I keep thinking that I’m going to come up short with the Independence Day Project—there have been a few countries recently that have left me scrambling until the last minute to find a poem that I can use. I’ve been writing entries ahead of time recently, as the next month or so has a few days with three or more countries celebrating on the same day. I’m trying to write two a day this week, at least, so I can get ahead. I look back on the quiet month of April… Which is not to say that I miss those days. Now is the perfect time for me to spending so much time on the project. I’m getting so used to searching and writing, that when it gets to the end of January next year I won’t exactly know what to do with myself. (A second round? A new project?) There are days, though, when I feel independenced-out. Usually when I’ve been reading about genocides and especially cruel colonial practises.

In the mean time, yesterday I went to hear some music at the Kennedy Center—taking advantage of the free performances at the Millenium Stage again. Two violinists from the NSO (Natasha and Zino Bogachek) and a pianist (Darya Gabay), a program of chamber music. Looking up the violinists, I find they've recorded a CD of Telemann's sonatas for two violins. I wish they had played Telemann... I hadn’t heard of any of the composers before hand, and so I was hoping there would be some contemporary music—unfortunately not. I’ve looked up the composers since, but I didn’t need to really—it was clear that Ysaÿe, Moszkowsky and Sarasate were all late Romantics, caught up in the trend for nationalism. Fine. There are some good pieces of the genre—I find it hard not to get into the spirit of Sibelius, for example. But these were lesser composers (hence, I suppose, them being unfamiliar.) For the most part I found myself playing the game I haven’t in so, so long: unfolding the piece ahead of what was being played. Once I’d figured the sound-world they were in, it was alarmingly easy to see where the works were going most of the time. I sometimes think that my entire music degree has somehow slipped out of my memory, but then I go to something like this and realize that, no, it is simply dormant.

Still there were some really nice moments. In Ysaÿe’s (he's the chap in the picture)Amitié I loved a moment when one violin played a scalic passage and then held a note, and the second violin came in on the same note—not immediately heading into a scale, but holding the same note, as there was a subtle shift from one violin to the next. I think this is typical of my reactions, though—I find myself responding to the stiller moments, find the climax so often in the quietness of a single note. And I know that to get that impact, you need that creation of a thick texture in order to pull back. I think it was that in these pieces the thick texture was so typical, and the moments of freshness only came through in stillness.

It also made me realize that I always find the slow movements too short. That a typical four-movement work will have only one slow movement, and then it will be over quickly: apparently it’s only meant to be a palate cleanser so you can dive into more displays of virtuosity. I measure a lot of works by their slow movements—I think that is why I always return to Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time: every movement is wonderful and complex, but the fifth and eighth movements are transcendental: they seem to lose track of an absolute sense of metre and move into this other place. I am still waiting for a repetition of that first real profound musical experience I had as a student at the conservatorium hearing the fifth movement of Messiaen for the first time in concert class, played from memory by the best cellist we had. I’ve had two complete musical experiences since then, but I guess it’s like a first kiss. It can’t be recaptured exactly.

It’s so nice, though, to find that this thing that was such a huge part of my life for so long is still there, and it still takes up the same amount of space inside me, however much it isn’t the current focus. And listening to these pieces last night, jotting down descriptions of moments that interested me, for what seemed right, or what seemed wrong (wrong words, but hopefully you get the sense of what I mean…) I felt again that I would like to try writing music again. I’ve long wanted to write a piece for flute, with “an occasional second flute,” and I realized last night that I wanted another instrument in a lower register for a counterpoint. Perhaps I will use piano, perhaps cello or viola. It’s something to think about. Though it’s so strange to find myself thinking about—I don’t have any manuscript paper, and I’m going to go looking for some in the next few days. I’ll see what happens.

As for today—who knows? I have some student writings I need to comment on this afternoon, and then I may dash off to a free film, or another performance at the Kennedy Center, or I may even go see a film that I have to—horrors!—pay for. 2001 is showing at one of the Smithsonians tonight, but I have already seen it on the “big screen.” So—maybe I’ll wander down to DC’s good cinema and see one of the new films I’ve read about.

“Should I bounce on a rock off his head?”
“Respect your father dear. —What kind of rock?”

