I was all set to type you all up a hot, fresh fantasy entry, set in some far-off place and time, but the department of my brain which generates that particular flavor of paperwork seems to be on holiday, and anyway there are only so many Others I can break into and hotwire before the cops begin to catch on.
So instead I decided to put up a slightly nostalgickal, slightly gaseous essay about my roots in parody and the little catch in my throat I got this weekend when I realized I hadn't put out a fully-dressed parody of anything in simply ages, perhaps because the department of my brain responsible for parody has staged a bloodless junta and now is fully in charge of the Department of Self-Presentation as well. Parody was how I made my literary reputation in high-school, channelling Dickinson and Whitman with fire and assurance (if not perfect verisimilitude). Parody was how I wooed and lost, uh, someone important to me. Parody was even the subject of one of the better papers I wrote in college (on the way disrespect towards authority is treated in medieval parodies of liturgical music, as contrasted with "straight" invective). And when I knocked on Parody's door, on Saturday afternoon, her apartment was totally cleaned out except for a broken toaster and a pile of old Goon Show tapes.
If the last two years of my life were a concept album, the theme would be "recapturing youth" and nobody would buy it, although sad-eyed critics in vintage Converses would say it was really interesting. Which is how I find myself being sucked into this project of making a model theater, with settings for the Tempest. It's inspired in part by a shoebox theater I made late in high school for a production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, in part by Matthew Locke's stunning incidental music for The Tempest, and in part by a cursory re-reading of the Island of the day before in the library the other day. I have a glue stick and the divine Number 11 X-acto knife and a set of Prismacolors -- and suddenly I remember how much fun -- good, serious, brain-exercising fun -- I used to have.
Unsurprisingly, it is the first scene which is giving me the most trouble, and until I do some research on the anatomy of sixteenth-century ships I'm rather at an impasse. The look I'm trying to evoke is full-bloodedly Elizabethan, as seen through a German Expressionist kaleidoscope -- the proscenium (so far) is a rather bare Ionic portico decorated with rosettes and lightning-bolts. Asymmetry mixed with correctness of Serlian detail shall be my watchwords. Also it should move a lot: rocking waves and clouds and machines for the gods to come in on. I'm afraid I've set myself an absolutely teensy scale (the acting space is only nine by ten centimeters). Frustration with this project will almost certainly drive me back into the workforce, which is my sneaky ulterior motive.
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I've just discovered to my absolute horror that the all-natural deodorant to which I've been devoted for years contains lichen. Nay, furthermore, it trumpets this fact abroad. Deodorant lichen? Have none of these people smelt a wintering caribou?
Guest Link: Lichen Land. Useful if you need to identify a lichen whose thallus is fructicose with squamules. I'm not making this up, you know. Alas but it offers no advice with respect to which lichens give you that fresh feeling.
Current music: Silence, for the first time in weeks. Shout out to Bernardo Pasquini's touching Caino ed Abele, to which I was listening earlier in an attempt to mask some very private noises leaking in from next door. Does anybody else remember the scene in Oranges are not the only fruit with the neighbors and the hymns? I'm sorry. Caino ed Abele is a dramatic oratorio about the murder of Abel, marked by particularly complex and dark music.
Current shocking realization: it's past three in the morning.