Saturday 6 April 2002 8pm
Mills Concert Hall
In Men of Action, people move around, and they talk,
and they sing and dance. While people are moving,
talking, singing, and dancing, other people are
playing songs on their guitars, and still others are
shining lights. The beautiful people are the shining
lights. There was some kind of conference, I guess.
The structure that you know about is four acts, each
containing four scenes. The other one is a secret.
Technology helps us along, of course, but the piece
isn't about that, and if it were, it would make no
difference, because you wouldn't know that. I'll try
to remember that if you do.
There aren't too many things going on at a given time,
but there are lots of things going on absolutely. I'm
very interested in the practice of medieval forgery,
which, I've learned, was very common. When people
move and talk, some people are tempted to call it
dancing and singing, and when people do dramatic
things with music, people are tempted to call it
opera. When people are having a good time, though, we
enjoy their company even more, and if I can bring a
smile to your face.
Dozens of family members will be informed of but not
involved with the production of pieces of art, or have
been, I guess, if you want to put it that way. In
this case it is a matter of indulgence, since my
family doesn't live here anymore, and never did, and
probably never will, but that's so formulaic, I'll
give it another shot.
There's too much going on and most people don't care
about most of it which is right because most of it
isn't very good and we all pretend that we think it's
worthwhile when we talk to the people who made it, and
we go see their thing out of a sense of duty, and we
smile and nod afterward when they tell us, very
inderectly naturally, how much we are supposed to like
and respect what they did. Program notes are a dead
give away.
So come see the people sing and dance and do what I
told them to do for your entertainment. It IS
entertainment, no matter what everybody else says, but
it's still conceited enough to be called art, so the
fact that you're entertained won't have to pray on
your conscience.