November 6, 2016

The Rutter Requiem went well. I was in good voice, and was learning about the workings of the music as I sang it (which I like best of all), and I think the congregation was moved. I am after this rehearsal process the more convinced that all things done in panic or anxiety are done amiss. To make one aesthetic choice in fear of another is not the way to go. I’d had my fill of church by the end of it, too, and note that New York will give me a breather. Drinks afterward at Avenue M, where I had hibiscus vodka for the first time. I must have days soon where I have more to say than this.

November 5, 2016

Rehearsal for the Requiem, which I am liking better than the other three times I sang it. Read twelve plays for ABBF. Two of them are glorious. Two are OK. The others, not so much. Do I blame playwrights for bad writing or the initial readers for bad selecting? People write plays without a clear idea of what they are; I feel there should be some interaction among characters, not just one figure after another coming on and spouting audience-ward what’s on her mind. 
   
Beka’s wedding venue has burned down, so my trip to Denmark is postponed.
   
Trying without success to think of some significant moment yesterday, except that I binge-watched the first three Aliens movies and slept sound afterwards without a nightmare. Dreamed instead that TD and I bought memberships to a very posh private club, where we were looking forward to luxuries which never quite materialized.
   
Photos from a California production of Waiting for the Witch.

November 4, 2016

Whatever I intended to do yesterday, what I did was let loose at the gym, shop while the cleaning ladies were at my house, then garden hard. A huge carton of roots and bulbs that I had forgotten I’d ordered arrived, and I made another inspired-by-idleness appearance at Eden Brothers, so there was much to plant, much to dig in order to plant, and by the time I was finished I was nearly immobile. Finished it all off by getting the worst haircut of my adult life. Feel fine this morning, though, and hit the Y as it opened.
   
Not one person between the Atlantic and the Pacific is not sick to death of this election. I am most sickened by the fest, the glut, the atrocity of irrationality. I smack my brow especially when people look at Hillary, a woman and a mother, and say that she represents “the same old thing” while Trump, an entitled self-delighted corporate billionaire represents change. It’s dumfounding. People don’t care the least about the meaning of words. Accusations of Hillary’s dishonesty and lack of trustworthiness seem,, as far as I could discover, completely made-up, and clung to despite the resigned denial of even those who first made the accusations. We prize what we think over what is. That’s OK when what we think is higher, but we think like rats fighting in a sewer and all who are not down there slashing with us are somehow out of touch. The Republicans had tried to subvert the Republic by denying voting rights and refusing to do their duty regarding the approval of justices, have gutted education and health services to make the rich richer, and yet somehow they can expect votes, and millions of them, rather than torches and pitchforks at their door. I simply don’t get it. I look for Tuesday when at least the forum will be closed, whatever else betide.

November 3, 2016

Back to the gym at last. There, a soak in the whirlpool, and it is still dark outside. I like it that way. Accomplish as much as you can before dawn.
   
Guest lecture in M’s Arts 310 class. Before my talk there were oral multi-media presentations, and I was flabbergasted at how half-assed they were. There was mastery of the media, all right, but the scripts, the messages, were abyssmal. I remember one series of presentations in my class when six students in a row skipped over words (“the s-word that I can’t pronounce”) relative to matters on which they should have at that point been experts. Our students barely let college mark an interruption in their lives. They barely let class mark an interruption in their checking of text messages. In this they are wholly innocent: dedication has never been offered to them as a life possibility. 
   
The Great Comet is evidently raking in the bucks. Sigh of relief. Some controversy about who originated the show off-Broadway. Email too long and remote for me to finish reading.
   
“On the Adoration of the Shepherds” accepted by what appears to be an evangelical anthology.

November 2, 2016

Odd dreams. I had taken a job in a sleazy movie theater, and realized that the clean up I was supposed to so was never going to finished, and I had to choose between leaving it only partially done or staying at a hopeless task forever. Was certain it was Sunday morning when I awoke. It was not.

recent scholarship

The Humaniad

---- a fragment
In those green lamented days of wisdom’s reign
When one was anxious to use one’s brain
And plans were laid in clear and common air
And one gave counsel in quad and on the stair
What was broken and amiss communally to repair,
Our fathers left behind their weekend ease
And gave birth to the Humanities.
From the first as good as it was strong
(All right, some of the lectures were too long)
It went from strength to strength for forty years.
New professor learned, and quelled their fears.
Graduating seniors dried their tears.
For whatever erred was communally made right,
And points were scored against encroaching Night,
And those that bitched the most as freshman
Would, at the finish, cry “Amen!”
Then arose one B_________ from the ruins of dead Rome,
And though he might have left the excellent alone,
Decided under protection of the Dark.
How he might most woundingly affix his mark.
So with a sly covert Satanic thrill
He gathered about him the weak in will
Who imagined his approval was their chance
Through the maze of Academia to advance.
“Let us,” said he, “Scorn all erudition
“And bring all that’s mediocre to fruition.
“Let us put everything we need on line–
“Research? Prepare a class? Who has the time?--
“For anything you really do not know
“there must be a snappy video.
“Scholarship, Discipleship, Mentorship? Oh please.
“The time’s too short for any one of these.
“And instead of pedagogy I’d like
“That much more time to ride my bike.”
Then spake he to his dark-of-night cabal,
“Behold how the gods of sloth we appease
“By making our curriculum such a breeze
“It can be taught by anyone at all.
“No need to know what came after and what before,
“Or who did what that led to what. It’s such a bore.
“And anyone who still possesses determination
“that students leave this course with actual information,“Shall be, summarily and harsh–O hark!--
“cast into the outer dark.
“Let us exile the excellent, that we
“Might flourish in our Mediocrity.
“It’s universal truth: each Creon is
“Anxious to be rid of his Tiresias.
Then uprose the mighty chairman from this throne
Heeding his creatures and them alone,
Until, on the blackest of black nights–

Here the manuscript is lost----

November 1, 2016

Faculty reading in the Laurel Forum. How was it? Varied. Tremendous effort in the morning, many things done, errands, correspondence, writing, collapse in the afternoon: the pattern of recent days.