Author Archives: weinberg

books, quotes

dragging the Serpentine

“…It is this infernal St. Simon marriage case. I can make neither head nor tail of the business.”
“Really! You surprise me.”
“Who ever heard of such a mixed affair? Every clue seems to slip through my fingers. I have been at work upon it all day.”
“And very wet it seems to have made you,” said Holmes laying his hand upon the arm of the pea-jacket.
“Yes, I have been dragging the Serpentine.”
“In heaven’s name, what for?”
“In search of the body of Lady St. Simon.”
Sherlock Holmes leaned back in his chair and laughed heartily.
“Have you dragged the basin of Trafalgar Square fountain?” he asked.
“Why? What do you mean?”
“Because you have just as good a chance of finding this lady in the one as in the other.”

– A.C. Doyle, “The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor,” The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (171)

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writing

reframe:

I have been (as is evident from the quotes) rereading The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. I was experimenting with the computer-downloadable e-reader softwares, and I’m reading this one on the Adobe version.

It has given me yet another idea for what to do with the endlessly importuning Sander Lamori, who will not be buried, despite the best gravediggers. Sander is a lot like a detective. I have also been watching lots of HOUSE and BURN NOTICE and thinking about episodic serial narratives (Sander was always going to be a serialist) that are focused around the solving of a problem.

But although I can think of a detective, I can’t write detective stories. I am not the sort of person who is good at tying up loose ends, let alone fabricating them. The word “puzzle” has always led me to look frantically for my brother, who is, of the two of us, designated to solve all the puzzles. I am not designed to design puzzles. I have never read a detective story in my life in which I did not flip past all the technical bits. (I enjoy doing puzzles, but mostly as an excuse to hang out with the aforementioned brother. If he’s not around, I tend to start playing with the puzzle pieces and imagining them as members of a chorus and making them dance and talk and have dialogues and get in fights…you get the idea.)

I have, however, always been more actively interested in the Holmes stories in which, as Watson remarks, no crime has been committed whatsoever–psychological intrigues, misunderstandings between lovers, etc. In those cases, I have often felt, I might be able to give advice, or construct a character who could. Perhaps I might be able to write problem-oriented stories in which, rather than crimes, psychological or romantic problems are brought to the heroes for advice; and perhaps Sander and his straight, humorless female sidekick might, against their own better judgment, get drawn into meddling with / trying to remedy the love affairs of their fellow teenagers. Maybe one of them writes the love advice column for their school paper.

I think this is a very good idea, and if I am not murdered by a shadowy organization, I shall undertake it.

If I do not do this, either, perhaps one day I will manage to write a story about all the different (unwritten) Sander Lamori stories that have never been written. Zombies seem to be very trendy right now.

Also, incidentally: House/Wilson = Holmes/Watson. I must be the last person on the planet to notice that.

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books, quotes

one long effort to escape from the commonplaces of existence

“You reasoned it out beautifully,” I exclaimed in unfeigned admiration. “It is so long a chain, and yet every link rings true.”
“It saved me from ennui,” he answered, yawning. “Alas! I already feel it closing in upon me. My life is spent in one long effort to escape from the commonplaces of existence. These little problems help me to do so.”
“And you are a benefactor of the race,” said I.
He shrugged his shoulders. “Well, perhaps, after all, it is of some little use,” he remarked. “‘L’homme c’est rien–l’oeuvre c’est tout,’ as Gustave Flaubert wrote to George Sand.”

– A.C. Doyle, “The Red-Headed League,” The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (41)

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books, quotes

the fierce energy of his own keen nature

“…Holmes, who loathed every form of society with his whole Bohemian soul, remained in our lodgings in Baker Street, buried among his old books, and alternating from week to week between cocaine and ambition, the drowsiness of the drug, and the fierce energy of his own keen nature.”

– A.C. Doyle, “A Scandal In Bohemia,” The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (5)

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the chorus

yesterday

was the last of three chorus workshops at Carver Center High School with N’s students, working on the choruses from Ted Hughes’s translation of the AGAMMEMNON. I am going to eventually write an essay about these choruses, how choral forms or devices appear in other Hughes poems (esp. in BIRTHDAY LETTERS) and on the experience of directing the choruses.

Hughes’s choruses are lineated in a very abrupt and irregular manner, but the lines have a lot of rhythmic consistency underneath that lineation. Reading to the punctuation helped: that is, we disregarded his line breaks for the purpose of speaking the text.

We used these techniques:

Day One:
(1) Assigning specific students to “lead” or be responsible for different phrases of the text, and working through the text, one section at a time, in this manner.
(2) Adding multiple voices in on top of the framework of individual students leading
(3) Discussing intention, tone, action verbs for passages (just like with a monologue)

Day Two:
Same as Day One but moving much more quickly: we got through several pages, instead of just one stanza.

Day Three:
(1) Permitted students to freely chorally improvise through remainder of chorus passage in question. Discussed results.
(2) Let individual students try their hand at directing or orchestrating passages–assigning specific words to specific students.
For example, there was a repeated line “The black bird and the white bird,” and one student asked half the students to say “The black bird” and the other half “the white bird.” This assignment of half-lines to subgroups reminded me of Homeric epithets. His innovation with this line was carried forward when and wherever the line appeared.
(3) Time running out, I encouraged the remaining students to “sketch” their ideas rather than assign them. There is a tendency to say “John, you say “The,” and Elizabeth, you say “Ship,” ” and so on, and it’s very time-consuming. But through using improv as a quick rendering device, we had time for three students to direct.

N and I discussed some, after, whether 15-year-olds are old enough to direct chorus passages themselves. It did bring out some time-wasting and arguing in the group–part of the problem may be the large size (12 students) of the group they have to control. But it was interesting to see. I think they might be able to do it effectively in smaller groups.

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poetry

Monody shall not wake the mariner

At Melville’s Tomb

Often beneath the wave, wide from this ledge
The dice of drowned men’s bones he saw bequeath
An embassy. Their numbers as he watched,
Beat on the dusty shore and were obscured.

And wrecks passed without sound of bells,
The calyx of death’s bounty giving back
A scattered chapter, livid hieroglyph,
The portent wound in corridors of shells.

Then in the circuit calm of one vast coil,
Its lashings charmed and malice reconciled,
Frosted eyes there were that lifted altars;
And silent answers crept across the stars.

Compass, quadrant, and sextant contrive
No farther tides . . . High in the azure steeps
Monody shall not wake the mariner.
This fabulous shadow only the sea keeps.

– Hart Crane, White Buildings

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israel, politics

…

“British director Mike Leigh canceled his scheduled visit to Israel yesterday in the wake of the cabinet’s controversial decision to approve an amendment to the Citizenship Law last week requiring non-Jews to pledge allegiance to Israel as a “Jewish and democratic state.”

– Haaretz. Via AJ.

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poetry

a head like a wet muffin

“It is not very exciting to arise and essay forth to ten hours dull and exasperating labor every morning at five-thirty and return home with a head like a wet muffin afterward. And that is the routine that I am enmeshed in at present…”

– Hart Crane, letter to William Wright, Feb 24, 1920 (Letters, Weber ed., 33)

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Baltimore, the chorus

briefly,

Taught a workshop on a chorus from Ted Hughes’s translation of AGAMMEMNON today to N’s class at the Carver Center High School in Towson. Then. in our workshop today, convinced everyone to read through Yeats’s “No Second Troy” in chorus formation. Tomorrow, more The Other Shore chorus workshops, and I’ll be back at Carver twice this week. Never have I ever…imagined doing so many of these things in one week. It’s a good thing.

L and B are in town.

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