Brazen Trumpet

 

June 23, 2024

Tried a little gardening this AM, but it was too hot even at 10:30. The weeds didn’t wait to be pulled, but leapt from the ground to end their misery.

Almost had my camera focused on my giant black frog before he leapt into watery obscurity. 

Second AVLGMC concert yesterday afternoon to a larger crowd, though it must be said that high summer is not the ideal time for indoors choral concerts. I think we were good. We were certainly active & happy & engaged, and our audience wept and laughed along with us. My own voice, which I’d been babying, was a brazen trumpet, and I could do ff contra notes to the very end. It’s been long since I felt so solid an accomplishment with that group. 

Watching some of the Olympic trials, where Katie Ledecky wins her heats with so much margin that she could have a cappuccino before #2 splashes home.  

The birds have found the mulberry trees. The mockingbirds have a peculiar little greed song they warble when they’re stuffing themselves with the berries. 

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From email:

Andrew Murphy 

3:03 PM (3 hours ago)

to me

Good Evening, David,

My Name is Andrew Murphy.

I have been given your details by Jim Horgan from Cork Arts Theatre, I had the privilege of being in the audience on one of the evenings to see Views from a Lamp Post being performed. I work with two Amateur groups here in Scotland and I would love to get a copy of your script for Alfie & Greta to let them read it with the possibility of performing it at some point in the future. I look forward to hearing from you so we can hopefully arrange something.

Thank you for your assistance.

Kind Regards, Andrew Murphy

 June 22, 2024

Dawn already ablaze. 

Concert at Grace Covenant last night for a small, appreciative crowd. Most of our choreography and scene-setting worked just fine, contrary to my expectations– the most successfully theatrical show we’ve done in a long time. The repertoire is convincing– not what I would have chosen, but vital and energetic, with musical (or perhaps I should say dramatic) virtues I had not anticipated. Pop, but strong pop. We’d slipped into the habit of doing junk. It’s not Schubert now, but neither is it junk. Hellish time afterward staggering home across the empty parking lots. 

 June 21, 2024

From Charles Schwab:

Rate of return: Your account had a cumulative rate of return of 215.05% from Oct 10, 2017 to Jun 20, 2024. (Annualized: 18.69%).

Not bad, I guess, for a naif. 

*

Exhausting rehearsal last night. What should have been a simple run-through was a workshop, still learning notes the night before a concert. We take on too much. We waste too much time. There’s too much of a gap between musical leaders and followers. C who stands next to me, for instance, sounds good, but gets about 1/3 of the notes wrong. B who stands behind me sounds good and gets most things right, and I use him to check myself. A sounded sensational on his Dylan solo. Part of the downside of all this is that I’m hoarse as ocean fog. Much of the bass part is quite low and also loud and percussive. The contra D flats just stop forming after a while. The pain in my legs after climbing down from the risers is, for a moment, almost unendurable. Walked home from the venue waddling like a duck. 

S was in a dire mood because our thrice-featured soloist K “has a stomach bug.” I knew when her name was announced months ago that she would not sing this concert. It seemed hateful at the time to say so, and gratuitous now to say “I knew it.” Sometimes I’m quite clairvoyant. Without fail I predict the days when my cleaning lady will want to delay or postpone. I knew when there was all that talk about a graduate program in creative writing that it wouldn’t happen, even when the Provost said, ruefully, "it’s a fait accompli.”  I can tell this kind of conviction from a hunch, but the evidence is so subtle and subjective I wouldn’t believe it myself. Let’s not add Casandra to the names . . . 

Full summer. 

The Dublin Traviata sprints toward completion. 

A scene from Coriolanus popped up on the Internet. It was only a moment, but the lines uttered by the character C himself, I believe) were so rich, so embroidered and damasked and gorgeous that you swooned even before you understood what was going on. No modern writer would be allowed to do that. I long for it. I could do it. It would put an even longer corridor between me and any conceivable producer. 

 June 20, 2024

Seriously re-vamped my portfolio. Items sold came to $86,000 in profit. 

