January 6, 2010
Epiphany.
Rehearsals had to flee my freezing studio, and took refuge in the Asheville Arts Center. It is warm and otherwise commodius, except for the din overhead, near constant and elephantine, of trampling, stampeding children. DiAnna sounds eerily like Ellen, in her voice quality, the way she reads her lines, even her take on the Irish accent. All my actors are choice, and I delight in watching them, though I fear my presence might be a compromise to the director’s authority, so I’m pulling back from that a little. In Casey, Adam has found an actor equal to him, and it’s beautiful to watch. Trinity was perfect from the first. The actors laugh at their lines, still, which is a good sign. I listen to the dialogue for flaws, and shiver with relief when a line, a page passes without one.
Dream last night that I was invited to a banquet at a home of a super rich family in New York. Turned out that everything as tawdry, vulgar, disappointing, all images of a class ripe for the fall. I went out onto the street and hung out with construction workers, and then I was happy. I think this comes of reading Gossip Girl on the cross-trainer.
Sent out the summary and first ten pages of a play, I Should Warn You I Have a Gun in My Bag, that I had not finished. The theater (in Savannah) called almost instantly for the full script, so I have been working steadily that last two mornings to finish the last, problematic, scene.
Attended the Epiphany service at All Souls, very sweet and innocent– exactly what the Christmas Eve service would have been back home, with the Nativity story read in halting juvenile voices and children dressed as angels and shepherds, and on all fours as very impatient sheep. Afterwards came the “burning of the greens,” a Christmas tree and a wreath set alight in a garbage can on the lawn. The burning of the greens, at least, was an image out of deep time, and the night was rolled back, and spring brought forward, as by one tugging on a carpet of flowers.
Thursday, January 7, 2010
January 4, 2010
Disturbing dream: I was a very old man, and I was supposed to have died. I actually felt consciousness leaving me in the dream, and the light going out. But then I revived, and began to do energetic deeds and get into mischief. I thought the deeds were proof that I was alive again, but the people around me took it as some last spasm before death, and stood around with the grave cloths, figuratively, in their hands.
First Beautiful Johanna rehearsal at the studio. It was beastly cold. Besides that, I have–as I have noted with shame on several occasions–an aversion to people at large in my personal space, and the rearranging and manhandling that accrued from the rehearsal disturbed me acutely. I will go back in the morning and set everything right. The important things– the characterizations and the master of the lines– were quite good, quite satisfying. Drew was there, snapping photos. Jolene made sure the heaters were on. People are more willing to do things for me than I am willing to ask it of them.
Disturbing dream: I was a very old man, and I was supposed to have died. I actually felt consciousness leaving me in the dream, and the light going out. But then I revived, and began to do energetic deeds and get into mischief. I thought the deeds were proof that I was alive again, but the people around me took it as some last spasm before death, and stood around with the grave cloths, figuratively, in their hands.
First Beautiful Johanna rehearsal at the studio. It was beastly cold. Besides that, I have–as I have noted with shame on several occasions–an aversion to people at large in my personal space, and the rearranging and manhandling that accrued from the rehearsal disturbed me acutely. I will go back in the morning and set everything right. The important things– the characterizations and the master of the lines– were quite good, quite satisfying. Drew was there, snapping photos. Jolene made sure the heaters were on. People are more willing to do things for me than I am willing to ask it of them.
January 3, 2010
Chris L set up a tour of the new theater on Church Street, the Altamont. The vision for the building is exquisite, and their plans for first-class musical theater in Asheville seem like they should work, though whether they will, who knows?. The people are energetic and attractive, and deserve to succeed. They have been systematic and attentive. Everything hangs in the balance, so that this does as well should not be too daunting.
Absurd cold continues.
Strange energy infuses me, alternating with a periodic irresistible collapse of exhaustion. It feels right to live this way, all peaks and valleys. Or, like my cats, vibrantly alive or sound asleep.
Chris L set up a tour of the new theater on Church Street, the Altamont. The vision for the building is exquisite, and their plans for first-class musical theater in Asheville seem like they should work, though whether they will, who knows?. The people are energetic and attractive, and deserve to succeed. They have been systematic and attentive. Everything hangs in the balance, so that this does as well should not be too daunting.
Absurd cold continues.
Strange energy infuses me, alternating with a periodic irresistible collapse of exhaustion. It feels right to live this way, all peaks and valleys. Or, like my cats, vibrantly alive or sound asleep.
Friday, January 1, 2010
2010
January 1, 2010
Morning yet too dark to tell the nature of it, though I think cloud and vapors.
J and I had coffee at a new place on Haywood Road, and then helped a women and a man hoist a couch up onto a second floor balcony and into second floor of the house that way, the stairs being impossible. Layers of anxiety fell off by just being back in touch. I had made up all the sorrowful parts of the story.
The second party last night was a costume party. When a certain group of my friends talk about a costume party, what they mean is a drag party, fathoms deep in the adjusting of false breasts, the re-application of lipsticks, and the hilarity associated with girdles and garters and cross-gender prostheses. DJ says that it is just people acting crazy and I’m not taking it in the right spirit. I accept that. I am a grump refusing to get into the spirit of the moment. Nevertheless, I fled, and spent the last moments of the year on my lawn, bathed in shivering moonlight.