—from The Bank Dick

Yes, there have been a few more films—All That Heaven Allows and The Bank Dick. Having now seen the former I can see just how much Todd Haynes’s wonderful Far From Heaven owes to this film. Also, I can see why Rock Hudson was such a sex symbol—in the Doris Day films it always seemed obvious to me that he was gay, but as the Walden-esque self-sufficient nature man, with his house in the woods, his hunting, trees and—terribly important—his flannel shirts I can definitely see why anyone would fall for him.

The Bank Dick is W. C. Fields’s best-known films—at least these days. (I don’t know how it stacked up at the time it came out…) I’m so glad I’ve finally seen one of his films—though Louise Brooks wrote that his films don’t capture the genius of his stage performances. The film certainly did well enough—his stage performances must have been something!

On top of this I’ve been catching up with friends, working in the Writing Center, begun working with a Liberal Studies summer class, planning the syllabus for the class I’m (hopefully) teaching in a few weeks (enrolments are still low—fingers crossed the numbers arrive), writing and attending performances, reading things and thinking about the thesis I’ll be writing this coming academic year. As my mother always says, “No rest for the wicked.”

I went to another free performance at the Kennedy Center last night—a dance performance by the NORD/NOBA Center for Dance, which is a community partnership between the New Orleans Recreation Department and the New Orleans Ballet Association. For a number of the pieces the dancers were accompanied by Rising Appalachia, a musical duo of sisters Leah and Chloe Smith—they were pretty fabulous. I’m hoping to track down their CDs soon. The dancers were great—again making me wish I had the knowledge and experience to write about dance (particularly contemporary dance) effectively.

The writing center and writing consultant work has started up pretty much as if I never left off. It still feels strange to me that I’m reasonably good at giving advice on all the writing that comes through the door. I’m used to knowing my way around a poem, but I feel like it’s taken me so long to get the hang of academic writing—and I’m still getting the hang of American academic writing—that I can’t quite trust my own advice a lot of the time! On the other hand, I think the struggles I’ve had, and really learning to think about it in terms of academic conventions has probably helped me relate to writers and helped them understand the very things that troubled me. It does make me wish there had been an explicit pedagogical strategy in my undergraduate degree to assist with writing—my writing fluency has always been considered a strength, but I really feel like I had to begin to find my own way through the labyrinth. In a way I think it has made me a better writer—because I’ve got idiosyncrasies that I wouldn’t otherwise have—but sometimes the weird individuality that creeps into my academic work does raise eyebrows. Of course, finding my own solution is, I think, the best way to have come out of the thing (even if it did take me an inordinately long time to do so!) but at the same time, the lack of focus on the pedagogy meant I was incredibly shy of asking for guidance to improve my writing for a long time. Slowly these things come together…

And now I’m trying to get the nuts and bolts of this syllabus together as I contemplate not just tutoring but actually teaching writing. I was reluctant to even apply for the teaching position as I didn’t feel qualified. As it’s like to be high school students or “rising seniors” I wanted to choose something familiar that they could begin to think critically about, and so the theme for the course is representations of America, specifically American youth, looking at television, print-media, film and short stories. I’m planning to use an episode of The West Wing (probably the last of season one; Charlie is reluctant to join the conversation because he feels his inexperience; Zoe, the priviledged presidential daughter, feels no qualms and doesn’t fully understand his reluctance; the president cites the report Charlie eventually gives him on youth attitudes to politics; the shooters are themselves young white-extremists… there’s a narrative about privilege versus lack of privilege, and about education versus ignorance in youth underlying what seems to be a whole adult focussed drama I’d like them to see) and an episode of My So-Called Life—probably the substitute teacher episode, which raises a lot of questions about youth investment in a cause and youth apathy, when censorship becomes an issue. I was thinking about using the film Pleasantville—which I haven’t seen in years—to try to think about adult nostalgia and youth culture… and perhaps—because, let’s face it, I’m a dork—the king of teen representation John Hughes’s Pretty in Pink. (I suppose Clueless would also work—I like Pretty in Pink because of the class representations and classic teen “types” staples of teen films that are clear but also not so explicit as The Breakfast Club… though The Breakfast Club works better in some other ways, acknowledging the near-impossibility of crossing into other social spaces…)

And of course I want to look at election coverage and the commentary on the youth vote.

I feel like it’s evolving day to day.

