New York New York 2

November 7, 2014

Rain Thursday. Outside my window at dawn lay the angular jumble of the city, all line and plane grayed by rain. In the midst of it, perched on the peak of a roof, was a single gull, the one brightness, the one organic, living being. He made the whole city turn around himself as an axle makes a wheel. I went down to the Paramount lobby and began writing a play. I continued on the play in the sculpture court of the Met. The gull inspired the play, as did my reaction to On the Town the night before.

Subway to the Met. Ran first to the special showing of El Greco’s. Wandered and took in. Wandered, so far as I remember for the first time, into the American wing. I must have been saving that for a time like this. Lunched facing the gray rain in the green-gray Park. The horrible taxi ride back to the hotel consisted of forty blocks of the driver jabbering to his friend on speaker phone in one of those African languages that have no words, only modulations in a stream of sound. The cell phone has made us forget the occasion and the necessity of manners. I couldn’t stand it and jumped out of the cab long before we were home. Cleared my head in the ran. Thought of the paintings. Thought of my play.

My sickness is mild but exhausting. Slept as much of the afternoon as I had.

From the Internet:

I'm a longtime admirer of your poetry. I don't know of anyone else as good, now that Ted Hughes isn't around any more. I am writing to ask if I can use a short passage as an epigraph for a new novel, the sequel to my first one, "The God in Flight." "The God" is going to be published for Kindle soon, and I would like to bundle the first chapter of the sequel with it.

I would like to call that sequel "The Platinum Secret," which is your phrase, so I am asking your permission to do that. It is the only phrase I know that captures exactly what I mean. If I can use the material I have in mind, it would be perfectly clear that this concept is your concept.

Below is the material I would like to use as the epigraph:

Beloved reader, do not look for it here;
do not look for the platinum secret—
more precious than victory—
the disappointment men do not speak of,
after the hope which barely dared to breathe its name.

“After Reading Whitman at Midnight, He Returns to an Old Theme,” from Blood Rose

All the best,
LA

Evening: off to Roundabout’s production of The Real Thing with Ewan McGregor and Maggie Gyllenhaal, Stoppard is the cleverest playwright in the world, and the show never disappointed on that or any other account: witty, perfectly acted, intellectually engaging. It gave me everything I lamented the lack of the night before. Happy with the Theater again, happy with Broadway. I was told I’d gotten the last ticket, and the sign said the show was sold out, but there were 20 seats in front of me in the mezzanine empty. The coat of the woman beside me stank rather shockingly. I wondered if her friend would tell her, or if she couldn’t detect it herself.

Joy returning up Times Square to bed. I thought of Blake’s “London.” Here there were no marks of weakness or of woe. Has the world changed so? Is that bit of it so special? Hundreds of smiling people taking pictures of one another under the dancing lights. Children petting the muzzles of the policemen’s horses.  Fifty languages. Ten thousand stories.

New York New York

November 6, 2014

Ninth floor of the Paramount. This time I have a view of the complicated geometry of Manhattan. Slept through the flight, the reason turning out to be I have a cold, and most illnesses of any kind lead me to sleep. No complaints. I have practically no memories of the journey hither.

I wanted to buy a watch at the Swatch place (where I bought my last watch) and so that was my first destination. What has to be noted is that Times Square and environs brimmed with the handsomest men I had ever seen gathered together like that, throngs and dozens. I sat down at an outdoor table with my new watch and–watched. As the afternoon progressed, I did something I haven’t done in a long while; I went to O’Luney’s bar and slammed down vodkas until I was just short of staggering drunk, and then I wandered around Times Square happy and sodden and a friend to all. It was lovely. Saw Hank Azaria walking out of the American Airlines Theater on 42nd. He’s smaller than you’d think, but quite beautiful. Sobered up enough to get to the Lyric, where I had the best seat in the house to see Bruce and Jack’s On the Town. They will bring bags of candy and drinks to your very seat. When it was over, I turned to my companion-for-two hours in the next seat and said, before I knew I was going to, “Wasn’t that horrifying?” Though on any technical level it couldn’t be faulted, though the music is Bernstein and “perfect” in any way I could detect, it was, otherwise, a blaring caricature of what someone must have thought, at one time, was the red blooded American male in the red blooded American city, all manufactured naivete and chemical energy with the volume at full. I know it was meant to be “entertaining,” but it didn’t entertain so much as bludgeon one with every cliche in the vicinity of having a good time, defying one to stagger away at the end imperfectly entertained. The ushers stood around with cattle prods to shock you into jollity if it looked like you weren’t having the Time of Your Life. The end, where it all starts over, was actually profound enough to raise it a few levels in my estimation, but not above “exhausting.”  On top of it, I had arrived drunk with every intention of having a good old fashioned good time. Like coming to a restaurant for a meal, and not being allowed out until you’ve consumed the entire dessert try. It’s like– oh, it’s early in the gray morning. Let’s start again.

November 5, 2014

Election day more of a disaster than can be spoken of. America has voted for the vampires while they were sucking blood out of their very necks.

