Spark blog

Suzan-Lori Parks beckons audience to listen in, find truth

2006-05-15T22:30:00.000-05:00

Tonight, Suzan-Lori Parks closed the 2006 speaker series with an evening of personal stories, dramatic readings, and even some down-home blues.

The Pulitzer-winning playwright and novelist dressed simply in a black shirt and skirt with boots to match. Her overarching message for the evening was similarly simple yet elegant — follow your dream.

Each of us has the power to create, and through our creations to discover the truth. Parks warned it is difficult and sometimes scary to dedicate ourselves to the pursuit of that truth, but she encouraged everyone to follow their creative spirit. "Now, right now, even when I'm speaking, is a wonderful time to take a step in the direction toward your truth."

Parks knows the difficulty of giving in to the spirit. She knew at an early age that she wanted to be a writer. But a high school teacher discouraged her from pursuing literature, so she instead focused on science. She was a biology major at Mount Holyoke College, content with her choice, until reading To the Lighthouse in a compulsory English course reignited the creative spark. "Virginia Woolf helped me remember who I'm supposed to be."

Shortly thereafter James Baldwin taught his first-ever college course at nearby Hampshire College, and Parks was among the 15 students selected for the class. She recalls reading her stories with frenetic energy — standing, pacing, gesturing. Baldwin temporarily disappointed her when one day he said, "Miss Parks, have you considered writing for the theatre?" But she soon recognized his comment was a suggestion, and not a critique of her storytelling skills.

Parks was no overnight sensation. After moving to New York City, she worked odd jobs and learned to type for temp agency work while still writing plays outside business hours. She staged her first play at a gas station–turned–bar, with little more than her family in the audience. But it was a start.

She learned to "listen in," or focus on her creative spirit. And she committed herself to becoming a writer — a process she continues today. "I wake up every day and say, 'I want to be a writer.' … Lots of wonderful things happen when you start making and remaking that commitment."

How can we learn to listen in? By reducing outside stimuli and carving out quiet time every day. By doing so, she says, we can discover our truth and explore it in our creations.

Parks is currently working on a number of projects, including a screenplay for Brad Pitt and a stage adaptation of the film Ray. Her ambitious 365 Days, 365 Plays will be staged later this year at 7 cities throughout the country.

Suzan-Lori Parks to speak May 15

2006-05-01T09:02:00.000-05:00

The final speaker in this year's series is playwright Suzan-Lori Parks, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 2002 for her drama Topdog/Underdog.

The former MacArthur Foundation "genius" grant recipient also wrote screenplays for Spike Lee's 1996 film Girl 6 and Denzel Washington's forthcoming The Great Debaters.

KLRU will feature Ms. Parks in an encore presentation of Stage on Screen: The Topdog Diaries on Monday, May 8.

Join us at the Paramount Theater on Monday, May 15 for a lively discussion on writing, art, and society. Individual event tickets are now available, as are discounted subscriptions for 2007.

Leonard Pitts and Chuck D tackle race, youth, technology, and so much more

2006-04-25T22:14:00.000-05:00

Tonight at the Spark speaker series, Chuck D, Leonard Pitts, and moderator S. Craig Watkins tackled sometimes thorny issues like race, hip hop culture, politics, and technology.

Race in modern America

The panelists opened with observations on how Hurricane Katrina illuminated race and class differences in American society. Racism may not be as socially acceptable today as it was 40 years ago in the Jim Crow South, but it’s still woven into the fabric of our society.

“We as a nation find that kind of stuff very difficult to talk about,” said Pitts. But he added that race is part of our everyday news, whether we recognize it or not. It’s in the crime statistics, the drug wars, and the unemployment numbers that mask a deep divide in American society.

Chuck D commented that the civil rights leaders of the 1960s acted with an “intensity of forwardness” that’s missing today. But we all share in the fault for letting the racial divide fester and grow. Through our government, our media, and other social filters we’ve been part of the “dumbassification” of America.

Both panelists agreed that we live in a society where anti-intellectualism is rampant, and where complacency isn’t just accepted, it’s expected. “Eighteen percent of Americans have passports,” said Chuck D, citing just one example of our insularity, “and that’s a damn shame for a supposedly international country.” [According to Yale Univ. the actual figure is 21 percent.]

Overextended hip hop culture

To many white Americans, rap music represents black culture. And Pitts noted that in terms of commercial success and cultural influence, it is the rock and roll of today. But he added that listening to rap can’t help one understand the black experience any more than watching “I Love Lucy” can help one understand the white experience.