I may be heading to Philadelphia tomorrow—if I do it will be my first time in Pennsylvania (another state!)—with Kacee, a girl I met in Costa Rica who’s in DC all summer before moving to Philadelphia for law school. She’s looking at places and areas to live, and hopefully I’ll be along for the ride. If there can be a stop by some major sight and a Philly cheesesteak then I will consider it a good first foray into the city. And I’ll be back. We were also talking last night about going on a crazy five day road trip up to Boston—and maybe going further on right up to Canada and New Brunswick—in the next week or two. I’ve got my fingers crossed. She has access to a car, so I hope it happens. She seems ready to get out of DC, having, like me, been back for under two weeks! Girl after my own heart… Nothing like someone who understands nomadism.

Tonight I’m having a cultural experience of a different kind: I’m going to my first baseball match. Not just any baseball match, though—it’s the “Stitch’n’Pitch,” which means that the game at the DC stadium will have a contingent (I do not know how large) of knitters in the stands, knitting and purling away as the innings pass by… Yes, I’m taking some knitting with me. Yes, I think it is strange—but how could I pass up such an invitation?

The words “you’re so cultured” were directed at me this evening when I told my friend Robyn that yesterday I watched the Clara Bow silent film It and today I watched the 1940s screwball comedy The Palm Beach Story in the basement of the Lauinger Library. It’s a happy day when I can earn culture stripes from screwball comedy, I gotta say. I mean, gosh! I wasn’t even waxing lyrical about Godard or Antonioni or some other auteur.

It’s been so long since I watched films, so I’m determined to sit down and watch a good few this summer—not just screwball comedies, but a lot of classics I still haven’t caught up with. I’ve started investigating Georgetown’s collection, and on the whole I’m pretty pleased with it! I’m hoping I’ll have some time tomorrow, though I start working in the Writing Center again tomorrow, so that means my day is a little more full than the last few have been. I’m thinking Sullivan’s Travels tomorrow… I was so sad that the Preston Sturges films were always so hard to find in Australia. Here, they’re easier—though I think they’ve all started finding their way down south by now as well.

I made it to my first free event at the Kennedy Center yesterday, as part of their Millenium Stage program—four local dance groups performed: Silk Road Dance Company (contemporary and traditional women’s dances of the Middle East, Central Asia and the Caucasus); BosmaDance (contemporary); Jazzdanz/dc (not surprisingly, jazz dance); and Coyaba Dance Theater (West African Dance). I enjoyed the whole, though it was BosmaDance and Coyaba Dance Theater that really excited me. The Silk Road Dance company was lovely, and I was fascinated by the hand movements of the dances—it reminded me of when I was taking Flamenco lessons, and learning to manipulate my wrists and hands in ways I’d never thought about. Jazzdanz/dc didn’t do a lot for me—I was surprised, because I’ve enjoyed jazz dance when I’ve seen it in the past—but I realise that I’ve usually seen it in short bursts, rather than a number of pieces all in a row. There was a female soloist who was terrific though—she seemed to have the kind of fluidity of movement that the other dancers lacked.

Fluidity of movement is one of the things I love about contemporary dance—and I suppose I’ve become really interested in contemporary dance because often there are things that remind me of circus. (I’ve been missing circus again lately…) I took some contemporary dance class when I was in Melbourne, and I felt like the classes tapped into a lot of the work I’d been doing when learning trapeze. I found BosmaDance really rewarding—there was so much in the movement I loved, and yet—I feel like I have no vocabulary to talk about dance. It’s something that—unlike, say, screwball comedies—I am not very familiar with yet.

The final group—Coyaba Dance Theater—were a complete joy to watch. I loved that there was no uniform shape and size to the dancers. What was uniform was the sheer energy. The drumming accompanying the dancers was amazing, and the dancers showed such joy on their faces while they jumped and shimmied around that it was impossible not to feel joyful too. I’m hoping I’ll get to see them perform again.

In the mean time—more writing, bits and pieces. Got one abstract done, and will work on another tomorrow. Staying up-to-date on the Independence Day Project. Catching up with friends.

So thirteen hours after I got back from Central America, I found myself at 8am on campus, talking to a class about the Writing Center. (I start back in my tutoring role there next Tuesday—things fall back into their rhythm quickly.) Upon finishing my class talk, I went to the library and borrowed five books (the first person to borrow for the day… summer hours) and then went to Baked and Wired for coffee. And so, DC life resumed, with a trip to stock up on groceries, an afternoon of reading and, Thursday night, a trip to an exhibition and performance art event.

