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2006-08-25, 9:44 a.m.:
Tim Burton to do Sweeney Todd? I can't imagine ANYTHING better. No, really. But Johhny Depp to play Sweeney Todd? I luv Johnny Depp, I really do, but that's just plain dumb. It doesn't matter if "he can sing." You can't play Sweeney Todd just by being "able to sing." Sweeney Todd is one of the most virtuoso, demanding, beautiful, lyrical roles in the songbook. This is not a role you can Rex-Harrison your way through. I don't want Depp unless he can SING SING SING SING. (And I don't want Patti Lupone, but that's another story.) The only person who could possibly play Sweeney Todd right now is Bryn Terfel. Duh. 1 comments
2006-08-24, 1:58 p.m.:
As part of today's big birthday celebration (a term I use loosely, very loosely), we are eating only snacks here. Feeling bitchy despite jubilee glee, however. I become an older bitch each year. Getting better at it. It seems to me that, on one's birthday, it should never be too early to begin drinking. 2PM? Hmm? Maybe more espresso is in order in a first-things-first sort of a way. A sudden bout of revising and poetizing came over me yesterday. Not quite sure what to make of it. Gutted a poem or two and increased the length of other poems by 100%. Everything is either very good or very bad or both. Everything is in a holding pattern. It's my current 'premier poem' - the one I have too much invested in and therefore cannot under any circumstances allow to suck - which I haven't looked at yet. I don't let myself open the file. I try not to think about it. I don't want it to be written in stone yet. I wish, a little, that it were working on itself in my absence. This week's obsessions come right on the heels of each other, all hurly-burly. They're tripping over each other. I can't leave the room without forgetting what it is that propelled me into the other room. I can't FOCUS. I'm sure I'm forgetting something vital and essential. I'm not sure what it is I'm supposed to be doing. So I do whatever's within arm's reach. It's so much easier to revise and change and fuck with (and if you're lucky, ultimately exalt) the tiny little low-ambition poems. Duh. Regrets, I have a few .... Ah, but that's a topic for another day. 0 comments
2006-08-23, 10:49 p.m.:
"Most of my ideas come from my childhood. I just needed the knowledge and skills to develop them." Gerhard Trimpin, sound sculptor and installation artist and creator of "Der Ring Hoch Drei" 0 comments
2006-08-23, 1:05 p.m.:
I want to swelter. 0 comments
2006-08-22, 4:40 p.m.:
*Though I suppose one of the best things to read on a desert island all by my only-o would be Walden, which also belongs on that other list**. 0 comments
2006-08-22, 3:33 p.m.:
No one tags me. I tag myself. You're IT! 1. What is a book that changed your life? I would say, The Hobbit. I had no idea that such things were possible, that the world contained such things, that the dark little library of Lake Anne Elementary could be allowed to contain such things. Dragons with names like Smaug. Songs that dwarves sung that I could make up tunes for (and still hear in my head when I think about the Misty Mountains). Riding in barrells down the river. Orcs with Cockney speech. Giant spiders. Forests that would eat you up. Pipeweed and shimery magic armor made of mithral and never-ending lembas and beautiful golden faerie queens. 2. What is a book you've read more than once? I re-read Jane Austen once a year, usually Emma and Sense and Sensibility and Persuasion and Pride and Prejudice. I re-read The Crossing. I have re-read the Kristin Lavransdottir trilogy with each pregnancy. I re-read The Country Between Us. I re-read the collected Stanley Plumly I have. I re-read Kunitz. I re-read The Sorrows of Young Werther (but in German, not English). I re-read the stories in The Birthday of the World (and want to re-read The Dispossessed, The Left Hand of Darkness). (When I re-read the Earthsea Trilogy, I found I no longer liked it as much.) I re-read John Cheever about once every year and a half. I used to re-read Ray Carver. I recently re-read Howard's End and A Room with a View. I'm sure I'm forgetting a lot. 3. What is a book you'd want with you on a desert island? I'd say Shakespeare because that would keep me busy the longest. If I got two books, I'd take the Bible too*. And of course I'd need a big blank book. 4. What is a book that made you giddy? I recently felt giddy while reading Clay Matthews' Muffler. 5. What is a book that made you sad? Primo Levi, The Periodic Table 6. What is a book you wish had been written? Ah hell. I sort of wish I had written Snow Crash. (Oops, I just realized I read this wrong. What do I wish had been written? The next thing I write.) 7. What is a book you wish had never been written? Mein Kampf. 8. What is a book you're currently reading? I'm reading a book about the Sudbury School on the balcony; an encyclopedia of witchcraft and a Joan of Arc biography and Quicksilver in the living room; in the bedroom, a book of the Bronte's letters to one another; and in the bathroom, Little Dorrit (though, at this point, this is essentially just lip service; if what I'd read of this book were college courses, I would lose all credits earned and have to start my degree from scratch again) and one of those books that will magically make me a better parent and person. 9. What is one book you've been meaning to read? I haven't read The Tin Drum yet and am almost ashamed to admit it. It's a long sad yarn (the story of it not being read) involving my �berlaziness preventing me from reading the thing in German and my pride preventing me from doing so in English. I have not read Gravity's Rainbow but plan to before I die. DAMMIT. Ditto War and Peace and The Canterbury Tales and The Divine Comedy and The Decameron and Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften. You know, I have not read Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre or Pamela or The Tale of Genji. Nor Finnegan's Wake, nor, God help me, ULYSSES. I DID make it through Schlafes Br�der and it was one of the hardest slogs thus far in my life and only stubbornness (and visions of the German Johnny Depp, Andre Eisermann) got me through**. 11. I add one more: What is the title of the book you're currently NOT writing? Mine is: The Invisible World. Also, seit eh und je: Thingology. 10. Now tag five bloggers. Olly olly all come free! 0 comments
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