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the amount of response to this in under an hour brings me a lot of joy.
(you can’t see it if you’re not my friend, but I said “anyone have book suggestions on these subjects: Wagner; Russian émigrés in Western Europe; a broad overview of the history of feminist theory; the early development of psycho-analysis” and everyone I know is a huge nerd)
Haven’t been writing, things have been hectic, I have been homeless. I move into an apartment this week, and then I go to New York for my high school best friend’s wedding (congratulations, Ally and Gavin), and then I get back on Monday and will still have a thousand things to do. But by the end of this week at least I will be moved into an apartment that is actually mine for the first time in months and months, plus it will have a view of Graceland Cemetery and will contain the companionship of one Griffin Sharps, Renaissance Man.
I am trying to write a play, but I’m very much caught up in the intense amount of research it may or may not require. Here are some books I am thinking about:
Lou Andreas-Salome - Freud Journal; Fenitschka; Hymn to Life a bunch of other stuff
Rainer Maria Rilke - The Duino Elegies; Sonnets to Orpheus; okay actually everything he wrote
Nietzsche - The Birth of Tragedy; the Case of Wagner; Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Benjamin - the Work of Art In the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility
Adorno - On Lyric Poetry and Society
Agamben - The End of the Poem
Kant - Critique of Judgment (on Aesthetic Judgement)
Freud - the Interpretation of Dreams; Introductory Lectures
W. H. Auden - In Memory of Sigmund Freud
a book or two about Wagner, a history book or two about Russian emigres in Western Europe, some feminist theory, some Lacan, a bunch of other crap and various biographies, oh my goodness
shakespeare lady thoughts
Note to self: something I was talking to my friend Amanda about earlier that i’d like to write about here and will maybe perhaps do so in the near future: why I am actually more excited about the idea of maybe one day getting to play Queen Gertrude than Ophelia. (this is somewhat related to my thoughts on that time I played Lady Anne in an adaptation of Richard III.) I would write it now but it’s 3 am and I have tech in the morning for this show I’m working on which you should see if you’re in Chicago. but maybe if I put something here I will feel more obligated to actually write my thoughts on the subject. awesome.
a box of paper called the internet
My baseline anxiety level has been pretty high lately, and one of the ways this has been manifesting itself is in the desire for technological clean slates. And so here we are. I’m certainly not deleting my archives, they can be found here, but I just to take a little step away. I’ve also been importing email archives from various accounts and deleting and sorting thousands of emails and getting them all into one place: sid at sidbranca dot com. It’s a weird process. For several months I was occupied by going through boxes of physical paper scraps while moving back and forth across the country. And then I ran out of boxes, but that drive remained.
Really, what I wish I could go through is that hotmail account I had in high school. I lost my virginity during the days of that hotmail account. That hotmail account got me through two long-distance relationships. There were some beautiful emails of advice from a dear cousin, and strange mediated friendships lived there. And then when I got to college, I stopped using it. I didn’t log in for the requisite time that I knew nothing about, and one day I realized it was all gone. I cried. But anyway.
These email archives document my progression from abusive relationship to abusive relationship, and from failed artistic project to failed artistic project. I suppose that’s sort of depressing. But there are little markers of progress along the way. I handle things a little better, I get a little more done. I keep it together a little more of the time.
I’ve been so antsy the past few days in part because I am just ready to be busy again. I’ve felt like such a bum for so long, since March, since January really, and this much time on my hands makes me tired. I start my 9 to 5 next week, and have a number of artistic projects on the horizon. Things will be improving soon. Oh, right, and I need to find a place to live come September.