Saturday, February 12, 2011
leaving the stage to rethink a theater
a substantial change of address
(and appendix to “creative fidelity”)
version 1
I’ve gone for awhile. Take what you please. In the meantime, I don’t forget you. I’ll be back to you in spring.
version 2
One can only share something (e.g., stage a play) if there’s something (the play) to share, obviously. Wanting to share something substantial implies having something substantial to share, first wanting to do the substantial work (or to obtain the substantial thing) that one wants to share.
Doing the work is drawn by aspiration integral to the working, not anticipations of a given audience (unless the work is essentially about or to a given audience). Work that seems to others to not be relevant to them might be just their prejudging—the judging of their own presumptions (or projections)—about what the work is to be. Benefit of the doubt toward creative fidelity may be deserved because something really new is unlikely to be what’s expected (and, in complement, creative fidelity can’t expect something really new, just venture as well as one can). Though the work can’t be about undermining expectations, really new work also is not about conforming to given expectations.
Bear with me. Doing the math comes before explaining it. Is there something wrong with putting pieces of it online? What’s obscure in upcoming months can get clearer in light of mediating it down the road with what’s inherently interesting to you (given your contact). Don’t blame the work for not being primarily oriented to you. The work’s own appeal is no devaluation of your interests! Proximal strangeness is no sign of ultimate incompatibility of sensibilities.
It’s simply that a work’s own appeal calls for a way of working that may be not yet comprehensible to others because doing the work is prior to, thus different from, the derivative work of making sense of it, i.e., mediation (at best with someone specifically). The Work and the work of sharing are different kinds of work, like an ordinary difference between creation and presentation. Writing the play is not the same as staging it (which can be done variably, for different readings of anticipated audience). To be creatively “lost” to the writing—and sharing that online—is no sign of disinterest in future staging or disregard for any audience.
“Leaving me during the writing because the staging didn’t come soon enough deserves a salutation of ‘good riddance’”—or else an appeal to your patience or generosity, which this note is.
Don’t lose my address. Don’t forget me.
