Opening Night

August 19, 2011

Dark and peaceful morning.

Finally got my Black Mountain proposal to Brian, calling it John & Merce & Melpomene.

Three big events in a day. The first was an opening faculty meeting which seems more surreal the more I think about it. It opened with summaries of NEA workshops over the summer, which seemed real and useful and academic to me. But it quickly descended into a series of committee reports which, however extended, contained no actual information. It was a faculty meeting written by Kafka, a whole lot of self-congratulation based on scheduling meetings the matter of which remained unrevealed–if indeed matter there was. Furthermore, it was possible for a visitor to sit in that room for an hour and not know we are an institution of education, that there were students involved, or that the professors had duties beyond adherence to the service of a series of blissfully vague quasi-corporate directives. Not one syllable about the delivery of curriculum. Not one syllable about the life of the mind, which is what–and none of those other things– we are meant to be about. Our big push seems to be a Quality Added program which is, considered for a moment, indistinguishable from plain old good teaching, but heavily disguised so that we may be tempted to think it is an innovation for which we have the administration to thank. The only changes are to make everything vaguer and worse. SACS, our rating organization, has found a way to perpetuate what was only a periodic interference with our work by declaring that assessment is a never-ending task, and that we shall think of ourselves as perpetually in pursuit of accreditation. How convenient, not only for them, but for persons in the superstructure who have no real work to do except to hound everyone about “assessment.” Sounds like Bush’s lip-smacking declaration of a perpetual state of war. The Provost spent minutes apologizing for our current poverty; then the rest of the meeting was suffocated in spun sugar manufactured, expensively, by people whose work–if this was an example of it– is as superfluous as tits on a boar hog. I know where to cut the budget and lose not a janitor, not a groundskeeper.

In the afternoon, Peg’s farewell party.

August 18, opening night of Vance, which I almost missed by falling asleep on the couch. I think it was a triumph. The people who offered comments offered praise, and the local critic seemed not only positive, but impressed. A critic’s approval is not the final goal, perhaps, but it makes the afternoon nap a hundred times easier. I’ll be vulturing the media for the next few days to see what people have to say. My crusty friend R seems to have quit the SART board because I had defied him over this play, and was allowed to. His suggestions were so bad I didn’t know I was meant to take them seriously, or that there would be hurt feelings if I didn’t. Complained about not being paid, and then was immediately remorseful that I did, the person whose fault it was no longer being present, and those I accused, innocent. Nothing is perfect in this life, or at least, so far as the theater is concerned, has yet been. But last night I was very happy. People had done their heartfelt best to give life to my words.