Posted by Gerri George

Lyrics are flash stories; they are poems, they contain elements of memoir; in some cases, they address personal themes, at times universal. Lyrics reflect the individual journey or cultural observations of the songwriter. They are a serious art form.

But are they literature?

Although there are many definitions of literature, my bookshelf copy of Webster’s New World Dictionary offers the following:

Literature: all writings of prose or verse, especially those of an imaginative or critical character…. excellence of form, great emotional effect….writings of a particular time, country, region….all the compositions for a specific musical instrument, voice, or ensemble.

Lyric: a lyric poem; the words of a song, as distinguished from the music.

The definition of a lyric is simple; applying the definition of literature to song lyrics is not. The above is a broad definition of literature, vis-à-vis lyrics, to be sure, but I’d rather fold lyrics into the literary family, than exclude them.

Like literature in general, song lyrics often reflect the times in which they were written: While the song Yankee Doodle Dandy seems nothing more than a cheerful patriotic ditty of words and music, in reality, it was hugely political. The website Archiving Early America explains that the song, first a nursery rhyme ridiculing England’s Oliver Cromwell as ”Nankee Doodle,” evolved into “Yankee Doodle” (indicated a trifling fellow), and “Dandy” (affected manners and dress). The British made fun of the American colonial motley crew, the early version who wore furs and buckskins, but over time, the motleys got their revenge, singing Yankee Doodle Dandy when the British surrendered. Great emotional effect? Writings of a particular time, country, or region? All the compositions for a specific musical instrument, voice, or ensemble? The lyrics can certainly be classified as literature. Who knew?

No one would argue the significance of Woody Guthrie’s lyrics. The insight helps to make his work shine as literature.

From Ed Cray’s book, Ramblin Man: Woody Guthrie on songwriting, “I am out to sing the songs that make you take pride in yourself and in your work. He considered himself The Dustiest of the Dust Bowlers. His lyrics in the classic “This Land Is Your Land,” are writings of a particular time, country and region, and offer great emotional effect. He labeled his guitar “This Machine Kills Fascists” which acknowledges the premise and passion of his lyrics. No slouch himself, of course, Bob Dylan, in Chronicles, Volume One, said Woody Guthrie’s songs “…had the infinite sweep of humanity in them.”

Sherrie A. Inness in her book Disco Divas: Women and Popular Culture in the 1970’s, says sexual openness was still going strong, but lyrics were becoming more self-reflective, a manifestation of the times. Singer-songwriters were trained in the style in which lyrics mattered. Carole King, “So Far Away,” and Carly Simon dealt with honesty, past lovers, and separations, themes not uncommon to literature.

Robert Hazard’s lyrics in “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” were timely and historic. The song continues its huge popularity with many uses worldwide, and has been covered by at least 30 artists.

Popular Philadelphia-based singer-songwriter Carsie Blanton, who tours nationwide, creates lyrics that are catchy, yet smart; they’re accessible (just ask her avid fans). Metaphors, similes. Her lyrics can also be fun – not unlike Paul Simon’s approach to “Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover.”

In her Baby Can Dance, (see video filmed in New Orleans) her lyrics reflect a view that it doesn’t matter how you dress or look, as long as you can dance; talent wins out. The title track on Idiot Heart, Carsie’s new CD: He was a dark-eyed man and I knew right away, It was gonna take a turn for the worst, So I said “Hey, heart, if you’re gonna go crazy Give a little warning first” Idiot heart I shoulda left you at home You gimme nothin but hard love bad luck When you gonna leave me alone?   Click here: Baby Can Dance

In the title track from Buoy, her previous CD, she offers a tour-de-force of similes:

he showed up
brighter than a buoy
slicker than a submarine
bonnie as a berry
cuter than a kidney bean

she was struck
dumber than a detour
quicker than a pistol shot
revving like a motor
hotter than a parking lot

Carsie’s songs are transferrable to Broadway, TV, and film, but they are, first, literature. They have universal appeal. Imaginative prose? Yes. Great emotional effect? Yes. Jonathan Takiff, PhillyNews.Com, compares her to Madeleine Peyroux, Norah Jones or Nellie McKay. Reviewing Carsie’s new CD, Idiot Heart, Jess Righthand, in The Washington Post, calls it “classic songwriting at its best.” Her songs are available at www.carsieblanton.com.
Today, it’s singer-songwriters Adele, Lady Gaga, Rihanna, Beyonce, and Carsie Blanton, to name a few, as well as Bono, Usher, the Wood Brothers, and Bruno Mars. The songs, sometimes just a few minutes long, 3 verses, and 3 chorus’ (one chorus, repeated three times), are structured with the rules of music. Story emotions flow. You be the judge of the literary nature of such compositions.

Then again, you might simply think of a song as uplifting, entertaining, finger-snapping, and toe-tapping.