The color of this year is green.
The second color of this year is silver.
My resolutions are mostly secret, but the public ones include the distancing of myself from the vices of patience, prudence, moderation.
Morning yet too dark to tell the nature of it, though I think cloud and vapors.
J and I had coffee at a new place on Haywood Road, and then helped a women and a man hoist a couch up onto a second floor balcony and into second floor of the house that way, the stairs being impossible. Layers of anxiety fell off by just being back in touch. I had made up all the sorrowful parts of the story.
The second party last night was a costume party. When a certain group of my friends talk about a costume party, what they mean is a drag party, fathoms deep in the adjusting of false breasts, the re-application of lipsticks, and the hilarity associated with girdles and garters and cross-gender prostheses. DJ says that it is just people acting crazy and I’m not taking it in the right spirit. I accept that. I am a grump refusing to get into the spirit of the moment. Nevertheless, I fled, and spent the last moments of the year on my lawn, bathed in shivering moonlight.
The color of this year is green.
The second color of this year is silver.
My resolutions are mostly secret, but the public ones include the distancing of myself from the vices of patience, prudence, moderation.
December 31, 2009
Tavern on the Green is closing without my ever having eaten there.
Night. The blue moon is sometimes obscured, sometimes dazzling in a scallop of cloud. Just returned from Waynesville, where I attended the HART New Years party, a crowded, jostling, happy, warm affair. Steve had prepared video montages of the year’s productions, very entertaining and professional. I see now better how he has been able to succeed in what would have thought an unpromising situation. He has made of everyone a family, concerned about every aspect and character of every production. I was in Proof and Hamlet, each time playing, curiously, the dead father. When my image came on screen I heard a murmur around me, “Ah, David,” with a tone of familiarity and affection I did not expect and am not used to. Now I have to cobble together some sort of costume and hit the second party of the night. I think I would rather sit here and watch the moon traverse my windows, east to west through the long last night.
Tavern on the Green is closing without my ever having eaten there.
Night. The blue moon is sometimes obscured, sometimes dazzling in a scallop of cloud. Just returned from Waynesville, where I attended the HART New Years party, a crowded, jostling, happy, warm affair. Steve had prepared video montages of the year’s productions, very entertaining and professional. I see now better how he has been able to succeed in what would have thought an unpromising situation. He has made of everyone a family, concerned about every aspect and character of every production. I was in Proof and Hamlet, each time playing, curiously, the dead father. When my image came on screen I heard a murmur around me, “Ah, David,” with a tone of familiarity and affection I did not expect and am not used to. Now I have to cobble together some sort of costume and hit the second party of the night. I think I would rather sit here and watch the moon traverse my windows, east to west through the long last night.
December 30, 2009
Woke with a firm conviction of the layers of consciousness that struggle for rule of the mind. Woke saddened by and utterly convinced of the fact that I had been turned down for tenure, and that in a week or so I was beginning a new career at Johns Hopkins, uncertain and confidence-shaken. I was deep into consciousness before I reasoned myself out of it. No such thing had happened, though somewhere in the layers of the mind, it was an experience and not a dream. The same is evidenced by my recurring dream of finding a new graduate school after flunking out of the old one. Some conviction of failure runs deeper than the fact, in these cases, of success. I know why people talk about parallel universes: I know the feeling of a dream, and these moments did not feel like that. I also wondered if there are things I am a soaring success at in my parallel lives –perhaps love–that is a bust here. It was a gleam of insight, as well, on how I live my life. I think I expect to crash and burn with everything important. Why do I live in this house? Because I think I got away with something in buying it, and don’t expect that the universe will let me have another go. Why did I never leave the university for farther fields? Because, as the dream suggests, I never quite expected to succeed even once, and twice seemed to be a temptation to the gods.
Ancient hurdy-gurdy on the radio, such peace, immense, if momentary.
Looked back through the journals of the past decade. One thing to note: I am happier now. By far.
Woke with a firm conviction of the layers of consciousness that struggle for rule of the mind. Woke saddened by and utterly convinced of the fact that I had been turned down for tenure, and that in a week or so I was beginning a new career at Johns Hopkins, uncertain and confidence-shaken. I was deep into consciousness before I reasoned myself out of it. No such thing had happened, though somewhere in the layers of the mind, it was an experience and not a dream. The same is evidenced by my recurring dream of finding a new graduate school after flunking out of the old one. Some conviction of failure runs deeper than the fact, in these cases, of success. I know why people talk about parallel universes: I know the feeling of a dream, and these moments did not feel like that. I also wondered if there are things I am a soaring success at in my parallel lives –perhaps love–that is a bust here. It was a gleam of insight, as well, on how I live my life. I think I expect to crash and burn with everything important. Why do I live in this house? Because I think I got away with something in buying it, and don’t expect that the universe will let me have another go. Why did I never leave the university for farther fields? Because, as the dream suggests, I never quite expected to succeed even once, and twice seemed to be a temptation to the gods.
Ancient hurdy-gurdy on the radio, such peace, immense, if momentary.
Looked back through the journals of the past decade. One thing to note: I am happier now. By far.
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