Daily Archives: October 2, 2008

chicago, music, politics

The idea Palin comparison with…(I tried…)

I just discovered Jason Robert Brown’s weblog, and the news that he’s writing the music for a Kennedy Center symphonic adaptation of E.B. White’s TRUMPET OF THE SWAN, with playwright Marsha Norman. These are all such good things, and remind me that there’s a world beyond Sarah Palin.

As I discovered when I was elected one of the 3 writers for the Stanford Band’s halftime shows, in 2001, I’m not really a comedy writer. I’m a punnist, whether or not they’re funny. It’s all about how words sound. To this end, here’s the Palin Pun that I think of every time I hear her name:

Sarah Palin:
Parasailing.

(a moment of silence for the pun)

T minus ninety minutes to the debate. Biden my time. I’ll be watching it with Robert and Caitlin in their Ravenswood apartment, the same place where I saw Obama’s acceptance speech. I think we’ll all remember where we saw these events for a long time.

Yours in trepidation.

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quotes

it cannot be demanded

A writer has no use for the clock. A writer lives in an infinity of days, time without end, ploughed under.

It is sometimes necessary to be silent for months before the central image of a book can occur. I do not write every day. I read every day, think every day, work in the garden every day, and recognize in nature the same slow complicity, the same inevitability. The moment will arrive, always it does, it can be predicted but it cannot be demanded. I do not think of this as inspiration. I think of this as readiness.

– Jeannette Winterston, “A Work of My Own,” ART OBJECTS: ESSAYS ON ECSTACY AND EFFRONTERY

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