Monthly Archives: June 2010

books, quotes

as telescoped and important as “Montaigne”

“Recalling the urgency I felt about my Work as a young sprat makes me laugh inwardly, a long, low, mocking guffaw that would curdle the blood of anyone who heard it. My Work! I still have it all somewhere, all the reprehensibly impish doggerel, the self-serious philosophical grandiosities. The arrogance of youth–those poems I wrote stank like soiled diapers in the sun, the essays were so snot-nosed they might as well have been written with colored chalk on a sidewalk in a hopscotch pattern. […] I cringe to think of the way I used to whisper aloud my own name, Hugo Whittier, the smarmy thrill I would feel at my breathless intimations, soon-to-be renowned. . . .As I recall, I intended that it would be shortened, in seminars and in conferences, to a crisp ‘Whittier,’ as telescoped and important as ‘Montaigne,’ or (the happy young Hugo inside me whispers urgently) ‘Shakespeare.’ ”

– Kate Christensen. The Epicure’s Lament. Doubleday: 2004. (204.)

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politics

until the law catches up to the culture

“Dramatically enough, “Glee” generated an unexpected real-life story last weekend to match its fictional plots. The Times’s Sunday wedding pages chronicled the Massachusetts same-sex marriage of Jane Lynch, the actress who steals the show as Sue Sylvester, the cheerleading coach who is the students’ comic nemesis. It’s a sunny article until you read that Lynch’s spouse, a clinical psychologist named Lara Embry, had to fight a legal battle to gain visitation rights with her 10-year-old adoptive daughter from a previous relationship. That battle, which Dr. Embry ultimately won, was required by Florida’s draconian laws against gay adoption — laws that were enacted during Anita Bryant’s homophobic crusades of the 1970s and more recently defended in court, for an expert witness fee of $120,000, by the Rev. Rekers of Rentboy.com renown.

We’ve come a long way in a short time, but as the Embry case exemplifies, glee for gay people in America still does not match “Glee” on Fox. Until the law catches up to the culture, the collective American soul should find even June’s wedding Champagne a bit flat.”

– Frank Rich in the NYT

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musicals, theater

scrounging under the couch cushions

“The Tony nominating committee had to go scrounging under the couch cushions to fill out the important category of original score this year, resorting to the rare tactic of including music from two straight plays among the four entries. ”

– Christopher Isherwood, “The Musical Has Lost Its Voice,” NYT. Via AJ.

His take comes in contrast to David Kamp, also in the NYT this week, who is more sanguine about the “Glee Generation,” the new audience for musicals, and the new writers and lyricists of musicals:

“The Broadway babies are not the passive, bused-in tourist young people of yore who went to see “The Phantom of the Opera” or “A Chorus Line” simply because it was what one did when visiting New York. They’re true believers for whom love of musicals brings happiness, transcendence, and, strangely enough, social acceptance. “

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Baltimore, music, the chorus, theater

keep your knickers on, it’s only a bloody play

Good, good ||8ve session yesterday: we worked on Dylan Thomas and revisited some Donne and Stevens. Piano and soprano saxophone. The energy of the group, yesterday, was much more about having the text function as one musical element in a sea of musical elements–a direction I don’t always go in, myself, but it was good to be pushed there. I think the results were wonderful. I left the session feeling really exhilarated.

After, went to JoeSquared on North Avenue and saw Second N8ture, a funk group (wonderful slow-paced cover of “Let’s Get It On”), and a horn-driven ensemble called the Chris Pumphrey Sextet. Their warmup reminded me of the experimental horn music Beth and I saw in Chicago, once upon a time — the three clarinetists in an art gallery, with everyone sitting around intently listening, and run after run after run of notes blurring together. But the actual set, once it started, was more traditional and programmatic — is that the right word? It had a lot of narrative elements, to my ear.. I liked them both. It’s good to be hearing more music.

Second N8ture plays at JoeSquared every second Saturday.

I also reread THE REAL THING (Stoppard) yesterday, which is what the title’s from. It’s Annie screaming at her producer into the phone, from a scene I directed for a class in high school. Scene 11. The first scene, I believe, I ever directed. With ED. I’m pretty sure. There are funny notes in my script, blocking and pacing notes. On the first page, someone has written (+ William Shakespeare) under the author’s name, (I think that was ED) and on the last page, “Kronk and Zadok Memorial Day,” after the oddly-named soldiers that Annie’s playwright lover is writing a bad television show about. (That was F.) The book is wrinkled and beat-up with weeks of rehearsal. It looks like what it is.

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books, fiction, quotes

all this phrase-making

    ” ‘Poor little place,’ he murmured with a sigh.
    She heard him. He said the most melancholy things, but she noticed that directly he had said them he always seemed more cheerful than usual. All this phrase-making was a game, she thought, for if she had said half what he said, she would have blown her brains out by now.
    It annoyed her, this phrase-making, and she said to him, in a matter-of-fact way, that it was a perfectly lovely evening. And what was he groaning about, she asked, half laughing, half complaining, for she guessed what he was thinking–he would have written better books if he had not married.
    He was not complaining, he said. She knew that he did not complain. She knew that he had nothing whatever to complain of. And he seized her hand and raised it to his lips and kissed it with an intensity that brought the tears to her eyes, and quickly he dropped it.”

– Virginia Woolf, TO THE LIGHTHOUSE

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fiction

rereading

TO THE LIGHTHOUSE for workshop in the fall. Whenever I read this the first time–freshman year, I think–I didn’t appreciate it. I was frustrated by how impeded the forward movement of the story was by all the narration of the characters’ interior lives. It’s still impeded, but I suppose that my appetite for frustrating experiences has increased with age.

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