Chuck D blamed major record labels and cable TV for over-commercializing rap music and overextending its place in contemporary black and hip hop culture. Today, artists are made “slaves to their contracts,” and sales quantity is stressed over music quality. “Big businesses introducing culture is bound to make mutants out of people,” he added.

Young people and politics

Watkins shifted the conversation to politics, and specifically why so many young Americans seem willing to tune out politics altogether. Pitts offered that perhaps it’s because young people need something to identify with. Recalling his first voting experience and all the elections since, he said that he can’t ever recall a scenario where he’s voted for a candidate so much as voted against their opponent.

Chuck D said that young people need to realize that voting is “like washing your behind every morning” — it’s something you have to do, not something you’re going to get credit for doing. While it’s easy to say schools should boost civics education in their curricula, he’s not so sure that’s the answer. Baby Boomers aren’t encouraging young people to vote because they don’t see 18- to 30-year-olds as their peers. So young people need to take it upon themselves to engage in the political process and make their voices heard.

Technology eliminates barriers

Where young people rule is in the realm of technology. Pitts said that no matter how hard they try, parents can’t keep their kids away from technology. “Once they start walking,” he said, “they start walking away from you.” So parents should instead concentrate on teaching their children how to use technology properly.

Chuck D agreed, building the case for increasing technology education in schools to help kids distinguish information from misinformation. He pointed to growing concerns over Internet predators using MySpace to contact the teens and young adults who constitute the site’s core audience. But from an artist’s perspective, Internet and mobile technologies are beneficial in helping eliminate the middlemen who complicate traditional music creation processes.

Where do we go from here?

So how do we improve our society? Not by taking on the establishment as individuals working in isolation, but rather by gathering together like-minded people and experienced elders in our communities and together building a vocabulary that constitutes a unified voice strong enough to challenge the system.

Also, we need to improve our critical thinking skills. Pitts noted that such courses are available at the collegiate level, but suggested that they should be included in compulsory core course loads.

Furthermore, we need to build on our cultural and racial similarities while learning to acknowledge and even celebrate our differences. And we cannot ignore emerging global issues that will impact succeeding generations, like global warming and our over-dependence on fossil fuels.

Join the discussion

How else can we as individuals recognize our diversity, yet strengthen our national and global togetherness? What other issues do you see affecting our society in the coming years?

Hip hop stars speak out on financial responsibility

2006-04-24T09:24:00.000-05:00

Chuck D isn't alone when critiquing the state of modern hip hop culture. This past weekend, entrepreneur Russell Simmons kicked off a 5-city "Get Your Money Right" tour, a public forum on financial empowerment put on by the Hip-Hop Summit Action Network.

LL Cool J, Nas, and T.I. were among the artists who joined Simmons in New York to stress the importance of financial planning and responsibility.

"The biggest misconception probably comes from the hip-hop community itself … that the money lasts forever," LL Cool J said Saturday. "You have to do the right thing with it." (from AP)

Future stops on the "Get Your Money Right" tour include Miami, Atlanta, Los Angeles, and Dallas.

Leonard Pitts makes wife's dream come true

2006-04-19T08:50:00.000-05:00

Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts just might be the best husband ever:

Got to be the wrong car, she's thinking. It's sure nicer than any car she's ever had. In fact, it's her dream car, the one she always told me she wanted to own "someday."
…
It's just a car, of course. Just metal and rubber and a lot of gadgets and doodads no car really needs. Just another material bauble that cannot follow you into the ground. But sitting there shining under the lights on the evening of my wife's 50th birthday, it feels like vindication and validation and I love you and thank you for persevering with me. Thank you for never giving up on us.

Read the full column.

Pitts will join Chuck D on Apr. 25 for a panel discussion on hip hop culture, race, and American society. Tickets are still available.

Chuck D launches mobile content service

2006-04-11T12:30:00.000-05:00

Chuck D announced the launch of Chuck D Mobile at last week's Billboard MECCA 2006 conference. The new service will give artists a wireless distribution channel to sell their music directly to mobile phone users. Chuck D, who spoke at the launch announcement, hopes the service will enable young people to find hip hop with positive messages.

Chuck D and Leonard Pitts to speak April 25

2006-04-04T15:34:00.000-05:00

Our fourth event brings together two of the most influential figures in hip hop: Chuck D and Leonard Pitts.

Chuck D is perhaps best known for leading Public Enemy, the controversial rap group that helped solidify hip hop's hold on the national consciousness with bestselling albums like It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back (1988) and Fear of a Black Planet (1990). He is also an author (Fight the Power: Rap, Race, and Reality), entrepreneur (Rapstation), and radio host (Air America Radio's On the Real).

