(no subject)

Mail sorted, check
Laundry, check
Parka to drycleaners, check
Paychecks deposited, pay-check! :D
Dry-goods groceries finally put away, check
Dishes, check
Netflix subscription cancelled, alas, check

Not too bad for ten-thirty on a Monday morning, eh? I still have to work on a new radio play for FA, pay one or two bills, take out the volumnous amounts of trash, mail-order some trousers, and clean off a pile of stuff to scan and sort, but I feel much better about the next few days now that the bulk of the chores are out of the way.

As I was going through the library books to make sure there were no flags left in them before I returned them, I came across a passage I'd flagged especially because it made me crack. Up. Laughing. This is EA Robinson, the poet, at some point in the early 1930s, as quoted by Scott Donaldson:

Before long, he predicted, we would carry little machines in our pockets that would let us "talk with anybody anywhere on the face of the earth -- and some interesting things will be said."
-- p. 399

Well, he was right about the little machines, anyway. :D

(no subject)

You are a friend then, as I make it out,
Of our man Shakespeare, who alone of us
Will put an ass’s head in Fairyland

Again with Shakespeare we hear or read the same advice: 'Play what is written'. But what is written? Certain ciphers on paper. Shakespeare's words are records of the words that he wanted to be spoken, words issuing as sounds from peoples' mouths, with pitch, pause, rhythm and gesture as part of their meaning. A word does not start as a word -- it is an end product which begins as an impulse, stimulated by attitude and behaviour which dictate the need for expression.

And you have known him from his origin,
You tell me; and a most uncommon urchin
He must have been to the few seeing ones --
A trifle terrifying, I dare say,
Discovering a world with his man’s eyes,
Quite as another lad might see some finches,
If he looked hard and had an eye for nature.
But this one had his eyes and their foretelling,
And he had you to fare with, and what else?

Four hundred years ago it was possible for a dramatist to wish to bring the pattern of events in the outside world, the inner events of complex men isolated as individuals, the vast tug of their fears and asiprations into open conflict. Drama was exposure, it was confrontation, it was contradiction and it led to analysis, involvement, recognition and, eventually, to an awakening of understanding. Shakespeare was not a peak without a base, floating magically on a cloud; he was supported by scores of lesser dramatists....but sharing the same ambition for wrestling with what Hamlet calls the forms and pressures of the age...Shakespeare used the same unit that is available today -- a few hours of public time. He used this time span to cram together, second for second, a quantity of lively material of incredible richness.

He’s old enough to be
The father of a world, and so he is.
"Ben, you’re a scholar, what’s the time of day?"
Says he; and there shines out of him again
An aged light that has no age or station --
The mystery that’s his -- a mischievous
Half-mad serenity that laughs at fame
For being won so easy, and at friends
Who laugh at him for what he wants the most

When I first went to Stratford in 1945 every concievable value was buried in deadly sentimentality and complacent worthiness -- a traditionalism approved largely by town, scholar, and press....And it was at Stratford years later, at the official luncheon to celebrate Shakespeare's 400th birthday, that I saw a clear example of the difference between what a ritual is and what it could be. It was felt that Shakespeare's birthday called for a ritual celebration. The only celebration anyone could vaguely remember was related to a feast: and a feast today means a list of people from Who's Who, assembled round Prince Phillip, eating smoked salmon and steak...then someone made a formal speech, we listened politely -- and rose to our feet to toast William Shakespeare.

Talk? He was eldritch at it; and we listened --
Thereby acquiring much we knew before
About ourselves, and hitherto had held
Irrelevant, or not prime to the purpose.

At the moment the glasses clinked -- for not more than a fraction of a second, through the common consciousness of everyone present and all for once concentrating on the same thing -- passed the notion that four hundred years ago such a man had been, and that this was what we were assembled for. For a breath of time the silence deepened, a touch of meaning was there -- an instant later it was brushed away and forgotten.

He might have given Aristotle creeps,
But surely would have given him his katharsis.

If we understood more about rituals, the ritual celebration of an individual to whom we owe so much might have been intentional, not accidental.

Who will believe my verse in time to come,
If it were fill'd with your most high deserts?
Though yet heaven knows it is but as a tomb
Which hides your life, and shows not half your parts.
If I could write the beauty of your eyes,
And in fresh numbers number all your graces,
The age to come would say 'This poet lies;
Such heavenly touches ne'er touch'd earthly faces.'
So should my papers, yellow'd with their age,
Be scorn'd, like old men of less truth than tongue,
And your true rights be term'd a poet's rage
And stretched metre of an antique song:
But were some child of yours alive that time,
You should live twice,--in it, and in my rhyme.

Happy birthday, William.

Sources: EA Robinson, "Ben Johnson Entertains A Man From Stratford"; Peter Brook, "The Empty Space"; William Shakespeare, "Sonnet XVII".

(no subject)

The stress may be getting to my mother, too.

She sent me a package, which arrived today. Inside was a box of Wild West Peanut Brittle, three watches (only one of which is mine), a tube of sugar scrub, a hat catalogue, and a loaf of very moldy bread.

Hey, who cares, it's a package from mum! *shares the peanut brittle*