randy_byers: (2009-05-10)
[personal profile] randy_byers
So I spent the three-day weekend with my family in Central Oregon. Felt sort of overwhelmed when I got home yesterday. I don't know what all it is; maybe just a confluence of powerful emotions. My niece and her husband were there with another couple from Portland. Friday night my niece asked about Sharee, and we had a pretty emotional conversation about her. My sister is on her way to Chile for a six month stint teaching ESL in Santiago. My younger nephew flew to Paris for two weeks on Saturday. My older nephew is still on the yacht off the coast of Honduras and going on a rollercoaster about whether he wants to stick with the gig. (It's boring, the owner is an arrogant prick, welcome to the real world.) My sister-in-law is freaking out about the empty nest. We had a number of pretty intense conversations about it. My brother was sailing in a regatta in Klamath Falls but came up on Sunday. We talked about the boys and argued about politics. My parents are doing fine, but they are beginning to investigate moving into a retirement center of some sort. Lots of talk about the past, intense stories about my mom's older brother, Lester, who drowned when he was eleven, and my dad's younger brother, Russ, who died of kidney failure in his 20s, just before dialysis became available. Lots of gossip about various cousins and aunts and uncles. Lots of stories, lots of lives, the human condition.

I spent the weekend fighting a rearguard battle against feelings of inadequacy. Probably a sign that I'm not sure what I should be doing right now. Family roles are shifting. What is mine? I'm still learning.

I read Shakespeare's As You Like It for the first time, thanks to a recommendation from [livejournal.com profile] ron_drummond. Shakespeare's comedies are tougher for me than the tragedies, because I often don't understand the jokes without explanations. I hope to see Shakespeare in the Park's production of this in the next couple of weeks, which will help. I want to see Rosalind in the flesh. I also finished my little fanzine article about Lemuria, which is for Rich Coad's Sense of Wonder Stories. Nice to write about something other than my usual fannish gossip. Read the latest Banana Wings on the plane down and back. A bastion of the community; I always feel that I belong.

And yet, and yet. What would I be without my uncertainty? How can you be found if you're not lost?

Date: 2010-07-06 05:06 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] ron-drummond.livejournal.com
What an honor you have been vouchsafed, to be who you are in the family you belong to; what a rare, irreplaceable, never-to-be-repeated privilege. How lucky we all are to have you amongst us.

Date: 2010-07-06 05:21 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] randy-byers.livejournal.com
Hey, you want to Skype this evening? I know you're heading to the con later this week.

Date: 2010-07-06 05:22 pm (UTC)

Thereby hangs a tale (tail)

Date: 2010-07-06 06:23 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] grytpype-thynne.livejournal.com
Shakespeare comedies: if you're not certain whether it might be a nob gag - it's a nob gag.

Anyway; being well-adjusted is not effortlessly fitting in, nobody does that (and for what happens if you try too hard remember Patrick Bateman). Well adjusted is knowing you're mot sure what your role is in life without being crippled by that uncertainty.

Re: Thereby hangs a tale (tail)

Date: 2010-07-06 06:32 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] randy-byers.livejournal.com
Those are both very good points. Almost invariably when I read the notes about some inscrutable language in the play, I was informed that it was a sexual pun. I was intrigued that "come off" had a sexual implication even 400 years ago. Anyway, the Bard certainly was a bawd.

And yeah, I find uncertainty very useful if I don't let it undermine my ability to act. Which typically means I need to see that the uncertainty isn't really about me, it's about the situation. (I had to look up Patrick Bateman.)

Date: 2010-07-11 05:43 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] fishlifter.livejournal.com
I find uncertainty very useful if I don't let it undermine my ability to act

And so for your next assignment you'll be (re)reading Hamlet, perhaps...?

Date: 2010-07-11 06:31 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] randy-byers.livejournal.com
I actually find Hamlet a pretty annoying character. Poor use of uncertainty!

Date: 2010-07-11 06:49 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] fishlifter.livejournal.com
I think your comment was a good example of what Hamlet doesn't do, i.e. he dithers about a lot. In my critical opinion, natch. In other words, he annoys me too...

Date: 2010-07-06 11:17 pm (UTC)
dalmeny: (Default)
From: [personal profile] dalmeny
I have a long-standing interest in Lemuria so I will have to get hold of a copy of your piece.

Date: 2010-07-06 11:34 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] randy-byers.livejournal.com
Well, you should definitely try to get Rich to send you a copy of the zine, because it's really good, but if that doesn't work out, let me know, and I can pass along my article. However, I wouldn't expect it to be anything new to someone with an interest in Lemuria.

Date: 2010-07-11 05:25 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] fishlifter.livejournal.com
Rich is planning to have copies ready for the Worldcon, so make sure to accost him there.

Date: 2010-07-11 05:43 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] fishlifter.livejournal.com
If you're interested in seeing filmed adaptations of As You Like It I thought the recent Kenneth Branagh version wasn't too bad at all, despite him having wackily decided to change the setting to (I think) nineteenth century Japan -- and thus for me it doesn't compare to his lush Much Ado About Nothing. My first stop for these things, though, is often the BBC Shakespeare versions: their As You Like It dates from 1978 and I'm not sure I've seen it, but it features Helen Mirren as Rosalind so I'd reckon it's up to standard.

It's one of the plays I studied several times, including as part of a gender in Shakespeare kick I was on about twenty years ago (although I think Twelfth Night has more going for it there, and probably overall, despite it being one of the plays-with-twins). You'll have seen it's a 'comedy' that introduces a lot of overt melancholia, though; which makes it interesting in that it's setting up an opposition against which to test not just the competing claims of restoration to one's own life and the rural idyll, but the whole concept of romantic love whose more practical testing occupies most of the other plot strands... I'd be interested to know how you reacted to the melancholic philosophising in particular.

I'm never convinced that most of the hold-your-sides comedy (the nob gags, to keep the noisier bits of the crowd happy) carries forward from early modern drama, although I've seen some pretty talented actors over the years managing to make some of this stuff funny after all.

And what a splendid word 'bastion' is. And with so much potential to turn into something else, too!

Date: 2010-07-11 10:15 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] randy-byers.livejournal.com
Ron tells me the Branagh version (which he likes) also cuts over half of Rosalind's lines, which seems pretty strange. I'd like to check out the BBC version with Mirren. I'll have to look in the local video shop, which has a small Shakespeare section.

I thought the melancholy Jaques was an interesting character, although I didn't quite know what to make of him. All his jokes about how Touchstone's marriage was doomed certainly appealed to my own melancholic humor. (Black bile, I think that is.) The introduction to the edition I read (by Jonathon Bate) mentions that Shakespeare's comedies usually have at least one character who sits outside the reconciliations/marriages at the end, with Malvolio being another example. Then again, Shakespeare's view of romance always has a certain bite to it. A Midsummer Night's Dream always strikes me as pretty sad beneath the surface, which is one reason I like the movie version with Kevin Klein as a melancholy Bottom. As I said the last time I watched it, he spends a night in heaven, but it leaves him bereft.

If all goes as planned, I'll be seeing a live production of As You Like It on Friday. It will be outdoors in a park, too, which seems an appropriate setting.

And don't tell me that "bastion" is another nob joke!

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