Author Archives: weinberg

Baltimore, theater, workstyle

weekend update

Last night, working on the grant in the computer lab. Rows and rows of empty workstations. Not a lot of people writing papers on the first weekend of the semester, and the Sunday of Labor Day weekend. I wanted to go to a musical improv session (the Volunteers’ Collective is starting up again) at the Red Room, but I wasn’t done with the writing. Today, I’m still working on it.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the last two Parallel Octave sessions. We had unexpected guests at both. Two weeks ago, two kids–brothers, I think–who lived nearby wandered in and ended up playing spontaneous percussion for us. Last week, some actor friends came in–people I did my very first Baltimore chorus workshop with–and one of them brought her sister, who was visiting. Last night, I saw the sister again, and learned that she, like I used to, is living from job to job, from one place to another, and not paying rent.

It’s unreal, but good, that I have a space where people like that can come through and play or act. Kids, or travelers.

Today, I woke up and made pancakes for the week. I’m in the mindset of preparing in advance. Everything has to be done by Friday, when I get on a plane.

There’s a free yoga class at the Hampden Baltimore Yoga Village at 5 pm, and I’m really going to try to get finished in time to go.

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theater

nuts, ands, or bolts

Yesterday, a good recording session for ||8ve–our twentieth. (Twenty weeks of chorus workshops. I’m very happy.)

I spent the rest of the night doing various things to get ready for taking a trip to Poland next week. I haven’t mentioned it here, but I’m going there to take a theater workshop from September 9-20. There are many things that must be done before I leave, including finishing a grant.

To this end, I spent the morning organizing photo files, and am about to go print them. Looking at four-year-old productions. Remembering the person I was when I saw those people every day, when those images were moving, not fixed.

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Baltimore

fall

(1) It’s as bright as June outside but the sunlight is hollow. The wind is moving everything it can move.

(2) Our neighbors are having a yard sale: one neighbor purchases spoons from another.

(3) Coming out of the Kinkos with copies of Tamora and The Demon Lover / House-Carpenter song, the wall of green-and-yellow trees along Charles Street is festooned with loose, swirling leaves, from sidewalk to canopy. Circles of leaves are spinning and elevating on the concrete steps.

(4) The mail contains a renewal notice for a magazine and a train ticket from Berlin to Poznan.

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Baltimore, theater

animated cacti

The Annex Theater premieres

FISTFUL OF FLOWERS

Fri Sep 3, 8pm.
Creative Alliance at The Patterson
$10, $8 mbrs & stus.

Fistful of Flowers is a soulful, multi-hued, queered Western. Collaborating with artists, performers and musicians, Annex Theater is one of Baltimore’s most innovative young companies. Hurt cowboy, ex-lovers seek vengance amidst animated cacti and live music by the company and musician Gerry Mac. A woman plays a gay man while an exit wound bleeds a thirty-foot long batik of the western landscape.

3134 Eastern Avenue
Baltimore Maryland 21224
Phone: 410-276-1651

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quotes, theater

Dissemble all your griefs and discontents

TAMORA
My worthy lord, if ever Tamora
Were gracious in those princely eyes of thine,
Then hear me speak indifferently for all;
And at my suit, sweet, pardon what is past.

SATURNINUS
What, madam, be dishonoured openly
And basely put it up without revenge?

TAMORA
Not so, my lord; the gods of Rome forfend
I should be author to dishonour you.
But on mine honour dare I undertake
For good Lord Titus’ innocence in all,
Whose fury not dissembled speaks his griefs.
Then at my suit look graciously on him;
Lose not so noble a friend on vain suppose,
Nor with sour looks afflict his gentle heart.
[Aside to Saturninus] My lord, be ruled by me, be won at last.
Dissemble all your griefs and discontents;
You are but newly planted in your throne;
Lest then the people and patricians too,
Upon a just survey take Titus’ part
And so supplant you for ingratitude,
Which Rome reputes to be a heinous sin,
Yield at entreats, and then let me alone
I’ll find a day to massacre them all
And raze their faction and their family,
The cruel father and his traitorous sons,
To whom I sued for my dear son’s life;
And make them know what ’tis to let a queen
Kneel in the streets and beg for grace in vain.
Come, come, sweet emperor; come, Andronicus,
Take up this good old man, and cheer the heart
That dies in tempest of thy angry frown.

– Titus Andronicus (1.1.427)

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poetry

behind its framework

To a Tree

Oh, tree outside my window, we are kin,
    For you ask nothing of a friend but this:
To lean against the window and peer in
    And watch me move about! Sufficient bliss

For me, who stand behind its framework stout,
    Full of my tiny tragedies and grotesque grieves,
To lean against the window and peer out,
    Admiring infinites’mal leaves.

– Elizabeth Bishop (written in 1927, when she was 16) (Collected, “Poems Written In Youth,” 212)

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Baltimore, F&F, gradschool

back-to-school

Off for the second day of departmental TA training / boot camp for the introductory creative writing course we all teach. It’s fun to have more of an idea of what’s up this time around.

My freshman roommate has been in town for the past few days, too. Been getting to see more of Baltimore with her–we went to Fed Hill last night for dinner with an old friend of hers from Kauai.

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