April 27, 2014

Two pileated woodpeckers in the yard when I returned from school, They are so huge I thought one was, at first, a dog up a tree.

Wildly eventful Saturday. Got some writing done despite the Death Metal blaring away in the café. Going back on my determination that I had done all the transplanting I was going to do, I dug up voodoo lily and acanthus and bloodroot and yellow magnolia from 62 and brought them to live with me in eternity. The magnolia I bought as a small tree, which produced a few leaves and then turned into a stick, and was then battered to the ground when the limb of the sweet gum fell. I thought I’d just let it there to rot away, but last summer it put forth a few shoots from underground, and this spring those shoots renewed and redoubled. The shoots come from, I suspect, under a graft, so I probably do not have the tree I thought I bought, but I suspect it’s a cucumber tree under all that, and that would be well enough. The day was blazing bright and dry, but with enough watering I think I brought everybody through.

Blake and David visited late in the morning, bringing champagne and orange juice with them. What great and stimulating talk we had! David gave me the CD and the score of a sort of cantata– I guess you’d say themed album– based on a paper he wrote for my class. It looks brilliant. By the time they left I was so smashed on the mimosas I slept the balance of the afternoon, rising in time to go to Hendersonville with the usual crew to see Flat Rock’s The Fantasticks.

I’ve seen The Fantasticks often enough that I could practically recite the show as it unfolded. This is a good thing and a bad thing. The good part was that it allowed me to remember all the casts I’ve seen in the past– Al Swanson and Lucia at Hiram, with John Macnamara as a sinister El Gallo. Before that, Kenley Players in Ohio, with John Gavin as El Gallo and Edward Everett Horton as the old Player. Tracy Hackney as El Gallo at UNCA, me coaching him through his anxiety about his voice. Jack played in it twice, and I know he was full of nostalgia as he sat beside me. I remember a review of the original show that said something like, “If you are the sort of person who likes this sort of thing, then this is the sort of thing you will like,” and I think that’s accurate. The singing was strong, everyone was good-looking, the music is sweet as it can be (I couldn’t stopping singing it down the streets of Hendersonville and into the Black Rose bar) but I was a little impatient with it, a little intolerant of its wide and aggressively marked thoroughfares. There was a real innovation, though. Maria as the mute was acting every moment, alive every moment, reacting every moment, as if the story were being told to her. Without a single line she stole the show. Almost unable to keep my eyes open on the road home.