Well, y'all look:

It's not as if I haven't been doing *anything* while I was off this blog, okay?

I got a new poetry book out (Rhyme Scheme, Zasterle Press)  got my academia grind on, performed -- a lot -- am on a couple new recordings, interviewed folks, laughed cried, cracked a few jokes worked way too much, changed my diet, started a new fitness regimen... and missed you guys! (Well, not the spammers.)

I'm doing better! I promise!

So... what if you need to find me? I got official findable stuff! Like my FB page over here:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Tracie-Morris-Friend-Page/108387949226537 , where I talk about things I'm up to and a few other interesting things that other folks are doing (mostly to do with acting, truth be told).

I got this here twitter situation going on, yes I do! https://twitter.com/mstraciemorris

And yeah, you *may* have noticed that all the new-ish platforms kinda coincide with my slacking off on this end. It's true.

I think I kinda have a handle on what I'm going to do with all these different opportunities to reach you all but it took me a while to get it together. If you've kept up with me via alerts, I really appreciate it. If not, I don't blame you -- and I give you smooches anyway!

;-)

This weblog will be closer to the rambling variety (as it has been) but I've decided to keep the posts shorter and sweeter so I can check in more often.

What's today's missive about?

*Shakespeare*. You guys didn't know I was a Shakespeare freak? All my postings about Ian McKellen over the years didn't clue you in? Well I am. I've studied Shakespearean acting overseas, I'm working on a Shakespeare project and teach The Sonnets so there's that.

In the last 10 days I've seen 4 Shakespeare plays and have enjoyed each of them. From Brooklyn to Broadway to Loisaida  it's been all about the Bard. I'm planning to see even more this season. You can never get enough! No matter how I'm feeling, no matter what goes on, connecting to Shakespeare through reading, writing, viewing, learning is grounding, calming (even when looking at those extreme tragedies of his, even reading the depths of despair in the sonnets). Live Shakespeare done well and with enthusiasm is regenerative to my spirit. It's helped me get through this ridiculous winter of discontent (a.k.a. slush, ice, rock salt and garbage via the 18 storms we've had in the region this season). I'll take some extra Shakespeare on top of my Shakespeare, thank you very much!

Going in reverse order, I just caught the last weekend run of "Othello: The Panther" a repurposing of the context of WS' most famous Moor (yes, Shakespeare wrote about more than one), down at the Nuyorican Poets' Cafe.  The concept was great and there was some excellent choreography, music, acting, directing and language. The energy was high and the pacing was lively. I really enjoyed the intimate venue of seeing this play presented in an unusual way. Just great.

Last week I saw the giant of an actor, Mark Rylance, *slay* the boards along with an astounding group of collaborators in the Richard III/Twelfth Night double bill on Broadway. Ba.Na.Nas.

Rylance is the epitome of perfectly blended American and British acting. The guy is uncategorizable except genius. I will be *very* surprised if this production doesn't sweep the Tonys. Twelfth Night was, quite possibly, the best theater I've ever seen.

My little run started off with an actor that does us US-based Shakespearean actors proud, the extraordinary Frank Langella as King Lear at BAM. Langella is a *beast*. I just love, love, love his acting and I have for many years. He knows how the make language work beautifully. Here's to NYC and Bayonne's own. *Any*time I see dude, I take notes.

Besides brushing up on you-know-who, I've been reading, performing, writing like a madwoman and traveling a bit. Let's just say the weather hasn't held me back. And speaking of which, that groundhog  Phil was right -- again! -- but it doesn't have to mean I like it!

 (via Geoff Fox's "My Permanent Record" blog)

Happy 2014/Year of the Horse/Winter and soon-to-be Spring to you!

(via the Lakeside Collection blog)

(via The Nuyorican Poets' Cafe website)

(Mark Rylance, photo by Chad Batka, via The New York Times website)

(Frank Langella as King Lear via BAM.org's website)

XXX

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste:
Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow,
For precious friends hid in death's dateless night,
And weep afresh love's long since cancelled woe,
And moan the expense of many a vanished sight:
Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,
And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er
The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,
Which I new pay as if not paid before.
But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restor'd and sorrows end.

-- William Shakespeare, Sonnet 30

Finally! My revived website is up! traciemorris.com

Hey Cats and Kittens!

I have a new, simpler version of my traciemorris.com website up and running! I'm very glad to have it and I hope you like it. You'll be able to connect to this blog/spot via my "Fun Links & Stuff" webpage.

