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putting on a show
May. 18th, 2024 03:34 pmThe Great Ziegfeld is on the teevee this afternoon. I've been continuing to sew-inforce the letters on my first act shirt, and planning to break out a skirt tonight. Opening night was pretty smooth. I do miss making more of a contribution to the production stuff, and realized I used to be one of the folks who'd clean up little things toward the end, on accounta I've had to restrain myself from doing that this time, and sit on my metaphorical hands. But there's satisfaction too in being a solid cog in my part of the machine, and knowing when we come in with oh-whoa-but-I vs oh-whoa-baby-I. And sitting up straight and innunciating like all get-out on that commissioned piece.
Some fresh variations on pain are coloring my experience of the recent handful of days. I now know that means to take it extra-easy on myself, and not just physically. But, yes, physically. I've also had fresh practice with other, more complicated self-care, which'd no doubt come across pretty navel-gazey to talk about here, but I'll note that I'm glad to have what progress I have there, too.
Watching those Follies sequences early in the Ziegfeld movie put me in mind of a broad view, kinda like one gets from the sequence in Hannah and Her Sisters in which Woody's character, in a mess of existential depression, wanders into a repertoire cinema and sees the Marx Brothers, and is enlivened by the very concept (the broad view) of all those people up there on that screen, engaging in all that, just to entertain folks. Just to give them something to look at and listen to and observe their fellow humans doing, for amusement (and okay on the side for $, but, like with Ziegfeld, it's not for the $; the $ are for the show, and more of it).
It's such a funny human thing we do--- a funny part of culture, the part of anthropology I was so surprised to hear I was way into, moreso than the old bones--- this putting on of shows for each other. This singing and dancing and acting as if we're in other human situations, and the making of moving talking pictures, and the painting of paintings, and the arranging of letters on pages of one sort or another, and the choosing colors for the walls, and all the story tellings of all the kinds.
There are a couple of spots in this iteration of the chorus show in which I get a front row seat (to see mostly the backs of performers) dancing and singing for the people in the seats facing the other way. A couple of the singers and the ensembles really blow me away, with this thing they're doing, and how beautiful the voices sound, and how delightful that people engage in this non-utilitarian hodgepodge of wonders, with however much "look at me" for whatever reasons, fundamentally to add something to life.
Like, I guess I'm saying I think about aesthetics in the big picture too, and that's grander for the heart than what little bit could or should be tweaked to make it better.
As in I like being part of the audience, too.
Some fresh variations on pain are coloring my experience of the recent handful of days. I now know that means to take it extra-easy on myself, and not just physically. But, yes, physically. I've also had fresh practice with other, more complicated self-care, which'd no doubt come across pretty navel-gazey to talk about here, but I'll note that I'm glad to have what progress I have there, too.
Watching those Follies sequences early in the Ziegfeld movie put me in mind of a broad view, kinda like one gets from the sequence in Hannah and Her Sisters in which Woody's character, in a mess of existential depression, wanders into a repertoire cinema and sees the Marx Brothers, and is enlivened by the very concept (the broad view) of all those people up there on that screen, engaging in all that, just to entertain folks. Just to give them something to look at and listen to and observe their fellow humans doing, for amusement (and okay on the side for $, but, like with Ziegfeld, it's not for the $; the $ are for the show, and more of it).
It's such a funny human thing we do--- a funny part of culture, the part of anthropology I was so surprised to hear I was way into, moreso than the old bones--- this putting on of shows for each other. This singing and dancing and acting as if we're in other human situations, and the making of moving talking pictures, and the painting of paintings, and the arranging of letters on pages of one sort or another, and the choosing colors for the walls, and all the story tellings of all the kinds.
There are a couple of spots in this iteration of the chorus show in which I get a front row seat (to see mostly the backs of performers) dancing and singing for the people in the seats facing the other way. A couple of the singers and the ensembles really blow me away, with this thing they're doing, and how beautiful the voices sound, and how delightful that people engage in this non-utilitarian hodgepodge of wonders, with however much "look at me" for whatever reasons, fundamentally to add something to life.
Like, I guess I'm saying I think about aesthetics in the big picture too, and that's grander for the heart than what little bit could or should be tweaked to make it better.
As in I like being part of the audience, too.
