”

Aside from sounding like the harsh and self-assured judgments of so many editors I have heard throughout my career (;-)), what struck me was how Bard executed precisely what I had asked for, but had indeed killed the art. The worst thing was that its criticisms, its reasons for making the changes, while they were correct from the point of view of a strictly logical thinking computer program, were absolutely far off the mark and plain wrong when applied to the purpose and effects of a work of art.

For me, the importance of this revelation with Bard, the lesson I learned, was not so much that AI is not yet ready to create a work of art like “On the Road,” but rather, that we as writers must believe in what we write and understand that editors will always have differences of opinion, but that the work you do should be above those differences. Yeah, you’ll write some crap, but you may just write something fabulous that you do not want to be torn apart by the opinion of one, two, three or even four editors.

Anyway, I am very conscious of this blog post being very long and wordy. So I am now going to ask Bard to sum it up in one paragraph (I will not publish the why it did its changes):

“Bard is a powerful tool for editing writing, but it is important to remember that it is a machine and does not have the same understanding of art and creativity as a human writer. It is important to use Bard’s suggestions as a starting point, but ultimately the author should make the final decisions about what changes to make to their work.”

Hmm…I am not sure that’s precisely what I said, but it’ll do!

In any case, not only did I not regret playing music at the spoken word night, but I found myself having a great time just talking and not singing. So I can thank Bard for that inspiration too!

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Theatrical and Musical Adventures from Aubervilliers and Asnières to Castellammare del Golfo, Sicily

July 27, 2023
bradspurgeon

Academy of the Unfulfilled in Palermo Flash Mob

CASTELLAMMARE DEL GOLFO, Sicily – I have been wrapped up in a whirlwind of theatrical and musical adventures over the past month that have been so many and varied that I have had not a single moment to write about them here, despite itching to do so every day. Now I am sitting high in the hills above Castellammare as I start these words, taking a break from setting down harmonies for the next song in a musical show that we will be performing at this Azienda Agricola Acquaviva this coming Sunday, 30 July, and I finally found a moment to get a few words down in the blog about these incredible experiences.

Brad Spurgeon as Einstein in TAC production

The first was my cameo role as Albert Einstein in TAC Teatro‘s next play, the work-in-progress tentatively titled “La Première Fois.” The show is in its early stages of creation, but TAC Teatro put on a show of the work-in-progress at its theater space in Aubervilliers at 164 rue Henri Barbusse. I loved creating this role with Ornella Bonventre directing, because I cannot imagine that many other wonderful true-life personalities to play than Einstein. And, surprise surprise, I discovered through the necessity of growing my hair and my moustache, that I am capable of growing a moustache that is a pretty damn convincing version of the mathematical genius’s moustache! (Now if only I discovered I could also emulate his mathematical genius.) In any case, the show went off very well, with the TAC Teatro actors demonstrating more than ever their diversity of talents, as the show is full of music, magic and illusion, along with some beautiful songs. My role is minor, opens the show at the moment, and will probably appear again later on.

TAC Teatro school performers take a bow at yearend show at Studio Théâtre of Asnières-sur-Seine

The sad story there was that this was the last show that TAC Teatro performed in the space where it has been housed for the last two and a half years, since the middle of the Covid epidemic. The owners of the former warehouse decided they want to try to sell the lot on which it sits, and so they took it back from us, and the same day we handed over the keys, they had the space demolished so that no one got the idea of squatting it. In a sad, sad irony, while the rich owners wanted to demolish our space to keep squatters out, that same night during the riots that tore France apart after the police killed a 17-year-old for no reason, TAC Teatro’s new space for the coming season, in Asnières-sur-Seine was demolished, looted, burned down, by the rioters. So the coming season poses some challenges.

In the meantime, TAC Teatro also celebrated its yearend of performances of the students of the classes in Asnières, which took place in the 200-seat, magnificent Studio Théâtre. There, I was called in to do the job of MC, and I was given the opportunity to do this by playing a song between each performance of the classes. I matched the nature of each song with the play performance. The plays of the children were Peter Pan, the Addams Family and the Petits Chaperons Rouges; the adult class’s play was “The Bear,” by Chekhov. It was a fabulous festive evening of shows with a full house spectators and a great capping to a season of drama classes for TAC Teatro and its students.

