Mediocrities everywhere—now and to come—I absolve you all

Today contained much more no-show public transit and rapid walking in muggy weather than I really consider ideal. Also my e-mail is still pffft. On the other hand, last night I dreamed about hanging out with dybbuk Alan Turing, reading a very good selkie story, and taking out onto coastal water (not Boston Harbor, somewhere with steeper cliffs and more trees) a small boat whose sails were made of birch bark. I don't know the correlation, but it's been months since I had dreams (a) that I remembered (b) that were not nightmares, so I really think I'm fine with it. I wish I could fall asleep before dawn, but the way we're coming up on the solstice, that doesn't seem likely to happen any time soon. Dybbuk Alan Turing was inhabiting the actor set to play him onstage, in a highly publicized production that would also be filmed. He had become much more convincing throughout rehearsals. I think it was working out for both of them.

Peter Shaffer has died. In April 1999, in London for the first time in my life with my high school concert choir and jazz band, I bought a theater ticket sight unseen. It was potluck: anyone who was interested gave twenty pounds to one of the teachers and took their chances with whatever was available at some kind of student/group discount that day. No one else in my friend group was interested. I had never done a blind date with art before. I was in a strange city and I knew I would regret it if I didn't try. I got a ticket to Amadeus at the Old Vic with David Suchet and Michael Sheen and it was one of the transformative theater experiences of my life. I knew Shaffer as a playwright; I'd read my mother's copies of The Royal Hunt of the Sun and Equus. I'd been shown the film version of Amadeus (1984) by a friend who adored Tom Hulce's Mozart and basically been left cold, which was awkward. But even coming in a scene late (I don't remember anymore what happened—there were three of us and we made it just in time for Salieri's first appearance), the intimacy of the stage version hooked me, the direct address to the audience that slipped off time like an old dressing gown and took on color, memory, ambition, envy, a disarming sense of humor and a dangerously sympathetic rapport with anyone who has ever created something not quite good enough, and I fell blitheringly in love with the play and its wildly fictionalized protagonist in ways that echoed for years. I remembered Suchet. I forgot about Sheen until 2006, when I spent the entirety of Stephen Frears' The Queen wondering why Tony Blair looked so familar and finally realized I'd have recognized him sooner if he'd used more profanity. I even got to see Karl Johnson in person, long before I knew it would matter to me. I wouldn't have that memory without Peter Shaffer. It was a great version of the play, too.

Courtesy of strange_selkie: Dorothy L. Sayers, Marjorie Barber, and the story of a wartime lemon. "When life sends you war, rationing, and personal hardship, true friends send you lemons."

P.S. For people for whom it is relevant, Patrick Garland's A Doll's House (1973) is playing on TCM on the evening of June 8th.