Turned down the trip to Umbria. The leader mentioned dormitory sleeping in a villa on a steep hill. Nope. Back in the day, maybe. Besides, I write daily with setting or provocation. He also said that mature participants are often impatient with the naivety and self-importance of the kids. Neither of those things bothers me much, but I am prone to impatience by any number of other causes. Also realized I could spend the same amount of money and be wherever I wanted doing whatever I wanted and not having anybody tell me how to write a play. 

Bad showing among the annuals this year. Change seed companies? Don’t know otherwise what went wrong. Saw the turkey hen wallowing in the zinnia bed, so that bit is explained. 

La Mama

 

June 19, 2024

Tried trading stocks, couldn’t understand why there was no response until the Schwab lady said “Happy Juneteenth.” 

Invited to join La MaMa’s playwrights’ workshop in Umbria in August. Giving myself a day to think about it. The invitation comes quite late, as many earlier acceptances dropped out. Don’t need it, but what DO I need now? 

 June 18, 2024

Went to the Woodfin Y first thing, had a workout. It felt good. I hesitated because I didn’t want to see C, and, of course, C sat at the desk at the top of the stairs and could not be avoided. It’s four years since my last visit, and that hasn’t changed. C never offends in any way, except to say “Good morning today” when he sees you, invariably, inevitably. I would do anything to avoid hearing those three words. I think twice about entering the Sav-Mor, because I always seem to be buying tonic water, and the check-out crone will always testify how tonic water is good for leg cramps, the quinine, you know. In fact, no it isn’t. Repetition has always driven me wild. Another day of heat, the sky a leaden yellow-gray. 

Marauder

June 17, 2024

Woke before tight to a sound on the east porch which I identified as a jar that has sat there for a month being knocked over by a raccoon. Sure enough, the jar was knocked over, and though raccoon is the likeliest, the sure culprit is unknown. 

My submission to The Carolina Quarterly came back with the announcement that the magazine is forced to close its doors. I can have my submission fee refunded if I want. 

 

 June 16, 2024

To church, merrily, without responsibility. Painting and writing. Great mullein in glory. 

June 15, 2024

Scorcher. I can survive upstairs by having the fan on high pointed at my head. Downstairs breezy enough. 

Dire (and sudden) disorder of the intestines. I look for dietary causes, and wonder if it was the unusual quantity of onions and cucumber in vinegar consumed yesterday.

Received a summons to jury duty at the end of July. I’ve ghosted out of that so many times I’m determined to do my civic duty this time. 

The lady at the Woodfin ABC offered me a part time job. 

 June 14, 2024

Missed Yeats’ birthday. He will forgive me. 

Good weeding yesterday– which I forgot until I looked out and saw dead weeds wilting on the grass.

Scolded at Riverside for feeding the white lab. 

AVLGMC concert at Givens Estates last night. Well attended, appreciated, but I don’t know how good. Perhaps adequate. I was better than adequate, though not perfect. Unable to walk for half an hour afterward. D and G had me up to their apartment for wine. Much talk of Ireland and Celtic culture. Another thing I’d forgotten was that in the despair of February, 2020, I invited everyone to my studio to take what they wanted. D and G took a good deal, the bluebird box and the painted drawer face for themselves, and bird paintings for each of their grandsons. I was happy to know this, to feel a ray of redemption. It was also curious to see the works in an unexpected context, though I must have known this all happened long ago. 

I like the boys in AVLGMC more than I have in the last decade. 

Delayed announcement from UNCA that certain programs– Classics, Drama, some foreign languages– will be cancelled. I want to be apoplectic, though can’t quite rise to it. It would be like trying to reason with a MAGA rally. Every aspect of the decision–including the identity of those who made it–is wrong. Everybody knows it’s wrong; it doesn’t matter. “Administration” must be eliminated as a caste and as a concept, but I am not the one to lead that fight, or more than a puling skirmish of it. Sneaking into my thoughts is the slightest satisfaction that Drama is gone, Arnold’s entire and only legacy disappeared before his eyes. A university without a theater is an absurdity, so if UNCA survives, theater will return, perhaps this time founded upon something other than mediocrity and dilettantism. 