Off to New York, assuming a routine journey, but who knows? Packed just one small carry-on, and I bet there’s still something in there I don’t use.

Quarrel with the humanities chairman, in which I was wrong, or at least weirdly entrenched, on most points. I think I make up too many scenarios, imagine too many twists and turns before I ask what’s really going on. I believe gossip too easily. I mistake confidences for truths. I do, on my side of the ledger, back off instantly if I sense I’m awry.

But, I do think I’ve learned enough lessons for a lifetime. Hold them off. Deflect the time of trial. It is time for ripeness. Even mercy.

Trying student J out as housesitter. He was very eager, and likes cats.

Ready, as ever, too early, or for things that may never come.

November 4, 2014

Two memorable dreams. In one I was in Hiram under calm starlight. Nothing happened; I was just there, and serenely happy. In the second dream we inhabited a world in which a race of monsters suddenly appeared. At first there was fear and conflict, but after a while we began to learn that they were sentient and good beings under shocking exteriors. All Souls was one of their first places of refuge, and we sang a service there in honor of one of then which had been killed by a mob. Jack and I stood side by side reading from the same music. The music was not notes but shafts of color. Our part came in on yellow. The music sounded like old country Gospel, and the lyric I remember, the one noted in bars of yellow, was, “We have seen the light behind it, praise the Lord, praise the Lord” repeated in canon.

Election day. It is more than I can speak of. One side doesn’t even have a platform, but only messy and contradictory bundles of negations, most of them at the base simply bare-faced lies. And the wisdom is that they will win. I have said in the past “I can’t stand it,” I and I have stood it. I suppose I will again.

November 3, 2014

Left Macbeth before curtain call in order to be at a Cantaria rehearsal, where I was so sad about no longer being with my theater friends that I was probably not much use. Onward, forward, leaving new construction and ruins both behind. People remain vulnerable as they age; they simply have learned how not to show it, how to entertain vulnerability inside, like an uncomfortable guest so frequent now you hardly notice that he’s there.

I’ve lost the Cantaria repertoire wars. It looks like it’s going to be Broadway and jingle bells from here on out.

In the great wars of the spirit I have come to a bivouac of sad truce. Nothing in any book prepared me for this.

November 2, 2014

Snow continued through the night, light but persistent. There was a point on 40 while I was driving home last night of near white-out.

Several friends at the performance last night, and it was good to see them. Sam & Sam from Humanities, who’d never seen Macbeth before, stood upon their long legs all a-smile. I wanted to party, but everyone was tired and far from home. What do I think of the production? There are excellences and deficits– all in all, taking in the standards of the Great World, I’d say we did above average work. The technical aspects were excellent, and at no point did the acting stand in the way of comprehension or enjoyment, I think. The sad part was how close to excellence some parts were without crossing over. Macbeth delivered the text without interpreting it. He was audible, energetic, efficient (“professional” would be the word), but there was neither delving nor discovery. His love is Commedia del arte, and the time you’re enthusiastic about Commedia might not be the time to take on a classic, iconic, thoughtful role. . . or anything with soliloquies. His sword fighting was excellent. MacDuff was both energy and contemplation. I have enjoyed doing this work more than I’ve enjoyed anything since Hamlet at the same theater. Some good angel smiles on it, and on the remnants of my conviviality.

Either return to or departure from Daylight Savings Time (I forget which), giving me an extra hour. Fighting off the onerous to get to the vital.

November 1, 2014

Jeff’s review of Macbeth in the Mountain Xpress allowed me to have created a “regal and refined” Duncan. Overall review respectful, without enthusiasm.  Friday’s performance was the first one which was “perfect” for me, no reversed words, no substitutions. Amy and Bill were there. So tired when I got home I woke to find a wine bottle with the corkscrew half driven into the cork, poised where I had, apparently, given up.

Halloween evening gave me an icon of myself and my life: I’m hunched over my roses bushes, choosing what I can save, clipping bud and blossom to bring a remnant inside against the threat of snow. Above, the sky darkening, piling cloud upon cloud, the wind stiffening, the north and west already black. Snow fell through the night and one woke to winter. I moved in during a snow storm, so this isn’t a first for this house. 51 isn’t cozy: too many rooms have two or three walls which are mostly 90 year old windows. Tiny spiders, one of them pale green, were hidden in the petals of the roses I brought inside. I leave them to their fates. They can ride out with the spent petals if they hang on that long. Haven’t looked at the gardens, but they’re under an inch of snow and one is not hopeful. That’s human life, isn’t it? Hoping that THIS frost doesn’t kill everything, knowing that one of them, sooner or later, will.

Main Street in Waynesville was thronged with costumed families trick-or-treating. It was lovely.

Took a Facebook quiz meant to determine what state should have been my home state.  I got Alaska, and almost immediately thereafter messages saying, “Yes, that’s right for you; you need open space and quiet.” These were from near-strangers, and I wondered “how the hell would you know that?”

Late afternoon, and it’s still snowing. The roads are clear, so I don’t fear for tonight’s performance. Tom and I sat in Starbucks writing Country songs.

Troubadours on the CD.