My Cultural Landscape: Living In Limbo

With so much anxious talk about pre-existing conditions, I'm surprised no one has pointed out that once a person is born, they have a pre-existing condition. It's called life. Or, in its later stages, death. As with many other parts of life, timing is everything. But in most situations, having a good location won't help avoid the obvious.

Case in point: On February 9, 1988, Terence A. McEwen gathered the press together to announce the shocking news that he was stepping down immediately from his position as General Director of the San Francisco Opera. The reason? His physician had insisted that, with any more stress, his diabetes could prove fatal. What McEwen could never have imagined was that, earlier that afternoon, his predecessor would die and completely steal McEwen's thunder. Having led the company and been a major cultural figure in the Bay area for 28 years (compared to McEwen's six-year tenure with the company), Kurt Herbert Adler's story was a much bigger news item.

Though the Grim Reaper may enjoy such moments of schadenfreude, in some instances souls are forced to spend unexpected periods of time in limbo.

In Greek mythology, Orpheus traveled to the underworld in an attempt to rescue his wife, Eurydice, and bring her back to life.
Dante Alighieri depicted a state of limbo as the first circle of hell in his Divine Comedy.
DC Comics describes limbo as "a dimension inhabited by old characters who have been removed from continuity or seemingly abandoned or forgotten."
In cultures that embrace the concept of reincarnation, the time between one's death and rebirth is often regarded as a period when the soul is trapped in something resembling limbo.

If reincarnation is real, then the the popular adage that "You Only Live Once!" (YOLO) must be false. Two recent dramas raise surprising questions about the finality of death. In a documentary being screened during the 2019 San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, a widow living in Israel receives shocking news. In a provocative drama being staged by the Shotgun Players, four African American men find themselves stuck in a mysterious kind of limbo until they can move on to the next phase of their lives (or deaths).

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On June 12, 1967, a thriller based on one of Ian Fleming's spy novels had its world premiere at the Odeon Leicester Square in London. You Only Live Twice made history as the first premiere of a James Bond film to be attended by a reigning monarch (Queen Elizabeth II). As noted on Wikipedia, in the film:

"American NASA spacecraft Jupiter 16 is hijacked from orbit by an unidentified spaceship. The United States suspects it to be the work of the Soviets, but the British suspect Japanese involvement since the spacecraft, after having 'swallowed' Jupiter 16, landed in the Sea of Japan. To investigate, MI6 operative James Bond is sent to Tokyo after faking his own death in Hong Kong and being buried at sea from HMS Tenby."

Poster art for You Only Die Twice

Fifty years after the release of You Only Live Twice, Yair Lev's mindfucking documentary entitled You Only Die Twice is making the rounds of the film festival circuit. With a story that includes some incredible burial plot twists, red herrings, and jaw-dropping discoveries, You Only Die Twice is the kind of film that could cause such famous mystery writers as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, Erle Stanley Gardner, Raymond Chandler, Dashiel Hammett, and John Grisham to roll over in their graves and ask "Why didn't I think of that?"

Filmmaker Yair Lev with his grandmother,
Chava, in a scene from You Only Die Twice

The story revolves around Ernst Beschinsky, who died in 1969 in Israel but apparently died again in 1987 in Innsbruck. The enigma of how one man could die twice went unnoticed until 2010, when a relative living in London passed away, leaving behind a house as part of his estate. When the filmmaker's grandmother (Chava) learns that she has inherited the property, she is justifiably confused by the news but happy to hear of the good fortune it brings. The inheritance becomes a legal challenge when her grandson discovers that Ernst Beschinsky may have been a victim of identity theft. The news sends Yair Lev on what feels like a wild goose chase in an effort to determine who could have stolen his grandfather's identity and, more importantly, why.

Two photographs identify the men who claimed to be Ernst Beschinsky

Lev travels to Austria, where very little seems to make sense. His research leads him to investigate the history of several Tyrolean families whose members belonged to the Nazi party. He soon discovers that, although an Ernst Beschinsky was the head of Innsbruck's Jewish community, none of the people on the board of directors of the organization he led knew anything about his private life.

