Sopranos: Made in America

I had several different theories about how the Sopranos would end. I realized, that Sunday night before the episode ended, that none of them were likely to satisfy me. But it didn't matter, David Chase pulled off an ending that no one predicted.

Like many viewers, I'm appreciating the ending more in retrospect. I think, first viewing, you're too caught up in the fact that you're watching the last few minutes of the Sopranos to think about the entire season, which I later did.

I thought about the title of the last episode. "Made in America."

And I came up with a theory that (amazing) I haven't seen. Yet.

I began to see the last season of the Sopranos as an allegory about the state of the union. About our national paranoia and fears. And how, as Dr. Johnny Fever once said on WKRP, “when everyone’s out to get you, paranoia just makes good sense.”

That is to say, the Bobby flashback in the boat (in the penultimate episode may be a “clue” to what happened to Tony, but it's also rather typical of the (reality-based) paranoia that has been building throughout this last season. This last season brought in global fears (terrorists), environmental fears (toxic waste), fears that we may not have an effective leader (Bush’s poor leadership and poor decisions about going to war and about who the real enemies; with counterparts in Tony's mob life. You can add onto that, health care (Uncle Junior) and what will happen to us when we get old (Uncle Junior and Johnny Sack), and loss of income as well as our national debt (the gambling metaphor).

I think this is the message of Made In America. Paranoia, based on legitimate fear, is what is “Made in America.” The fears that permeate the last season are fears we all have. Tony has an acute fear of getting whacked, but the message comes from A.J. (the most changed character on the show, who,unlike Tony has no illusions anymore and sees the world as it really is) and from Meadow, “it’s a fucked up world.

I think Chase’s last season is mirroring the state of our country. The end says – I don’t know what’s going to kill me –but something will and it's something distinctly "Made in America." I thought maybe Chase was giving us a wake up alarm and then also realized that a wake up alarm is what starts the final episode.

And the last scene is paranoia personified. It doesn’t matter if Tony lives or dies. The point is the nagging realization that at some point (like the Sopranos series itself) it all has to be over.

So that's what I was thinking about last week. Then, this week, I received my Daily Dharma message and although its message is not related to the Sopranos, it feels like it is:

"Intelligent practice always deals with just one thing: the fear at the base of human existence, the fear that I am not.

And of course I am not, but the last thing I want to know is that.

I am impermanence itself in a rapidly changing human form that appears solid. I fear to see what I am: an ever-changing energy field...

So good practice is about fear. Fear takes the form of constantly thinking, speculating, analyzing, fantasizing. With all that activity we create a cloud cover to keep ourselves safe in make-believe practice. True practice is not safe; it's anything but safe. But we don't like that, so we obsess with our feverish efforts to achieve our version of the personal dream. Such obsessive practice is itself just another cloud between ourselves and reality.

The only thing that matters is seeing with an impersonal searchlight: seeing things as they are. When the personal barrier drops away, why do we have to call it anything? We just live our lives. And when we die, we just die. No problem anywhere." --Charlotte Joko Beck

Berlin Alexanderplatz and The Sopranos

I just finished watching the Rainer Werner Fassbinder 14-part television epic Berlin Alexanderplatz. Again. Originally released in 1983, I first saw the when it was broadcast on PBS in Chicago around 1986-1987. It exists almost nowhere now -- I have a scratchy VHS version of it that I was fortuitous enough to tape when it aired. I've seen rumors that Criterion will finally give it a proper DVD release, but it hasn't happened yet. When it does, I'm sure I'll buy it and watch it all over again. It's exhausting viewing, but one of the greatest films ever made.

I've seen it a few times now, but this is the first time I've watched it in its entirety since I started watching the Sopranos. And as I watch the final episodes of the Sopranos (there's currently about 5 episodes left to air) and I watch Tony's downward spiral, I'm noticing that there are some striking similarities between Tony Soprano and Franz Biberkopf. the anti-hero of Berlin Alexanderplatz. To wit:

· Man with child-like tendencies, inability to function as an adult.

• When he gets agitated (and he doesn’t react by yelling) – he collapses to the floor

· Involved in the underworld, but is morally conflicted with his involvement.

· Betrayed by those in the gang he trusts.

· Must always appear tough, in the face of adversity.

· Needs stability of a regular partner, but also has girls on the side

· Has killed and beaten people, but is made to be a pitiable, tragic and even likeable character.

· Very similiar physical attributes, overweight, but carrying it with swagger.

And then there's the little things --like:

· Mieze, one of the main woman characters, is depicted scrambling away on her hands and knees in the woods before she is killed by someone in the gang, whom she thought she could trust.

