Two productions I've seen recently, the Cyrano at JDP and the Hamlet at the Hungarian theatre in Cluj seem to underscore the danger of staging the Western canon according to the pop-culture view of the West.  The 80's glam-rock vibe of the former, and the unfortunate cage-brawl duel at the end of the latter seem taken from television and film, rather than a consciousness of the source culture.  I mean, you wouldn't stage a Noh piece with a manga vibe, or conduct a Beethoven based on the late 1990s MIDI versions on the web.  

 In fairness, many if most directors stateside would do the same thing.  Tempore, mores, etc.  But Hamlet or Cyrano being unable to speak to the folks who are perched a bit precariously between East and West (as, I suppose, technically, every spot on earth is) is a loss all around.

 Also: colloquial English versions of the verse on the supertitles (text is the famously peculiar Hungarian adaptation from the 19th c., I think) are supremely disconcerting to those who know the plays. I find myself closing my eyes, so I can think through the actual structure of the text (which, in fairness is possibly not available to the actors in the adaptation).

That said, the Hamlet there is worthwhile.  I saw it three times this year, taking careful notes each time.  (tickets a bit pricier than the usual Balkans budget, but still under $15).  Mulling a longer piece on it.  Not for any audience, just to think through a few things. 

I worked several times with a great Czech scenographer whose talk-back schtick was to ask people to raise their hands if they (a) liked the play, (b) disliked the play, or (c) had no opinion about the play.  He would then scan the room after (c) (quite a large percentage, always), and hang his head and say, "Now that frightens me." 

Perhaps the reason that I kept coming back was the discovery that the odd building I ran past before dawn every weekday in the winter a year ago had staged a Hamlet.  And I became very curious about what that might be.  It's a bit personal, and a full explanation of my interest (amply rewarded) will have to wait for that longer piece.

Living in a condition of life similar to that of Indiana Jones without becoming as reductionist and cliched as Indiana Jones is a bit of a challenge sometimes.  Imagine Proust attempting to go around the world in eighty days.  The task is Wellsian, so the story must be according to the terms of H.G.

Incidentally, those Spielberg films are parables of American spirituality.  Ark and Grail, obviously, but also Eastern spirituality (Temple of Doom), esoteric faiths, and sci-fi parables in a spiritual context.  Essentially, what happens when the older notions of religion play out against an American ontological context.  And "Indiana" stands for the new world, the discovered place; his dislike for the name comes from the fact that the name was used in a derogatory sense against the people who lived there originally.

Perhaps. 

#saturdayradio  BBC adaptation of Priestley's Good Companions.  Priestley is a real touchstone for me.  Like Fowles, he managed to smuggle a few worthwhile things into mass-market printings.  A novel is always about the experience of a single person within time, divided among the characters, and therefore analogous to the act of creating the novel.  But this is only an analogy.  The point of the work is to say that this is the experience of a single soul.

I try to avoid the news--entertainment of the present national politics, but in a more abstract sense, when you sense the falseness of things at the center, which is necessarily a function of ideas, perhaps there is some concern that things closer to you, which necessarily tend more to the empirical and mimetic, might similarly seem to be tending to the false, if they were to be subjected to the scrutiny of ideas.

 When you encounter a foreign culture, whatever its nature, as you perceive its limits and dimensions, you are seeing that of your own nature which is invisible to you, transposed.

 On second thought, it's no error of the Beeb to keep close that which is their own.  Probably a weakness on my part to have drawn from the public trough during the rest of the weekend.  It was useful when I was in dicey circumstances (not in the constitutional sense), but there's no reason to tap into the matrix first thing on the day of rest when there's a sound cabin and library.  Independency.

 "An elite and highly trained US border patrol team had recently joined the search."

Arkansas.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/06/arkansas-devil-in-the-ozarks-caught 

 The Saxe-Coburg Marconi machine, sub nom. BBC Radio 3/4 seems to have restructured their web access with an eye to increasing revenue.  Puts the kibosh on News Quiz and In Our Time with Saturday brunch.  Basically, what the OED did a few years ago -- increased departmental revenue at the cost of global influence.  Speaking commercials to the nations.

