luctor et emergo

An excerpt from the preface by Heinrik Ibsen, here he comments on his first play, which critics claimed borrowed extensively from the form and themes Heinrik Hertz’s play Svend Drying’s House:

It might be maintained with quite enough reason that Hertz in his Svend Dyring’s House had borrowed, and to not a considerable extent, from Heinrich von Kliest’s Käthchen von Heilbronn, a play written at the beginning of this century. [...] But does anyone doubt that it would be possible, that with a little good, or a little ill, to discover among still older dramatic literature a play from which it could be maintained Kliest had borrowed from here and there in his Käthchen von Heilbronn? I, for my part, do not doubt it. But such suggestions of indebtedness are futile. What makes a work of art the spiritual property of it’s creator is the fact that he has imprinted upon it the stamp of his personality.

I rejoice. It’s a liberating thought. The work is not what matters, but rather the ideas behind it, the motive, the doing. Art involves the discovery of new ideas, but also relies on the preservation of old ones. It’s a cultural record, the direct physical manifestation of our collective unconscious. It manifests and perpetuates, occasionally something arises that’s novel and shatters a few molds, but then that is assumed into the mass of our thinking and perhaps something else is dropped, but who knows if it’s ever lost, or if these noble discoveries are only reflections of past truths lost to time?

And from Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia:

We shed as we pick up, like travellers who must carry everything in their arms, and what we let fall will be picked up by those behind. The procession is very long and life is very short. We die on the march. But there is nothing outside the march so nothing can be lost to it. The missing plays of Sophocles will turn up piece by piece, or be written again in another language. Ancient cures for diseases will reveal themselves once more. Mathematical discoveries glimpsed and lost to view will have their time again. You do not suppose, my lady, that if all of Archimedes had been hiding in the great library of Alexandria, we would be at a loss for a corkscrew?

So now we continue. I’m optimistic, though right now a bit more tabla rasa than I would like. Who knows what discoveries we’ll make, or when we’ll make them? I guess I don’t feel I need to write an earth-shattering work of staggering proportions, because what if it has been written before? Yes the idea is grand, and for my short life, maybe the ideas I seek to create and pursue will be of importance for a short span before dropping once again into obscurity. It’s as if at times of creativity I should feel like a man wandering a junkyard at night, feeling and groping in the darkness, occasionally lifting objects aloft to be understood by starlight.

Small cast party for Philadelphia, Here I Come! at Jeffery Roberts. Great conversation, some good wine. I’ve always been blessed with this cast in terms of conversation. Each member is their own specific individual but we share our experiences so readily. Plus we’re not adverse to the occasional lewd comment, which helps. I’ve developed a lot of interesting ideas around memory and it’s role through this process, and at some point I hope to delve into them a little more on here once the show ends tomorrow and I suddenly have more free time than usual.

I think that the more a person’s quality of life decreases, the more attached they become to physical objects. When I was a kid, and even now, I occasionally make a mental list of things that I would rescue, should the place where I’m living catch on fire. The amount fluctuates as things come and go from my life. But how much stuff is truthfully necessary?

Again, Grange’s question: What is valid?

As I continue to think about this, less and less stuff seems essential. I am indebted to countless things, but my possession of these things is in the end not entirely necessary. Knowledge and experience are the only things that one really needs to carry forward into the future. Contact and interaction with other people is of course of the utmost importance (I would not count my life to be of any quality if it weren’t for the people I am surrounded by) but books, music, art, tools, everything in the end is to be shared by each other.

Dr. Walter Stump recently bequeathed to me the complete Yale Shakespeare collection. He was emptying out his office, and on our last day of classes together offered them to me. I graciously accepted, but it was this gesture that I found very moving. For the past week he had opened up his office, which was about ten feet wide by twenty feet deep and completely filled with wall to wall bookcases, to students allowing them to select up to ten books each day from the stacks and I began to think about the underlying metaphor of this diaspora of literature. What do you really carry away from books? Knowledge. After a while the book is not necessary and should be given to someone else who can learn from it. The same for any other tool or instrument. Always for the public to use, always for the younger generations.

We seem so very far away from this idea. I recognize it as an ideal, but I believe that it may be something to work towards and apply on occasion. Gift giving for instance, take something you have but don’t use and give it to someone who may have use for it. Perhaps this is a bit communistic, but perhaps it’s something that should be considered.

How many things would you need to rescue? Truthfully. Living well, I think you’d find the answer is fairly close to zero.

Dr. Stump,

It may be best to call Playwriting off tomorrow as I don’t think I’ll be done with anything worth reading. All around me I am beset with ideas but none of them have enough weight. I’m not invested in them, frankly it’s very hard for me to invest in anything for 60 pages without feeling presumptuous. I’ve tried writing about that as well, but again, the question “Why?” rears it’s ugly head. I’m having a hard time drawing upon personal experience, and when I do, I have a hard time justifying placing it upon stage as it seems to cheapen it. It’s incredibly frustrating looking at a work and feeling that it has been contrived, not created, and everything I have done so far feels that way to me. I understand that these are works in progress, however I see no progress between what I have created now and what I created four years ago.

Perhaps I need experience. To spend time searching for value in things around me and try to find a way to transform that into something that would work on stage. Perhaps it will come to me, eventually, in a year or ten. Know I am not discouraged, but rather now have an imperative need to search for value in the world and in my life. I think that now is the time to listen and not to talk.

I apologize, as this must be disappointing to you and I can assure you I am disappointed as well: Shelagh Delaney wrote “A Taste of Honey” at age eighteen and you cannot know how aggravating that fact is to me.

Hope all remains well. I’ll see you in class, and look forward to studying in London with you.

Sincerely,

Ian Carlsen

PS: I am fine if this affects my grade negatively. I understand that if I really wanted to I could turn in a very quick, trite, hackneyed work and receive a mediocre grade, but I just can’t bring myself to do it.

I am frustrated with academia right now, perhaps I don’t fit in. I can’t seem to separate the body of my work in school from work that I want to remain relevant in the rest of my life. My school mind from my artistic mind. I know however that I must. I am required to create and receive deadlines to do so by. With my other classes this works well: In Prof. Zhao’s Modern East Asia I am doing well, I take notes and write papers, which are critically thought-out answers to questions she poses. This is an example of when academia works.

In theater on a university level, the format is different. We are expected to rigorously churn out examples. There are no questions posed. The object is simply to demonstrate an understanding without asking critical artistic questions or allowing the process to evolve from a natural or real place. Perhaps the only aspect this works well in is tech/design. When applied to performance, the result is cleverly-disguised indicative acting, a series of hat tricks designed to create an example in the quickest most efficient manner thought of. The professor of a scene study class says a character must cry, the class disbands and a week later the actor comes in and pretends to cry, leaving himself at the mercy of the professor to see if his ruse has passed. Acting becomes an inorganic formula, a mechanical response. With writing for the theater the same happens: a formula is given and followed out, but with no place or imperative to write other than the sake of a deadline what results are hollow representations of art with little lasting power. As if someone was going to build a house by ear.

I often wonder if acting, or most art for that point would be best taught in a conservatory or an apprenticeship, after one has had a few years of general education.

If so, then, what am I doing?