Customer Reviews

Make Love Not War

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In Jennie Orvino's "Make Love Not War," poetry and music combine into a rich, spicy musical-verbal stew, fulfilling as a good meal. Orvino is heartfelt but never sappy, sultry and sexy without being vulgar, equally passionate about war and love. Her musical collaborations are in a range of styles, each piece distinctive. Orvino performs her poetry: acts it, scats it, bats it about like the kittenish tiger she is, tickling and teasing in a juicy purr.

Orvino is fearless as she steers from rooms of sexual ecstasy to lands of devastation. Salvation lies somewhere on the road between those two realms. She mourns the horrors of war, but in erotic passion there is hope for transcendence. Each informs the other: the consciousness of such horror brings intensity to love, and love is the only possible respite when bombs are devastating your home.

Eros is Orvino's ministry, healing and redemptive. She personalizes the beseiged, becomes a warrior boy, wonders about those who were kissing for the last time before being buried in rubble. And in her poems, she loves as if each encounter might be the final collision of skin against skin.

I'm finding that "Make Love Not War" is a good thing to listen to while driving. In Los Angeles, at least, you see humanity at its lowest ebb while passing it by enclosed in your bubble. The driver who throws his lit cigarette out the window, then veers in front of another car. The sad-faced woman at the bus stop. The sullen young man with his rap bass so up it shakes the car next to him. But then you let Orvino and her musicians take you over. The toddler runs in her yellow dress in a yellow field. A war-blasted landscape regreens and reanimates. People kneel at each others‚ feet, rubbing one another, as she puts it, like "deer at a salt lick."

You smile. You might cry. At home, you'll reach for your lover. That kiss might well be your last. Make it sweet.