(Carsie Blanton lyrics used with her permission.)

George brings with her more than twenty years of experience as a writer and editor.  Her stories have appeared in Literal Latte, Penn Review Literary Magazine, Bucks County Writer and Wild River Review.

Her story, A Rose by any other Name was a Pushcart Nominee.  George is a Barbara Demming Memorial Fund Writing Grant winner.

We look forward to Gerri’s discerning eye and gift for making literature breathe.

All through the weekend of November 10th, LIVE from the NYPL features programs with master artists including Gilberto Gil, Jessye Norman, Peter Sellars, Anish Kapoor, and Brian Eno. There will be poetry readings, art installation, conversations and site-specific performances, in New York Public Library’s historic public spaces.

Events will include performances by the emerging talents in dance, film, literature, music, theatre, and visual arts who were paired with master artists—Trisha Brown, Zhang Yimou, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Brian Eno, Peter Sellars, and Anish Kapoor, respectively—for a year of creative exchange by the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative.

The weekend will also feature cross-disciplinary discussions with current mentors Anish Kapoor, Brian Enoand Peter Sellars, as well as Rolex Arts Initiative program advisors José Van Dam and Osvaldo Golijov. Instigated and moderated by LIVE from the NYPL director Paul Holdengräber, the talks will cover a range of topics from mentoring and artistic process to creation and performance. Gilberto Gil and Jessye Norman will also join Holdengräber for one-on-one conversations. Film industry insiders Danny Glover and Peter Scarletwill participate in the weekend as well.

“Rolex is delighted to partner with the New York Public Library to offer New Yorkers the opportunity to engage directly with the art and ideas of this extraordinarily talented group of artists,” said Rebecca Irvin, head of philanthropy at Rolex SA. “Over the past 10 years, the Rolex Arts Initiative has created a community of some of the most inspiring and provocative artists in the world. We have witnessed important, creative collaborations and feel it is important to share that thought-provoking dialogue with the public.

Paul Holdengräber, Director of LIVE from the NYPL, said: “LIVE from the NYPL’s charge is to provoke conversations, offer cognitive theatre, encourage debate, present irresistible performances, and celebrate original ideas. We look forward to speaking with the master artists who have participated in the Rolex Arts Initiative, as well as presenting many of the world and U.S. premieres of work by the emerging artists who were protégés in the program this year.”

Paul Holdengräber, Director of LIVE from the NYPL/ Photo Credit: Jocelyn Chase

“We are thrilled to align our mission with Rolex in promoting artistic collaboration,” said Joy Stocke, Editor-in-Chief of Wild River Review,” and look forward to featuring both established and new artists from the mentorship program in the pages of our international literary publication. This cultural exchange is too often underestimated in the popular conception of true artistic growth. We applaud LIVE from the NYPL and the Rolex Arts and Protégé Arts Initiative.”

TICKET INFORMATION: Tickets for all events are $25 for the general public and $15 for students/seniors/Friends of the NYPL.Tickets can be purchased through the website:www.rolexartsweekend.com. For more information about LIVE from the NYPL, visit www.nypl.org/live.

Proceeds from LIVE from the NYPL presents the Rolex Arts Weekend will benefit the New York Public Library.

About the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative

In keeping with its tradition of supporting individual excellence, Rolex gives emerging artists time to learn, create and grow. The Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative pairs together promising talents with world-renowned masters in six artistic disciplines—dance, film, literature, music, theatre, and visual arts—for a year of one-to-one creative collaboration.

Since its launch in 2002, the Rolex Arts Initiative has built a remarkable artistic community that connects artists from around the globe. Past mentors have included Toni Morrison, Sir Peter Hall, Wole Soyinka, Pinchas Zukerman, Julie Taymor, Mira Nair, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, Martin Scorsese, John Baldessari, and a host of other notable figures. For more information, please visit www.rolexmentorprotege.com.

About LIVE from the NYPL

LIVE from the NYPL is a series of vigorous and provocative conversations, debates, and performances at the New York Public Library curated by Paul Holdengräber, director of LIVE from the NYPL. Participating speakers in the recent seasons have included Ferran Adrià, Reza Aslan, Paul Auster, Tina Brown, Edwidge Danticat, Angela Davis, Shepard Fairey, Umberto Eco, Frank Gehry, Werner Herzog, Christopher Hitchens, Jay-Z, Maira Kalman, Spike Lee, Lawrence Lessig, Bernard-Henri Lévy, Norman Mailer, Javier Marías, Frank McCourt, W.S. Merwin, Toni Morrison, Nandan Nilekani, Keith Richards,

Salman Rushdie, Patti Smith, Zadie Smith, Derek Walcott, John Waters, The Velvet Underground with Lou Reed, Slavoj Žižek, and many others. This Fall 2011 the LIVE from the NYPL includes conversations with Harry Belafonte, Diane Keaton, Rick Rubin and Russell Simmons, Joan Didion, Edmund de Waal, Stacy Schiff, Ariel Dorfman, Tom Brokaw, and many more. To watch short clips of past events go to http://vimeo.com/livenypl. For more information, please visit www.nypl.org/live or email live@nypl.org.

