Repairs

 

August 12, 2022

Movie night at DJ’s, a pointless addition to the Dr. Strange oeuvre. Quality is inverse to the number of toys a director has to play with. So many diversions have to be slapped from a moviemaker’s hands before cinema is art again, or even very pleasing. In a similar vein, I was set to go to the Magnetic to see the Anam Cara collaboration, but they made the mistake of posting a preview. No. Not even five minutes of that. The error is more prevalent among women, I think, than men, that there is a special wisdom to the body when it comes to religious or artistic practice. The body assists by learning to stand aside. I saw bits of them before: the occasional striking tableau is not worth the long minutes of self-indulgent milling about. There is no theater without language, except insofar as movement suggests language. I’m setting dance in another category, of course. Have been attracted lately to videos of Charismatic church services. Most of them are unintentionally (some intentionally) funny. I think the dancing and flinging oneself about must be fun and releasing, but it has nothing to do with the Holy Spirit. It is social, without a vertical dimension. There is no ecstasy without discipline. 

Will the Carpenter finally arrived and I was right in thinking that lifting the burden of the roof off my heart would have the effect of breaking a dam–all is flow again. I cannot explain nor justify the degree to which I shut down in the last eleven days, but it was real, and now it is over. Plus the fact that the final bill was half the estimate. Will deflected my wrath by being cute and attentive and very explanatory/apologetic. They–or at least he–were apparently as embarrassed as I was infuriated. The corollaries are a morning of heroic weeding and dead-heading, and before that an earlier morning of purposeful writing.