Reading Virginia Woolf's diaries on the train back from football this afternoon; I’m in the period of 1918, 1919. Woolf doesn't write much about the war or its aftermath. There are exceptions, though, for the most part she talks about small things, daily things. The higher quality ink that she and Leonard got to print T.S. Eliot's poems; flower arrangements; visits to friends country cottages.
Woolf's prose always does something to my brain, makes me want to write. She changes the way words and sentences feel. Woolf's diaries remind me of Lispector's Cornices.. They're both writers who are extraordinarily metaphysical when they write about the ordinary material objects that are relevant to their daily tasks.
I saw my friend's comedy/variety show last night, and it made me think about whether I wanted to start a stand-up.
On one hand, it feels like a natural extension of my playwriting; on the other hand... I'm used to hiding behind the mask of other characters. So leaving behind those kinds of masks makes me uncomfortable—enough that I think I probably should do it.
Admittedly, my psyche is charged with extraordinarily anxious energy—that could be used for a set—but I usually funnel it and filter it and symbolize it and conceal it through tropes. (Not that stand-up wouldn't mean creating some kind of persona or mask or filter, but it would be more human. I don't know. It's just a thought.)
Last night, after the show, Crumps, S, myself and a few others went to Dean’s new performance space and drank wine and shot the shit.