Filmmaker Yair Lev tries to solve the mystery of who
stole his grandfather's identity in You Only Die Twice

After much digging through media and municipal archives, the missing link turns out to be a romantic relationship between a woman named Ilse and a young man who lived across the hall from the filmmaker's grandfather when they were children. Nearly 80 years after the end of World War II, the mystery is finally solved. In a surprising turn of events, the filmmaker uncovers a mind-boggling truth about his grandfather while his newfound friend, Andreas Focke, learns that, in a previous generation, one of his relatives was a member of the Gestapo.

Yair Lev and Andreas Focke visit the grave of the "other"
Ernst Beschinsky in a scene from You Only Die Twice

You Only Die Twice is one of those fascinating stories that reaffirms Mark Twain's claim that "Truth is stranger than Fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t." It also underscores the importance of how, in today's heavily digitized information age, few employees remain on the job who retain sufficient knowledge of their institution's history and culture to be able to help people find the answers to seemingly unsolvable questions. Here's the trailer:

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According to the World Health Organization, as of December 31, 2018, 37.9 million people are currently living with HIV/AIDS. Another 35 million have died since the disease was first identified in 1982 (that's five times the number of Jews who perished in the Holocaust). For many people, the 1980s was a decade of grieving for [primarily] gay men who succumbed to the HIV/AIDS epidemic. So many lives (and so much talent) were lost that it still seems like an entire generation of the world's LGBT community was cheated out of its future, its potential, its health, and its happiness.

In the earliest days of the epidemic, one might encounter a friend at the gym who would laugh and say "Hey, with a body like this, how could I be sick?" and then learn, two weeks later, that he had died. Many of us lost hundreds (some lost thousands) of friends for what seemed like no good reason. Scant medical information was available as people struggled to understand how such a deadly plague could occur in modern times.

Today, America is fighting a plague of targeted hate crimes propelled by a rising tide of racism, xenophobia, and domestic terrorism. Among the many who have been shot, stabbed, choked, and beaten to death is a subgroup of young black and brown men whose only crime has been being born. To make matters worse, many of their killers have been Caucasian police officers with itchy fingers who have shot innocent children like 12-year-old Tamir Rice and incredulously tried to justify their actions with claims as ridiculous as the infamous "Twinkie Defense" employed by Dan White's lawyers during his trial for the November 27, 1978 assassinations of San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk.

The Shotgun Players is currently presenting the Bay area premiere of Kill Move Paradise, a drama by James IJames (whose play, White, caused quite a sensation last year). The production's most visible asset is a pearly white unit set designed by Celeste Martore which permits a series of startling entrances by its four characters: Isa (Edward Ewell), Grif (Lenard Jackson), Daz (Tre'Vonne Bell), and Tiny (Dwayne Clay). Its most visible prop is an old dot-matrix printer whose tractor-fed supply of computer paper contains a sobering message.

Edward Ewell is Isa in Kill Move Paradise (Photo by: Robbie Sweeny)

As the play begins Isa addresses the audience directly, asking why they're sitting there, if he scares them, and establishing their relationship as something resembling a group of voyeurs looking at a diorama or watching the inhabitants of a human zoo. The difference here is that the four men are acutely aware of the audience and, rather than a zoo or diorama, they seem to have landed in something resembling a bardo or way station to the afterlife. By the end of the 70-minute play, it's no longer a secret that each of them was killed by a law officer or overzealous vigilante and that each name on the seemingly endless computer printout belongs to a young black man whose life was stolen from him by an act of racist violence.

Of the four men, Isa is a poet who, by the age of eight, realized that white people found him "scary." Though not sure how, he senses that he may have been in this strange place before. A simple gesture toward his neck suggests that perhaps he was lynched in a previous life. Grif is biracial, well-educated, and fashion conscious. At one point, referring to the kind of subcultural shorthand that exists between many black men, the older, wiser, and more introspective Isa states that, though he may not be Grif's biological brother, he most definitely is his brother in a spiritual and psychic sense (a similar kind of kind of shorthand has long shared between many gay men).