 New Sabbath-day brunch possible standby:

 

 Politics stateside turning into a bit of a soap opera, which is occasionally the sign of a more general condition of things.  No particular knowledge, but it's struck me on more than one occasion that the point of modern wars and policy battles is to, like the canny dons at a college meeting, maneuver the debate so that their faction leads both sides of the question. 

Admin tasks until 2AM, so again no AM run.  Clearly vis-a-vis the testing of voices, the impulse that I had at the February nadir to the south to hie to the simplicity of the mountains of Bulgaria was a good one. Bright side, my stubbornness brought some interesting evenings at the theatre in Belgrade and here. The task is in the books -- though watching other people do theatre can help with that.

Interesting, the FCO has put out traveller advisories across the Balkans advising travellers of stiff penalties for unauthorized substances, and noting that airports have machines of extraordinary sensitivity.  I never touch the stuff, but I had an interesting experience in London a few years ago.  It's a little-known fact that you can take an outside path between the two terminals, instead of the monorail.  I took the meadow path, as it was a beautiful day, and I didn't want to miss the chance to walk on English soil.  As it turns out, it was also the de facto break area for the airport employees, who were smoking a peace pipe or two near the path.  After just walking past them, I got a dismissive sneer from the elderly lady using the electronic wand to sweep the luggage in the second terminal.  But I did get a buttercup out of it, so still a win over the monorail.

 Zauberflote and Marriage of Figaro (double-bill, abridged) at the conservatory.  Graduation performances.  Quite good.  Zauberflote especially.  I imagine Austrian culture was once a complex question here, given the Hungarian magnates in the area.  

I'm not a freemason, but Zauberflote is a mystery piece.  Always meaningful.  Longstanding habit of mine never to applaud in the second act. 

Day quite warm.  Double-timed the 45 (25) minute walk in the first of the summer heat, so arrived as if finishing a run.  Kept to the back, where there was, alas, little air.  Air in the house proper much better than the other evening though.  Oxygen makes for better art.  

 In the world as it should have been, I would still be in NYC now, doing theatre and practicing law.  But in the postlapsarian dispensation, there are many interesting gardens and worthwhile things to find.  It's not that the city itself was essential, but it does raise you to a certain level, at which the work is more worthwhile. As I wander the strange gardens, the fight is to keep the eyes and mind alive.

Interesting story in the news about a month ago -- the son of a couple who were involved in confidential government work was apparently a bit alienated, and travelled to the Court of Peter, Elizabeth, and Catherine, enlisted in the army in hope of citizenship, and was promptly sent into a unit with a rather high mortality rate.  Salutary reminder that those alienated from the factions of Athens are also, and separately, the enemies of those outside the city.  

The fault in the present politics seems abundantly clear, but perhaps no one thinks that they would get any richer from making the point.  Democracy in Athens was frequently the means of tyranny; the point was that the moderating aristocracy (Aeropagus, etc.) could be bypassed, if a single person could command the demos.  The mechanism of present power is the media machine, which somehow has convinced people that they personally have an instinctive, unlearned insight and power vis a vis the national politics.  Because they watch television.  And so the central authority predominates, and when one person commands a predominant central authority, this is, by its terms. monarchy (you can have elective, or even legislative monarchies).

Second, the king always wants to go to war.  Look at UK constitutional history -- constant assembling of parliaments to get money for foreign wars, ships money, etc.  Traditionally, this is counterbalanced by forms of collective authority distinct from the nation as a whole -- the Estates, the churches, the federated states, etc.  The point of the latter being that it's much better to live peaceably and happily than go off to war to gratify the ego of a king.  So, in this natural balance, the wars ideally were taken up only where the people in the states/Estates/churches could be convinced that it was absolutely necessary for the country.  In a monarchy in the context of a centralized state, these subordinated forms of group identity within the state matter less.  Each citizen stares into the center by using the glowing machines on the wall or in their hand.  Ergo, war is the order of the day.

