Apologies, Performances, and Trousers
I'm climbing out of the funk I've been in, slowly. I've even made some progress writing emails to people! Please note, however, that if I have not yet replied to an email of yours, this is in no way an indication that you are somehow lower down on my list of priorities to write to. I've just been writing to people who, if you can believe it, I've been out of contact with for even longer.
So, I finally have a big big deadline looming: the 45-minute colloquium I'm giving in Cambridge in exactly one week. Oddly, while in Seattle what I was most worried about was the Q&A, this time I'm not worried about that at all. I suppose I have fewer people to impress in the Cambridge audience. The biggest worry, is, I guess, that RP will realize how little work I've accomplished since I got here. Pathetic, really.
So what do I do now that I finally have something big and high-stakes to prepare for? Well, finally start going to plays and concerts, of course! Friday I have tickets for the London Sinfonietta, playing Michael Gordon's Gotham (probably won't be as good as Decasia, but that would be asking a lot), Mark-Anthony Turnage's Crying Out Loud (World premiere, I believe, and it's probably too much to hope for that it somehow involves the Peter Allen song), and finally Reich's City Life (Now!! With Extra Added Post-9/11 Resonance!!).
The next day I'm catching a matinee of Schiller's Don Carlos, starring Derek Jacobi, which I am approximately 90% sure I will enjoy less than the last time I saw Verdi's Don Carlos, but which I'm looking forward to nonetheless. The Schiller centenary or something is going on, so there's more Schiller drama available that one has any right to expect in any non-German-speaking country. I'm kicking myself for missing his Mary Stuart in one of the fringe theaters a few weekends ago. Although this is a little odd, I have a sense that the big big Romantic/historical epics by Schiller and Victor Hugo and, I dunno, Goethe and the like might be due for a revival. There's something about the seriousness and sweep that seems, I dunno, somehow right just now.
Soon the world will be ready for my long-fantasized staging of Hugo's Cromwell, performed uncut, with little physical movement, and very slow, uninflected line readings. Someday...
These are, in fact, the first instrumental music concert and the first spoken drama that I have seen in London (no, the organ recital does NOT count). Isn't that pathetic?
Some of you have been forced to hear me wax lyrical about the Marc Newsom for G-Star Raw collection. Well, I went and tried them on... and they are so beautiful. You may not be able to see in the pictures on the G-Star website that the white rubbery outlining of the back pocket elegantly flows into the hammer-loop, from which no hammer will ever hang. Details, darlings, details! Anyway, when I tried them on, I half expected to maybe splurge and pay something ridiculous for them. Only after I had put them on did I discover that they were not around £100, as I was casually expecting, but rather two hundred and forty-five pounds. That is, almost $500. That is, almost as much as a month's rent in my first apartment in Oakland. Then again, I suppose pants last a lot longer than a month. And these pants would bring me much more joy that 1849 6th Ave #4 ever did. And £245 is only about 2.5 weeks rent in my current situation.
Anyway, after trying on the Thing of Beauty by Marc Newsom, I took my favorite favorite jeans in the whole world to the Turkish tailor to get a rip in the crotch patched. Yes, again. (These are the pants that, last time I was paying to get them repaired, prompted the fashion-conscious A— to remark "why, exactly, are these jeans so great?") Dropping them off, the guy said "Do you want us to clean them, too? Because if they see them like this, they won't touch 'em."
Well, £8 and some humiliation is still cheaper than a new pair of jeans.
So, I finally have a big big deadline looming: the 45-minute colloquium I'm giving in Cambridge in exactly one week. Oddly, while in Seattle what I was most worried about was the Q&A, this time I'm not worried about that at all. I suppose I have fewer people to impress in the Cambridge audience. The biggest worry, is, I guess, that RP will realize how little work I've accomplished since I got here. Pathetic, really.
So what do I do now that I finally have something big and high-stakes to prepare for? Well, finally start going to plays and concerts, of course! Friday I have tickets for the London Sinfonietta, playing Michael Gordon's Gotham (probably won't be as good as Decasia, but that would be asking a lot), Mark-Anthony Turnage's Crying Out Loud (World premiere, I believe, and it's probably too much to hope for that it somehow involves the Peter Allen song), and finally Reich's City Life (Now!! With Extra Added Post-9/11 Resonance!!).
The next day I'm catching a matinee of Schiller's Don Carlos, starring Derek Jacobi, which I am approximately 90% sure I will enjoy less than the last time I saw Verdi's Don Carlos, but which I'm looking forward to nonetheless. The Schiller centenary or something is going on, so there's more Schiller drama available that one has any right to expect in any non-German-speaking country. I'm kicking myself for missing his Mary Stuart in one of the fringe theaters a few weekends ago. Although this is a little odd, I have a sense that the big big Romantic/historical epics by Schiller and Victor Hugo and, I dunno, Goethe and the like might be due for a revival. There's something about the seriousness and sweep that seems, I dunno, somehow right just now.
Soon the world will be ready for my long-fantasized staging of Hugo's Cromwell, performed uncut, with little physical movement, and very slow, uninflected line readings. Someday...
These are, in fact, the first instrumental music concert and the first spoken drama that I have seen in London (no, the organ recital does NOT count). Isn't that pathetic?
Some of you have been forced to hear me wax lyrical about the Marc Newsom for G-Star Raw collection. Well, I went and tried them on... and they are so beautiful. You may not be able to see in the pictures on the G-Star website that the white rubbery outlining of the back pocket elegantly flows into the hammer-loop, from which no hammer will ever hang. Details, darlings, details! Anyway, when I tried them on, I half expected to maybe splurge and pay something ridiculous for them. Only after I had put them on did I discover that they were not around £100, as I was casually expecting, but rather two hundred and forty-five pounds. That is, almost $500. That is, almost as much as a month's rent in my first apartment in Oakland. Then again, I suppose pants last a lot longer than a month. And these pants would bring me much more joy that 1849 6th Ave #4 ever did. And £245 is only about 2.5 weeks rent in my current situation.
Anyway, after trying on the Thing of Beauty by Marc Newsom, I took my favorite favorite jeans in the whole world to the Turkish tailor to get a rip in the crotch patched. Yes, again. (These are the pants that, last time I was paying to get them repaired, prompted the fashion-conscious A— to remark "why, exactly, are these jeans so great?") Dropping them off, the guy said "Do you want us to clean them, too? Because if they see them like this, they won't touch 'em."
Well, £8 and some humiliation is still cheaper than a new pair of jeans.
posted by Grrg at 1:52 PM
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