About Wild River Review

The online magazine, Wild River Review seeks to raise awareness and compassion as well as inspire engagement through the power of stories.
In a climate of repeated media flashes and quick newsbyte stories, Wild River Review curates, edits and publishes essays, opinion, interviews, features, fiction and poetry focusing on underreported issues and perspectives.  Praised for “exceptionally interesting interviews,” Wild River Review has published conversations with many leading writers and thinkers including Orhan Pamuk, Elif Shafak, James McPherson, Alain de Botton, Pamela Tanner Boll, Tiffany Shlain, Saadi Youssef and Per Petterson among many others. To find out more about the female-run literary publication, read: Every River Tells A Story.

FOR MORE INFORMATION, CONTACT: Kim Nagy: knagywrr@gmail.com or Joy Stocke: stockey@mac.com

The suitcase was stuffed
with scorpions, with clay pots and dirt
roasted corn and fava beans, with pans of warm bronze
of dulce de leche and quince
canvas bulging from the lunges of poisonous snakes.
Our destiny was to be far from the aroma
of plantain and tree tomato
ripened on the lips of roofs.
Our destiny was like my father’s -
a couple of schellings in the pocket pierced by a star
he said goodbye to his father with the idea of detaching himself
like a caracol rooted in chasms of tenderness
no time to take the black doll
whose arm was stitched so often the thread held time
and no time to take the knee socks
I wore on the last day of high school
no time to take the trees I climbed by myself
to the middle of a hive that buzzed between my temples
no time to take the warmth of the popcorn pot
no time to take the way I skipped rope in the courtyard
no time to take
the family album embroidered in cross stitch
destined to the parting
destined to lemon-grass teas
steeped in tears that flushed our hearts
we left with the hot coals of a fate not chosen
we arrived before we knew it
men with fish eyes and the accent of crude ants detained us
you must declare all the dirt that you are bringing
you could be fined
you cannot bring food to this country
you will be fined
defensively we declared our pots of roasted corn and fava beans
we lifted our underthings trembling
and felt what it was to step foot on land not our own
they inspected all we had
and did not pay attention to the snakes.

From that day on
we came to know the destiny of border
to make love to snapshots yellowed
by the distance of their background.
We opened up the suitcase
and from that day on
we cultivated
hummingbirds in exile.

Photo Credit: Christine Matthai

The conference center was all glass and steel, with wide hallways circling the auditoriums and silent elevators encased in glass that glided from floor to floor. Cappuccino bars with plates of cookies dusted with confectioner’s sugar appeared at convenient intervals. In various seminar rooms we sat in tall-backed swivel chairs made of biodegradable materials, safe enough for your child to eat.

It was winter in Cape Town. During the global conference on developing countries, skies were bright, afternoons unusually hospitable. Clouds parted as if on cue from the stage of Table Mountain. Inside the air-conditioned conference center, soft leather shoes skimmed over carpets and business cards slipped from wallet to wallet. At the waterfront below people loitered at Seattle Coffee and Haagen Daz or bunched onto ferries for a ride to Robben Island, a visit to prison cells, and a gusty return through shifting tides. A Xhosa leader sentenced by the British to life tried and failed to negotiate the cold currents, lighting out one night alone. For decades the pancake of metamorphic rock was home to lepers as well as seals, the original residents.

At the conference President Zuma spoke via satellite about economic opportunities awaiting foreign investors in Africa; “The conference serves as a key platform to drive engagement around critical economic issues on the continent and to connect decision-makers,” he said to an audience that included thirty-five Chinese CEOs. Two South African high school students sat primly on stage articulating their goals, one to advance technology, the other to practice law. Graca Machel, Mandela’s wife, spoke about the need for African men to view all women as if they were their own wives and daughters so that entrenched traditions condoning abuse would begin to unravel. Sporting a marigold World Cup jersey, Archbishop Tutu blew a vuvuzela and remarked with a wink that he hoped to see this audience in South Africa again before the 2020 Summer Olympics that Durban hopes to host. We are a family of man, he said to resounding applause. The air buzzed with change, or the possibility of it.
When the session ended, I ambled through street markets hawking T-shirts and beads, saw Gothic churches and well swept parks with banyan trees and palms, Dutch colonials safeguarded by electric fences, and the new stadium gleaming like a spaceship. An acquaintance remarked that the city was nice but didn’t seem very different. She seemed indignant (though relieved) at the high rises and KFC, as if she’d expected to see child soldiers wielding fully loaded AK47 assault rifles and men with machetes as pictured in The New York Times.

