Representative Bob Lynn's Words

I was doing research for an upcoming essay on the web yesterday, when I came across a speech State Representative Bob Lynn made on the floor of the Alaska House of Representatives on April 27 2004. Lynn's speech clearly shows his outrage on a subject I know a lot about - me.

I didn't know Rep. Lynn had made the speech until yesterday. I already knew that he was upset with me over a speech I had made at UAA on April 8 2004, in which I attempted to defend a musical work I had recently written about the young American peace activist, Rachel Corrie. He had been at that speech, and in a free-for-all comment period after the speech, had clearly denounced the work.

When I started this blog four weeks ago, I decided to only bring my music up here when it is germaine. I'm not entirely sure it is in this case, but feel I need to set this matter straight. Elsewhere. Rep. Lynn is wrong about this particular piece of mine. That being said, I have a higher regard for Rep. Lynn than for many of the GOP crooks and semi-crooks we currently have in office.

The work Lynn castigates was cancelled in Alaska and New York City, before being produced in London by a group of Jewish peace activists on November 1 2005. I've vowed to not produce it in Anchorage until it has been performed in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem. If one looks at the names of some of the prominent patrons of the London performance, Lynn's claims about the premise of my art become pretty absurd:

Professor Noam Chomsky, Harold Pinter CH, Dr. Ilan Pappe, John Pilger, Richard Eyre, Roger Lloyd Pack, Susie Orbach, Julie Christie, Professor Avi Shlaim, Dr. Jane Manning OBE, Anthony Payne, Clare Short MP, Baroness Jenny Tonge, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, Moris Farhi MBE, Susannah York, Sir Anthony Sher, Uri Fruchtman

So I've posted my speech from April 8 2004 - which has never been available on the web before - and Lynn's April 27 2004 speech about my talk. Two very good articles were written about the issue of The Skies Are Weeping in Anchorage back when the fracas occurred - George Bryson's Flashpoint Cantata, for the Anchorage Daily News, and Amanda Coyne's The Sound of Silence, for the Anchorage Press. Coyne won the Alaska Press Club's 2004 First Prize for Arts Writing award for her excellent story which, sadly, has recently disappeared from the web.

I haven't posted the entire work, The Skies Are Weeping, on the web, but you can listen to the final movement, Rachel's Words, here. A collection of comparisons between myths and facts about Rachel Corrie is available at a site, also called Rachel's Words.