The 3^rd annual Silk City Summer Arts Festival is taking place this year Outside at Eastside Park in Paterson, NJ July 24^th, 2010. Several dance companies, musicians, poets and actors are scheduled to perform and celebrate the arts. The goal of the festival is to rebuild the arts in Paterson and encourage emerging artists to perform their craft.

Jenny Efremova, the Artistic Director for Expressions Dance Company will be presenting her work “Voices” together with her dancers Julien Kanor and Sandra Passirani. The work deals with a man’s inner struggle of keeping his African Traditional practices while living and working in the western world. The dance is accompanied by vocals from Sandra Passirani. The communication between the song and movements leads to a dialogue which in turn helps the man to find abalance between his two worlds.  Jenny’s work fuses African spirituality with the European search for identity. Coming from Russia, she was not allowed to practice much of her cultural traditions, which in turn lead her to search for the cultural belonging in other countries, such as Jamaica, Cuba, Ghana and Nigeria. After dancing and teaching around the world, she is now based in New York City where she fuses African Dance with Modern, HipHop and DanceHall.

“Lunar Park”

 

• The story is told by the main character. It is written in the I format. At times the format switches to “the writer” and at one point the narrator became a third person, looking at the story from the outside. The writer mentions several times that it is not him who is writing the book, but the writer within him, who has his own voice and personality.The writer’s point of view gives me the insights into his world. The perspective is not objective and sometimes I wondered whether the events in the book actually took place. I found myself taking the writer’s side in the most cases, which prevented me from reading the book objectively. His style of writing was so convincing that I did not doubt anything he wrote. I was with him from the beginning until the end. He is an excellent writer. The amazing flow of the words and sentences took me on the ride throughout the book.
• The book starts with a bit of confusion. The writer is describing his previous works and I was not sure whether it was the introduction to the book or the actual beginning. I had a hard time understanding whether it was a true story or not. All I knew was that I enjoyed reading it. I was ready for more, not matter what it was. As he wrote about his books, I was anticipating the next section, which never came. When I realized that I had to accept the way the plot went on, I became very anxious. I felt as if I knew what I needed to know already and was waiting for something else. Later on I settled into the book, still amazed at the amount of the events taking place.I feel that the writer was telling the readers the background information about himself through his previous works. When that was done, he started the actual story of him moving in together with Jayne and her two sons. The mystical events started at that point, which is actually what Lunar Park is about. From there on, the events follow in the chronological order. At times the flashbacks are made back to the time when Bret was a young kid. He remembers his dad in different situations, which made a big impact on him and his life.
• Bret’s inner voice is very youthful. He is very honest and does not come across as superficial. He makes mistakes, he breaks down, he cries, he loses the grasp of reality, but he is not evil, nor does he wish any harm to anybody. He represent a regular human being, who is struggling with the haunted past. He is sarcastic. He will break out into a joke in the midst of drama, because that is the only way to survive. Thinking too much about the pain makes him more depressed, so he runs away from it. He cannot handle the responsibility which comes with the fatherhood and family. It is hard for him to take care of himself and he has not realized that his bachelor’s life is over. It is very hard for him to make the transition into the adulthood.Bret’s use of language is very vivid. The actions came alive in front of me. This is one of the reasons why I could not realize that I had read almost 500 pages in just a couple of days. His tone was very youthful with a touch of humor. His sentences followed his way of thinking. When he was stressed or scared, he used short sentences, which gave me a very good feel of the urgency of his thoughts.
• The main setting is on the East Coast of the U.S. When Bret is looking back at his upbringing, he is referring to his hometown, Los Angeles. At the end of the book he goes back there to shed the ashes of his father. Otherwise everything else is pretty much centered on the East Coast around the New York City area. Most of the “scary” events are happening in the house. Bret feels chased, watched and attacked. He occasionally takes a drive to the college where he is teaching, but the house is the center of most of the happenings.
• Bret is the principal character, drug addict, unpredictable, very caring but not capable of taking care of his family. Full of imagination and is an incredible writer, who releases his inner thoughts through his writing. His wife is very needy, in terms of love and attention. She wants Bret to commit to her and the family life, which they are trying to create. They struggle and in the end she gives up. Bret’s son never got to find put that Bret was his real father. At that time when Bret’s wife became pregnant, they were not married yet and Bret could not commit to the fatherhood. In that sense, Bret feels a struggle to care for his son, because he constantly gets accused for not being the real dad. It hurts him, but in the end he is helpless.
• In Lunar Park, Bret is talking about his famous life and also about his inner struggle with his father, who’s spirit is haunting him. In this book Bret’s goal is to release that, which he does not realize until the end. It also seems to me that Bret wanted the readers to understand him. The celebrity life has not given him an opportunity to explain himself and his actions. I think he wrote this book to somehow explain and justify himself as a victim and a person who is human. I think he felt judged and lonely deep inside.
• Lunar Park, I finished reading this book in August, so I actually don’t quite remember all the details, but I think it signifies his crazy life. It was amazing reading a story about someone’s life from the inside as opposed to outside and I think that was actually the goal of the book. I think Bret wanted the world to understand him.

DN 00-06-09