New Mexico Mercury

Immortal Desires & the Seduction of Art

If you ask me what the most important, let’s say intellectually challenging, non-fiction, book written in the 20th century, it would have to be Life Against Death by Norman O. Brown. First published in 1959, when I read it in 1968 I found myself re-reading almost every page just to make sure what he said was what I thought he said. The sub-title is The Psychoanalytical Meaning of History. Brown was profound.

When he wrote LAD Brown was a professor of classics at Wesleyan University, and later at UC Santa Cruz, in California, where he died in 2002 at 89. During the 1960s the Movement raised him up to an icon. Remember the Movement?...

Working Classroom Gives Us “Bocón!”

Albuquerque's Working Classroom, which uses creativity as an avenue for social change, gives us "theater of the oppressed" in Bocón!.

On Stage: A Thinking Animal, a Beastly Man

At the start of Act I, a rooster talks and acts like a man. At the end of Act II, a man talks and acts like a rooster. That in a nutshell is the story of Year of the Rooster, the current offering of the Fusion company at the Cell Theater in downtown Albuquerque.

How and why the rooster becomes humanoid and the human becomes beastly is the plot of this funny, violent, difficult and provoking story by the 20-something Eric Dufault that opened Off-Broadway in New York less than a year ago...

¡COLORES! November 7, 2014

Nicolai Fechin, One of New Mexico's favorite painters. Fleeing his homeland to avoid the dangers of the Russian revolution, Fechin found a home in Taos. He worked tirelessly to build by hand a remarkable home and his paintings are a striking and indelible portrait of New Mexico.

Órale! Post-Pop Fusion at The Harwood

West Coast trailblazers and Southwest innovators of the varied Lowbrow movement get high art treatment at the Harwood in Taos.

El Machete: 43 Missing

43 Missing

Give people a chance

Nov. 1 was Day of the Dead but in Albuquerque it was an exceptional day of life. What made the day was a unique musical gathering called OneBeat. The performance Saturday night was a rare conjunction of time, place and people, an occasion to be not only remembered but treasured.

Some 25 young musicians from Africa, Asia, Latin America, Australia and North America joined to produce some three hours of music that blended a wide range of genres, traditions, styles and instruments into an evening that was a celebration—of youth, of international collaboration and harmony, most of all of music that can stir our souls and ignite our passions like nothing else on earth...

Mercury Poetry: Between Portales and Clovis

On the road from Portales to Clovis
sand mixes with cloud,
the air thick with grainy patches where dust
joins with air in a raucous dance
ignoring the people below
ignoring the animals in their burrows
ignoring the cows eating, heads down, haunches up,
not a care in the world...

Día de los muertos

On November 1 and 2 the souls of the departed visit their loved ones for a few hours. When they arrive they find an altar of flowers, candles and food, in accordance with family resources, set up in their honor.

Five Questions for New Mexico Authors - Paula E. Morton

This week we ask Florida author and journalist Paula E. Morton some questions about her enthralling new book, Tortillas: A Cultural History, from the University of New Mexico Press, 2014.

New Mexico Mercury: How did you come to think of the tortilla as a vehicle with which to study history and society across cultures?

Paula E. Mortan: Before I was an author, I was a farmer in York County, Pennsylvania. It was a rich but demanding lifestyle, and after more than twenty years we headed west to Las Cruces in the southwest corner of New Mexico. The most I knew about tortillas was that they tasted good in Pennsylvania and were best at the borderlands, handmade and warm off the griddle...