 June 12, 2024

Productive days in unexpected ways– an orgy of revision of older manuscripts. 

Movie night last night with R and DJ. Dune 2. It’s a long, red-brown film, but I never looked at the clock. 

When I returned from Ireland, some things in my house were different from how I’d left them. The most notable was that all my TV remotes lay organized in a straight line on the coffee table. I had not done this. It being unfathomable, I stopped thinking about it, until R mentioned that he’d brought A to the house (which he loves to visit) and read him poetry from my shelves. A poem by Richard Wilbur moved him in particular. I loved the idea of R and A wandering about my house when I was gone. 

Yeomanly bout of weeding. 

Don’t go out without slathering my face with sunblock. Lip still painful. 

 

June 9, 2024

Ill today, with what I don’t know. Maybe just downloading the Irish adventure. 

 

June 8, 2024

Extreme early rising brought on by the clash of times between here and Europe means that I woke, caught up on correspondence, submitted three manuscripts, did the day’s weeding before 10 AM. Good effort at weeding, though about a tithe of what needs to be done. The orange sun hat proved its mettle. 

People ask what the most important thing that happened in Ireland was, and I have to get past the real one to name one they want to hear about. The real one was lying in my bed in Cork, sort of getting physically ill, but certainly sliding into the abyss of dark thoughts. Memories were pinnacles cast up from the past, places where thoughts snag one and lash one to bareness and despair. I foresaw a night of howling anger, as I’ve had ten thousand times before. I realized this derived from looking up old journal references to Cork and the places I knew there, harmless enough, but each harmless recollection dragging its burden of disappointment, deception, futility. Then, like the touch of an angel, came the revelation, “then don’t think of it.” Do not indulge in recollection. Have no past. With some exceptions, my “present” is hopeful, energized, lighthearted. Each day means starting again with my full complement of visionary joy. Thinking of all the times– which is almost all times–when this visionary joy came to nothing is instructive without actually being helpful. Not thinking of the past is the only way forward. So far, it’s worked. I’ve drawn myself out of whatever declivity my thoughts detected. Lost nothing, moved forward. Maybe it’s my time of life. Maybe it’s a lesson I would have been happier learning as a lad. 

 June 7, 2024

Jet-lagged at rehearsal last night, but the affliction (always worse this side of the water) ebbs away. 

Bought huge floppy hats at Tractor Supply to keep the sun off my head while gardening. 

Sweetpea climbs my bedroom window, with the most perfect pink in the world. Sometimes there’s the soporific buzzing of bumblebees, the flutter of tiny copper-colored butterflies. Near constant rain while I was gone turns the garden into a jungle. It will require care soon–probably tomorrow– but the condition of jungle is one to which the garden aspires. When I pulled down bamboo stalks, considerable amounts of water spilled from them. I should have thought to taste the water.

Visit to MAHEC, receiving a clean bill of health. My blood pressure is, according to the technician, “fine.” 

Home

 

June 6, 2024

The Day that Would Not End ended at about 12:15 this morning. Faithful Billy dropped me at my darkling door. You had to stand in line for the Delta Sky Lounge at JFK. The democratization of air travel cannot be stopped except by one’s dropping out oneself. Worked on the play. The last leg, between Atlanta and Asheville, was leavened by my seat companion, who owns a beauty salon in Shreveport, LA. We mostly talked about True Blood. She’s visiting a friend in Asheville to have a girls’ week while the friend’s son attends his first summer camp. 

The impression of finally being in my own house was that of stunning silence. Compared to Cork and Limerick, my street seems wholly uninhabited by night, silent as stone, not a peep until birds began to cry before dawn. Delicious summer warmth laving all. So far as I’ve looked, I find nothing here amiss– despite what I might have imagined. Potato salad in the Atlanta Sky Lounge of memorable savor. Drank iced tea as though it were ambrosia. 

