September 16, 2010

Quiet night. I feel like the only person in the world. In the studio I made a version of Yeats’ The Singing Horseman from memory. It was much more detailed than the original, and much less effective. I will try again tomorrow and see if I can get the balance of the evocative and the abstract right.

I watered the garden in the evening. As I watered, the moonflower was in bud. I went around and turned the water off, and when I returned, the bud had blossomed. It was waiting for me to turn my back.

Listening to Sondheim’s A Little Night Music in the truck Very, very clever, and the performers are perfect– Zeta-Jones, Lansbury, et al. What bothers me about it? The same thing that bothers me about intellectual jazz– exclusiveness, the too-public assertion of a private event. Like hearing the conversation of one’s betters from a distant room. One admires Sondheim, but does the work want us to like it? Does it allow us to like it? I’ve sat through Into the Woods five times, and each time admired something it, but, though I enjoyed individual performances, I never enjoyed the work. I don’t think I was meant to. Sondheim enjoys it, and that is supposed to be enough for us all.