August 8, 2009
Crushingly hot. Have not recovered from spending the day in the hot studio, where I finished Landscape with Stigmata. My work is totally different in appearance (not so much in inspiration) since Jason came upon it. This is a good thing. It tells me I shouldn’t have been so insistent on discovering everything for myself.
The moon rose in white majesty last night, as far south as I remember it. Hoping for the same tonight, when it is clear, and every aspect will be visible.
The white iris re-blooms, multiply welcome.
Sunday, August 9, 2009
Thursday, August 6, 2009
August 6, 2009
Whirlwind trip to Atlanta with DJ. The reasons were to see the High Museum and the Aquarium, and we saw them, but also found a choice neighborhood bar called Sidebar and sat in the Hyatt Regency lobby with a convention of investors from Morgan Stanley. I don’t know what to prize most. The draw at the High was Monet’s Waterlilies, which is big and atmospheric, but I wonder how good the painting actually is. I suppose it doesn’t matter if you’re good when everybody loves you. Saw my beloved Bellini. She understood why I couldn’t dance for her this time. Was impressed by the American landscapes, especially the moonlit ones, and a lovely image of Ninsun on loan from the Louvre. Loved the aquarium. It was full of happy kids. You watched them watching the happy otters. They fed the whale sharks by rowing a bucket of krill before them in the water. The belugas are not organic creatures, but mystical apprehensions shared equally by all.
When I took a bus from new Orleans to Atlanta in 1981, I stayed in the Georgian Terrace, where I made my room into a kind of joyful brothel, with the gleanings of the local bars and the basswood-perfumed streets below. It was a glad time, and I remember it smiling, and I remember how the vast window of my room opened onto a parking lot, all the winged insects of the South beating around the white street lights. I was happy. Robin. Gary. Eddie. I remember some of their names. One night I walked to the new Hyatt in my jeans and grubby t-shirt. I assumed they wouldn’t let me in, but they did. The lobby was a swirl of beautiful women in evening gowns. I looked up into the soaring atrium and thought it was the sort of place that would be forever closed to me. I was wrong. I don’t know that I was fully recalled to that ancient moment when I picked the Hyatt off the list of possibilities, but in any event, there we were, lifting our vodka glasses under the soaring oculus, beside the cream of Atlanta and the pin striped warriors of Morgan Stanley. My secret is that it was exactly the thrill I hoped it might be.
Whirlwind trip to Atlanta with DJ. The reasons were to see the High Museum and the Aquarium, and we saw them, but also found a choice neighborhood bar called Sidebar and sat in the Hyatt Regency lobby with a convention of investors from Morgan Stanley. I don’t know what to prize most. The draw at the High was Monet’s Waterlilies, which is big and atmospheric, but I wonder how good the painting actually is. I suppose it doesn’t matter if you’re good when everybody loves you. Saw my beloved Bellini. She understood why I couldn’t dance for her this time. Was impressed by the American landscapes, especially the moonlit ones, and a lovely image of Ninsun on loan from the Louvre. Loved the aquarium. It was full of happy kids. You watched them watching the happy otters. They fed the whale sharks by rowing a bucket of krill before them in the water. The belugas are not organic creatures, but mystical apprehensions shared equally by all.
When I took a bus from new Orleans to Atlanta in 1981, I stayed in the Georgian Terrace, where I made my room into a kind of joyful brothel, with the gleanings of the local bars and the basswood-perfumed streets below. It was a glad time, and I remember it smiling, and I remember how the vast window of my room opened onto a parking lot, all the winged insects of the South beating around the white street lights. I was happy. Robin. Gary. Eddie. I remember some of their names. One night I walked to the new Hyatt in my jeans and grubby t-shirt. I assumed they wouldn’t let me in, but they did. The lobby was a swirl of beautiful women in evening gowns. I looked up into the soaring atrium and thought it was the sort of place that would be forever closed to me. I was wrong. I don’t know that I was fully recalled to that ancient moment when I picked the Hyatt off the list of possibilities, but in any event, there we were, lifting our vodka glasses under the soaring oculus, beside the cream of Atlanta and the pin striped warriors of Morgan Stanley. My secret is that it was exactly the thrill I hoped it might be.
August 4, 2009
Took my first yoga class while thunderstorms ripped through downtown. I cannot sit cross-legged, but that is the worst of it. I feel good now, relaxed and energized at once, as everyone said I would. Cindy, the instructor, says I’m a “natural.” I was just happy not to be the class spaz.
