Quote of the Day: More TS Eliot

"Anxiety is the hand maiden of creativity." I guess I'm on a bit of an Eliot kick this week for a couple reasons. First of all, I've always liked his theories about art and tradition. It's much too complicated for me to explain properly but basically he describes the individual talent of an artist adding something new to the current tradition like a carpenter building on a foundation. This may seem obvious and self-explanatory but trust me it's not when you have narcissistic people like Ezra Pound running around screaming, "Make it new" when he's not too busy writing anti-Semitic propaganda for Fascists. I've also been thinking a lot about Eliot this week because I've been thinking a lot about poetry. We are have a poetry reading Friday and I've been trying to decide what to read. My own poetry is out of the question because it's just not very good. I think I've finally settled on an old Anglo-Saxon poem that reads very much like a a psalm with its faithful stoicism and its words that still ring true after more than fifteen hundred years. I've decided not to read all the ones lamenting about how bad it sucks when my ancestors, the Vikings, come over and impregnate your women. They all seem a little too dark for a church setting.

I'm quite tired today. Today, was the first day in a long time when I had to force myself out of bed with a sheer act of will power. Normally, I pop right up like a jack-in-the-box when my alarm goes off. I'm the best example of a morning person you'll ever find. I think I reach my mental peak around 7AM. After that it's all pretty much downhill. I'm getting much too old to function well on three hours of sleep. I went to the play "Betrayal" last night and I relly quite liked it. That play makes a very good case that Harold Pinter's Nobel Prize was not undeserved. (By the way, my personal policy of not accepting any Nobel Prizes for myself until Philip Roth gets his is still in effect.) The play actually got over at a reasonable time. It was only afterwards that things took a turn for the bizarre. Guess where I found myself at eleven o'clock on a Wednesday night? That's right, I was at the Swedish Medical Center emergency room talking to a girl I'd just met for the first time about catheters and ovarian cysts. I hadn't been in a hospital in forever. I had forgotten what a real chamber of horrors it can be for somebody with mild OCD and germ issues.

I did see something that was kind of funny there last night. This woman got so mad at whoever she was talking to on her cell phone that she threw it all the way across the waiting room. I assume it was some kind of "loved one" because only they have the ability to get you so mad so quickly. Anyway, the woman picked up her phone and promptly apologized when security (or it could have been the police because they had guns) showed up to calm her down. As they were leaving one officer said to the other, "I guess she didn't like her service plan." I almost laughed out loud because it was the perfect line for a world-weary cop who's seen it all. It could have almost been a piece of dialogue written for Jerry Orbach back when he was still alive and on "Law and Order."


PS
I should be adding a blogroll sometime later this week so the three people who link to me can stop feeling neglected.


PPS
I will be reviewing several different pieces of media this weekend such as the play "Betrayal," the books The Watchmen and Serena, the TV show "The Wire," and the band The National. I know you can't wait but try to settle down enough so you can sleep tonight.