Art-o-matic. The idea is for it to create a place for DC artists to converge. What this means, at the all-inclusive exhibition taking up 10 floors of a building that just strays into the NE quarter of town, is that genuinely interesting work sits beside the really awful. And, occasional gems like the classic “don’t touch the button” drawing by an artist whose display provides the information: “Connor is eleven years old,” and whose card advises he is represented by his mother.

I’ve been reading Hoogrrl for a while, as it lets me know about exhibition openings and art events that I wouldn’t otherwise hear about, and so mid-way through last semester I got into the habit of trying to get to one of these events most weeks, and so have seen (and written about) quite a few exhibitions in smaller DC galleries in the past few months, as well as visiting the major collections on the mall, and at the Corcoran and Phillips museums.

With ten floors, there was no way I could take it all in. (Ten floors?) Perhaps if you came each day for ten days, and looked at a floor. I was there for the performance art, music and beautiful people, so I went to the sixth floor, but from what I saw on the ground floor it seemed like the same proportion of good art, derivative art and just plain bad art.

The two performances I stayed for didn’t do a lot for me. The first, by Ding Ren, featured a drummer—not bad, though a little heavy on his use of the cymbals—and a girl picking up two or these pieces of coloured paper at a time, folding them, cutting holes in the middle and then scattering the circular(ish) pieces on the ground as she wore the borders around her wrist (well, apart from the ones that got away.) After a while, she collect some of the circular pieces off the ground then went and taped them to people. Returning to more cutting, she then once again walking into the audience and forced paper-border bracelets on people (one girl refused, shaking her head vigorously, but nonetheless received a bracelet.) Eventually she gathered more of her circular pieces in twos and threes, taped them together, then taped them to the edge of the stage. The denouement? Well, she picked up a pile of what was still on the ground, walked into the audience and then flung them in the air. Now that I've looked her up a bit, I suspect the piece of paper were meant to be "positive clouds." As someone who once uttered the words "I don't like fun" (meaning, really, that I make my own fun, and don't necessarily find other people's idea of "fun" to be my own) the idea of these positive clouds seems platitudinous and flimsy.

I had trouble taking this all seriously. I found myself wondering if the poor girl’s hand was getting sore from the cutting. Also, her pile of coloured paper was enormous, and I wondered if was going to—dreaded that she might—“perform” for as long as it took her to get through the whole pile. (She didn’t. About a quarter of it.) And finally, I found myself fretting about the waste of paper for an exercise so completely un-transcendental. Looking at her website, though - the source of the positive clouds above - I suspect she has better things happening.

The second scheduled artist, we were told, was sick, so a replacement in the form of Anthony Willis was provided. This was better—in that there was a point (or there seemed to be at the time. I’m a little hazy on it now). Anthony danced and sang and blew a whistle and told himself to STOP. But the dancing was not great—and while it was meant to be parodic, it was mediocre enough to not work as parody—the singing was okay, but a little (in the words of the American Idol judges) “pitchy”, and the acting was a little overwrought. It made me wonder if he’d called it performance art because none of the elements quite came together enough to be anything else. I also thought that if he did it in drag, and camped it up a notch, it would have made a decent drag act.

I don’t want to come off as a grump. Especially since Art-o-matic seems to be a place for people to try things out, in the early stages of taking wing. And that is a wonderful thing. But I didn’t stick around after these two acts to watch for the next performer in half an hour. Instead, I went home, crawled into bed and read a book.

Between studies I continue running from event to event—this past weekend was no exception.

Friday night I saw the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater perform at the Kennedy Center: they have an annual engagement to perform in DC, and at each performance the repertoire was slightly different. I saw The Winter in Lisbon, The Road of Phoebe Snow and Revelations—the latter being their signature work, and one that was choreographed by Ailey himself. The company began with a performance in March 1958 and promotes African-American cultural experience and modern dance.

As is often the case with the cheap seats, I was a long way away from the action—I could still see plenty, but it wasn’t as exhilarating as those experiences of being up close to the dancers, as I was last year when I somehow managed to get front row seats for the Australian Ballet's performance of Don Quixote with Ethan Stiefel. The first two performances were less compelling to me than Revelations: I think because I didn’t have the same emotional response. The music and the dancing was incredibly fun, but I didn’t feel as much was at stake as in Revelations, which took my breath away. Though they perform it nearly 300 times a year, it showed no signs of staleness, and the duet “Fix Me, Jesus” was the highlight for me. The only problem with this being that my emotional peak came so close to the start that the rest of the performance ebbed a little from those moments in “Fix Me, Jesus” where I felt myself leaning forward, utterly absorbed.