Leonard Pitts is an award-winning, nationally-syndicated columnist for the Miami Herald. Pitts began his journalism career as a pop music critic, but within a few years he had earned his own column to cover culture, race, politics, and other issues in the news. He won a Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 2004 and is the author of Becoming Dad: Black Men and the Journey to Fatherhood.

The panel discussion will be moderated by S. Craig Watkins, associate professor of radio-television-film, sociology, and African American studies at the University of Texas. Watkins is also the author of Hip Hop Matters: Politics, Pop Culture, and the Struggle for the Soul of a Movement.

Join us at the Paramount Theater on Tuesday, Apr. 25 for a spirited discussion on hip hop culture, race, and American society. Individual event tickets are now available.

Azar Nafisi on the power of imagination

2006-03-29T22:00:00.000-06:00

Tonight at the Spark speaker series, Azar Nafisi urged us to recognize the transformative power of imagination.

Imagination and investigation

Imagination frees us from seeing the world as it is, so instead we see the world as it could be, or as it should be. It is imagination that gives us hope in the darkest of times.

The power of imagination lies at the core of her bestselling Reading Lolita in Tehran, which chronicles women's struggle to reclaim their Iran from a regime imposing its own radically different vision on the populace. As that book illustrates, imagination can be a subversive act because it leads us to question things. "To genuinely feel subordinate is to never stop questioning," she said. In contrast, smugness is the absence of questioning.

Imagination and questioning lead to investigation, and Nafisi believes the urge to investigate differences lies at the core of culture and reading. This is the subject of one of her books-in-progress, The Republic of Imagination — a metaphysical state in which differences are celebrated, but simultaneously the overwhelming commonalities that link us all are recognized.

Cultural diversity

Nafisi urged us to envision the Iran beyond the headlines. It's a nation of more than its male-dominated, Muslim regime. Iran is the birthplace of classic poetry from the likes of Rumi and Omar Khayyam, and it is a land of great beauty and diversity.

In fact, she paralleled "the hidden Iran" to the global perception of the United States. Both nations are led by regimes that at least outwardely rely on their faith for political direction, but the people and their culture are much more complex than might be indicated through mass media. Nafisi's comment that "no religion can be democratic if it takes over a state" was met with fervent applause.

Never complacent

Paradoxically, Nafisi thanked the Islamic Republic for helping her learn never to feel complacent. When she returned from foreign studies in 1979, she found a drastically changed Iran. She didn't feel at home in her own home, which though unsettling at first proved beneficial because it prevented smugness.

While a happy (if not complacent) resident of the United States for nearly a decade, she still hopes for change in Iran — if not a change in regime, at least a change in mindset. "Every culture has something to be ashamed of," she said, citing slavery, segregation, and the slow extension of suffrage to women among blemishes on American history. "No culture is exempt. But every one has the right to change."

Change comes through challenges. She urged us to raise our voices when the government acts against our principles: "Any act of barbarity, any act of brutality, implicates all of us. No one can be silent." We need to constantly challenge and be challenged, lest we risk what Saul Bellow termed the atrophy of feeling.

Nafisi encouraged everyone to keep our eyes open for challenges to freedom and democracy, ending with the call to action: "Readers of the world unite."

Join the discussion

For more on developments in Iran, Nafisi recommends gooya.com. She plans to start a new online book club by summer. Details will be posted at azarnafisi.com.

What are your thoughts on imagination and culture? Do you think imagination is alive and well in America today? Are diversity and questioning celebrated, or at least generally accepted?

Nafisi to speak about imagination and culture

2006-03-27T12:25:00.000-06:00

The Austin American-Statesman published an interview with Azar Nafisi yesterday. The author of Reading Lolita in Tehran offered a preview of Wednesday night's Spark event:

I want to talk about the importance of imagination to culture and the way in which it transforms our reality and our interpretation of it. I want to link that to my experiences in Iran, a society that is culturally suppressed, in order to create a form of dialogue between the two systems and cultures. There is a way literature reveals our universal aspirations.

Read the full interview, or find ticket information for Nafisi's speech.

The power of book clubs

2006-03-23T15:38:00.000-06:00

A book discussion group helped Azar Nafisi better understand changes in her native Iran, and how the fundamentalist regime was oppressing women and intellectual freedom.

While most American book groups likely deal with less weighty issues, they still play an important role in many of our lives.

No one knows just how many Americans belong to book clubs, but memberships certainly total somewhere in the millions, especially with the popularity of Oprah's Book Club.