I, too, donned my North Face and ventured to Robben Island. The tour guide was a former political prisoner who found it cathartic to work alongside his former guards and eat a sandwich with them at midday. He showed us Mandela’s cell, scrubbed clean and painted white, with a mat on the floor and a big red bucket for water and waste, a door that slid open as if to a horse’s stall. One of the original eight imprisoned with Mandela, Ahmed Mohamed Kathrada, spoke to a group of us, matter-of-factly endorsing that leader’s ethos of forgiveness. During his eighteen-year incarceration the prison took special care to discriminate between people of color: he, as Indian, could wear long pants and socks during the cold winters; blacks wore shorts. Why?

“To remind them they were boys.”

The crowd whispered their indignation.

“Ask any prisoner what he missed most,” continued Kathrada in a voice as temperate as the earth tones he was wearing, “the answer, to a man, was children.” Prisoners protested and fasted for many years before reforms enabled a father to hold his child. I’d thought the answer would be a blanket, sex, meat. But a child changes– is no longer a child–in eighteen years.

We strolled in the sunshine of the prison courtyard and consumed pesto and lemon tarts at a bountiful buffet before heading back to Cape Town, whose high rises glittered against the backdrop of sandstone and shale. Thereafter, I was shuttled on tours from vineyards to Table Mountain, all with dreamy unease and sporadic irritation at not seeing what operated below the veneer of obsequious bellhops and British teas. I wasn’t out to see “the real Africa;” those British teas at the Mount Nelson Hotel were oh so real. But I seemed to be skating on a reservoir in a volcanic crater, and the ice needed to crack. The parks where tourists strolled and blacks in neon vests speared litter with poles were quiet. Through the dark bus windows I saw a crisp new hospital and the stately university standing as it has since 1829 on the Rhodes estate at the base of Devil’s Peak.

Where was the city within the city?

At the final session of the conference, I met a young woman from Bedford, New York, which is about twenty miles from where I live. Initially, I mistook her for an extraneous family member, someone’s daughter, so unassuming was she, standing by the sign-in desk in a black cardigan and boots. She shook my hand, softly, and pulled involuntarily at her long blond hair while I chattered foolishly about New York and stared indiscreetly at her green eyes and heart-shaped face. She had spent a semester at the University of Cape Town and had returned to open a grass-roots center for HIV positive children in the township of Khayelitsha. More astounding, she had raised a million dollars and had navigated the city’s tortuous political system, including negotiations with the township’s mayor, to purchase a tract of land adjacent to the only hospital serving Khayelitsha’s 1.5 million people. Such is the clout of this politician that when drug gangs who’d committed theft realized they robbed her, they voluntarily worked off the debt by cleaning her house, toilets included. Whitney planned to build a new center with storage facilities for medications, a playing field, and a feasible kitchen for preparing a daily meal, as she already did in her existing center, for her 75 kids. The wait list for her center numbered in the hundreds; she had a staff of four.

In cold drizzle the following day, Whitney picked me up at the Mount Nelson in a black SUV. My husband came too, but our friends opted to enjoy themselves by exploring gracious vineyards in the surrounding hills. As a kid I’d visited pueblos on Hopi reservations in New Mexico, which are now closed to tourists; later I’d traveled to India and Indonesia, Iran and Peru. Gawking at poverty was not PC.

And who would benefit? I swallowed that question like a piece of gristle but felt invasive nevertheless as I questioned Whitney about the sordid conditions, lack of in-tact family structure and education, lack of plumbing and electricity, lack of grocery stores and jobs. “I hear unemployment’s 34% in Cape Town.” Did Zuma tell us that?

“ More like 80% out here,” she said, as if easing bad news–the death of a pet bird– to a child.

“Where does anyone work?”

She shrugged and kept her eyes on the road. “Cape Town, maybe, but a domestic, who typically earns $15 a day, pays $6 in bus fare.”
We drove about twenty five miles– five times the distance from the city to Robben Island—passing much-touted one-story cement houses you get if you essentially win the lottery; thereafter stretched miles and miles of corrugated tin shacks wedged together like crooked teeth. Empty bottles, orange peels, plastic bags lay roadside. Later I stepped over barbed wire and a dog skull. Meanwhile Whitney answered our questions matter-of-factly, if guardedly at first.

“There are no toilets?” I asked, wondering where I was going to go.

“The government supplies Port-o-Potties. The people think they’re a joke.”

“So?”

“They have buckets, but the shacks have no floors so when it rains they flood.” She turned to me, raising her lovely eyebrows.

“Oh.”

