28 Names

So, this morning I woke up and got to work early, so I decided to write out a list of people I need to write emails to, both work-related and friends. Pretty much just off the top of my head, I ended up with a list 28 names. Twenty-eight! The list ranges from certain people whom I still call "really good friends" when they come up in conversation, but with whom I have not communicated with whatsoever since arriving in this country, to, um, the president of the AMS (although her reply is only a week late, rather than seven months). Having made a list, I then sat down and wrote... two emails. Only twenty-six to go!

(The twenty-eight names do not even include the invitation I need to write for a dinner party I'm tentatively planning for the 18th, which would add six names or so to the total.)

So anyway: maddening musicology colloquium on Jimi Hendrix at Oxford last Tuesday. Brilliant, brilliant musicology colloquium by the famous R—M— last Wednesday. (He's doing well.) Binge drinking in Camden on Thursday. Popstarz with new friends R— (the American) and O— (the eccentric) on Friday. Mysterious Skin on Saturday. Bernstein's Mass performed by the London Symphony Orchestra on Sunday.

This last one deserves a little comment. Everyone always thinks that Mass is a big disaster, right? Hippie shit appropriated by the establishment's establishment, or something like that? Godspell rewritten by the Radical Chic? Well, it is, sure... but I'll be damned if it doesn't really, really work on stage. And there is some stunning music. And some of the embarrassing lyrics are actually rather effective. That one recording sounds so very, very earnest... but that earnestness can be (and perhaps even in 1968, was?) undercut by the cynical sneering and (self-)parody in the staging. This production (in the Barbican Theatre) decided to make absolutely no reference to the 1960s at all—and in fact a lot of the stage business was cut. (Significantly, they decided to not actually show the moment when the celebrant throws the eucharistic bread and wine on the floor, the (actually still rather shocking) climax of the entire piece.) I was worried that British singers wouldn't be able to pull of the very vernacular American English—but it turns out they used mostly American soloists. The result was remarkably fresh. I might even say "relevant." (Now more than ever...?) And the audience response was rapturous, which completely surprised me—the biggest ovation I've ever seen in Britain. Mass! Hear it again, for the first time!

R— still has my PNP New Yorker thingy...

Did I mention I'm coming to New York in, uh, two weeks? Everyone I know in New York: y'all are toward the top of the twenty-eight...