XL Cover Story

The art of war

As the battle for Iraq stretches into three years, Austin artists respond with words, pictures and allegory

By Joe Gross
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Wednesday, January 25, 2006

On March 19, the war in Iraq will be three years old.

We are already 80 percent of the way into our part of World War II, 97 percent of the way into the Korean War and about 26 times the length of Desert Storm.

Historians can't quite agree when our intervention into Vietnam started — massive American military aid arrived in 1955; "advisers" in 1961 — but suffice it to say we have a way to go before matching the length of that decades-long conflict.

The Vietnam experience is instructive, however, when discussing the speed with which art responds to war. Certainly peace-loving folkies were among the first responders in the early 1960s, but Staff Sgt. Barry Sadler's "The Ballad of the Green Berets," one of the initial explicit Vietnam War songs, did not appear until 1966. At the other end of the spectrum, Country Joe and the Fish's "The 'Fish' Cheer/I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-To-Die Rag" waited until 1967.

Almost three years into Iraq 2, artistic rejoinder to the war — from the categorical to the allegorical — is only now beginning to reach conspicuous density.

It's easy to be cynical about this and other political art: Recall Tito Puente's hysterical appearance years ago on "The Simpsons." When accused of shooting Mr. Burns, Puente replies: "But why wound his body with bullets when I could set his soul afire with a slanderous mambo?"

Nevertheless, Austin musicians, visual artists, actors, poets, writers and directors have increasingly engaged in the current conflict in Iraq — a few interceded before it even began — even as a crucial question arises from the animated Puente's comment: Why mambo in the midst of war?

'It's not about the response, it's about the responsibility.'

Sometimes you just have to speak your mind.

One of the first and most public responses by an Austin artist to the war was, of course, from Dixie Chick Natalie Maines. On March 10, 2003, days before the start of the war, Maines stated during a concert in London that the band was "ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas."

You might recall that all heck broke loose, from instant boycotts to picketers at the Erwin Center for the Chicks sold-out show later that year. The comment provoked howls of protest from many conservative country fans. Some thought Maines was out of line for criticizing the president while not only on foreign territory, but on the eve of war.

Eventually, the Chicks apologized, the clamor died down and the tour was a smash.

Of course, the country star with the biggest 2005 was Toby Keith, who sold more records with his album "Honkytonk University" than critical favorites such as Gretchen Wilson, Keith Urban or Texas' own rising star Miranda Lambert. A country journeyman for years before 9/11, Keith became known more for his strident tune "Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue" than for his consistent singing and songwriting.

Country suddenly seemed like the official music of the war, with songs such as Lee Greenwood's "God Bless the U.S.A." feeling like red-state anthems. In fact, it's well known that mainstream country music's popularity cuts across all sorts of political affiliations. And even with the title track to "Honkytonk U" talking about entertaining the "boys in Afghanistan and Baghdad City," these days Keith seems more preoccupied with opening chain restaurants (I Love This Bar & Grill) and his own label (Show Dog) than with politics.

Songwriting, with its tight temporal boundaries and often frank lyrics, raced ahead of painting, sculpture, theatrical productions, dance concerts and literary works in the pro-war and anti-war sectors.

In Austin, Bukka Allen says he was thinking about the war from the day it started, which is when he began planning "13 Ways to Live," a compilation album featuring songs about the war from a variety of singer-songwriters.

"There's a combination of the direct and the nonspecific on there," Allen says. "All I could think of when I heard Abra Moore's song ('100 Miles') was all these soldiers moving into Baghdad. It's not specific, but it lent itself to the imagery of what was happening on CNN at that moment. But Butch (Hancock's 'The Damage Done') and Eliza Gilkyson's 'Hiway 9' are very direct and about the war itself. These are hard songs to write."

In '05, at the top of Austin war-themed tunes heap sat James McMurtry's "We Can't Make It Here." The tune, popular with his fans since its release on the album "Childish Things," received a publicity boost in the Dec. 9 issue of Entertainment Weekly, when novelist Stephen King named "Childish Things" his No. 2 album and "We Can't . . ." his No. 2 single of the year.

McMurtry says the song came together right before the 2004 election. "I finished it two weeks before the election. A day later, I made an acoustic version a free download on my Web site," he says. "I wanted to get it out to the people, and it gained a momentum before the album was even made."

McMurtry says the song has generated vibrant responses on both sides. "It's been mostly positive, but it's been extreme in either case. Some really hated it and really got angry, but (independent U.S. Rep.) Bernie Sanders from Vermont used it as a campaign song. Besides, it's not about the response, it's about the responsibility."

But McMurtry admits political songs are virgin territory for him, with good reason. "The song was a roll of the dice," he says. "Most political songs are terrible, and I got lucky with that one."

One that wasn't terrible — and was also aided by the Internet — was Austin songwriter Rachel Loy's "The Same Man." She wrote it in March 2003 on spring break from Berklee College of Music.

"I was inspired because my good friend just left the States to go fight," Loy says. "The morning after I wrote the song, I called Dudley and Bob on 93.7 KLBJ while they were on air and told them about the song. They asked me to come down and play it immediately, so I did. People started calling in right away and freaking out about it, so they posted it on their Web site, and it spread all over the Internet."

"The Same Man" was released on Epic Records two months later. "Unfortunately, the week it was released, President Bush announced that we had won the war," Loy says. "Radio stations didn't want to play it and sales peaked the week of the release."

But it got out there.

