I have to reply at once

Hi Heather,

I have to reply at once, with first reaction before I lose it.  Firstly, thanks for the review of the Circa.  Just a few days ago I accidentally hit the button on Billy's remote that took me to what I thought was ballet, that cleverly used skipping ropes.  As it became more gymnastic and less balletic, I realised it was a Circus dancing rather than rather more agile than usual dancers, and then at the end they said it was Circa.  It is all about cross-over, mixing different art forms.  I didn't know abo8ut the Monteverdi-slash-circus.  It is very hard to conceptualise the union of chalk and cheese, but if nothing else they would both need to be the best quality.  A lot of these productions are in the "points for trying" category.  Good on them for making the attempt.  Perhaps it could never work, even with excellent singing; I am not sure how Operatic emotions would translate to gymnastics.  A trapeze artist filled with self-doubt or a jealous rage would be dangerously doomed, even if it wasn't in the libretto. Some unlikely pairings do work and lead to bigger things, but they are only found by accident when lots of unlikely pairings are tested.  Musical Comedy stars who can both sing and dance as well as act are greatly admired, but taking those combined skills to the level of High Art would be super-human.  I love Brett's image of Jesse Norman in a tutu.  That is sort of what Walt Disney did in Fantasia with the ballet dancing elephants and hippos, or perhaps Absurd Theatre, like Ionesco, but they were making the point that the combination was absurd, not passing it off as serious "culture". 

I long ago admired Pina Bausch and remember the dumpster tragedy.  It is always sad when a young person dies pre-maturely, but when they display the potential for exceptional creativity, it is a loss to all humanity, not just to that person.  I have been somewhat obsessed with my own mortality recently.  [Cancer diagnosis does that sort of thig.]  Had I died young, as I fully expected to do as a sick child, the world would be very little different as my contribution has been close to minimal.  That is the result of being a  very introverted person, and as you would probably tell me, is irrelevant.  Even people who do great things are often just the person who did something that was part of the cultural development and would have been done by someone else if not them.  It is the equivalent of the "great man" theory of history.  If Einstein hadn't worked out Relativity and so on, they would not have remained unknown, but we would have attached other names to that knowledge.  Similarly the silliness of people going crazy over sports-people that they do not personally know, as someone had to win the race, so their adulation is meaningless.  But I don't think any of that matters, because there are only so many of us in the boat and we all have to row together, and if anyone does not pull their weight, but just gets carried along, then it does make a difference.

Yes, please do jot down ideas.  Keep a notebook/diary.  It could be the raw material for something later, even edited by someone else.  Also, writing things archives them and makes room for new ideas.  I write quite differently with a pen.  I write letters on paper to Marie in Queensland.  I would write to you too, but I have no address.  It takes five days for our letters to pass between Vic and Qld, but Germany might be quicker.  That makes me think: the City of Berlin is the equivalent of a State in Germany, isn't it?  In feudal times cities had their own sovereignty equivalent to Bishoprics and Dukedoms.

Cheers,
Na'um