“Wallace had decided that writing was not worth the risk to his mental health. He applied and was accepted as a graduate student in philosophy at Harvard. Philosophy was the only thing that had meant as much to him as writing. It, too, could trigger epiphanies. Harvard had offered him a scholarship, and academia would give him a more stable life, with health insurance.”
More of the same. Oh, DFW…DFW…
“In his senior year of high school, he began carrying a towel around with him to wipe away the perspiration from anxiety attacks, and a tennis racquet, so that no one commented on the towel.”
– D.T. Max on David Foster Wallace in the New Yorker (via Evan)
“Long after Burnham’s death, Frank Lloyd Wright told a lecture audience, “Thanks to Dan Burnham, Chicago seems to be the only great city in our States to have discovered its own waterfront.” Chicago, Wright said, was the most beautiful city in the country, and he gave the credit for this to Burnham, whose architecture he could never abide.”
– Paul Goldberger in the New Yorker on the centennial of the Burnham Plan of Chicago
The artists’ statements are done and the grant is almost finished.
We are lost in the arcane governmental sub-procedures of grant submission, which require registration with three different middleman websites in order to submit one grant. But we’re close.
I am at that point in editing where every sentence is only looked at for a way to make it shorter – I knew I’d gone too far when I was changing sentences like “The organizations involved are A, B, and C” to “Organizations involved are A, B, and C.”
I am editing the narratives of two artists into those “artist’s statement” items for a grant. I got to talk on the phone to each of them, which was nice. One, rehearsing in Minneapolis, had just returned from getting lost on a morning jog in ten-degree weather.
It would be inaccurate to say that snow is “falling” today, because from my second-story window, it looks more like it’s rising. Or, knocking at the door.
“…just as often the entries record a kind of spiritual desolation and profound isolation. The actress Hope Lange, with whom Cheever had an on-and-off affair, once said that he was the horniest man she had ever known, and sexual avidity is certainly omnipresent in the journals. They include graphic descriptions of sexual encounters, real and imagined, with members of both sexes, as well as anguished attempts to hide or rationalize or excuse his attraction to men. But what comes through most strongly is not so much lust as all-purpose yearning: for a gentle touch, a moment of closeness — for love. The journals are often so thrillingly well written that you can’t put them down, and yet there are pages where you feel you ought to look away. Reading them is like peering over someone’s shoulder into an abyss of loneliness.”
– Charles McGrath on John Cheever in the NYT Sunday magazine
Despite Ear Infection 2009, I managed to get some good work done today on a grant for the NEA, in between shooting steroids into my ears. (Mmm…steroids…)
I wrote almost the identical grant for a different project back in August. That time, it was my first federal government arts grant, and I think it took me about three times as long. This time was much less painful.
In a year which has often been about thwartedness and frustrationdom, and a vague sense of declining capabilities with incipient age – no more all-nighters – no more excessive consumption of alcohol without hangovers – no more life without consequences – it is so nice to feel like I have gotten better at doing something.
I just had an idea, which I think comes from time spent on Dr. Crazy’s blog.
As I contemplate the return to academia, I was trying to think if there was any topic that I care enough about to spend an entire thesis on it – something which resides within the family of English and comparative studies, relates to both poetry and theater, relates to other languages while still being grounded in English. Something with a relationship to performance without being exclusively about performance. Something more manageable than the history of rhyme in French and English poetry and theater. Something that lets me work on the Greeks without having to learn Greek.
What about some form of translation studies? You could take a given text and do a study of how its various English translations, over time, reflect (or don’t reflect) concurrent trends in poetry, theater, ideas of the time, etc. I guess it’s a kind of reception studies.
Maybe I could do a degree in creative writing somewhere with a 2-part thesis: a scholarly component on translation history of a particular text (ideally a French rhyming drama) and my own version.
I think this would allow me to prove, or disprove some of my favorite chestnuts (if anyone knows why a “chestnut” is called a chestnut in this context, please let me know), things like the ludicrous idea that it’s somehow “easier” to rhyme in French than in English.
I’m kind of into this.
“…for all of our familiarity with each other’s culture, even given our co-mingled DNA, the Brits are still sometimes surprised by our emotionally based naturalism. The goal of creating the illusion of “voyeurism” for the viewer that our art traffics in is still, it seemed to me by their almost amazed reaction to our efforts, something they don’t often or perhaps even naturally “go after” in their theatre. Literally, flocks of twenty-something, native-born theatre students were singular in their reaction of how “foreign” and “exciting” the ensemble-based naturalism was to them. This is not about any boast of something we can do that they can’t. Lord knows their artists can and do achieve any and every sublime height that we ever have or could and usually outrace us instantly in verse-based work. It’s simply that I was reminded of a British theatrical art whose deep ties to verse lead to somewhat different and more presentational ends.”
– Jeff Perry on the Steppenwolf blog on the British reaction to AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY in London
To my extreme annoyance, in the Chicago leg of my tour of Bodily Afflictions of the Kindergarten Period, I’ve somehow managed to develop an ear infection, which prevented me from taking my long-planned trip to Indianapolis for the culminating performance of the second year of the Indy Convergence tomorrow.
The Convergence is a theater conference which I co-founded last year, with friends I met assisting at OSF, and I was going to attend the performance both to congratulate my friends and to pass the baton to their new director of development. Instead, I’m here in Chi-town, oddly sick, and with something that I’ve never heard of anyone over the age of eight contracting. Using the droppers makes me feel like the Ghost in Hamlet. Lying in bed, reeking of acetic acid and liquid steroids (my ears could be baseball players) I keep hearing “The king rises!”
At any rate, if you’re in Indianapolis, please check out their work tomorrow. Feb 28th, 7 pm, Wheeler Arts Community, 1035 Sanders St., downtown Indy. Free and open to the public.
Dara Weinberg 