Aryan Noor drove me to the airport. He said his name means “moonlight.” I observed that I thought the Queen of Jordan had the same name. He speaks Persian and fled to Ireland with his family when he was twelve from Afghanistan. He said that of all English speakers, American are the easiest to understand. He asked if Americans think that Trump is a joke, or is it just everybody else. The gay steward from the Shannon-New York flight said I was the passenger who gave the least trouble. Part of that was that I’d had three quite calming bloody Mary’s (which I made myself, so–) before boarding. 

Thought I’d save gardening for a little while, but new bamboo spearing through the canopy got me down there with my spade. There weren’t many, but they were large and, most of them beyond hacking, had to be wrestled to the ground. 

 June 5, 2024

Heaviest rain in the rainy time I’ve been here. Hoping Ireland can handle that and there won’t be trouble at Shannon. If Ireland can, maybe Delta can’t. All will be made known. Unusually restful last night. I retired early, my departure is not until past noon, and I had reasonable confidence I knew how to set my phone alarm. All issues that can be anticipated are well. Was this a good trip? Not by a wide margin, yes. Worth the price and bother? Who knows? I’m unlikely to regret it, likely to look back on it with profit and instruction, and the mystery of whether I can travel again is solved. Can’t say it was exactly pleasurable or restful, but that may be the anxiety of departure. 

 June 4, 2024

Worst conceivable weather. A day and a half of this whole journey has been fine. It’s all right. The parking deck across the street shivers with gray water. I’ve checked twice since waking to insure I fly tomorrow rather than today. It’s the sort of mistake one makes. Supped in unnecessary splendor in the hotel restaurant last night, then spent the inclement night working on my play. It had been more than four years since I traveled, but my customs came back to me. What an odd little man I am in many ways. 

As Bank Holiday is over, it became museum day. The Limerick Museum across the street is a noble building but otherwise useless. Dioramas do not a museum make. Hauled up to People’s Park to go to the deeply-remembered and much-loved Limerick art museum, to discover that the bounty of AEs and visionary masterworks of the Celtic Twilight in their hulking frames are gone, replaced by a forgettable contemporary one-man show and an austere, modern, parsimoniously curated selection of the permanent collection. Great disappointment. The boy at the desk had no idea what I was talking about until I showed him photos in their own museum book of the same white, empty room stacked floor to ceiling with curiosities. It hasn’t been THAT long since I was last in Limerick. . . surely. . . Consoled myself with a walk in People’s Park, where the roses are in glory. Found the People’s Museum of Limerick, which is a Georgian mansion filled up with random furnishings and curiosities. The lad at the door asked if I wanted the guided tour or if I preferred to go about alone. “Go about alone,” I said, and immediately got a twenty minute summary of late Tudor to Georgian Limerick anyhow. Irish tour guides will not be daunted. Sat in the formal garden and contemplated their mulberry tree. A drawstring from my yellow raincoat had worked loose, and I dropped it into a phonograph on the top floor, as my contribution to the randomness of it all. Someone will find it tomorrow or it will lie there for the next fifty years. Wandered to the Crescent, north of which I stayed a couple of times, once with Nick, and below which I had enjoyable times at the theater. The theater endures. I might have altered travel plans if I’d thought of it. The gallery where I bought paintings once is not. Poured my coins into the case of a street fiddler on O’Connell Street. This journey lasted, perhaps, one day longer than it ought to have. Good to remember for the next time. 

 June 3, 2024

Plans for the day detoured by a poxy Bank Holiday. All attractions are closed, plus the weather is bitter and squally. Nevertheless, took the measure of Kings Island and sat along the river with cider in my hand and swans cavorting in the shallows. The sun-poisoning I got in Sligo has never healed, and re-asserts after exposure, and renewed after the fewer than ten minutes I walked unprotected yesterday in sudden sun. Burning sensation on brow and scalp and lips, face red as a lobster. I think a little ultra-violet crept in through the clouds on my walk today. Slept well last night, though both here and in Cork the only cover offered is an immense comforter that crushes and confines. The whole time I’ve had to kick it off and sleep wrapped in my raincoat. I remember a gladsome time last night, though doubt I can drink that much again tonight even to achieve a similar effect. 

Limerick

 June 2, 2024

Early morning, packing for the train to Limerick. 

