September 13, 2008

City before dawn. No workers scamper about in the lighted glass box across the street. A monumental rain makes the streets shimmer. Raindrops streak like comets down my windows.
Returned to the Art Institute to concentrate on American work. Wondered why everyone was so hot for Arthur Dove. Wondered why the Rockies are a less convincing subject for Impressionism than Mont St Victoire. Wondered why I felt so out of place lunching in the formal dining room rather than in the plebeian café. Then I didn’t want to look at any more art.

Went to the bar across the street before the show, where I was bought drinks by a very jolly priest who runs the Saint Luke’s school down the road.

Second preview was better. I could hear Tim better. My suggestion of the alternation of the Tricolor and the Union Jack on the wall did help to establish the passage of time. But S was still out of his depth. It was worse because he was trying harder. I noticed that the director’s notes in the program do not speak to the matter of the play at all, but rather comment on Bloomsday as a cultural phenomenon, and wonder what if Chicago had the same. I was confused watching Anna Livia last night. Was it good? Was it so-so? Was it boring? Was it too weird? Did it give the audience all necessary information? Was the quiet of the crowd at curtain awe or indifference? Was it transcendent? Was it nothing in particular? A whole row of pretty-boys left at intermission. I’d liked them because they were not afraid to laugh, but then they were gone. Were they gone because they were pretty-boys and hadn’t applied lip-gloss or shrieked "fabulous!" in forty minutes, or because it was boring? I heard one woman say that it was "jibberish, just nonsense and jibberish," but realized finally that she was talking about Finnegan’s Wake. I was not being constantly introduced, as I had been in New York, so it was possible to circulate at intermission with some anonymity, but that too was frustrating, because I didn’t hear anything relevant, except one woman speculating (correctly) that the characters were ghosts. I sat with sweet Peter–who will be yachting with his dad today-- but grabbing him by the collar and demanding, "Is this show really any good?" would have been too desperate. I said to myself that Bailiwick and Thorny wouldn’t have chosen it if it had been crap, but companies produce crap all the time. Two of Kevin’s friends said it was "mysterious and beautiful." Would everyone have been saying that had they known I was the playwright, or had I come upon them unaware and they had to think of something fast? I could get nothing from the reaction of the preview crowd (and crowd it was; the room was full). Maybe if I had stayed and made someone talk to me. . . but I fled out into the rain and got a taxi with a man who talked some African language into a cell phone all the time, apparently giving his companion a lesson in the spelling of Chicago street names, until I realized a detour on Belmont had thrown him off, and he was asking for directions.

Would I have liked the play had I not been fixated on the question of whether other people were liking it? Yes. At this moment, that’s all I have to go on.

People tease me about always having naked people in my plays. If I’d had in this one, I bet the row of pretty-boys would have remained. Actually, I did have them; directorial decision weeded them out. I think that was a mistake. It makes the last scene look like one of those 19th century life drawing classes where everyone is wearing diapers.

Is the play at least as good as, say, Wicked? Oh, hell yes. If performed at the same level of professionalism–but I had wanted to write so that the play would be independent of the qualities of the production, so that it would transcend everything thrown at it. Dumbshit idea. Or shall we say, only an idea, with no relationship to what actually happens in the world. Shakespeare can be annihilated. So can I. Bailiwick’s production is honest and strong and loving, and if I see weak spots, maybe I should have seen them coming. I thought I had anticipated everything.

What the hell was I doing writing all Irish like that? A love poem to a lost self.

I have to ask someone, if I can get beyond the desperation implied by a playwright pleading for input about his play. Maybe people are unforthcoming because they assume I’m confident in my work. Maybe they are unforthcoming because it is so terrible and they don’t want to be the one to break the news.

Denny did not come. I thought it was a mad idea that he would, but I did hope for a little while.
Amy got the Faustus review in the Citizen-Times, which is probably for the best.

Lehman Brothers topples and Hurricane Ike tears Galveston to pieces, and I had an imperfectly definable evening at the theater. It is time for me to seek some coffee.

*
Afternoon: driven in at last by the deluge. Did manage to get out and stroll by Lake Michigan–the same color as the sky right now. Did, despite earlier determination, go to the Museum of Contemporary Art, where I found the Jeff Koons retrospective lively and funny and joyful. I had an enduring erection while walking through the exhibit, a phenomenon requiring an explanation I can’t give. The museum was full of children, and that led to the lasting sensation of joyfulness, for they laughed at what was laughable, and at what was genuinely funny, and their presence allowed exchanges such as the following:

Eight year old to his brother, concerning a video in which a man is sledgehammering a bag full of something while a rat looks on from a green plastic maze" Why is he doing that?"

Ten year old: "I don’t know. It’s art."

Opening night in two hours.