According to Elizabeth Long in Book Clubs: Women and the Uses of Reading in Everyday Life, our groups share the same fundamental purpose as Nafisi's: "they have no larger or more social mission than to gather [primarily] women together for the companionable discussion of books, ideas, and experiences."

What role do book groups play in our society? Are they part of community building? Do they serve a purpose beyond just socializing?

Azar Nafisi to speak March 29

2006-03-06T10:46:00.000-06:00

Our third speaker is Azar Nafisi, author of the bestselling Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books.

After receiving her Ph.D. from the University of Oklahoma, Nafisi taught Western literature at Tehran University, Free Islamic University, and Allameh Tabatabai University. Her opposition to mandatory veils and other repressive measures applied to women eventually forced her out of universities and persuaded Nafisi to leave her native land in 1997.

But before leaving, Nafisi gathered seven promising students for informal weekly discussions of literature from the likes of Vladimir Nabokov, Henry James, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Jane Austen. For two years, they secretly met in Nafisi's home and shed their robes and veils to engage in animated, uninhibited dialogue on books, art, culture, gender, morality, oppression, and so much more.

These experiences provide the foundation for the part memoir, part literary criticism, part social commentary Reading Lolita in Tehran. Read an excerpt from the Middle East Quarterly.

Nafisi is director of the Dialogue Project and visiting fellow at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University.

Join us at the Paramount Theater on Wednesday, Mar. 29 to welcome Azar Nafisi to Austin. Individual event tickets are now available.

Brian Greene on space and time

2006-02-28T22:30:00.000-06:00

Tonight at the Spark speaker series, Brian Greene walked us through some exciting developments in the scientific understanding of our universe.

Space and time are the most compelling of scientific ideas because "we experience them, constantly." Yet scientists still struggle with what space and time are, and what if anything they mean to the universe's existence. To help us comprehend space and time, Dr. Greene provided an overview of some pivotal moments in scientific history.

Newton's laws of motion

First, we examined Isaac Newton's three laws of motion, developed in the 17th century. Newton viewed space and time as absolutes. In fact, his laws didn't mean anything absent a definition of space and a definition of time. A contemporary, Gottfried Liebniz, disputed Newton's certainty about the absoluteness of space and time. And yet Newton's laws remained generally accepted for at least the next two centuries.

Einstein's theory of relativity

Then in the early 20th century, Albert Einstein "came to very different conclusions." Einstein devoted 10 years to understanding how gravity works, and his theory of relativity postulated that space and time are not absolute. Instead, Einstein argued, gravity affects space and time. In terms of cosmology, "an object like the sun, merely by its presence in the fabric of space, deforms that space." Yet space and time are interconnected.

Quantum mechanics and Heisenberg's uncertainty principle

But then quantum mechanics began to pose problems. Werner Heisenberg's uncertainty principle states that the smaller you go, the bigger the uncertainty. What appears placid on the surface may instead be rent by "quantum jitters." The result is that if space and time are real, then they are subject to quantum uncertainty.

Einstein's theory of relativity does a great job of describing space and time on a large scale. Heisenberg's uncertainty principle does a great job of describing space and time on a microscopic scale. Yet the two laws seem unable to coexist peacefully.

String theory: a unifying theory?

String theory may address the gap between Einstein and quantum mechanics. Dr. Greene warned that string theory is "an unproven theory — I need to stress that."

Strings may be the fundamental building block of all matter. These strings vibrate in patterns, and different vibrations give rise to different particles. If true, then string theory reduces the jitteriness of space postulated by Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. It "allows quantum mechanics and general relativity to come together."

Yet string theory requires three fundamental changes in our understanding of space and time. First, there are more dimensions than previously believed — specifically, 10 instead of the 3 we currently are able to see. Second, space can rip. And third, our universe is created by one big slice of space that collides with another every trillion years or so.

Proving string theory

How can string theory be proven? One possibility is the Large Hadron Collider currently under construction in Geneva, Switzerland. While not as powerful as the Superconducting Super Collider once planned for Texas, the Swiss facility may be able to demonstrate the existence of gravitons, or the energy shed when two particles collide.

Scientists strive for the truth, no matter how difficult to obtain. String theory may or may not be correct, but it is at the forefront of today's scientific explorations of how space and time function in the universe.

Join the discussion

We would like to thank Dr. Greene and the audience for a fascinating exploration of space, time, and the universe.

What thoughts would you like to share? Do you find string theory a palatable explanation for how space and time operate in our universe?

Fabric of the Cosmos

2006-02-15T14:20:00.000-06:00

Brian Greene will talk about his most recent book, The Fabric of the Cosmos, when he appears at the Spark speaker series on Feb. 28.