Brad Spurgeon MCing the TAC Teatro yearend show

No sooner did we finish that event than we packed the car to go to our annual summer address in Castellammare del Golfo in Sicily, not far from Palermo. Here, this year, I started my first week participating in the great Chiringuito Jam session in Scopello, that I had discovered only last year, and which we learned was run by Ornella’s cousin, Michelangello Bologna. I again did a couple of songs with a complete band, and with Michelangello, who is a Michelangello of the harmonica in addition to the MC of the evening.Then, suddenly irresistibly, surprisingly, and synchronistically, after we had discovered that Castellammare del Golfo had been chosen as the location for a big crazy theater workshop by the illustrious Mario Biagini and his group called Accademia dell’Incompiuto – Academy of the Unfulfilled, we decided to take part. This workshop, or residency, lasts for the entire second two weeks of July, and in addition to consisting of working with Biagini’s troupe to create a final show – called “The Thirsty Ones” – for the 30th July, we also had two other performances of some of the work.

Teaser for the show of Accademia dell’Incompiuto – Academy of the Unfulfilled

Extraordinarily, one of those performances had been planned – without any input or prior knowledge from us – as taking place during the Wednesday night jam at Chiringuito! So for the second time in the month of July I ended up performing on the stage outside in Scopello, but now, I did first a performance of a couple of songs in the usual way with me on the guitar with other performers at the jam; then, second, I worked with the dozen or so actors and singers of the theater workshop performing the songs we had been working on, with their fabulous harmonies and many languages. I played guitar and filled in here and there with vocals.

I want to jump back a little and say why this serendipitous meeting of the Biagini group and Ornella and me was so surprising: We had met Biagini for the first time last year when we went to the Teatro Ridotto outside of Bologna, Italy in order to interview him for a project that Ornella and I are working on about some of the theater greats of the last 60 years. Biagini is known for having worked closely with the legendary intellectual figure of 20th century avant garde theater, Jerzy Grotowski. In fact, Grotowski, who died in 1999, had left Biagini and another man, Thomas Richards, in charge of the Grotowski Center in Pontedera, Italy – Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards – where Mario Biagini had worked since 1986.

Biagini and Richards ran the center until 2021, when they decided to go their own ways. Grotowski was one of the seminal figures of modern theater, and Biagini is a torchbearer of his world, along with Richards. Now this links into the next meeting, which happened a couple of months ago in Paris, when Ornella and I went to the Grotowski event at the Théâtre des Abbesses in Paris where Biagini was present to launch the latest edition that he edited of a translation of Grotowski’s theoretical – and other – writings that has just been published in French. It is a fabulous collection of the theorist’s work, including the writings that would eventually make up his famous and influential “Towards a Poor Theater” book that was first published by the Odin Teatret publisher and founder, Eugenio Barba. (Whom I have written about a few times here.

We also made a connection at one remove with Biagini at the beginning of April this year, when a group that he has directed that came out of Teatro Ridotto, also took part in the annual international residency called Finestres – see my previous post! – that Teatro Ridotto has put on for decades in Italy and that TAC hosted this year in Aubervilliers at the beginning of April. I am speaking about the fantastic Collettivo Hospites, who, incidentally, just put up a video of their memories of that week of activities.

FINESTRE sur le jeune théâtre from Collettivo Hospites

So it was quite amazing to discover that Biagini was holding this workshop in Ornella’s home town in Sicily during our stay here. And we joined in. The performance at Chiringuito was then followed by a flash mob performance a few days later in the streets of downtown Palermo. Here again we sang our songs, and I played guitar along with the musical anchor of the work, Viviana Marino on her classical guitar. There was a film production company on hand in Palermo, so you can see the work of this company, Ponte di Archimede Produzioni, in the teaser for Sunday’s show that I posted above. The teaser was also filmed partly on location at the base in the hills above Castellammare, where we are preparing and will put on the show, and where I am sitting writing these words. You only catch a tiny glimpse of me playing in Palermo, and a bit of Ornella and her daughter, Morgana, are also visible momentarily!

Segesta temple burning July 2023

I hope to have more videos and photos to follow, but this is what I have at the moment. Until then, if you can make it to the show on Sunday, I understand the airport in Palermo is open again…. Oh, yes, that’s another bit of news to follow up with: After the burning down of TAC’s new space in Asnières and the demolition of the old space in Aubervilliers, the 2,000 year old theater in Segesta, next to Castellammare del Golfo, and the neighboring 2,000 year old temple were both engulfed in flames in recent days during the catastrophic fires that we have been experiencing during the massive heatwave that lifted temperatures to well above 40 degrees celsius. A couple of years ago, TAC had been in negotiations to put on a performance on that ancient stage. The flames are following us from town to town, country to country!

