January 24, 2009

Yesterday was extremely social. Jason and I had coffee together in the morning, then went to the studio where we assured each other that the room was much too cold to work in yet. He set up all my light fixtures–which I had actually moved up there for storage, but no matter–and replaced all my incandescent light bulbs with those twisty energy-saver ones. He fussed at me at breakfast for drinking sugar-laden hot chocolate. He applauded my recent faithful return to the YMCA with enthusiasm. All this makes me smile inside. I’m not used to anybody taking care of me. Moved my lap top into the smaller studio, where I can make a stab, at least, at creativity in an unaccustomed space. Jason notes that I would work better there if I fixed it up a little–it looks exactly as it is, the rummage left from my moving my painting studio upstairs–but the fixing up impulse in me is exhausted for the moment.

Jason’s exhortations, added to others in the past, led me to buy a Blackberry, which I am still wrestling into submission. The man at the phone store was a self-declared nerd, and showed me how I could download, among other things, boxing and racing games, and the ancient, Ur-version of Donkey Kong. I passed, but accepted the website in case I changed my mind. Nathan the phone man said I sent out joyful vibrations. I was glad of that.

Departmental wine and cheese in the Common Room. We are convivial without being exactly friendly. That must be right for us.

DJ and Kyle and I joined MP at Scully’s, to comfort him, or perhaps help him celebrate, his temporary return to bachelorhood. Afterwards, DJ and I scooted around to Commerce Street to take in a little of the Asheville Fringe. In the past I have not sought out local Fringe festivals, assuming them to be a sort of salon des refuses, where works which maybe shouldn’t have seen the light of day, do. I’m not sure that’s not the case, but I had not added into the mix the question of fun. The evening was great fun, belly-laugh and jaw-cracking smile fun–whatever vibration it had artistically. An earlier show ran over at the BeBe, so DJ and I had beers at the Thirsty Monk, which I liked, and which was full of former students, now drunkenly and rather contentedly unemployed. The show we saw was Chall’s production of Rock Saber, by Julian Vorus. I’d seen Vorus’ work at No Shame and thought it of exceptional promise. Part of the charm of Rock Saber is that it starred buddies of mine, each of whom covered himself in a kind of glory, playing to the hilt caricatures of the drugged-out life of the 5th-rate rock and roll band. The piece had exuberance to recommend it, a sort of boyish energy and gleeful vulgarity which sailed it out and over any criticism that it really wasn’t about anything, much. Gleeful vulgarity is one of my favorite things, and I laughed practically from beginning to end. Vorus has great talent. His verbal skills are superb, but he needs a vision worthy of those skills; he needs some shade of Cervantes or Voltaire peering over his shoulder, guiding him to something more lasting than the peal of laughter. Not that there’s anything wrong with the peal of laughter.

Commerce Street was alive with kids, not only at the BeBe for the plays, but down the street at a café, whose hundreds–or at least dozens-- milled around in the bright light inside and spilled out into the street in their costume shop clothes and their earnest expressions. It was beautiful. I will keep to myself that it was lovelier than Galway or Leicester Square, places I thought couldn’t be surpassed in youthful celebration. Students have mentioned the café, in such a way as to make me think it is dedicated to poetry. Obama’s inauguration and the crowd outside the poetry café on Commerce Street have been the best things so far this year, the things that give me a smile with a foundation of steel.