"...there still lives among us the ancient notion that there is an essential emnity between form and content. Let someone give valuable and needed attention to form and style, and soon comes the charge that substance and content are to the writer inconsequential. Let a book on any subject reveal literary artistry on the part of the author, and immediately its scholarship is questioned. Such thinking persists in spite of the fact that Luke put the lie to this dichotomous reaction long ago by producing a Gospel in which the Christian message is happily joined to conscious literary art. Of course a writer may, for whatever reasons, deliberately minimize or de-value content, but such is not to be assumed of a writer who wishes to devote attention to method in preaching. One cannot say everything in one volume; to attempt it is to dull the edge of all that is being said. To say everything is to say nothing. One writes of one thing with such conviction that the impression is given that this one subject rises above all others. Every good sermon is heresy when judged for all the important truths left untreated."

- Fred B. Craddock, foreword to the expanded edition of Eugene L. Lowry's The Homiletical Plot: The Sermon as Narrative Art Form (Westminster John Knox Press, 2001, pp. xiii-xiv)

* * *

[Note: I tried to talk about HAIR without spoilers below, but I don't think I really succeeded. Proceed at your own risk.]

I've been mulling over what kind of messages HAIR sends to contemporary audiences, if any. Its plot is notably thin: one of my companions assessed it as "more of a concert than a musical," and two others spent most of the second act whispering variations of "great visuals, but what the hell is going on?" (Perhaps I've spent too much time in Ann Arbor: every element of Claude's hallucination seemed blatantly obvious to me.) One older woman called it "dated" -- I think in terms of intended shock value. The funny thing is, there's plenty in HAIR to offend almost anybody in the mood to feel offended -- it's massively politically incorrect, and I don't get the impression all of that's intentionally so. Put another way, I can't help viewing the show through my irony filter, which makes much of it seem incredibly naive, and yes, quite dated. (One of the more interesting second-act whisperings was whether RENT will age similarly.) But how much of that is me being almost forty, with a mortgage and board meetings? How much of that is me never having had much patience with idealistic entitlement? How much of it is me not being able to gauge the distance between the creators of the show and its content -- were they simply reporting or intentionally editorializing (and in which direction?) about the 60s, in what they chose to depict?

And yet -- not having realized beforehand that there was even a plot, and having previously heard the hits only out of context, I was stunned at the ending ("Flesh Failures"). I enjoyed the entire thing -- it's colorful and bursting with energy (before the show, the director said (in Nougat), "My plan is that we are going to pound that park") and it's not short on eye candy (one of my companions on Whit Whitaker, who played Hud: "That guy needs to have his shirt off in every show from now on"), and yeah, the bourbons and margaritas I'd had beforehand didn't hurt.

* * *

Upon further reflection, my reactions to Hair are definitely knotted up with the rest of my wiring: my personal definition of "obscene" has more to do with attitude than specific speech or visuals. Earlier this week, a New England copy shop refused to print a zine in which I have a story, citing their right to decline "obscene" work. Naturally, I find their stance far more offensive than anything within the publication itself. At the same time, few things trigger my temper more quickly than half-assed work, indifferent service, or a dismissive attitude toward details, even though I'm old enough (1) to have committed these acts myself on multiple occasions and (2) to comprehend that there are many reasons things don't get done well that have nothing to do with malice or willful stupidity. It's a patience I have to reach for consciously.

The flip side of this is that competence is a huge turn-on for me, and this extends to my consumption of fiction: a friend introduced me to several manga series by Youka Nitta earlier this month, and I'm deeply hooked -- not just because they explicitly depict hot guys having enthusiastic sex (rawr!), but because the storylines firmly push my buttons in terms of people obsessed both with becoming true masters of their professions and being worthy of their lovers: Umaimon Kuwasero features two chefs profoundly passionate about the creation of food, and two of my favorite scenes involve demonstrations of elite expertise (in one, chef A shows chef B why he needs to pay more attention to a hated ingredient, and in another, chef B recognizes that a dish presented to him as chef A's isn't because, in spite of its beauty, it doesn't taste quite right). In Haru wo Daiteita, both of the protagonists and several of the supporting characters are obsessed with creating and supporting the best performances/films possible, sometimes at great risk to their relationships and/or careers. This is why Nora Roberts's Born in... and "Three Sisters Island" series remain on my bedside bookshelf, and why I keep reading Stephanie Laurens's Cynster and Bastion Club series: the heroines and heroes don't start out interested in love for its own sake. More often than not, they see it as a threat to their hardwon identities or independence. The way love first breaches their defenses and then makes them better at what they do is what makes these stories compelling for me...

...which loops back to my reservations about Hair: after looking at some of the YouTube videos, I have to say that it's good that I saw the Arboretum production first: I don't think "Hair" or "Flesh Failures" would be haunting me to the degree they are if I hadn't seen and heard them live as I did Wednesday night. And it's not the characters I'm connecting to -- there isn't enough of them in the story for me to care about -- but their voices and the driving bassline and the way both the stage and the story literally became so much darker within the final minutes. And... this is the point I've been circling around -- it wouldn't have made a difference whether there had been nudity or not. To care about a character becoming naked (physically or emotionally), it helps for me to care about the character, period.

(And, just like a sermon, this blog post is reproaching me with all the tendrils of the other thoughts I wanted to include, but it's time for me to tear myself away from the keyboard and return to the realm of sweeping and caulking.)