Not particularly coherent

My nose has been extra sensitive today, so many things just extra foul: old garbage, pea soup and coffee breathe, urine, etc., waiting for the remnants of the hurricane to wash it away, but so far, the rains have held back.

Been having back issues for the past week, sometime in the middle of the night, the pain went into the top of my neck and woke me up.  Never did go back to sleep, had trouble finding any position that didn't scream out.  Went to get a massage mid-morning, she gave me an extra half hour, but by this evening, the stiffness was creeping in again, though it doesn't hurt quite so much.  This has all made me rather tired.

Went to go see Bill Irwin tonight as part of the "Beckett Fest" happening around town.  He made me think about how one approaches work (or art of any type) at different stages in your life.  What you find at 20 is not what you find at 50 and not what you find at 80.  He also talked about the climate you are living in and how that would affect how you play it as well as how the audience receives it.  And since he's a physical actor, he was asked how that informed approaching such heady work.  I think that's when he talked about working with the late Herbert Blau, he mentioned two things, which I wanted to write down, but other things happened, so by the time I was able to, I'd mostly forgotten, but I think it had to do with: 1) everything is happening right now; and 2) imagination is visceral (which works for me.)  I think #1 was the performance is about you and the audience in this space and moment; and #2 being that sometimes ideas are better expressed through the physical rather than through the thinking or the words.

Also, in the middle of his talk/performance I thought..."and this is all for men, I don't get to know the work at the same level, because it wasn't written for women to perform." ("Endgame," "Waiting for Godot," though he did write women characters into other plays, just not the ones talked about tonight.)  It's true enough, though I'm not sure why that went through my head at that moment.

On the way home, I began to reread Act IV of Othello.  Prep work for the monologue...should get around to finishing the second version of the Chekhov, too, but trying to get some sleep for now.