metablog, writing

isn’t hard to master

I haven’t blogged in a long time. Shortly after the Passover Seder of which I spoke in the last post, my MacBook, which has seen me through a year and a half of personal assisting, a year and a half of assistant directing, and a year of Chicago writing, died the death of all good technology. I am writing this from my friend B’s computer, up in Lakeview, where I spent the night last night – watching SINGING IN THE RAIN and talking of old and new friends.

Being without a laptop has made trying to write regularly interesting at best, difficult at worst. I am laboring under a backlog of both ideas and emails. I find myself taking a weekly two-hour-long trip to the 24-hour Kinkos to get scenes typed up for playwriting class.

I lost work as a result – not much finished work, which was backed up, but first drafts in all genres.

A good thing about this is that I am learning to write first drafts longhand and save computer composition for revision, which has the merit, if nothing else, of shaking up my work habits.

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Judaism

There’s religion upstairs.

A small bookstore in a major city in Illinois.

A: Do you have a Passover Haggadah?
B: A what?
A: A Passover Haggadah.
B: I’m not familiar…?
A: (realizing she is still in the Midwest) It’s, uh, a Jewish thing. Do you have a Jewish, I mean, do you have a Judaica section?
B: There’s religion upstairs. You can’t miss it.

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books, chicago, Judaism

don’t call it a tuesday

Merry-go-roundup:

Riding home today on the Division bus with a grocery bag full of five boxes of matzah, I felt like Golda Meir, shopping for her sister’s Denver Seder for all the tubercular Zionists, and meeting Morris, perhaps. I have no idea if that’s what she did or not, but it made me think of her.

The pigeons and I both rejoiced today at the removal of the Winter Snow Covers from the fountain in the concrete public-triangle-square at the Ashland/Milwaukee/Division intersection. Soon, pigeons, soon, the fountain will run freely again.

If, for the sake of argument, you waited until you were 27 to read THE TURN OF THE SCREW because you were creeped out by the hype, you’re going to be kind of underwhelmed. You might also decide that you have read your last novel about governesses. Nonetheless, I am still trying to plow through aaaaall of Henry James. One of the advantages of aging is that I am able to take him in, and I want to take it all in before it’s too late. I feel like I have a limited James window. Next: THE BOSTONIANS.

My pink phone is dead. Maybe it was too pink.

My roommate has TWILIGHT on Netflix.

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theater

dialogue from playwriting class

A: Do you have a degree in directing?
B: No, English.
A: How did you ever learn how to do it?
B: (not sure she ever did) I just started, and made a lot of mistakes along the way. You kind of pick it up as you go along.
A: What’s the last thing you directed?
B: (realizing that this is also the first, and only thing, she ever directs) An adaptation of AGAMMEMNON.
A: I can’t imagine how you did that!
B: (me either, babe) You do it if you have to.

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chicago, F&F, writing

april snowers

Yes, it’s snowing again. This time, the white dots are rushing downwards, like arpeggios.

I’ve spent the day cleaning up from last night’s party, which is one of my favorite things to do – to very slowly remove stains from your apartment that you can’t identify or remember. How did the food get all the way over here?

R&C took over the kitchen at 4 pm and created a TopChefworthy multi-course meal, including clams, grapefruit, salmon, focaccia, and scallops. E surprised me with a cake that was mousse layered on top of a brownie. I haven’t had a proper birthday cake in ages. And they really put 27 candles on it. I have the best friends in my universe or in Douglas Adams’s. No one went home hungry, or sober.

The best part was E singing along with Air Supply, and the other best part was when we found ourselves straining the last bottle of red wine through coffee filters to remove glass from a broken neck. So far, no one seems to have died. C lost one of the solar-system earrings R made her outside somewhere, and now that it’s started snowing, I’m not sure I will be able to find it.

Yesterday was also the first meeting of the new playwriting class I’m taking. I got to workshop the scene which I thought was going to serve as the play-within-the-play. It reads fine, but the instructor pointed out that it both had no dramatic action and also, as plays-within-plays go, was one of the least eventful PWPs ever. He was right.

I’m very excited about working on both the frame-play and the PWP itself, but I get the feeling that this class, rather than leaving me with a finished draft, is going to leave me with unfinished questions.

I am going to brave the snow and go buy an eggplant. If you had asked, I would advise you to do the same. Snow in April demands eggplants.

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theater

maybe you don’t want to own your own theater

Leaders of nonprofit groups say the economy has only worsened problems in an arts sector that is as overbuilt as the housing sector.

The cherished American belief that ownership guarantees security has been cruelly disproven for many, arts organizations as well as individuals, who bit off more than they could chew.

– NYT via AJ

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a propos of nothing, chicago, writing

why is a raven like a writing-desk?

Last night, Beth and I ate at Mana on Division and planned out the Seder we’re having next week, and then I rode the Ashland bus to Pilsen for another meeting of the Jacques Lacan book club – which isn’t only about Jacques Lacan – but in my mind, he will always be the person who dragged me back into critical theory.

This morning is the first meeting of another playwriting class. It’s six sessions, and each one includes one hour of a writing exercise and two of hearing actors read the scenes you bring in.

So I’m beginning with what I think are the two crucial scenes from the 80 pages of the two-character play that I want to put within a larger framing structure, and seeing what happens. This week, one of my Chicago friends is one of the two guest actors, so that’ll be fun. She’s seen some of this material before.

I’m so happy to be back in a Saturday morning theater environment, like the acting class I used to audit in Los Angeles. This class is a long-running thing that I expect to have some regulars and some new folks. It’s a community that I’m very excited to meet. It won’t be the same as being in rehearsals, but it is a step closer to returning to rehearsals on the terms I want.

Tonight, a whole acronym full of friends are coming over for dinner. Outside, you can see sky between the clouds.

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a propos of nothing, F&F, self-blogerential

her long story

When Emilia came to the end of her long story – which in spite of its length displeased no one; on the contrary, they considered it to be briefly told with respect to the quantity and variety of events that were recounted in it – the Queen, expressing her wishes with a single nod to Loretta, gave her leave to begin, and she did so as follows:

Dear friends and readers, or enemies and followers, today is my twenty-seventh birthday, and although my life at this time feels like the longest story I have ever known, I hope that you, like the Decameronists, will find it and this blog equally briefly told with respect to the quantity and variety of events recounted in it.

This is the first birthday in years that I have not spent in previews. I am spending it, instead, job-interviewing, housecleaning, filing, and preparing for another meeting of the Jacques Lacan book club this evening. Tomorrow, some friends are coming over for dinner. Last night, I celebrated the April Seconding with a single cupcake, muttering “Happy birthday, cupcake” to myself in quiet agony. But today, I’m going to clean the bathtub.

The most important present I have given myself is the making of a decision which has been suspending me in neutral for months. In its wake, I barely know what to do with myself, but at least it has been made.

Although, unlike Lauretta, I do not know what story I am going to tell you yet, I am comforted and continued by the knowledge that I will keep telling you something. Thank you for being and for reading.

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poetry, writing

yes I said yes I will Yes

Pick a card, any card. April 1st is a good day to make up your mind, like making a bed, or a cake. I would say more but this blog has a strict anti-spoiler policy. But today, in yoga, after making a decision that has been unraveling me like Weezer’s sweater for months now, I poised on my arms in crow pose for a second – for the first time. I realized that I’ve probably been able to do this for months now, I just haven’t believed that I could. I’ll say more when I can, but I want so much to say, here and now, this: Follow, poet. And this: Thank you for waiting for me, poem.

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