By now rain was coming down in droves, and her wipers were on high speed. Through vapor like cataracts I saw shacks with no windows–wood, tin, bright paint, weathered numbers– shirts hung to dry, collarless dogs all generic brown, stands selling oranges and bananas, only oranges and bananas, a few women with blankets around their shoulders to ward off the rain. For the most part only children looked back at us.

The SUV took a sharp turn inside a wire fence and stopped at what looked like an abandoned garage. Inside, a Yale business school student with evenly cropped blond hair and a body toned by varsity lacrosse greeted us enthusiastically. Another young woman from Chappaqua sat sniffling at a laptop in the chilly communal office space, while an older woman, a social worker from the township typed on a desktop and rifled through papers. Whitney could not operate without some local staff—“too dangerous,” she conceded– and she based her center in a Methodist church, whose members also provided some protection. The cavernous room was like the belly of a whale, with exposed beams in a half-finished ceiling, dark wood walls, few windows. Whitney looked down at the brown linoleum and quietly noted she’d had that installed. “You should’ve seen this place before.” We stood among haphazard chairs under dim overhead lights waiting for the kids to arrive, but the bus broke down and only a few straggled in. At the far end a woman hunched over a puzzle with three small girls, scarcely moving, somehow holding their attention. A cluster of boys sat around an electric heater watching professional wrestling. “Usually I never let them watch TV,” chimed Whitney. They danced, played games, went to a museum, did yoga. Four year olds learned how to take medication themselves because no one reminded them, or no one approved. A social worker counseled a teenager on the stigma of HIV, another on sexual abuse by a mother’s boyfriend. Only one of the 75 kids had a father at home. Some lived too far from a water spigot to take their pills. One boy always smuggled bits of his meal home to his siblings under his shirt. “He’s not usually shy,” smiled Whitney as I shook his fine-boned hand. Another boy arrived with the seat of his cotton pants torn– routinely abused.

Did they wonder what I was doing there? I wondered what I was doing there, but didn’t want to be elsewhere, for the moment. We stood talking with Whitney for some hours while the rain clattered on the roof and pummeled the mud. Her staff brought a plate of spinach and bean stew to each kid, one at a time, from a kitchen (smaller than Mandela’s cell) with a tiny refrigerator, two burners, and a shelf harboring brown paper bags and two heads of broccoli. Acid worked at the inside of my stomach, but I figured I’d wait till I got back to the hotel.

When the clouds running overhead left a listless grey cover and the rain relented, we left the center and wound through paths between tin homes. We stepped over dog feces and broken glass, brushed past occasional men, always alone. “Don’t flash a camera around,” Whitney warned. I wouldn’t have been able to find my way out. Little boys stared and grinned. At length we reached a square opening with a spigot and called out at the doorway of one of the homes. I remained near the door while Whitney and her social worker went in, the latter chatting in Xhosa to a woman holding a baby. The walls were lined with newspaper; a kerosene lamp stood on a board attached to the wall; an electric wire dangled fruitlessly from a corner of the ceiling, not a foot above my head. One bed. Children slept on the cardboard floor. Three adult women, no men. I smiled and looked mostly at my feet. A plump girl in pink sweatshirt and sweatpants, who had raced up to Whitney when we arrived, still clung to her, arms locked around her torso, nose crusty and running. For years the family had thought she was mute. A boy tried on black leather tie shoes we brought, and I thought they looked hard and ungainly jutting from his slender ankles. He soon took them off, placed them carefully side by side, and slid his feet into flip flops. Did they fit? He nodded. We thanked everyone, called out cheery goodbyes, smiled, waved, and soon left.
I followed, asking no questions about where we’d go next. That way I’d appear easy going, as if I did this kind of thing every day, as if we were one family, as Tutu had said. Perversely, I validated the marble bathrooms and lavish breakfasts at the hotel because I was also seeing this; in the same breath, I condemned it all, the displacement of millions, the morass of shacks stretching in perpetuity beyond the shadow of the new stadium and the unabashedly colonialist hotel with its etchings of British military men standing at attention, brass cannon in the hallway, kudu antlers on the walls, warm fireplaces and cozy high teas, egg salad sandwiches with the crusts cut off and butterballs that someone had to make…. Worst of all, I found myself wanting to leave, wanting to eat one of those sandwiches.

I left nothing in the township except a smile and a pair of shoes I didn’t buy–and whatever reaction my presence provoked, if any. What did I take, I who already had a job, a plane ticket, a wardrobe of cashmere and silk? Photos I snapped on the sly like a private detective and images to transcribe arbitrarily into words for you—but do you see what I see? And what then? Back at the hotel the doorman opened the door, and the concierge standing tall in her tan pantsuit smiled broadly. I had coffee in the bar, skirting the immense display of watercress sandwiches, custard tarts, and chocolate truffles laid out for high tea. The same waitress I saw each morning brought a tray with a starched napkin and far too many utensils for a cup of coffee. She remarked that the weather was likely to clear. Such optimism! I wondered where she lived, what time she got up to start serving by 7 am, what she thought about our cordial greetings, but I chattered as if I didn’t think about these things.