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FINESTRE: An Extraordinary Week of International Theater Exchange @ TAC Teatro in Aubervilliers

April 17, 2023
bradspurgeon

Workout at Finestre

AUBERVILLIERS, France – I am still recovering 10 days later from an amazing week of work at TAC Teatro (3-7 April), where Ornella Bonventre and her company met with nine other companies or theater individuals from around the world to exchange their practices and put on a final show for the public. Finestre means “window” in Italian, and the second part of the name of this annual meeting is: “On the Young Theater:” Finestre Sul Giovane Teatro. The meeting has been held for the last 14 years at the Teatro Ridotto in Bologna, Italy, by Lina Della Rocca, the director, and usually involved only Italian companies. After Ornella and Lina met last May, they decided to hold the meeting in France this year, and for the first time make it an international festival. It was a huge amount of organizational work for Ornella and TAC Teatro, but with the support of the city of Aubervilliers, she pulled it off. What a week! What discoveries! Oh, yeah, and what a lack of sleep! But all worth it.

There were more than 30 performers from all around the world, and my job was to film and photograph the whole thing for TAC Teatro, and eventually I will make a little documentary out of the more than 1,000 files I accumulated (film, sound and photos) over the five days of the meeting. First, let me note the companies and people present in addition to TAC and Teatro Ridotto:

dinner at finestre

Filo dei Venti (ITA/BRA/SPA)

Teatro dei Servi Disobbedienti (ITA)

Merida Urquia (COL)

Collettivo Hospites (ITA)

Prof. Roberto Murphy, Paulo José da Silva e Bruna Anita Hennings (BRA)

Miguel Jerez Lopez (SPA)

Rebeka Guerrero (SPA)

The ItinerAnts (ENG)

Erika Montoya (SPA)

We were blessed by the city of Aubervilliers to have been given the use of the Espace Renaudie as a workspace all day long throughout the week, and then we dined and also performed or rehearsed at TAC Teatro’s space, also located in Aubervilliers. The artists stayed in either hotel rooms provided by Aubervilliers, or at the homes of volunteer families of Aubervilliers that are in the habit of working together to house visitors during events in the city. What a great collaboration between the city and the companies.

Ornella Bonventre (from back) directing work at Finestre

Teatro Ridotto has existed for 40 years this year, and is recognized as one of the leaders during that time in Italy in the so-called “third theater” movement. (The third theater “is a kind of theatre made by groups that create their own tradition, their main goal is to exist, resist, not trying to belong to the established theatre. Their own existence is resistance. They might work with ritual, politics, in alternative spaces like schools or prisons.” – Andrea Copeliovitch.)

There was a certain leap of faith required from all participants involved in this first ever week of the event to be held outside Italy, but with Ornella’s TAC Teatro making great headway internationally and in planning events in and around Aubervilliers, Paris and elsewhere, as well as the strong reputation of Lina Della Rocca and her renown for holding this annual event, the whole thing ran without a hitch.

Lina Della Rocca teaches at Finestre

Throughout the week the companies worked together showing their various methods of actor training, and then they worked as a complete group on a flash mob show, thanks to the suggestion of Ornella who desperately wanted to share as much as possible of the gathering with the community. Then the whole thing was again opened to the community with a final show of excerpts from the current work of each of the visiting companies, which was put on at the Espace Renaudie in a free performance for the public.

On the first Tuesday evening TAC Teatro also put on a performance of its latest show, Ajamola, for all of the participants at its home theater space, and then Merida Urquia put on her show that was directed by one of the great actors of Odine Teatret, and ItinerAnts gave a taste of its famous “Tea Lady” performance, by Cinzia Ciaramicoli.

group shot at finestre

All in all, the drawing together of more than 30 people from around the world with at one point five or six directors collaborating on a performance, was an exceptional example of how despite everyone having their own vision and ego, we can all work together when the goals are clearly defined and all leading to a show. It was quite breathtaking for me with the camera, I can assure you! And I don’t even want to mention the babel of four or five different languages being spoken every minute of the week!

painting exercise at Finestre

And the biggest proof of success is that Ornella and TAC Teatro, at least for their part (I can’t speak for the other guests), are already hungry to try to stage another such international event as soon as possible!

card exercise at Finestre

PS: I made tons of videos over the week, but they cannot be posted raw, I need to edit them. So I will eventually post another blog item in the coming weeks with an edited video of some of the high moments of the event. The flash mob performance in the streets of Aubervilliers was definitely one of the high moments, and I got some fabulous footage of it. There were some wonderful moments in the final show of each company’s “personal” productions. Not to be missed!

