More Than This Provencial Life

I walked out last night, and also tonight, and the air was sulfurous. It smelled like gunpowder.

Happy Guy Fawkes day.

I put on my Orvis walking jacket today (my idea of the epitome of Britishness) and my Orvis cap (also British) and I was wearing my Orvis polo (not very British but nonetheless, Orvis), and I was wearing a pair of my Orvis jeans (not particularly British at all), and I walked down to Roborough Studios to re-do some scheduling stuff. There was a pink sunset hanging by the mountains and I could just see, covered with mist, in the distance a second set of hills after the first rolling hills that you could make out for sure. I even thought I could see a third set, but I decided that those were mountains, leading me to conclude that a group of clouds should be called a "range."

I also ended up feeling very old in that jacket, in a good way. Like C.S. Lewis talks about the joy he had in taking walks: when I put on this jacket, I felt like I needed a walking stick. Or a cane. It was a very smug little jacket, it lightly rests on your shoulders just in case you're a frail person. It has these little leather details on the end that for some reason make me feel warm when I look at them. I got the sense that maybe I've been a forty year old man all my life and I'm just coming to understand it now.

Anyway, it put me in a very daydreamy, world-weary mood. So a couple of musings:

First, I'm currently under the opinion that if you want to learn how to direct, coming to England won't help. The theatrical traditions are very different, and while the journey will teach you a lot about directing, the fundamental, grokking point of that revolutionizes your understanding of the art by meditation on it is missing for me. Maybe you have to discover it on your own, maybe it can't be taught, but nonetheless, while my directing class is fun and I wouldn't really trade it for another drama class, I do wonder what would've happened if I had just taken Dramaturgy to begin with.

Second, I've been listening to the musical version of Beauty and the Beast, and - like my Christmas version of Twelfth Night - I've become obsessed with doing a reinterpretation of the musical away from its Disney roots and more towards a fairy-tale, gothic (but not in the White Wolf sense), folklore-y route. Mostly revolving around rose petals. Rose petals and flash lights (excuse me, "torches"). And at the end with the transformation the entire set collapses. That's how I'm envisioning it anyway.

I completed an impulse exercise from The Playwright's Guidebook by Stuart Spencer and turned it into a 16 page short play. And one about which I am fairly pleased. So I'm shelfing it for a few days and I'll come back to it and see what needs editing, which is probably a lot. Also, I want to try writing a scene, or short play, or theatrical script of some kind, dedicated to my son. I don't have a son. I may not ever have a sun. But that's why I want to dedicate it to him.

I need a tear-jerker tonight, I'm really in the mood for some serious catharsis. I think I'll watch Shakespeare in Love for the umpteenth time.