From Page to Stage: Newark in Black and Blue in 2004

In the Fall of 2004, I was teaching a course at Rutgers University in Newark called “From Page to Stage” where the idea — as I was teaching the course — was to take original scripts written in class and present them in live performance to learn how the process of active creation worked.

The final project was a series of group presentations where students shared their lives as they were living it — and the alarming result of one racially diverse group was: “Newark in Black and Blue.”  That group’s bruising presentation was tough and blunt and dramatic and I decided we had to record that performance in audio so we could preserve the truth of the moment.

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When Sunny Gets Blue and Sunshine Blows Through the Blues

“When Sunny Gets Blue” is one of the greatest Blues/Jazz songs ever written. You can sing it slow and creeping with an oozing loss, or you can snap it up and make the song fast and raspy.  The lyric is especially keen — you can take it as a comment on a personality, or a conundrum of living in the sunshine when the world is dark around you:

When Sunny gets blue, her eyes get gray and cloudy,
Then the rain begins to fall, pitter-patter, pitter-patter,
Love is gone, so what can matter,
Ain’t no new lover man come to call.

Many of us probably have a Sunny or two in our lives — some versions gloomier than others, but today, I want to share a 10-second memory of a ray of sun.  Her friends and co-workers call her “Sunshine” and the name fits her without a fog.

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Beanie Blue, Queen of the Undernight: Ten Sentence Story #165

Beanie Blue was born to be a Queen, but she sure didn’t feel like one.

It was hard for her to get up in the morning — when the world was awakening to bright sunlight, Beanie was caught in the darkness of her oversleeping un-dawning mind — and it made her so sad she did not want to get out of bed in the morning.

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Speak Louder, I Can't Hear You Over My Erection!

There’s a Devil’s Bargain in that little blue pill.  Sure, we knew Viagra could cause blue vision in exchange for sexual pleasure, but who knew the Devil would take a second bite of our withering masculinity to cause hearing loss as well?

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The Swirling Blue-Green NASA Sun

News broke this week that shattered our world of understanding about the sun above us. Often a golden totem of warmth and richness, NASA now shows us our sun is really a fiery swirl of burnt azure and glistening turquoise:  More blue natural gas flame than crackling orange ember.

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One Night at the Blue Note

You never forget your first night at the Blue Note in New York City’s Greenwich Village.
18 years or so ago, I stepped into the Blue Note and I was never the same again.

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