 No run this AM.  The conservatory performance was worthwhile, but it was still a few hours of sitting quietly in a rather crowded and under-ventilated room.  The full 8 h., a great rarity with me, seemed in order.  The locals are a bit like the Chicagoans in that regard, perhaps because of the winters.  The comfort of the close.

2,500 years ago, it would have been possible to observe the apprentices perform their choric odes in the open stone theatre of Lycurgus, head back to the dwelling, have some vegetables, and then wake at dawn to run.  But we live in airtight cubes now, for no reason that I can fathom other than the forced-air climate control requires it.  (Even where the structures themselves use radiant heat instead.)  

https://www.thetimes.com/article/636f8010-448e-4d93-9aeb-986c46c1c6c4 

 Walked down to the university conservatory for a graduation performance of Carmen.  Quite impressive.  As a professional actor or performer, you will perform thousands of times.  But the night of the graduation performance is meaningful, and therefore more interesting to observe.  I remember my conservatory repertory and showcase very well.  The moment when the ideas were most full.

"At the beginning of the story, it is only in the heaven of ideas that Carmencita is any different than the other girls around her."  (Adorno)

 When the Pope was elected, the Sun-Times ran a photo of him, newly ordained, meeting JPII in Chicago.  I thought I caught a few glimpses of it early on, but looking at the tapes from the Vatican in the news feed, I'm very struck by the similarity in bearing and demeanor.  Imitation is a very useful door, even when possibly unconscious.  Transmission.

 

One troubling thing, though, was the location of the political conference based in my country, and the explicit endorsements and promises of support from serving members of the executive.  When it comes to political speech, license can swiftly become licentiousness.

Odd story in the local press here for about half a news cycle, reporting the State Department disclosure of lobbyists for the far right candidate.  A consultancy based around the legacy of a former Nixon pollster, apparently quite active in the region supporting the far right.  Insight: a local politician, a friend of the candidate, gave an interview to say that once the election began, he seemed to have a demon, and was saying things he'd never said before.  The fellow expressed the hope that his friend would be able to speak as himself after it was all over.

I'm apolitical, as anyone in this position should be, but that does make me a bit more aware about the overreaches of others in that area.  The way of the world.  If your cup is full, may it be again.

Interesting election result in the neighborhood.  I see the logic.  Listening in on the early preliminaries of the Chopin competition, everyone seemed to be playing Debussy.  The Enlightenment romantic and the rational, about to enter their third century of interrelation and counterreaction.

 The recent strike deep inside enemy territory in the European imbroglio is a lttle troubling.  For all of the savageness and inhumanity of the fight, it's never been a condition of general war -- perhaps until now.  The analogy might be two gangs in a brutal knife fight, and one goes around back and destorys the other side's machine guns.  Combined with the recent agreement out of Berlin, very troubling.  One danger of bold initiatives for peace is that they can inflame the war, if they don't work, as the equilibrium of the fight has been shaken.  

 Amateur musings, #notexpert, just #wiseacring. 

 If the Last Rather Big War should have taught us anything, it's that, in a society based on reason, the people doing bad things will have well-justified reasons for doing these things.  Which is why justification isn't enough.  It does come down to an ineluctable conflict between the people doing bad things and the people living in a better way, but only the prople doing bad things think that it's therefore just a conflict between equally valid subjectivities -- they think this because they realize that both types find their own thinking to be justified.  But the people living in a better way generally don't ground their conduct in the justification or approval of those around them.  The better person prevails not because they're more justified, or stronger, but because the only possible ground for the good is mind-independent.  We use our minds to reach the good.  The malefactor does what he can get away with; the good person does what he can accomplish.

It's very important to fight any notion that the only valid truth criterion is from social agreements.  The present social agreements are in considerable need of truth, which is to say ideas.