9 August 2004

MM and I have been to see Noel Coward's abominably silly Design for Living, a scrappily written drama about the dangerous choices of three Bright Young Moderns, a comedy at which it was almost impossible to laugh. Many fine small witticisms, but the overall arc very coarse and callous: after attempting to cohabit with her painter-lover, the young lady Modern attempts to cohabit with his writerly best friend; then leaves him for her staid banker-collector friend-of-the-family; then throws him over utterly to live with both writer and painter, in an ill-defined menage. What is not said, but sniggeringly implied, is that the writer and the painter were (very likely) lovers before they met her, and nigh-unmistakeably lovers after she left them both. The staid collector leaves in a very Malvolio-like rage, but there the resemblance to Shakespeare ends. Marisa Tomei looked the part, but had an unfortunate tendency to shout rather than project; none of the cast had mastered the sharp, clipped, snapped style of dialogue Noel and his Gertrude Lawrence made their specialty. The woman beside me said, at the conclusion, "I think that was the dumbest play I've ever seen." My view is only a little more charitable.
"She knows her onions." Said--rather inconsequently--by one of the young men of their common innamorata. I had been thinking rather a lot about onions, having just that evening consumed my second sandwich of lox, cream cheese, tomato, and the traditional accompaniment of red onion, in the course of three days. When had I last eaten even a crumb of red onion? FSG objected to them so much--they interrupt the flow to the kiss, apparently; TWB scarcely liked them better. I hesitated, each time, before placing the onion on the tomato. But why pause? why reserve myself for the kisses of lovers absent? They were so sharp and sweet.
An evening of Pat Shaw for my monthly dance, the Amherst Assembly. SS and her pretty daughter to visit, her daughter dancing quite a lot, and very creditably. BC and her intermittent lover, the elusive SF, materialized a little late, and left a little early, as affectionate to me as always, and as full of mystery as always. The evening's surprise delight was "Once I Loved a Maiden Fair," which Pat Shaw interpreted as a longways, and I suggested dancing as a two-couple set. At the break, WB came to me and said:"I tend to hear possibilities for Spoonerisms, and when you announced "Once I Loved a Maiden Fair," I immediately heard, "Once I Loved a Faded Mare."I said: "What you do with your private life is none of my concern." WB: "I knew I could count on you to say that."
I was apologetic to SS about the occasional interference my ego makes in my judgement about matters of dance. TWB used to flay me about my competitiveness; and certainly, I have been guilty of no end of push, of groveling, of staring at my shoes, of elbowing, of unreasonable pride and needless shame. But what is it that we expect of ourselves now? TWB and all the other choreographers who surround me, all the professors--are they motivated only by a selfless desire to give? Not at all: they are as madly egotistical, as hungry for fame and praise, as any one living, and it's nonsense to think otherwise. It was only my ego--the reminder and reflection of his own--that TWB couldn't abide; his own he served with tender faithfulness. And so on, with all the rest of the human race. Think of the Olympics, the ancient, authentic Olympics--free meals and commemorative statuary were the least of it: what the Greeks desired was fame, renown, to be remembered and sung forever. Christian humility is all very well, but even then, are the good souls not written in the Book of Life? what is that but sublimated fame? And am I alone supposed to eat and destroy my ambition, my desire to achieve and to be seen to achieve? am I supposed to be wiser than Aristotle himself?