· Fassbinder uses imagery of slaughterhouses and butchery throughout -- Satriale’s is a butcher shop.

There are plenty of differences, for sure, but I'm can't help thinking that David Chase and/or other Sopranos writers have, at the very least, seen and been inspired by this film. The two series are also comparable as they are both highly cinematic, but used the multi-episode virtues of television as a medium to tell the story.

Incidentally, in the strange, half-dream epilogue of Berlin Alexanderplatz, Frank Biberkopf’s journey ends in madness -- a complete mental breakdown occurs when the veils are removed and he sees the ugly truths that surround him. He survives, but is reduced to an empty shell. If this turns out to be Tony’s Soprano's fate as well (and it's beginning to seem as though Tony is coming to realize that all the self-knowledge and insight he's gained through psychotherapy will not save him), I’ll be super-convinced of the connection between the two films. If Tony's fate is madness, he could end up being the blissful, empty idiot, institutionalized (a form of prison worse than real prison for Tony), playing checkers with Uncle Junior and getting visits from Dr. Melfi.

And it would make sense. The Sopranos began with Tony's search for self-knowledge. But self-knowledge is only good if it can lead to change. Tony's therapy has helped him be a more effective leader and family man but not always a better person -- he seems incapable of that. Thinking he's been getting better when he's really not and coming to that realization could mentally destroy Tony if he finally faces his life and his deeds, clearly sees who he is and what he has done to others and at the same time loses the power (money = power) and support (women and family) to distract himself from himself. And it’s already happening. It's been happening. It’s too late to save Tony and now -- for the series to come full circle -- madness, in the form of Tony as a disillusioned, mentally and morally depleted, empty shell seems inevitable.

But that’s just my theory, after watching 14 hours of Berlin Alexanderplatz

Keith Jarrett live in Chicago

I could talk about this, or I could let Howard Reich talk about it. Sounds like we both had pretty much the same experience of this concert:

Freewheeling Jarrett in transcendent form

By Howard Reich
Tribune arts critic
Published February 19, 2007

Pianist Keith Jarrett has played the Chicago area regularly through the decades, but rarely has he appeared more relaxed or freewheeling than he did Saturday night at Symphony Center.

Playing what was billed as his only North American solo recital this year, Jarrett spoke frequently to the audience, bowed deeply at their ovations and lavished five encores on a capacity crowd that would have stayed for another five (or 10).

More important, he turned in some of the most lustrously elegant pianism to be heard in Orchestra Hall in a long time, regardless of genre.

Indeed, it would have been inaccurate to consider Jarrett's show precisely a jazz set, for in many ways it exuded the sensibility of a classical piano recital. Certainly the bulk of his program proved deeply rooted in the European classical tradition (though his encores drew on jazz techniques).

In one solo, block chords unfolded solemnly, as if in a chorale by J.S. Bach. In another, a spray of fast-running notes in both hands recalled Claude Debussy's "Fireworks." In a third, harmonies teetered on the edge of atonality -- just as they do in Alban Berg's Piano Sonata.

Even when Jarrett looked closer to home, he evoked classically trained composers who merged the impulses of European and American cultures. The long-lined lyricism of Samuel Barber and the bittersweet chordal palette of Norman Dello Joio rang out from some of Jarrett's best passages.

Certainly this was not the Keith Jarrett of the 1970s, who won international fame on the strength of innovative but often long-winded solos on recordings such as "The Koln Concert." Like many maturemasters, Jarrett, 61, has learned the virtues of economy and understatement.

How much this owes to the chronic fatigue syndrome Jarrett has battled since the mid-1990s only the pianist himself may know.

Of course, some Jarrett trademarks never go away. The moaning and groaning, the writhing at the keyboard, the rising up and sitting down and rising up again at the piano bench during a performance never will be easy to endure. Such self-dramatizing gestures have added to Jarrett's mystique, even as they have detracted from the high poetry of his finest playing.

And true to form, the sometimes cranky pianist on more than one occasion chided his audience, accusing one listener of attempting to illegally record the music and glowering at others who coughed during the proceedings. He lamented the shortcomings he perceived in the Steinway grand, though it served him better than he may have realized.

In the end, Jarrett's profusion of encores suggested that he was enjoying the evening after all. He opened the series with a haunting account of Cole Porter's "Miss Otis Regrets" and ended it with a version of "When I Fall in Love" that transcended the original.

Because the event was recorded, it could make a sterling follow-up to Jarrett's release of last year, "The Carnegie Hall Concert."

Call it "Keith Jarrett: Live in Chicago." Has a nice ring to it, no?