May 18, 2025
Long OM of the cicadas.
Drove Saturday to Waynesville to present Washington Place to subscribers. The drive through the mountains is stupid beautiful. I think I did OK, though I was the only one without actors or a scene to present. My director is in Spain and I was left to figure out for myself what “present your play” might mean. But, I enjoyed it. Got big laughs, which is the important thing. I’ve been gone so long I recognized maybe three or four people, the rest being new and young and overweight. Reintroduced to the “theater kid,” bouncy, witty, exuberant, dance-class elegant in carriage. in touch with the jargon and traditions of the theater, fully alive only in the dim light of backstage. Attractive, very sweet, but disturbing in a way it took time for me to put my finger on. I’d not been one myself. As a mature actor I seldom did the big family musicals, so contact with them was slight. But I reaffirmed the last time I did large-cast theater (Magnetic’s one act festivals) what I’d noticed before: that the bounciest, most deeply obsessed and committed “theater kids” are all but invariably bad on stage. I recall sitting with two girls at the Magnetic who reeled off anecdotes of recent theater history, shared techniques, did esoteric exercises and warm-ups, warned others against violations of backstage superstitions, and yet, on stage, were inert as buttered dumplings. Yesterday two galumphing boys in sailor costume (doing a scene from Anything Goes) livened backstage with antics and sweet-tempered goofing-off, but bombed horribly on stage. Their colleagues were delighted to add this to future backstage anecdotes; the audience was robbed. This is a general, even if not an inevitable, rule. A person has so much energy, and that which goes into identity is lost to performance.
Now that my brain is on this track, it notes that it’s seen this among writers, too, poets who are so MUCH the poet in affect that their work becomes an afterthought, shored up by “borrowing” and redecoration of others’ insights. The stakes are smaller in poetry, the pay-off less immediate, so the syndrome is less pronounced. When I was briefly writer-in-residence at Montana, that ship all but foundered under the weight of WRITERS. People wondered what the “quarrel” between K and myself was. There was no quarrel, but exactly this, so great his desire to BE a poet that the actual making of poetry became an exercise in concealed plagiarism.
On the drive back I passed a sizeable forest fire just west of Candler. No mention of it in the news.
Watched a catbird snip the wings of a cicada, dip the body in the birdbath to moisten it, swallow it whole.
Evening: went to One Word Brewing in West Asheville to hear A’s band, Minor, at his father’s behest. A hundred people in the yard of a micro-brewery, with the performers, students at the Asheville School of Music, under a tent. The band was good. The girl vocalists were very good indeed. Rock has its traditions and its classics, and the student band was learning them, showing them off. A new scene for me.
Evening: went to One Word Brewing in West Asheville to hear August Dolce’s band, Minor, at his father’s behest. A hundred people in the yard of a micro-brewery, with the performers, students at the Asheville School of Music, under a tent. The band was good. The girl vocalists were very good indeed. Rock has its traditions and its classics, and the student band was learning them, showing them off. A new scene for me.
May 16, 2025
Too much & too hard singing last night. Woke up unable to speak. Couldn’t ask Alexa what the weather was going to be.
Memory from long ago: the first time I went to the ballet (Swan Lake at Blossom Music Center) I was astonished that you could hear the thump of the dancers’ feet on the stage.
Finally reading Arch Brown’s book A Pornographer. Looked in the index, as it was not impossible that I might be mentioned in it.
May 15, 2025
Woke to a sound that made me think I’d left the water running. It was the cicadas. Decided I love the sound, and would be happy if that were the backdrop of every summer. This is more poignant because, assuming a seventeen year cycle, I may never hear them again.
Called GOT-JUNK? And had various metal items– spent arbors, bent metal chairs, the firewood holder mouldering against the fence--hauled away. It was more expensive than I expected. The two boys who did the job (one slight and white, the other huge and black) were touchingly interested in doing well at that rather elementary job, and in securing my approval. Pride in workmanship has not wholly disappeared.
Planted pink turtlehead and $100 worth of ferns.
May 14, 2025
Huge advances in the War of Weeding, opening so much new ground I ordered more seeds.
Signed up for FaceBook posts from Sligo, which end up making me unexpectedly and purely happy.
May 13, 2025
Cicadas louder than before. They seemed to stop during the rain, or perhaps the rain’s sound covered theirs.
JB writes from South Carolina:
I hope you remember me. And I hope you are having a blessed and beautiful life. You had a significant impact on me and on my journey as a writer, an artist, and an art scene provocateur. I always thought you were punk rock (which is the highest compliment from me, as punk rock is where I first encountered DIY, unapologetic expression, and open inclusion of the fringe).
Rehearsal went well, for I was in good voice, though much too long, and I was not in good voice at the end of it. The other 2nd basses useless. They won’t even sing if I drop out for a minute.