I'm also on Twitter and Facebook (mstraciemorris on twitter and Tracie Morris' "fan page" on Facebook). This blog will remain a forum for me to post longer notes, pictures and poems that I like.

For those of you who check in here, thanks so much for your persistence as I try to improve my online presence. I really appreciate your support!

See you around the internet,
Tracie

www.traciemorris.com

working on the site -- Happy Summer 2011!

As I work on the site, here's an update via my little blog. BTW, you can reach me via Facebook on my Tracie Morris "fan page" or via Twitter @mstraciemorris. Hope to catch you on the 'net. xo, Tracie

This is the trailer for the documentary film I'm in. A very sweet little piece by the renown director Bert Shapiro. Enjoy and check out the film via www.newfilmmakersonline.com

Happy Spring! 2011

Hi. I'm renovating this site and blog. Thanks for your patience. If you get re-routed or something weird happens, please bear with me as this is getting sorted.

Hope the weather is nice where you are.

Tracie

Playing a bit of ketchup (and hot sauce)!

Spring has sprung and it's my season. It came in like a lion! (Lots of pix here that I took (unless credited). I know they're kinda sucky but I used a phone and I'm not a photographer so lower your expectations!

Ketchup: I guess I'll have to work backward with updates on doings. Right now I'm lamenting not being at the exciting Rethinking Poetics conference at Columbia in collaboration with Penn.I especially feel guilty because I was just in Philly for a hot second taping another installment of Poem talk organized and hosted by the adorable Al Filreis. No uptown hanging out for me: I'm on a deadline for a big project and my birthday's coming up (w/ festivities) and have other obligations this weekend. Ah, well.The conference is right in the city, too. Have fun for me everybody!

http://rethinkingpoetics.wordpress.com/panels/





But... I did get to see one of the luminaries, Charles Bernstein earlier this week in a reading w/ Kenny Goldsmith at the Sixth Street Community Synagogue. It was a nice reading! I haven't heard Kenny read that much and I really enjoyed the double poetry bill with Charles and he. They were also joined by a musician, Jamie Saft. There was a friendly discussion w/ an editor of the Forward, as well as the curator of the event, after the show. There was also a lovely tour of the synagogue and it's progressive history. Very nice! The Lower East Side hasn't always been the supergentrified spot it is being presented as nowadays. This is a photo of a hilarious traffic light I saw as I walked from the train.























Charles read a poem on Walter Benjamin that I haven't heard since we performed together in Paris years ago (ooh la la) and it was great to hear it again as well as some of his libretti. Jamie Saft has worked w/ lots of folks including John Zorn. (John seems to have worked with everyone I know, I swear, and I recently checked out another friend of his, visual artist David Chaim Smith who's illustrations/interpretations of Kabbalah at the Cavin Morris gallery were beautiful and intricate. I wish I could afford to buy one...ah well. I feel that way everytime I walk into a gallery. But DCS's work really was quite gorgeous.)




Speaking of galleries, I don't know if I even want to get into the vortex that was my experience w/ Marina Abramovic! It was intense! Here's the thumbnail: I went at the suggestion of a few people, including one of my colleagues at Pratt and it was like living in another world for a week. Now that the dust has settled and I'm reived from my reverie, I can think on it a bit. Don't want to be too long winded on this post (too late!) but it was very moving and special. I went to MoMa several times: once to check out the retrospective upstairs, once to check out the crowd, once to sit w/ Marina and I had to go to the closing day, for goodness sake. It was star-studded and, in some ways, anti-star b/c the stars, especially at the end, couldn't sit w/ her. The line and all who waited overnight were too formidable to jump just because the person is famous. New Yorkers have been known to be violent when someone cuts the line! I didn't sit w/ her long myself (I think it was a couple minutes). Personally I didn't feel it was necessary to stay that long in order to understand the implications of what she was doing, especially w/ so many people waiting to sit w/ her and I also think I could have stayed sitting w/ her for weeks and weeks and still discovered new things. So what was the point of hogging the time?





(h/t slp: calarts/redcat events)

One of the great added benefits of "meeting" Marina was that I bumped into the affable Suzan Lori-Parks that day and she went old school in appreciation for "not hogging the mic" as it were. It was a fun conversation and I find her work really interesting. Lovely use of language.



(h/t Jacket magazine)























(h/t squaw valley writers.org)

I am tempted to name drop other folks that I saw there but that's kinda boring. However, I did run into a couple poets and we got to hang out the last day: Evie Shockley and Lee Ann Brown. I love seeing poets in places! Especially my friends. More poets in places! Fan out poets!