Austin jazz fixture Alex Coke's piece "Iraqnophobia" stretches even further back, to Sept. 11, 2001. "I was on tour in Nebraska when 9/11 hit," Coke says. "We played up there where Cheney was hiding out. After the gig, somebody took our van and filled it up with gas because they heard there was going to be price gouging. I was very moved. I thought we would just run into a bunch of rednecks, but I was really touched by the people and the popular sentiment."

'There are more open-minded people than we think.'

Like Coke, many Austin artists and intellectuals said that the role of topical art is to engage the viewer/listener/participant, to inspire reflection on an issue rather than arguing a point or persuading.

University of Texas English professor Ann Cvetkovich has written about the intersection between political issues, public sentiment and how art operates.

"Many art forms provide occasions for public gatherings — art openings, theater and music performances, film screenings — that bring people together and enable them to see that they are not alone," Cvetkovich says. "These gatherings can be another kind of public demonstration, one that connects us to the creativity and collectivity that are our best opposition to the violence around us.

"Art events work in some of the same ways as demonstrations and protests, but also in some significantly different ways. They don't necessarily tell us what to think or provide the expert's opinions. They create a forum in which we get to access not only what we think but also we feel about what's going on."

Writer Kirk Lynn adapted "Get Your War On," which opened last week in a Rude Mechancials production at the Off Center, from David Rees' comic strip of the same name. The strip relies on humor that's best described as political surrealism, not easily translated to the stage.

"It's easy to mess up," Lynn says, "because the individual reader can take their own tack when they read it. There's a range of emotion you can place on the words when you perform them."

Wisely, when "Get Your War On" was being workshopped, Lynn says the Rude Mechs asked audiences to stick around and talk after the show.

"We had a wider range of political beliefs and reactions than we thought we'd get," he says. "A soldier stayed after once, and he was not pleased with the performance or the content, but he was supportive of the expression."

Latifah Taormina, executive director of the Austin Circle of Theaters, is directing both parts of "Two into War" — Fraser Grace's "Gifts of War," a riff on the Trojan women, and Naomi Wallace's "The Retreating World," which concerns modern Iraq. She's comfortable with direct and allegorical modes of expression.

"I came out of a theater in the '60s that did political satire that deliberately dealt with issues in the current news," Taormina says. "I think people resist being told how to think, but I think they're very open to looking at something with their own eyes. I think theater can put something out there."

Taormina also notes that, though sheer coincidence, many people working on the play, presented in a Different Stages production at Play Theater, come from career military families. "I don't think it deepens the drama," she says, "But I think it helps knock the stereotype down that anyone who is military is all gung-ho. There are more open-minded people than we think."

This is what art does best: Start conversations. Pose questions.

'Since when is the only thing you can do the thing you should do?'

By 2005, the sound of war pounded insistently in Austin's music, theater, dance and visual arts. Poems, paintings and concerts became cries of pain, of befuddlement, of outrage.

Among the earliest of these cris de coeur was the single-named Benini's Shroud of Turin-like abstraction, "Face of War" (seen on the XL cover). Benini, who lives west of Austin, was born in war-savaged Italy in 1941.

"I grew up knowing that war is a pervasive monster that devours all," he says. "On the first day of the war in Iraq, I asked forgiveness for the misled souls who started it, and the painting cried."

Sometimes, however, art thrives on asking extremely large questions and forcing the audience to find a context. Some artists are completely uninterested in letting you know their political affiliations. Software engineer, installation artist and molecular biology researcher Zack Booth Simpson is one.

"I specifically avoid directly political artwork because I want the piece to say something deeper than a party affiliation or a political stance," Simpson says. "I go to one conference, people think I'm a Republican. Another, a Democrat."

For example, in 2001, prior to 9/11, Simpson made a piece called "Save the Baby?" Participants walked into a room to see projected images of small, cute, green aliens trapped in a puzzle at one end of the room, and a baby tied up at the other. The participants were told nothing about the scenario at hand. A 10-minute countdown clock began. Participants soon found they could manipulate shadows on the walls, a bit like a video game, to let the aliens get closer to the baby.

"Inevitably, every group leads the aliens to the baby," Simpson says. "But the aliens don't save the baby — they eat the baby." Simpson sees it as reflection of humanity's endless need to problem-solve. "Audiences tell me helping the aliens was the only thing they could do. But since when is the only thing you can do the thing you should do?"

A recent piece of his, "Moderation," part of the "22 to Watch" show at the Austin Museum of Art, asked participants to step in a pool of water. Simulated flowers quickly bloomed around the participant's foot and then wilted.

"You're immediately rewarded," Simpson says. "The only way to get a reward out of this thing is stepping more and more, which generates a greed of wanting more flowers to grow." Enough steps and the stream stopped producing flowers at all.

A riff on environmental exploitation? A very remote commentary on war? Maybe, but Simpson says it applies to any interaction. "In the real world, you have to pay attention to what relationships can provide so you can moderate your requests of them," he says "All interactions have limits; people and societies have to be mindful of the other side of the interaction's ability to deliver on the request or the relationship dies."

Like these Austin artists, "The Simpsons' " version of Tito Puente eventually assaults Mr. Burns with his mambo, which is indeed slanderous. Mr. Burns remains unfazed, but it's a great song and Mr. Puente has his say, puts the idea out there.

Most of the time, that's all art can do. Most of the time, that's enough.

jgross@statesman.com; 912-5926