Lenard Jackson is Grif in Kill Move Paradise
(Photo by: Robbie Sweeny)

Daz (short for "Dazzle") is obviously more streetwise, has a more labile personality, and possesses a shorter emotional trigger. He also seems to have memorized a surprising inventory of items from black history and black culture that are stored in another room. Tiny (who is only 15 years old) is treated with kid gloves by the three other men who, having already grasped their predicament, are protective of his innocence in a very brotherly way (Tiny makes his entrance toting a plastic toy gun and is eager to engage the others in his favorite game: Cowboys and Aliens).

Dwayne Clay is Tiny in Kill Move Paradise (Photo by: Robbie Sweeny)

Upon arriving in this sterile environment, these men are unaware of what happened to them or how they got there. But as they start to remember things, it becomes evident that each was shot to death when they were doing nothing more exciting than going about their everyday lives. "Kill Move Paradise takes the Elysium of Greek antiquity and flips the script. Set in a netherworld prepared for its newly deceased inhabitants, we follow Isa, Daz, Grif and Tiny as they try to make sense of the world they have been 'untimely ripped from' and this new paradise they find themselves in," explains the playwright. "Inspired by recent events, Kill Move Paradise is a expressionistic buzz saw through the contemporary myth that 'all lives matter' and a portrait of the slain, not as degenerates who deserved death, but as heroes who demand that we see them for the splendid beings they are."

Kill Move Paradise is being staged by Shotgun Players as a co-production with The Lorraine Hansberry Theatre. Though his play received its world premiere from the National Black Theatre in Harlem in 2017, Ijames wishes it could become obsolete (despite knowing full well that the constant wave of murders in America makes that highly unlikely).

In his program note, director and co-choreographer Darryl V. Jones explains that:

“During Reconstruction, the free black man became a challenge to the political system and a threat to the status quo. In retaliation, the most insidious and lingering minstrel caricature was created: the ‘Vicious Black Brute.’ This stereotype was presented as large, menacing, violent, and on the prowl for white women. The ‘Vicious Black Brute’ caricature incited fear and gave people the justification they were looking for to kill black men. The lynching of black males became a popular blood sport. They were carried out in public and often times people would set up picnics and bring their entire families. Between 1882 and 1930, the American South experienced an epidemic of fatal mob violence against blacks producing over 3,000 victims. Therefore, it became commonplace to kill and to witness the killing of black men who had not committed any particular offense other than being black. Americans became both fearful of black males and desensitized to their random murders.”

The cast of Kill Move Paradise (Photo by: Robbie Sweeny)

“The lynching of African American men that began during Reconstruction and continued well into the 20th century has left a trail of blood that continues to be spilled today in the gunning down of unarmed African American males by police officers. This fear and desensitization continues today in the gunning down of unarmed African American boys and men by law enforcement and rogue vigilantes. Unarmed black men are five times more likely to be gunned down by police than whites. In Kill Move Paradise, James Ijames boldly exposes the fear, stereotypes, and death threat facing black males in America today. In Kill Move Paradise, we see not just dreams, but life itself deferred, cut short for being black in a society that has been conditioned to view black as fearsome.”

Dwayne Clay (Tiny) and Tre'Vonne Bell (Daz) in a scene
from Kill Move Paradise (Photo by: Robbie Sweeny)

With costumes by Courtney Flores, lighting by Stephanie Johnson, sound by Elton Bradman, and video designed by Theodore J.H. Hulsker, Jones has directed Kill Move Paradise so that the mysterious messages that arrive written on paper airplanes are every bit as cryptic as the contents of a Chinese fortune cookie. While the four men obviously come from different age brackets and different backgrounds (one describes them as being "different flavors of black"), each has a solid sense of who he is and what makes (or made) him happy. By working together, the four men come to understand how they will be able to leave the bardo and move on to the next step in their stories.