The same old same old.

Or one of them.

It’s something I’ve wrestled with, or at least thought about to inconclusion, for more often than I like to admit.

Which means that I can’t make up my mind.

So what is it?

It has to do with the impulse to create, the dissatisfaction with the non-existence of the (in this case) work of art.

Once the work of art is created and “out there,” it’s beyond the artist’s control. This can be frustrating to the artist, much the way God is frustrated by His creation of the world, when He sees what we’ve done with it.

The artist, if he’s aware of such things, tries to control the output so his audience will respond as he intends.

If he’s from long ago and long dead, it’s too late for him to “correct” our misapprehensions.

If it’s a play, let’s say by Shakespeare, and the characters “talk funny” because “they don’t sound like us,” we need a translator or a guide, a teacher, the emphasis on bringing the language “up to date” by “modernizing” it, so we can follow the story and know what it’s all about. This puts an emphasis on the story at the expense of the language.

But, and I’ve said it before, if we tell the story by changing the words, it isn’t Shakespeare.

Most of his stories were “borrowed.”

Shakespeare is the words.

If we make changes, we need a disclaimer, like “based on” or “inspired by.”

Even in school, the overworked teacher tries to shepherd her students through five acts so they “get it,” and they all collapse under a pile of verbiage. Too often even the teacher doesn’t “get it” and thinks the original language is a test of endurance.

Shakespeare is universally revered. He’s on a pedestal. He’s like the Bible, which is still being translated into simple English so we can be told what He said, if not what He meant.

What? God spoke English? Well, no, but He could have. But then nobody would have understood Him back then. Uh…almost just like now.

I’m of two minds (what? only two?) about things like “modernizing” the past.

Sometimes it can work. But it takes work to make it work.

A clever director can sometimes stage a play in modern dress if it doesn’t violate or destroy the original intent.

But, buyer beware.

What would The Merchant of Venice be if Shylock wasn’t Jewish?

When Othello is played in white-face, that destroys the whole intent and conflict of the original.

Even an exalted actor like Laurence Olivier, went out of his way the other way, to be a “purist.” In film, on screen, his Othello is not just black, he’s BLACK. So black, he burns a hole in the screen. So black, that he put drops in his eyes to make them blood-red and complete the stereotype. He went overboard.

Olivier chose a gimmick, sometimes two, to translate his performances from stage to screen. His Hamlet, filmed in precise black-and-white, has the protagonist, because he’s Danish and therefore blond, be so blond that on screen his hair looks white, his head on fire (not literally, of course, please excuse the hyperbole, it’s for dramatic effect).

There are too many examples of things that didn’t work, that strike a false note. Miscalculations, failed attempts. There are too many instances where people say with gratitude, “Yeah! They dumbed it down for me. Thanks.”

How many people, who are not English majors, read poetry?

People think “rhyme” is poetry.

Vocal art, song, has devolved to one-note monosyllabic repetition. “Yeah, yeah, unh, unh, bitch, F U!”

The accelerating cultural decline has devolved us back to the stone age before language was invented.

People eat undercooked French fries and think they’re eating French.

We still have champions of culture and the integrity of art. Angela Gheorghiu refused to sing an opera in modern dress because it violated and destroyed the original intent.

Zefferelli’s productions re-created the originals with such intense beauty that we were re-living those former times, experiencing that true art doesn’t die.

Ponnelle created innovatively to bring the then into the now.

Eileen Farrell sang on the opera stage and the night club, brought out her ground-breaking record, “I’ve Got a Right to Sing the Blues,” and she did. The Metropolitan Opera said, “Go do that. You’re done here.” She had one of the Great Voices of all time, evenly beautiful, powerful, and sang Wagner the way it was meant to be.

Renee Fleming and Bryn Terfil sang Porgy and Bess.

So what does all this have to do with anything? Am I just floundering in a morass to make me feel good?

No, it’s a replay of concerns that have bothered me for years.

It’s an attempt to find a solution that is not just the answer.

An action plan without action is just words.

When I was teaching, I was doing it. I was learning how to teach, and what, and why. My students helped me. They taught me as I taught them. And it worked. Spectacularly.

It all comes back to this.

Here I am beating the same old drum, cutting through the rhetoric.

There’s so much more to life.

Teachers (and librarians, and bookstores) united can save the world.

The world is worth saving.