November 8, 2015

Unforgivable hell of downloads and verifications and entry of passwords. Hours wasted and no work done. I wish all Microsoft had but one neck.

November 6, 2015

Went to buy flowers for the opening. Happened upon a place run by handsome young gay men, which was a plus. They were friendly and cute and stupid, which was neither a plus nor a minus as far as concupiscence was concerned, but rather amusing, or would have been had I not been having a bad morning.

    Him: So, where do we send these?
    Me. The Magnetic Theater, 375 Depot Street. (Disturbance in back, so he doesn’t hear me)
    Sorry, where do we send these?
    The Magnetic Theater, 375 Depot Street.
    Now, where are we sending them?
    The Magnetic Theater---

This went on for quite a while. Turns out he was looking for a name, and what I was giving him didn’t sound like one.  At one time I was actually turning on my heels to make for the door, but at last we got it worked out.
  
To the Magnetic then for the premiere of Washington Place, going alone, as if creeping in hoping not to be noticed. I need a gala in my life, and this wasn’t it. The house was sparse but contained quality people. And, in the moment, all was most and exceedingly well. The acting was excellent, the set and costumes and sound and lights flawless. May well have been the best opening night ever, including New York. I sat there taking it in, hearing laughter at the right moments around me. The play does not need even a touch. Proud, happy, came home and slept the sleep of the righteous.

Excellent session at the studio this AM. A whole painting in one sitting. The bitter sadness of the first of yesterday was not quite washed away by the satisfaction of the second half, so I had little skirmishes of that war to fight today. Theater again in a few hours.

November 5, 2015

Set the wrong foot down on leaving bed, and the morning has been, so far, odd.
   
Received the DVD of Washington Place from GPTC on the same day it opens at the Magnetic. Forgot to buy flowers for the opening. Maybe chocolate is better.
   
All Souls choir expanded since I left it for the stage. I still have the only low D.
   
Pissed off at an editor for admiring and admiring my poems and then not taking one. He should trust my judgment rather than his own. Really. I’d say that to his face. Follow me where I am going. Someone.
   
Great quantity of bread strewn on the yard for the crows.
   
My yard guy stood on the porch yesterday, considering with me as to whether the lawn needed mowing. We agreed that it did not. But I longed for him in a way that was beyond physical; it was metaphysical, puzzling– unassuageable.
   
Indian ragas on Pandora.

November 4, 2015

Rose exhausted from yesterday. My humors were out of balance, sure, but also it was a day of extraordinary turbulence. Fought a dead WiFi router; after melt-down realized I could unplug the computer from the router and plug it directly to the cable and get on with my life. Conference with a student whose fecklessness is exceeded only by his puppy-like sadness. He really has no clue that he has no clue. Headed out to the radio station for a live interview with J about Washington Place. Couldn’t hear it, of course, but felt it went well. Didn’t have to say much. Directly from there to a three hour All Is Calm rehearsal in the distant fringes of Fletcher. Came home, slept about an hour, rose precipitously, vomited heroically, sat in front of the TV until the sickness and the acid subsided. Rose finally in pale light and cleaned the litter box. Lovely day, all in all.

November 3, 2015

Voted at Saint Eugene’s. Received a doughnut.

Humanities debacle yesterday. Will talk it over with the class. The theme was “Disability as Diversity,’ which has nothing to do, they admitted, with our study, but provided a day which didn’t have to be planned. My belief is that a person with a severe speech impediment should probably not take up public speaking. To replace speechmaking with writing or painting or teaching or any other thing in this world is overcoming the handicap. To take up public speaking is to impose it.  If I were a bad actor, would I expect to be cast anyway on the basis of my wanting to be an actor? Should my bad acting be taken as noble defiance of the gifts which were dealt me, and the others which were withheld? Or just a test of everybody’s patience? Just willfulness? Our speaker could barely be understood, and much of his testimony– about forced sterilization in the 30's-- was lost. Nor could I quite understand why it was scheduled in the first place. The topic is not provocative, for not one person in the room could be expected to disagree with him or have another reasonable perspective. Another opportunity for easy indignation? He couldn’t mention the perps without identifying them as “white men,” a buzz word that sank immediately into everyone’s receptors, whether it was relevant or not. He victims he spoke of were white women. But if you didn’t know about eugenics, now you do, if you had the patience to unravel the smear of sounds.

Three nail-spitting blaspheming meltdowns already, and the day is little more than half over.

November 2, 2015

Truly remarkable downpouring from the heavens. Lakes shimmer in the dark under the streetlamps. Soaked between my car and the door of the Y.

Put The Weir to bed yesterday afternoon, a good experience which I am not sad is over. The drive– too much. I think we’re up on the “success” wall. Huge attendance for a “drama.” We were talking in the dressing room about how the play is not quite as good as some people seem to think, but then decided it might be just that we were doing it badly, and it was better to shut up about it. As a playwright, I see missed opportunities on every page. The interplay between the characters is better than the monologues, and yet the monologues are the meat of the play. Our Haywood County reviewer observed that men’s stories are not particularly scary.  The test is, did we slip in our own vomit? And we did not.

November 1, 2015

Our best performance yet last night, with a responsive and attentive crowd worthy of it. As an actor I find I cannot be completely “in the moment,” for if I am, I miss lines, because the lines are not always what one would say if one were fully in the moment. It has to be a compromise between being “in the moment” and reading the script at the back of your eyes. Hit that compromise last night. L was in the audience, said it was the best thing he’s ever seen me in. Of course, one takes that not as meant, but as a judgment on all that came before. They handed me a check, a big one, which was a nice surprise. For someone like J, it makes all the difference in the world.  E keeps her mind in the game by not speaking to any of us from the time she walks through the door to the time she leaves. Hope it’s working for her.
   
Dark morning slick and gleamy with rain. I slept the extra hour the Time Lords gave us.