Later I told my friends about the township, the kids, the disease.

“Anything like Calcutta?”

“Worse,” I replied with earnest fatigue, as if I’d just gone without food and water and slept in the mud, as if I’d just survived.

“We wish we’d gone,” my friend replied. “ It rained and the view from the vineyards was lousy.”

***

One night the members of the conference split into groups of about thirty and were bussed to different sites throughout the city for dinner. One group went to Cecil Rhodes’s mansion, which is closed to the public. Ours drove forty-five minutes along the coast to the home of Eric, head of a human resources consultancy, and his wife, Mary. French doors opened onto a balcony overlooking Table Bay sparkling in moonlight like a Hollywood set. A striking array of oil paintings hung in the dining room where four parallel tables were set with white tablecloths for the occasion. We were seated and wine was poured. At my table was Jeff Berger, an anthropologist who found skeletons in the Malapa Cave north of Johannesburg which, he claims, are 1.9 million years old and will forever change our concept of the origins of hominids, subsequently, the family of man, though I couldn’t get him to say exactly how. Asked why human life started in Africa, he responded, simply, it’s the biggest landmass in the world. You could plop North and South America and China and Europe inside it, an image that sent ripples of surprise around the table. Our hostess went around the room asking each person—members of the conference only—who they were and what they did. We heard from brilliant wind and solar energy entrepreneurs and the creator of bubble wrap who works out of New Jersey but said New York.

While individuals introduced themselves, “colored” women served huge platters of beef, whole fish, pumpkin ravioli, smoked salmon, and salad to each of us, after which Mary said she had a surprise. I’d noticed a young man standing just inside the living room, dressed in black slacks and a short-sleeve collared shirt, smiling and nodding as we arrived—he might have been the only person of color not in the kitchen. Now, with anticipation evocative of Christmas, Mary presented her protégé, of sorts. She had helped sponsor his violin lessons. He had studied for two years and made exceptional progress. He was eighteen though given his five-foot height and willowy limbs I would have guessed twelve. With her maternal arms around him, Mary narrated snippets of his childhood in the township, citing his many siblings and his will to attend school, hunger and ever-present danger from gangs. He then raised his bow, cocked the violin on his shoulder, gazed over our heads, and performed a classical piece for us that was so familiar, followed by something slow and lyrical that I had never heard. He dedicated it to Mary and played with such ardor that tears came to her eyes. This art, too, was hers. We applauded her generosity and his talent, and he thanked his sponsors warmly for his many opportunities. In the air was a giddy optimism veiling vestigial colonialist sensibilities: they too can rise. But he was one, and we were so many.

****
Waiting at the Cape Town airport for the 22-hour trip home, I leafed through Fortune. More poverty. But GDP grew 4.9% in Africa from 2000-2008! I tried to see, concealed in that figure –the triangular 4, the circular 9– another bowl of soup, another pair of shoes, a lightbulb lighting a shack, a woman with a raincoat. There was land to farm, diamonds, uranium, and manganese to mine, a hydroelectric dam to build on the Congo that could supply all Africa with energy, fiber optic cable to lay throughout the east and the south. It was Cecil Rhodes, redux.

Back in New York, I often think of the township. On land formerly owned by William Rockefeller that tumbles down to the Hudson River, I walk my dog with the joggers and picnickers. It’s summer and the grass has gone brittle and yellow in the drought. August is the coldest month in Cape Town and the rainiest, the time when Khayelitsha, floods and the sun retreats by five. I pass three men speaking Japanese and carrying enormous cameras, not in their cases, cameras with lenses that will capture this park as I have not seen it. I’ve contacted the school where I teach and asked them to invite Whitney to speak to raise money for her center. The request was met with enthusiasm, followed by an email outlining the difficulties of scheduling time at morning assembly, what with speeches by the new representatives of community service, and all. And that email betrayed not the slightest touch of irony.

What then.

I replay scenes and reactions– a young man who brushed by me in the alley between homes, a dog ripping at a plastic bag, a slightly cross-eyed boy, the tangy smell of urine. Of course I wanted an egg salad sandwich that day. Who wouldn’t? But why would I think not wanting one at that moment would make me more empathetic, more transcendent, more integrated in the scene–and that would suffice?

Unlike Whitney, most of us mortals cannot—or do not want to–pick up and start another life halfway around the globe. When my daughter, who is Whitney’s age, exclaimed, “Can I work at the center?” I flinched. I saw her walking the labyrinthine township with her ingenuous smile, taking a wrong turn, catching looks, and worse. Port-o-Potties are used for gang rapes. Maybe I wouldn’t let her go; maybe it was a passing whim. “I’m sure there’s a lot you can do from New York.”

