the slow march to Phase 2 in the city's comeback continues. For you, cityboy, it just means waiting it out, and even when it happens, a lot depends on your mobility, which has not been much recently.
Today, so far, just stayed mostly in and around the apartment---a walk north on Amsterdam to 84th and some time spent in Riverside Park in the seventies. Still, perhaps the most interesting part of this day was my time spent "lying around" in the 1 o'clock time period. I had two very strong visions. The first concerns a short scene that fascinates me from The Mask and the Face, the play that I just bought on line, and that I have thought about since my sophmore year at Hopkins. It is a dialogue, between the play's protagonist---a man in his late twenties who believes that an unfaithful wife should be killed for her sins, and an older man---a man of the world---who has married a much younger woman. He is aware that she is being unfaithful to him; he does not have a problem with that. The younger man is combative---the older, calm and worldly wise--- a very effective contrast. In the scene, the older man explains why he puts up with his wife's infidelities, and how he thinks it will all play out. The younger man is incredulous. Somehow, each time I go back to the play, rather than reading the whole play through again, I fixate on those two pages.
Amazing! I must have read the scene today at least six times. I would love to see it performed--just that segment, in front of an audience. As for the rest of the play, the young man with such a strong view of infidelity finds out that his wife has been cheating on him, and then is forced to make a decision---to stand by his beliefs, or have compassion. The rest of the play is about how that decision changes his life.
Second vision: centers around Act I of the Seagull. I fantasize directing a production at Friends--just of Act I---and in my mind, cast students whom I know in most of the parts. The first act plays in my mind over and over again. At this point, I feel like I know how each moment in the act should be played--just thinking about the play and its characters stimulates me, Would such a production be
possible..? Probably not---you are not part of the artistic staff at Friends, for one, and secondly, would the students, asked to read The Sea Gull, be excited by it, or intimidated by it, since it so out of their
"ken". At times, when i have suggested to a student at Friends, a book or a performance that stimulates my imagination, they have shut it down. Ah well, citiboy, the whole thing remains in your mind---still, what I think is important is how much sustenance I get just from thinking about
that first act, especially its final moment---Dr. Dorn, helplessly empathic while all the energy is going on around him.
Reading news: I am currently reading Prep, by Cutis Sittenfeld, the story of a middle class white girl thrust into an exclusive private boarding school. Not exactly gripping, but its working. But I just bought a novel, at a news stand (remember the book stores are still not opened) by J.M. Coetzee, the renowned South African novelist an essayist, called Waiting for the Barbarians---which, from the little I have read, is about social justice in South Africa. Quite a contrast---sensitive white girl
trying to navigate an elite school, and a novel focusing on social justicee. Which will win
out my time. We will see by tomorrow, or soon, stay tuned....
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