Book of Hours: (I have begun writing a larger compilation of poems called “Book of Hours” of which the following poem is a part.)
Short Song for the Long Train Home
Love is a foreign city
And we don’t know the words
So we make sounds like babies
And sing like little birds
1/12/14, Day 13,766: Be Happy Be Happy Be Happy Born
This day is so named because I finished Be Happy Be Happy Be Happy. While it is definitely the roughest first draft I’ve written in awhile, I’m grateful to have finished it, both because it was a victory of discipline to push through my uncertainty about the play and complete it, and because I deliberately pushed myself out of my comfort zone with this play, and while uneven, there are some things that really excite me about it. I probably won’t have the chance to significantly rewrite this play until the Flux retreat.
This was an intense day, because I also led a Flux Sunday and participated in the New York Madness event. My play–After the Party it’s the Ever After Party–didn’t really work. The comedy fell mostly flat, and worse, none of the barbs in the play caught. I think this was because I was trying to do something different with this play: I had a deliberate agenda, and wanted to create something that was both a play and more than a play. What was meant to unsettle fell squarely on the nose, and what was meant to delight seemed trite. Either this was too much ambition for the short format, or (and this is what I suspect) I don’t yet have the chops to pull off this kind of thing on the quick and dirty. Still, it was a valuable failure for the relationships developed with my actors, director and the Madness team, all of which I hope will continue; and overall the theme and the night seemed to go over well. It was also fascinating to see how a group of mostly white playwrights engaged–or didn’t–with the theme “Identity at the Intersections”…
1/13/14: The Sea Concerto begins
This day is so named because I wrote the first 12 pages of a new play with an old title, The Sea Concerto, and then heard them read at the Lark Playwrights’ Workshop. This was an exciting night: the play read well and the feedback was inspiring, and the Workshop group itself finally cohered into something that felt like a true collaborative group.
It was also a very busy day at TCG, with big steps forward on Conference planning, and it began with an early morning NET board meeting. So I slept well last night.
Technique never stands still: it only advances or retreats…
Writing: 12 out of 13 days (Be Happy Be Happy Be Happy complete, first 12 pages of The Sea Concerto)
Spanish: 11 out of 13 days
What small things did I do the past two days to help build the Honeycomb?
(And what does it mean to “Help build the honeycomb?)
- Hosted Flux Sunday
- Asked my reps to to strengthen the Voting Rights Act in this congressional session.
- Participated in a NET board meeting phone call
- Signed this open letter to the bankers receiving over 91 billion dollars in bonuses this year to ask them to consider donating that money to homeless/public housing programs
- Participated in New York Madness’ “Identity at the Intersections”
- Signed a petition asking Congress to not cut food stamps as part of the Farm Bill negotiations
- Participated in the Lark Playwrights’ Workshop
- Ate vegetarian meals and reused all containers
Corinna Schulenburg 