At the conference Bill Clinton said to his audience of empowered people, “You can always find a reason not to do something.” This child ravaged by HIV will not live, three doctors told Whitney. You might as well go home. For that reason she and her staff stayed with him twenty-four hours a day, and for that reason he had something that day to live for. Repeatedly she told me, “This is what I’m meant to be doing.” The very reasons not to be there constitute the reason she is.

by Michael Shareshian

As part of the 7th annual PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature, The Cooper Union in New York City hosted a panel discussion featuring opinions and perspectives regarding one of the most complex and important issues facing our global society: Wikileaks.

Is raw, unfiltered data useful?  Do forums like Wikileaks need traditional outlets? Are leaked cables leaking what is already known? These, among many other topics, were discussed by Human Rights Project’s Tom Keenan, media theorist Geert Lovink, Professor of Democracy Ian Buruma, and policy analyst David Rieff.

Presenting his theories first, Mr. Lovink deemed the leaking of classified documents to be a rapidly developing and highly influential genre of journalism in and of itself, “data journalism.” Lovink argued that young people with technological capabilities will continue to develop such forums as they evolve and play an increasing role in our information delivery and digital infrastructure.

Ian Buruma sees Wikileaks as having less influence than some may perceive.  Buruma noted that Wikileaks’ cables needed the mainstream press in order to have any impact at all.” Referencing established outlets such as The New York Times, he stated that people like Julian Assange depend on traditional sources in order to lend credibility and perspective to data.  According to Mr. Buruma, raw data is of very little use to the public.  Only when qualified individuals interpret it can it become something useful and understandable.  He acknowledged a commonly held complaint that not everything on the Internet is trustworthy, and asked the question, whom should the public trust without the filter of reliable fact-checkers?

Like Mr. Buruma, analyst David Rieff downplayed the influence of Wikileaks for different reasons.  As he sees it, much of the leaked cables contain information that is already available in the public sphere.  While he made it a point not to downplay the questionable, and at times deplorable, actions of governments around the world, how influential can “document dumps” be when the information they contain are simply reinforcing what is already known?

During a question and answer session, an audience member challenged Mr. Rieff’s assertion that the public at large is as informed he assumes them to be. This questioner drew attention to a leaked cable that revealed the lesser known occurrence of CIA officials interrogating a cameraman in order to learn more about the operations of Al Jazeera.

Perhaps the most important issue that needs to be addressed by the public at large is how do documents revealed by secret sources affect safety.  Can transparency and protection of national security coexist?

Are “leakers” like Bradley Manning noble whistleblowers or a danger to our citizens and soldiers serving around the world?

The discussion continues…

Michael is Wild River Review’s newest intern.  He studies English at New Jersey’s Rider University where he enjoys hosting his own weekly radio show.

by Gerri George

So, you’re looking at the number of friends you have on Facebook and it’s, well, pretty scant. Some of those in your circle have, like, a thousand friends and you’re feeling pretty down about it and you think you’ll add to your list and so you decide to see if Joan Didion has a Facebook account.

You back up for a minute and think about this.

You remember how you sent one of your favorite comedians a friend request and it’s still pending and you figure he doesn’t want to be your friend, he doesn’t even know you, but you like him and you want him to like you and its painful not hearing back. But for some reason you’re thinking that Joan Didion will accept you as a friend. You have things in common, after all. You’re both literary writers and you love her work and you’re certain if she could read yours, she’d return the love.

In addition to the content of her books, you’ve grown to admire two vintage photos of her with a cigarette in her hand, and she looks mythic and fabulous and you wonder if she still smokes, and if she does, you’d like to be able to tell her the method whereby you quit smoking shortly after graduating from University of Penn. And if she has quit smoking, that’s another thing you have in common.

You watched her accept the National Book Award for The Year of Magical Thinking and you knew it to be a fine, deserving book because you read it and loved its brilliance and felt the sadness.

You’d love to have a chat with her in New York over strong coffee in one of those tony downtown cafes as a prelude to friending her on Facebook.

“Joan,” you’d say, as you relished the sound of her spoon stirring half-and-half into a mug of house brand, “I’m speechless at your talent. To what do you owe your success?” She’s savvy and sophisticated and she’d probably respond with “Good genes and hard work, my dear writer friend. That’s the secret of my success.”

You’d want to tell her that editors and publishers won’t know that you, personally, might already have good genes and hard-working habits until that time when you happen to hit it out of the park, but you decide you’ll keep such thoughts to yourself. You wouldn’t want to discourage her wisdom. She’s Joan Didion, after all.