Brief chat with AG, after a long absence. He has a son I didn’t know about, and lacks a wife I thought I did.
J worries about my health. It is sweet. BE did long ago. That was sweet too. We leave too many things behind. Some of them catch up to us again; most do not.
Sound of Carmen from the living room, from my instructional set “Listening to and Understanding Opera.” It’s always something.
Took my first yoga class while thunderstorms ripped through downtown. I cannot sit cross-legged, but that is the worst of it. I feel good now, relaxed and energized at once, as everyone said I would. Cindy, the instructor, says I’m a “natural.” I was just happy not to be the class spaz.
Brief chat with AG, after a long absence. He has a son I didn’t know about, and lacks a wife I thought I did.
J worries about my health. It is sweet. BE did long ago. That was sweet too. We leave too many things behind. Some of them catch up to us again; most do not.
Sound of Carmen from the living room, from my instructional set “Listening to and Understanding Opera.” It’s always something.
Sunday, August 2, 2009
August 2, 2009
Watched the swallows in the sky last evening, riding the winds, too high for insects.
Watched Helen Mirren as Elizabeth I. I think it is the greatest prolonged performance by an actor that I have ever seen,
Poems poured out of me on the Starbuck’s terrace. I asked them to turn the canned music down and they did, ever so slightly.
Painted with J. When the torrent came, we discovered that our studio leaks like a sieve. Either the leaks are new or the rain seldom falls that hard. Came home and napped. It was a long, hard nap, and that was because I was making a chart in a dream. The chart was the way to prove that a child whose ghost haunted the dream had been raped and murdered. It was the only way he could be at rest, and I could not wake completely until the chart was done. I woke as I put the last pictures into place. The Y was closed by the time I woke, so I jogged along the perimeter of Beaver Lake, which I had not done in a long while. I saw a heron and an egret. The shallow water was lit golden with evening light, and fish floated in it like flaws in a jewel. Plants were stirred by turtles rooting around their stems. I stood and looked at the teeming waters, and I was happy.
Watched the swallows in the sky last evening, riding the winds, too high for insects.
Watched Helen Mirren as Elizabeth I. I think it is the greatest prolonged performance by an actor that I have ever seen,
Poems poured out of me on the Starbuck’s terrace. I asked them to turn the canned music down and they did, ever so slightly.
Painted with J. When the torrent came, we discovered that our studio leaks like a sieve. Either the leaks are new or the rain seldom falls that hard. Came home and napped. It was a long, hard nap, and that was because I was making a chart in a dream. The chart was the way to prove that a child whose ghost haunted the dream had been raped and murdered. It was the only way he could be at rest, and I could not wake completely until the chart was done. I woke as I put the last pictures into place. The Y was closed by the time I woke, so I jogged along the perimeter of Beaver Lake, which I had not done in a long while. I saw a heron and an egret. The shallow water was lit golden with evening light, and fish floated in it like flaws in a jewel. Plants were stirred by turtles rooting around their stems. I stood and looked at the teeming waters, and I was happy.
Saturday, August 1, 2009
July 31, 2009
J and I drove to the Parkway Playhouse in Burnsville for the premiere of JM’s play Esley: the Life and Musical Legacy of Leslie Riddle. The drive through all that green land is, by day, very beautiful, and by night, haunting. I’ve performed at the Parkway, so there was little excuse in my getting as lost as I did. I think I frightened J with the violent level of my not-getting-there-fast-enough frustration. After all my swearing and veering around slowpokes, we arrived with 15 minutes to spare. The playhouse situation reminded me of Penguin Rep in New York– dark wood, golden-agers tottering up and down an easy rake, re-made barn-- except the dress, behavior and, I suppose, life stories of the audience were as different as could be imagined. I think it’s an excellent idea to remember local heroes in plays. The task for a playwright or a producer is to tell the story with a minimum of summary, as though it really were a story. It requires an imaginative re-visioning, and a courageous disregard for received pieties. Esley did not achieve these things. The man was never allowed to tell, or have, his own story. J described Riddle as being presented by the play as the Carter family’s “house nigger,” which I am certain was not the intent, or the historical truth. JM brought on what one thought was a completely superfluous “reporter” to utter big chunks of exposition, until one saw the second act, which was, except for the interruption of songs already heard in act one, entirely made up of this “reporter” reading Riddle’s biography off a sheet of paper. Had Rob not memorized his lines? Was this the way it was actually planned? Incidental matter such as the accidents which robbed him of leg and fingers, courtship and marriage, indeed anything which threatened action or discovery, were left out. I’d guess this was in the name of decorum, so Riddle could come of as a humble and talented colored man, lifted up by the attentions of a famous while family. If he went whoring or got plastered or lay in wait for an enemy or fell in love or snapped back when he was turned away from a lunch counter, it was not told of. I did enjoy the evening after all-- the music and the pretty girl playing Maybelle Carter and the opportunity to investigate another playwright’s skills-- which I suppose is the final judgment.