Also on the weekend I visited the modern collection at the National Gallery of Art—a surprisingly small selection is on view—and, unexpectedly, fell in love with Miró’s “The Farm.” The detail of it, its oddity—somehow the whole thing was perfect. I need to think about it, study it more—I hope there’ll be a poem to come from it.

I also got to see Brancusi’s “Bird in Space” in marble finally—the collection had two, one brass, one marble—something about marble sculpture gets to me in a way that castings in bronze—or brass—do, though in another way brass seems the perfect material for “Bird in Space”—or rather, brass is a material that Brancusi made his own. Whenever I think of Brancusi I also think of a couple from a poem by the wonderful Elena Knox: “It’s not a Brancusi/ excuse me.” In fact, wandering around the gallery, so avidly looking, I thought I might try to do a little series of couplets on artists: an Ogden Nash take on painters and sculptors. Though at the moment that’s just another idea for the notebook—ah!—the notebook is growing fat with things to revisit.

Wandering back to the East Building, I saw another couple of exhibitions: one “Impressed by Light,” 19th century British photographs. There were some absolutely beautiful pieces here—especially some of the sepia-toned Scottish and Alpine landscapes. (Talk about the sublime…) I was also struck by a room of images from travel—especially those from the “east.” I love looking at photographs so much—and these photographs were so beautifully printed. I wonder if it’s something about the flatness, the smoothness of the medium? It reminds me of the quote from Frank Stella about his paintings—and their surfaces—which has fascinated me for so long—“I wanted to keep the paint as good as it was in the can.” At the same time, though, I find I can’t spend as much time with a photograph as I can with a painting, where I get up close and look at the brushwork. Perhaps its simply the way were all look at photographs.

Speaking of smoothness of surfaces, I also saw an exhibition of Robert Rauschenberg’s prints. Rauschenberg has been a bit of a favourite of mine for years now—from the crazy combines to his early screen prints. This exhibition, while being a cross section of the work he has done in prints over his career (and, oddly, also a cardboard door that the National Gallery decided to bring out for the occasion) it gave me a chance to see what he’s been doing more recently. Some of my reactions were mixed: at their best, those prints are these amazing collisions. Some of works in the exhibition though seemed akin to collages of the early twentieth century that had been presented in print form. While I would not object to taking any of them home with me (Ha! I wish!) I did feel that there were repetitions, and sometimes I didn’t know what to do with them.

A few years ago, while I was looking for a housemate, I met a girl studying printmaking at RMIT. She was surprised by my enthusiasm for the print process—and it’s true that I love prints. Etchings, lithographs, silkscreen, woodcuts. They all fascinate me. The smoothness and seeming simplicity attract me.

Wisconsin Death Trip at the Gonda theatre on campus. Apparently over course of the performances the show has changed shape - what I saw was a different version to what people saw the week before. I guess, like an out of town opening, they were able to use these performances to gauge reactions.

My reaction was extremely positive. A friend from English found the narrative a little too fragmented, but that didn't bother me. It wasn't, just like the book wasn't, a single narrative, but a way of imagining the trials of a community. I felt there was a lot to like here. The music was great: I would probably put it in the category of music theatre rather than "folk opera," as Tim Raphael (the director and writer) billed it, but it wasn't in any way cheesy: I feel that it really imagined how something like the musical could be theatre art, rather than glitz. That said, while I understood the rationale for the musical eclecticism (while one might imagine that late nineteenth century Wisconsin would be a fairly homogenous group in terms of ethnicity, that wasn't true: the musical ragbag was meant to reflect this) I felt that there could have been a greater unity to the music: using the different styles, but blending them a little more, to mirror the way different people came to be part of one community.

For the most part the students acting were great: they were obviously very taken with the material, and wanted to serve it well. There were moments at the start where, as the ghosts of the community arose, a few of the actors were oddly stiff or overdramatic: they ruptured the surface, the texture on stage, so that you couldn't help being distracted by their awkward postures. I wonder if this was simply warming into it, or reflective of the fact that they are, after all, student actors.

It's exciting that after Tim Raphael had been thinking about how to do this for so long it got to appear for the first time at Georgetown. It's made me want to see more student theatre (although I've been warned some of it is terrible) - but then, I'm also more generally getting involved with seeing stuff around DC. I'm getting so busy - frazzled - with university work, that it's great to put that aside for a breather now and then and jump into something cultural.