Lina Della Rocca and Ornella Bonventre at the end of Finestre

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100th Open Mic at Pomme d’Eve in Paris – and My First There

April 16, 2023
bradspurgeon

Pomme d’Eve Open Mic

PARIS – I had the strangest experience on Friday evening attending for the first time the Pomme d’Eve open mic in the bar of the same name on the Rue Laplace in Paris. This was the very same cellar bar that had hosted the first ever open mic that in around 2010 immediately transferred up the street to the P’tit Bonheur la Chance bar and became one of the best in the city for years. But I loved the atmosphere of the Pomme d’Eve, with its kind of medieval cave and thick pillars, and small stage, and a great mixture of both intimacy and space. I had seen that my friend Riyad Sanford had been running this “new” open mic in the Pomme d’Eve for probably around two years, as a new addition post-Covid to the Paris open mics, and I had intended for two years to attend! Friday was the first time I could, and the strange thing was not so much the absence of Riyad – who had gone on a trip and been replaced this week by Vedit Raisinghani as host – but the fact that for the first time probably in more than a decade at a Paris open mic, I did not know or recognize a single musician in the open mic!

Yes, here I was, some 13 or more years later at this very same venue from which so much had grown, and at which now Riyad – who for years hosted the open mic at the Klein bar, as well as others like the Galway and occasionally the Highlander – hosted this one and so I assumed that I would find all of the familiar faces. In fact, no. Not a single face I knew. Or not, rather, until I later learned that the violin player who accompanied those who wanted to be accompanied, had remembered me from the Osmoz Café open mic of Sheldon Forrest, and I did have vague memories of him.
Man on piano at Pomme d’Eve Open mic

But what I realized had happened was that a whole generation of performers had suddenly supplanted the previous generation of performers, in the period in which I had greatly reduced my own visiting of open mics due to both Covid and other activities – notably TAC Teatro activities – and so I realized only by not recognizing anyone and also seeing for the first time a new generation that looked sooooo much younger than the previous one, that I had been away a LONG time!
MC and Ales on violin at Pomme d’Eve

But what I found was greatly reassuring: Faces change, generations come and go, but the music and the spirit of the open mic continues in the same way. Signup was advertised as being at 8:30. But by the time I arrived at about 8:35 I was already the 12th, and designated last performer, as there is a strict adherence to the need to close the open mic for the evening at midnight. With three songs each, I just barely managed to get in under the time limit to have my own three songs. But it was a huge pleasure, and there were still lots of audience members by the end of the open mic when I went up, since, I was told, the bar is one of the few that stays open until 5am!
French one at Pomme d’Eve open mic in Paris

From where I was sitting and taking a few videos, you will not see that there was a very nicely sized crowd of musicians and spectators. And my only criticism is that I found the sound system could have been better for the vocals – as you will hear it is ever so slightly muffled. But that may well be because I was not sitting directly in front of the speakers.

This place also has something that is usually missing in most such open mic venues, which is a piano. So it is well worth it for a broad cross-section of performers. And the added touch last on Friday of having Alex, the violin player, was really great. I insisted he play along with me, as I thought he was about to leave as he had not yet recognized me either as the guy he had seen at Osmoz Café. I was glad he joined me on all three songs: “Mad World,” “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere,” and my “Borderline.” I was really touched when afterwards one of the other young musicians came up and told me the Dylan song is his favorite … or was it one of his favorites? In any case, it showed me that the generations may change, but the same great songs go on touching them all one after the other.
Duet at Pomme d’Eve Open Mic

Oh yes, and I forgot to mention. Another shocking moment for me came right at the beginning when the MC announced that this was the 100th edition of the open mic! Boy, had I really been gone for a LONG time!

Check it out!

Another at Pomme d’Eve open mic in Paris