Lifestyle changes: well, I've decided to get healthier (a never-ending quest) and am becoming more strict w/ the old diet. Less junk, crap, garbage. More weight-training whole, live foods and water. Since Gemini season has arrived and that means my birthday (yay!) it's time to re-evaluate and move forward. I have some ridiculous precedents for long life in my family (I had an uncle who died at 108), and if I get w/ the program I might be around and healthy for a while. If not, well, there are, unfortunately other precedents for ill health in my family too. I'm at the point now where I'm deciding to tap into the long-living genetic disposition and not to undermine it with bad habits. Weirdly, I'm eating more these days but am not as "fluffy" as before. Consuming better food actually gives me more leeway with how much I can eat. I know this is like "duh, no kidding" but I had to find out w/ trial and error. Whatever. Wish me luck!

Projects: Writing and re-evaluating my writing. It's quite the meditation going over past words. I can almost feel the context of why I needed to write them at the time, coming back. Not exactly a trip down memory lane more like some Star Trek space-time continuum collapse! Disconcerting, unnerving. But good! Doing some recording soon too and that is always lovely.

My trip to Uganda was life-changing. I love going to Africa and have always enjoyed my experiences there. Every place is, of course, very different. In Uganda I got to hang out at schools. I met quite a few students and they are smart, smart, smart. The scholastic resources are terrible though. I saw the vestiges of colonialism (even now) in the depleated libraries and dated books. One thing I did note however, was how much more well-read the students are regarding African literature. I got exposed to many of the books they read as schoolchildren in grad school. That's a sad commentary on the US education system in relation to the second-largest continent on earth. And the students are well-read about very different African authors from throughout the continent.

































On a goofy tip, I criss-crossed the equator and that was super fun! I've been south of the equator quite a few times but stopping and taking pictures was cool! Also went to the source of the Nile. That was supercool because I've visited Egypt and went to the end of the Nile so it's like: yay! End to end! The falls around Uganda are gorgeous.



















Politcally, because of the controvery anti-gay/queer legislation in the country, the place is flooded w/ southern White evangelicals. Whatever floats your boat on the religious tip, but these folks bring their bad habits, intolerance and awkwardness whereever they go. It seemed to me (after run-in with a couple of these yahoos) that racism and prejudice trumps religion. Just tacky behavior (and aesthetically, just straight up tacky!) I can't agree w/ the intolerance of queer people there (or here for that matter) and I find it interesting that some Africans are very critical of European/Euro-American imperialism when it comes to some things but not other things. If the news reports coming out of the States about who's funding the anti-Gay measures in Uganda (conservative White Christian fundamentalists here in the States) are correct, then this intolerance is just as much an aspect of imperialism as the bad textbooks in the schools that privileges Europe and America over Africa, even for Africans.

LIke I said, it was a deep trip! I look forward to visiting Uganda again. I met some beautiful, smart people there.

Hot Sauce on the table: I've got a few projects heating up (as I've mentioned) and will hopefully be revamping this website over the summer. So if you tune in and things are different, it's on purpose! I'm glad for this nuts-and-bolts website version but hope to step up my game a teeny bit now that I've got other irons in the fire. Stay tuned and enjoy the decent weather!

xo,
Tracie

PS: An early Happy Pops day for you Pops!


My Father's Geography
by Afaa M. Weaver

I was parading the Côte d'Azur,
hopping the short trains from Nice to Cannes,
following the maze of streets in Monte Carlo
to the hill that overlooks the ville.
A woman fed me pâté in the afternoon,
calling from her stall to offer me more.
At breakfast I talked in French with an old man
about what he loved about America--the Kennedys.

On the beaches I walked and watched
topless women sunbathe and swim,
loving both home and being so far from it.

At a phone looking to Africa over the Mediterranean,
I called my father, and, missing me, he said,
"You almost home boy. Go on cross that sea!"

(h/t poets.org)

It's been a long time....

to quote Rakim!

Lissen, I have been b-u-s-y! I'll fill you in w/ more details soon.

What do I have to tell you about? Latest musings, my trip to Uganda, sitting w/ Marina Abramovic, new projects, lifestyle changes, summer coming, the Gemini season starting, revamping ye olde website.

My next post is probably gonna be loooong! Maybe even in two parts!

So look out this week and I'll catch y'all up. This is what *professional* blogger and entertainment types call "a teaser".

Thanks for checking in,
Tracie

Oops! Almost forgot...

HAPPY CHINESE NEW YEAR!!


Special Yay if you're a cat person!
(Year of the Tiger)
:-)

TM

(h/t to news.bbc.co.uk for the pic)