Coffee in New York with Joan might be your best chance of having her accept your friend request, but you’re pretty sure coffee isn’t in the cards, so, you access your Facebook account and you key in Joan Didion’s name and there are multiple Joan Didions, and then there’s one with her picture, a dramatic black and white photograph and she looks remarkable with light hair and sharp features and that cast-iron expression confirming she has nothing to prove, but you can’t add her as a friend or even send her a message.

It seems there’s a conspicuous blank space in the data field where the options to receive a friend request would ordinarily reside. Blank space…thwarted…no chance for kinship.

Joan Didion needs no new friends. She is in possession of everything the fates have allowed.

You’re disappointed.

Hmmm. Maybe Cormac McCarthy or Michael Ondaatje has a Facebook account.

Gerri George’s stories, which often portray the human side of outsiders, have appeared, or are forthcoming, in Literal Latte, Penn Review Literary Magazine, The Bucks County Writer, Quiddity International Literary Journal, Wild River Review, Front Range Review, and elsewhere.  “A Rose by Any Other Name” was a Pushcart Prize nominee. “Night,” read by a professional actor before a literature-loving audience in London, Soho (OK, so it was a pub), also appears in audio and text on the Liars’ League website, under the Sex and the City theme. I received a Barbara Deming Memorial Fund writing grant for women artists.  Hastings, America – a poem (America Ground, Hastings) – read at the Hastings Festival in England on July 4, 2010, and will be published in their anthology. The Great Idea Drought appeared in The Penn Writer, and I won a Writer’s Digest contest in the category of TV/Movie Script.  Twitter.com/gerrigeorge facebook/Gerri George

To read George’s short story “Henry Moore and the Bookstore Clerk”, click here: Henry Moore.

Hello My Lovely Family and Friends,

First I want to thank you so very much for your concern for me. I am very touched. I also wish to apologize for a generic message to you all. But it seems the best way at the moment to get my message to you.

Things here in Sendai have been rather surreal. But I am very blessed to have wonderful friends who are helping me a lot. Since my shack is even more worthy of that name, I am now staying at a friend’s home. We share
supplies like water, food and a kerosene heater. We sleep lined up in one room, eat by candlelight, share stories. It is warm, friendly, and beautiful.

During the day we help each other clean up the mess in our homes. People sit in their cars, looking at news on their navigation screens, or line up to get drinking water when a source is open. If someone has water running in their home, they put out sign so people can come to fill up their jugs and buckets.

Utterly amazingly where I am there has been no looting, no pushing in lines. People leave their front door open, as it is safer when an earthquake strikes. People keep saying, “Oh, this is how it used to be in the old days when everyone helped one another.”

Quakes keep coming. Last night they struck about every 15 minutes. Sirens are constant and helicopters pass overhead often.

We got water for a few hours in our homes last night, and now it is for half a day. Electricity came on this afternoon. Gas has not yet come on.

But all of this is by area. Some people have these things, others do not. No one has washed for several days. We feel grubby, but there are so much more important concerns than that for us now. I love this peeling away of
non-essentials. Living fully on the level of instinct, of intuition, of caring, of what is needed for survival, not just of me, but of the entire group.

There are strange parallel universes happening. Houses a mess in some places, yet then a house with futons or laundry out drying in the sun.

People lining up for water and food, and yet a few people out walking their dogs. All happening at the same time.

Other unexpected touches of beauty are first, the silence at night. No cars. No one out on the streets. And the heavens at night are scattered with stars. I usually can see about two, but now the whole sky is filled.

The mountains of Sendai are solid and with the crisp air we can see them silhouetted against the sky magnificently.

And the Japanese themselves are so wonderful. I come back to my shack to check on it each day, now to send this e-mail since the electricity is on, and I find food and water left in my entranceway. I have no idea from whom, but it is there. Old men in green hats go from door to door checking to see if everyone is OK. People talk to complete strangers asking if they need help. I see no signs of fear. Resignation, yes, but fear or panic, no.

They tell us we can expect aftershocks, and even other major quakes, for another month or more. And we are getting constant tremors, rolls, shaking, rumbling. I am blessed in that I live in a part of Sendai that is a bit elevated, a bit more solid than other parts. So, so far this area is better off than others. Last night my friend’s husband came in from the country, bringing food and water. Blessed again.

Somehow at this time I realize from direct experience that there is indeed an enormous Cosmic evolutionary step that is occurring all over the world right at this moment. And somehow as I experience the events happening now in Japan, I can feel my heart opening very wide. My brother asked me if I felt so small because of all that is happening. I don’t. Rather, I feel as part of something happening that much larger than myself. This wave of birthing (worldwide) is hard, and yet magnificent.

Thank you again for your care and Love of me,

With Love in return, to you all,

Annon.

*This letter was forwarded to us by a friend. The original sender is unnamed.