N.B. Bill’s first official Rogue Vagabond adventure, in the summer of 1999, was largely taken up with a motorcycle trip through India.

9/8/99 — “…I’d thought I had seen it all by now, but the other day I stopped for gas and walked down the road to the bus stop for a cold soda. When I got there, there was a hit-and-run victim in very bad shape. About 50 people were waiting for the bus and all seemed to be ignoring him.

“I tried to be of some help. He was in shock, and I almost got into a fight getting some gas cans to keep his feet up. I was at least able to slow the bleeding in his arm most of the way, but had to buy ice and dirty rags from the Coke vendor to put a cold compress on a very serious head wound. During this time two traffic police and three police patrolmen arrived. They acted like they were doing me a favor by radioing for an ambulance. I’m sure all the cops had much more first aid knowledge than I, but they just stood by. I couldn’t understand what they were talking about, but it sounded like it was probably last night’s cricket game or something of equal importance. Meanwhile, the crowd at the bus stop was getting more and more pissed off about the late arrival of the bus. Read more…

I’m inclined to support President Obama’s Afghanistan policy. I don’t take for granted having someone in the White House who consistently behaves like an honest, smart, rational adult. He has inherited a spectacularly bad hand to play, and he deserves to be given the benefit of the doubt—at least for a reasonable period of time.

I’m also appalled by the degree to which self-referential narcissism has apparently become so many people’s primary orientation. It’s striking how voices on the anti-war left tend on a wholesale basis to ignore the significance of the facts on the ground. Instead, it’s all about feelings and what people want and feel entitled to right now.

The take-no-prisoners vehemence directed at opposing viewpoints over abstractions (from both sides) shows up how thoroughly our culture has been permeated by a warlike mentality. It contributes to the problem, not the solution. In reality, systemic change is often painstakingly slow. Nancy Pelosi made a wise remark awhile back when the Code Pink ladies were camped out in her front yard in San Francisco agitating about something-or-other. She noted that their job was to advocate, while her job was to get things done. Advocacy and real-time action are different arenas, both vital to a healthy democratic process.

I think a distinction that’s too easily overlooked is the use of the military to provide a law enforcement function as opposed to its being an imperial invading force. I don’t like how lopsided the U.S. commitment to a global police force is, but the imbalance has built up over a long period – at least since World War II — and it won’t change overnight. Of course our tax dollars should go more towards domestic issues and less towards meddling in the affairs of other countries, but we have to deal with present reality. Pakistan needs to be stabilized so its nuclear weapons don’t fall into the wrong hands, and who’s going to see to that if we quit the scene?

The decision to send troops into a war zone is heart-wrenching. I expect the Afghan/Pakistan strategy derives from a considerable amount of role-playing and scenario-testing, with a chess board-type game plan having been mapped out. The flexibility to adapt to real-time developments over time has to be crafted into the mix. It would be nice to see more of the public debate centered on a reality-based discussion of these various scenarios, and less on different constituencies’ desires for instant gratification under impossibly complex circumstances.

“Stories we tell will cast their spell
Now and for always”

NEVER UNDERESTIMATE THE POWER OF STORYTELLING, THE UNIVERSAL LANGUAGES OF MUSIC AND VISUAL IMAGERY, OR THE MAGICAL ABILITY OF THEATRE TO SWEEP PEOPLE AWAY. AT A GATHERING IN LONDON FOUR AND A HALF YEARS AGO, DIRECTOR MATTHEW WARCHUS DESCRIBED HIS VISION OF HOW The Lord of the Rings COULD SUCCESSFULLY BE BROUGHT TO THE STAGE.

The answer lay not in a conventional formula, but rather in letting the story itself suggest, organically, how it might be done. The atmosphere in the books of an ancient world steeped in history and lore, with a vast breadth and depth of cultural traditions, suggested mystery and magic to be explored. J.R.R. Tolkien’s implication that the stories of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings depict events from an era of European history lost in the mists of time, surviving only in an ancient manuscript handed down through the ages, offered a context for the creative freedom needed to translate the tale into a different form. The Mystery Plays of the medieval craft guilds—Biblical stories in a wide range of dramatic styles that were performed across Europe during the Middle Ages—provided a model for morally substantive narrative combined with theatrical pageantry that actively involved the audience in the imaginative experience. This would be a new version of the old stories of Middle-earth.

The basic idea would be to draw the audience into a fantastic sensory environment and emotionally engage them in the central tale of a dangerous quest undertaken by two ordinary little folk who set out to defeat an evil power that threatens their entire world. The story needed to be told without irony, befitting its epic scale and mode. The challenge would be to remain true to the spirit and essence of the books while crafting an accessible narrative that would succeed on its own terms as a piece of contemporary theatre.

For Composer and Musical Supervisor Christopher Nightingale, music was central to the tale, both literally and metaphorically. In The Silmarillion, Tolkien’s introduction to his imaginary universe, Middle-earth is called into being in song, and each new act of creation—of Elves, Men, Dwarves—is a new theme in a divine symphony. Evil is introduced into the world as a discordant theme that disrupts the harmony. Nightingale realized one couldn’t theatrically tell the story without music. The songs and musical styles would need to convey the unique spirit and flavor of Middle-earth’s various cultures—familiar and yet alien, not pegged to any real-world counterparts. What kinds of songs would Hobbits sing? They would naturally have an earthy folk feel to them, but melodic motifs, rhythm, instrumentation, etc., might take the ear in unexpected directions. How to reflect the timeless magic of the Elves, who live and breathe exquisite artistic expression? What kind of music would Dwarves make? What would Evil sound like? How would that differ from the sound of Evil that believed it was acting for Good? Read more…

8/11/99 — “On the flight from Osaka I met a very interesting mushroom-munching Arab gentleman who, even though I am a heathen and an infidel, was kind enough to show me a part of Bangkok that I had not seen on previous trips. Bangkok actually has an equivalent to Telegraph Ave., although it is not nearly as influenced by the Christian right wing conservatives.

“I am going to spend a couple of days here absorbing the local culture before I move on to Calcutta to skinny dip in the Ganges and hopefully get a motorcycle. I think I have a scheme where I can get a bike there for very little cost, and dirt bike climbing Mt. Everest will be the ride of a lifetime, if I can pull it off.

“…don’t worry, I brought my lucky rabbit’s foot and a four leaf clover, and just to be safe have bought a charm blessed by Lord Bushnahara.

“I’ll write again soon.”

Bill

King of the Jungle

My late brother Bill was a born storyteller with a flair for the exotic. Filled with restless energy, he was instrumental in shaping my earliest impressions of magic and darkness. Throughout childhood, he chafed at the confines of small-town suburbia, and at sixteen he ran away from home to join the Army. He volunteered to become a paratrooper and go to Vietnam, and he spent two years there in the late ‘60s.

Maybe he was searching for adventure and excitement—I don’t know, I never asked. Right out of the starting gate into adult life, we ran in different directions—me to the left and him to the right. It wasn’t until mid-life that we struck up a friendship and found out how similar our world views were. But I think it’s safe to say he got more than he bargained for at the tender age of nineteen.

In 1999, after thirty years of struggling to lead a conventional life down in the LA urban jungle, he decided to cut the shackles binding him to civilized society and set out in search of adventure.

For a few years, he had a wild and exuberant time. Read more…