Scorpio 19° (November 11)

It is Ed’s birthday today and we shall give him a jingle around 10. It’s now 7:30 and I’ve been up since 5 but didn’t fall asleep until 12:30, so yeah It’s going to be a bit of one of those days. There will be room in the schedule once I get cooking, so I’m not going to worry at all. I need to produce about four to five pages a day on average to keep this party going. And I need to lean and relax into it in the process so to play the long game. Look, larger works of art or whatever have been created in less time. It is all about focus and really nothing more. There is enough work under my belt to let this flow and be creative, and still enough time in any given day to accomplish what needs accomplishing. So I will get my brain around some of that today and spend the next hour or so organizing my pages for the day. And then I might just focus on a structure for the intro in the afternoon. Going to make a lovely egg drop soup for lunch. And roast some cauliflower and sweet potato (to mash together) and stir-fry a packet of cabbage and co. that is typically meant for slaw. A bit of Asia today. S. off tomorrow to Boston which brings trepidation on a number of levels. But one cannot live fearfully right now because it is already a fright. I will get some crazy glue. That was a non sequitur in a sea of them. I used to have time to play Bananagrams. Now I don’t even want to. I wonder how The Queen’s Gambit is affecting the sales of chessboards. I will spend four hours today on the next chapter, proper, and then an hour or so on the introductory words. 

The following blocks of text are exceprts from my first year of  Blagues, nos. 1121-1125 I am reading through all of my Blagues, five per day, and posting some samples here. Now, in my sixth year of writing this Blague, by the time I get to my seventh, I will have journeyed through all the daily Blagues of my first five years. If that’s confusing I apologize. Year seven, I’ll only have to read through year six, once a day.

Awoke at the Merchant in Salem, dreaming some demon was trying to have sex with me. Actually a little something might have gone down, but I definitely woke myself up before full possession ensued. I think. We’ll see. But it was a spooky house in a spooky town. Remind me to tell you the story about my first trip to Salem, freshman year. We sat on the terrace but there were windows which were people’s rooms and we can actually sense them shuffling around so we went downstairs and there was a breakfasty type thing like a frittata and yoghurt and it was nice. Coffee was eh but coffee is always eh and I love the place. But I was buzzing about yesterday’s meeting and wanted to get some thoughts down and here they are…

Great to see you yesterday as always and I think that it was all in all a productive meeting. I trust that, should we come to terms with Endicott, it can tick some boxes in the planning process for the tour itself. I am going to raise some red flags here in this note but don’t be afraid LOL. It is all designed to be preventative, efficient and to keep this train on track.

This grant of 6K is for the planning of a tour to include at least three New England venues. One has the option of presenting a showcase in the planning as part of the process but the showcase shouldn’t be overstated for a number of reasons. Ideally, it is designed to be something to which one can invite venues that would be part of the tour. And of course in most cases it would be the first iteration of a piece—not the case with Gravitational Fool—so we shall continue to hone our own unique reasons for doing this, some of which we’ve already unearthed.

Though in the presentation of a showcase we are open to ancillary elements (workshops, talk-backs) we must be very careful that the showcase be part of speeding our process and not become a cul de sac wherein we waste time and energy. We must remain efficient and precise and preservation of time and energy which both equal money. You said upon parting yesterday that you need to check that “presenting at schools” isn’t frowned upon by NEFA. Do that straight away!

Several red flags inevitably went up for me yesterday all on the theme of what we all can do for E.C. and what is a suggestively a disaffected student body; also, and this is because B is N’s boss, the meeting ended with him directing us to immediately jump through hoops to get stuff to Becca. Whoa Nelly. Cart Before Horse. I am sensitive to her being his boss, and I also see my way through that for Afterglow. First, WE must be clear: This showcase is about furthering GF’s development and, yes, in so doing, we are happy to interface with students, etc. But that can’t be our primary focus, even if it is Endicott’s. And I dare say that this sort of thing will need to be funded by them. 

The showcase itself will need to be ticketed in any case and we must go into it as a means of extending the lifeblood of the planning process, and I will work that out. Though we are not bound by the “artist fee” as per Adrienne: As mentioned, I am still keeping that amount earmarked as such: as remuneration for the artists in the “production” of a showcase. The rest of the money, which is NOT a lot (we have to keep reminding ourselves of that) will go to Afterglow’s planning of the tour and the administration, meetings, travel, promotion thereof. Every moment Afterglow puts into this is on the clock; so we want to be preventative of how long conversations are, how much time is spent on things that are not germane to this particular process which must be streamlined to work for us.

Remember, at risk of sounding like a broken record, Afterglow doesn’t spend time writing grants because we don’t have the bandwidth. Likewise, the work needed to be done in the execution of a grant received must also be afforded by said grant. That’s why ticketing will be important, we realize, in so far as AF’s take will continue to allow us to keep this process going until it takes off and becomes both artistically and financially fertile.

Again, not being alarmist but in the spirit of being surgical in this process, this is how we propose we proceed.  (Consider this my own workshop in Arts Administration entitled Horse Before Cart!

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The thing about being confronted with a rage addict or to use the more colloquial term, and the perp’s own words, hothead, is that you second guess your own role in what goes down. Did I do something to make so and so so angry? He showed up and it was tense; and then he desperately apologized which was such a relief; he was holding a large tool box in one hand and buckets in another so he couldn’t prevent my hugging him, something I’m sure he had never experienced with a man before, probably not even his own son. He also apologized to S. and pressed the issue…you’re sure you accept my apology. Absoultely yes.

I was writing and sitting outside in the haze and was chatting simultaneously with high school friends Mike and Tony. I was musing about a boys weekend here on the Cape when S. came to announce she’s going to Toronto for several days at the end of June; so I impulsively swung that information into my conversations with these guys and they were like let’s do it—so they’ll come, along with two other friends, Dave and Ken, hopefully while she’s in Canada. Fun.

It felt like a day off though more of a derailing as, even though we were now okay, the run-in with the rageful really shook out some things. I think because I didn’t react it pressed a reset button on what would be my typical (outmoded) behavior in situations like this a/k/a father and/or authority issues. I feel different. I feel tired and sad and vulnerable but also real and unapologetic and strangely free.

After more than ones fair share of wine this Saturday night, what else to do but sing aroun the piano. I was deep into Baracuda and some other songs I’ve not sung before. I’m wistful about so much and yet I don’t feel at all as if the rug has been pulled out from under me. Typically this sensation is more bitter than sweet for me but not today and not this evening.

To view the original Sabian Symbol themed 2015 Cosmic Blague corresponding to this day: Flashback! The degree point of the Sabian Symbol may at times be one degree higher than the one listed here. The Blague portrays the starting degree of for this day ( 0°,  for instance), as I typically post in the morning, while the Sabian number corresponds to the end point (1°) of that same 0°-1° period. There are 360  degrees spread over 365/6 days per year—so they nearly, but not exactly, correlate.

Typos happen. I don’t have a proofreader. And I like to just write, post and go! Copyright 2020 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved. Get your HAUTE ASTROLOGY 2020 Weekly Horoscope ebooks by Starsky + Cox.