Closing performances last night. Again, my cast did well, though impressions of other offerings changed, some for the better, most others not. Some things can be welcomed only once. My estimation now is that there were three clunkers, still a quite good average. Lovely big party afterward at the theater, where I met everybody, the other playwrights present (including Darren [I think] a charming young man from Skibereen) and other lights of that active and vital institution. A light to which there was no shadow, all in all. Wish we could have parties like that after shows, but it would necessitate house bars, which America makes so difficult.  

On the train from Cork, a woman sat next to me who had beautiful blue irises wrapped carefully in foil. I said, “Somebody gave you flowers!”She said, “No, these are from my own garden. I’m taking them to Dublin to put on my sister’s grave.”

Savoy Hotel, Limerick, a concern so elegant I was embarrassed to be dressed as I was checking in. Balcony looks at the roof of the Dunne’s Stores parking garage, but also, in the distance, at King John’s Castle and the green hills of Munster. Had a nasty lunch, leaving the record unbroken in that regard. 

Darkness: Went back to my ancient practice of hiking from pub to pub, taking in culture and ambience, and was deeply happy. Limerick is a comfortable town for me, whereas–for whatever reason–Cork was not. Hugely drunk, so that these words will be the last I can type tonight. I love the pubs, tribal, masculine, loud, intimate... . qualities, I realize now, generally remote from my life.

 

June 1, 2024

Bright morning. Tried to go socializing last night, but felt the creeping dismantlement that is the onslaught of phlebitis. Scurried home, took the prophylactic antibiotics which, along with the computer, may be the most useful things that ever came into my life. The fevered sleep that followed was some insurance against the unhoused people camped on the quay below, who shrieked at each other deep into the morning. This otherwise excellent hotel has severe noise issue. The glass walls onto the river are not the least bit soundproof, and the public area beneath allows for mayhem. 

Working steadily on The Dublin Traviata.

News on RTE that an Irish judge has been convicted of sexual assault and attempted rape on a number of boys, when he was a teacher. He was a thalidomyde baby, and has no legs, one arm, and does not leave his wheelchair. The question which the newscasts solemnly refuse to answer is, “how?” 

 May 31, 2024

The news when I came to the hotel last night was that Trump is convicted on all counts. Being without honor and without shame, he’ll not slink away as a real man would at this point. A bitter and ragged victory is still a victory. Listened to his reaction. There’s no need for him ever to speak again, just play a recording of his unvarying litany of imaginary grievance. Everything he says is a lie. Things that start out true are lies by the time they finish coming out of his mouth

Dead pigeon on the roof of the snack bar under my balcony.

Took a taxi to the Lough, walked back almost the farthest way I could. The taxi driver wanted to know if a man could be a convict and still be President. As far as I know, yes. Many of the waterfowl were accompanied by balls of fluffy chicks. A pair of coots emerged from the island with their very fluffy but quite big baby, clearing the water for a wide swath in front of them, driving ducks and geese away, even menacing birds that were already out of the water. Papa whirled and had me in his sights. I wondered if he were going to try to scare me away. He stopped dead in the water, weighing his chances. I finally satisfied honor by moving off to an acceptable distance. Sighted my necessary heron. Hiking back to town I visited a little gallery above an off-license shop. The paintings were terrible, the effort gallant. Bought coffee from a couple who had toured the USA as part of a car delivery service. Visited Fort Elizabeth, the existence of which had been unknown to me before. The voluble Maltese at the gate was so pleased I had visited and loved Malta. We spent more time talking about Medina than the fort around us. If any monument in Ireland in the last 600 years is free from the taint of British savagery, I haven’t heard of it. The walls of Cork are alive with cranny flowers and ferns. The long walk home was less long than I anticipated; I’m beginning to navigate Cork with confidence. 

In many ways, the perfect day, nowhere particular to go, plenty of time to get there. I sat in the sun on a bench at the fort, doing nothing. The sun was hot but the air was cool, so the balance was perfection. I wondered how long I could just sit. Turns out, a considerably long time. 

Two herons flap around the pilings under the quay across the river from my balcony. Blessed.