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Notes from Anna Deavere Smith
Notes from Anna Deavere Smith’s Letters to a Young Artist:
Discipline
“Part of earning that title ‘artist’ is the quality of your interaction with others: how much you manage, as I said about presence, to activate the desires and fears of others through-and here’s a new idea-the use of metaphors and fictions. This does not require fame and fortune ( Read more... ) -
Minotaur Grief
"I'm disturbed by the want-biological, / as if my animal wanted to speak, / the body does want to speak but lives / under the mind... / I think of this as Minotaur grief, / the near-human half-poem / within its maze, waiting in bestial confusion until / Ariadne would, with taper, find her way / and as another kind of poet / have sex with the near- ( Read more... ) -
Distinct Coolness at Summer's End
This evening, sitting out on the porch towards bedtime (as we are trying to regain the sense of "school night" hours), the day's humidity and the steady light rain felt like swamp weather. Then suddenly, the breeze shifted, picking up an increasingly gentle forcefulness and easing into a deeper rain, and the temperature dropped suddenly by at ( Read more... ) -
On Presence
I'm teaching a new class at school this year, Engaging Contemporary Performance, an interdisciplinary performance class with a focus on works that explore themes of social justice. As a foundational text for the reflection and building discourse, we're studying Anna Deavere Smith's Letters to a Young Artist, a collection of letters written to a ( Read more... ) -
And here we go...
I'm getting ready to head out for the first day on campus fr the new year. It should be a quiet day, as the campus is without power, and the only official meetings are of the admin group to discuss readjustment plans for the opening meeting schedule ( Read more... ) -
Visits
After three days in the mountains, I've been on a roller coaster of activity in Oakland and San Francisco -leaving in the morning and carrying all that I might need for a long day of travel, walking, change of temperature, and ability to reach out into the web of communication ( Read more... ) -
Sierras
Beautiful days in the Sierras since I arrived. Being away at the cabin has given me a chance to integrate some of the summer's intensity, as well as to spend time amongst the great trees of this area. Great Sequoias yesterday, so magnificent, and fragrant incense cedars in sun dappled forests around 75-85 degrees, depending on the time of day. ( Read more... ) -
Spider Honey
A facebook friend from my high school years posted today that her daughter said, "I wish spiders made honey because I am not afraid of them, then we could eat spider honey." -
Mercury Retrograde
Is hitting me really hard -July was so transformative, and August just feels like a communication sink hole big enough to swallow my pickup truck!
I'm resorting to organizing and short spells of tidying and throwing stuff out - at least I feel like I'm getting something accomplished. -
August
Back at work for first time after two weeks away (more on that later, hopefully, on my filtered pages) - August brings a steep "summer's almost over" feeling, and the campus was fraught with the deadlines approaching ( Read more... )