June 9, 2017

Painted steadily in the morning on an old work I was trying to finish. I once prized it for its austerity, but I don’t prize anything for its austerity very long. Now it’s crowded and rather ugly–or at least odd-- though every individual passage is rather beautiful. Visitors from Florida and Venezuela.

Mockingbird singing his heart out against my studio window--

Three more performances. The boys in the dressing room are, despite the jibes and witty insults, loving and gentle with each other, allowing the most extravagant vanities and suffering purple idiosyncracies without comment. Each boy’s weaknesses are noted and ignored. Each boy’s virtues and triumphs are referenced by the others whenever possible. If each boy were as sexually triumphant as he lets on, the world would be peopled again; if he were as fine an actor, he would already be in the movies. And yet they encourage one another further and higher. I have not heard one criticism of another’s character or past or performance or anything else. Not one boy has failed to declare sexual desire for the other, and though of course it’s joking, it’s a way of getting out into the open and gone emotions which did damage in my “day” because they had to remain strictly subterranean. I used the image before of being in a room full of my grandsons. It is a mixed and unexpected blessing.  They are shallow and ignorant in some ways, deeply informed and masterful in others. In a world whose secrets are encoded in pop music and sci-fi films, they would be sages, and I would be an idiot. I’m content to be able to sit and listen, though perhaps, to some degree, they are performing for me, Whatever is going on, I am happy and grateful, and will miss them, if not the long drive and the long wait.

It would be interesting to creep next door and hear what is going on with the girls. I bet the two rooms would seem like different planets, one smelling rather better than the other.