Finished This Paradise Apart for Black Mountain.
J and I drove to the Parkway Playhouse in Burnsville for the premiere of JM’s play Esley: the Life and Musical Legacy of Leslie Riddle. The drive through all that green land is, by day, very beautiful, and by night, haunting. I’ve performed at the Parkway, so there was little excuse in my getting as lost as I did. I think I frightened J with the violent level of my not-getting-there-fast-enough frustration. After all my swearing and veering around slowpokes, we arrived with 15 minutes to spare. The playhouse situation reminded me of Penguin Rep in New York– dark wood, golden-agers tottering up and down an easy rake, re-made barn-- except the dress, behavior and, I suppose, life stories of the audience were as different as could be imagined. I think it’s an excellent idea to remember local heroes in plays. The task for a playwright or a producer is to tell the story with a minimum of summary, as though it really were a story. It requires an imaginative re-visioning, and a courageous disregard for received pieties. Esley did not achieve these things. The man was never allowed to tell, or have, his own story. J described Riddle as being presented by the play as the Carter family’s “house nigger,” which I am certain was not the intent, or the historical truth. JM brought on what one thought was a completely superfluous “reporter” to utter big chunks of exposition, until one saw the second act, which was, except for the interruption of songs already heard in act one, entirely made up of this “reporter” reading Riddle’s biography off a sheet of paper. Had Rob not memorized his lines? Was this the way it was actually planned? Incidental matter such as the accidents which robbed him of leg and fingers, courtship and marriage, indeed anything which threatened action or discovery, were left out. I’d guess this was in the name of decorum, so Riddle could come of as a humble and talented colored man, lifted up by the attentions of a famous while family. If he went whoring or got plastered or lay in wait for an enemy or fell in love or snapped back when he was turned away from a lunch counter, it was not told of. I did enjoy the evening after all-- the music and the pretty girl playing Maybelle Carter and the opportunity to investigate another playwright’s skills-- which I suppose is the final judgment.
Finished This Paradise Apart for Black Mountain.
July 30, 2009
Email from Turtle Shell Productions:
"We were unable to cast your play Werewolves in London {sic} and will have to pull it from the Festival. I am sorry and I wish we had more time in the search."
I pursued the matter, and pried out a little more information, but that seems, finally, to be the end of that. I am not good in the presence of the arbitrary.
Email from Turtle Shell Productions:
"We were unable to cast your play Werewolves in London {sic} and will have to pull it from the Festival. I am sorry and I wish we had more time in the search."
I pursued the matter, and pried out a little more information, but that seems, finally, to be the end of that. I am not good in the presence of the arbitrary.
July 29, 2009
Yesterday on the cross-trainer at the Y I broke my old mile record, at 9 minutes 30 seconds. Molasses, I know, but blue blazes for me.
Summary of the past week: Merce Cunningham is dead; Michael resigns as Cantaria director.
Jason and Richmond and I have lunch at the new café under my old digs at the Railside.
Working on the Black Mountain piece. The thing that strikes me is that the faculty and visitors at Black Mountain College were far more significant and accomplished than the students. What does this say about the kind of education it offered?
Yesterday on the cross-trainer at the Y I broke my old mile record, at 9 minutes 30 seconds. Molasses, I know, but blue blazes for me.
Summary of the past week: Merce Cunningham is dead; Michael resigns as Cantaria director.
Jason and Richmond and I have lunch at the new café under my old digs at the Railside.
Working on the Black Mountain piece. The thing that strikes me is that the faculty and visitors at Black Mountain College were far more significant and accomplished than the students. What does this say about the kind of education it offered?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)