Space and time form the very fabric of the cosmos. Yet they remain among the most mysterious of concepts. Is space an entity? Why does time have a direction? Could the universe exist without space and time? Can we travel to the past?

Greene uses these questions to guide us toward modern science's new and deeper understanding of the universe. From Newton's unchanging realm in which space and time are absolute, to Einstein's fluid conception of spacetime, to quantum mechanics' entangled arena where vastly distant objects can bridge their spatial separation to instantaneously coordinate their behavior or even undergo teleportation, Greene reveals our world to be very different from what common experience leads us to believe. Focusing on the enigma of time, Greene establishes that nothing in the laws of physics insists that it run in any particular direction and that "time's arrow" is a relic of the universe's condition at the moment of the big bang. And in explaining the big bang itself, Greene shows how recent cutting-edge developments in superstring and M-theory may reconcile the behavior of everything from the smallest particle to the largest black hole. This startling vision culminates in a vibrant eleven-dimensional "multiverse," pulsating with ever-changing textures, where space and time themselves may dissolve into subtler, more fundamental entities.

(Excerpted from the publisher)

Reviews from around the country:

"…as dazzling as it is tough, and it beautifully reflects this theoretician's ardor for his work" (New York Times)

"…Greene reminds us, in many ways the profound mystery of the universe remains undiminished" (Discover magazine)

"…a profoundly original contribution to popular understanding not just of quantum theory, but of space-time, cosmology, the 'arrow of time', unification and the modern view of physical reality" (PhysicsWeb)

"…a wonderful book for the lay reader who wants to get a glimpse of what we theoretical physicists are thinking about" (American Scientist)

"…rewards the persistent reader with a panoramic vision of a vast and hidden universe" (Wired)

"Greene has a way of explaining things in terms that non-physicists can grasp" (Slashdot)

"One cannot help but feel more enlightened about our existence by better understanding the science behind it" (San Antonio Express-News)

"…with each chapter Greene unfolds layer after layer of physical reality that modern physics has discovered" (Curled Up with a Good Book)

Brian Greene trivia

2006-02-01T14:46:00.000-06:00

Some interesting trivia courtesy of Wikipedia:

As a 5-year-old, Brian Greene was able to multiply 30-digit numbers
His math skills were so prodigious he began receiving private tutoring from a Columbia math professor at age 12
Greene earned his bachelor's from Harvard and his PhD from Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar
He helped the actor John Lithgow with science-related dialogue for NBC's Third Rock from the Sun, and also made a cameo appearance in the 2000 film Frequency

Learn more in Wikipedia's entry on Brian Greene.

Brian Greene's "The Elegant Universe"

2006-01-24T09:17:00.000-06:00

In 2003, Brian Greene and WGBH produced a three-hour documentary version of his bestselling The Elegant Universe for the PBS series NOVA.

Watch the documentary, read interviews with Greene and other physicists, and explore a variety of materials related to string theory at PBS Online:

The Elegant Universe on NOVA

The NOVA site also provides an excellent glossary reprinted from Greene's book.

Brian Greene will be speaking at KLRU's Spark speaker series on Tuesday, Feb. 28.

Ticket information

Brian Greene

2006-01-20T08:30:00.000-06:00

Our second speaker is Brian Greene, a world-renowned physicist and author.

Much of his career has been devoted to researching superstring theory, which some scientists believe may provide a unified theory of the universe through quantum physics. He has also authored two bestselling books: The Elegant Universe (1999, W. W. Norton) and The Fabric of the Cosmos (2004, Alfred A. Knopf).

Greene is Professor of Physics and Professor of Mathematics at Columbia University, where he also serves as co-director of the Institute for Strings, Cosmology, and Astroparticle Physics (ISCAP).

Join us at the Paramount Theater on Tuesday, Feb. 28 to welcome Brian Greene to Austin. Individual event tickets are now available.

Ticket information
Biography from Columbia University

Dan Rather

2006-01-03T13:41:00.000-06:00

Our first speaker is Dan Rather, a native Texan and longtime news anchor/correspondent.

Biography from CBS News

Welcome to Spark

2006-01-02T12:25:00.000-06:00

Spark provides a dynamic forum for fresh ideas that reflect on global issues, inspire action, and shape our everyday lives.

Dan Rather — January 9
Brian Greene — February 28
Azar Nafisi — March 29
Chuck D & Leonard Pitts — April 25
Suzan-Lori Parks — May 15

Series subscriptions are available, as are individual event tickets.

Each Spark event takes place at the Paramount Theatre in downtown Austin, Texas.