May 13, 2010

Re-energized– the secret may be as simple as working out before anything else, to convince the body it’s up and running for good. Lee the Chinese guy always says something to me at the Y which I don’t understand, but the tone is friendly. Hugely productive after the work out and the Chinese greeting. Hacked invasive vines, worked on two plays, worked on a poem, painted barrier-breakingly. Black landscapes lit by moons and snow white birds. JM’s mother was in the studio building, to see her daughter graduate Saturday. She is one of those women so bent on emotional seduction that she will keep talking–like a drill grinding into earth, like a machine gun covering the horizon-- until she senses the extremest possible tension of surrender, and then call to you several times as you, released at last, are walking away, so see if her power still holds. I would not have picked her and JM for mother and daughter given a hundred tries. DM arrived at the studio as I was leaving. I wanted to say I regretted that we would have no time together today, as we used to, but somebody told a joke, and the moment was gone. I’m at a loss to cover all emotional bases.

Attended–for the first time–a Cantaria concert, at the UC of C downtown. It’s hard to know how to judge what I heard, having always been on the other side before. The soloists were excellent, the tenors strong, the basses weak to nonexistent, the program full of delights, if too relentlessly various to leave much form in the mind. I think the group from the first has filled a need not entirely artistic, and that kept in mind, the evening was a rousing success. I would rather have been there than not. But if I had been a stranger wandering into the venue, I might have said, at the end, "Oh, that was really nice," but then never needed to come again. Not entirely sure why. Maybe it was a group too clearly working at the upward limts of its potential.