One Nation, Of Individuals (with Liberty and Justice for All)

This semester my Dramatic Writing Workshop is reading Anne Bogart's A Director Prepares. Yesterday we discussed her essay on Memory, which is largely about Americans' lack of memory (recognition) of the shoulders we're standing on when it comes to theatre. A classmate noted that visual artists learn to copy before they can create. They're constantly making art, turning around, revisiting Picasso, Degas, Rembrandt, then mimicking for a while, then facing forward again and marching on.

Playwrights don't much do this. We think it's important to know the basics, but no one holds you to it. The sentiment appears to be "There's too much"--which is kind of true--we definitely don't have as succinct a canon as art history (or maybe I'm just telling myself that because I still haven't read, say, Raisin in the Sun). Not only are we forgiving about neglecting our past, we are absolutely unforgiving when it comes to dragging it along with us. It is not good to be impersonating another writer. If possible, our work should be nothing like anyone's ever seen before. Not only is this basically impossible, if it were possible, approaching the goal of sheer uniqueness in this way is like just deciding to take a running jump off a roof and say we will be the first human to fly. We need to walk before we can run--and absolutely before we can soar.

Why are we this way? Why do we want to be so new? Why can't we stand to repeat classics, to learn from what has come before us? Bogart says it's a matter of not recognizing and using our own culture because American culture is so jumbled and illusive. You can't pin it. Are we religious? Yes and no. Are we helpful? Yes and no. Are we obnoxious? Yes and no. We're not even unanimously rich or talented or polite or impolite. We have almost no common literary background. We have no ritual. I can get behind this theory of not using our culture because we don't have one, but I think a more likely reason we don't go back and reflect what has come before us is because part of our culture...actually probably the only consistent part of our culture is being individual. We were founded because of persecution, we like to protest and riot and be free, and thus...write new new works.

Desert morning. April 2012.

Just some stuff I'm thinking about at 4 AM...which is another story.

The world shines as I cross the Macon County Line.