I’ve been busy, which doesn’t mean I haven’t thought about blogging. It just means that I have these ideas about blogging, then decide to read other people’s blogs instead. Or work in the labyrinth. Or sort and type in 700 Finalist Application Forms. That kind of thing.

I thought I would list as many of the ideas I had for blog posts as I can remember. At least we can all sigh heavily for what might have been:

• There was the “big post” I mentioned weeks ago that I said I was working on, but I never wrote: Robert Patrick’s Cheep Theatricks is a book of plays still on my shelf, and I came across Robert Patrick, who is still alive, which kind of surprised me. I foolishly thought that all gay playwrights from the Village era were dead of AIDS or something. Idiot. Anyway, it opened up a whole stream of connected websites, including Patrick’s own scrapbook of the days at LaMama. The reason it resonated was that I did several of Patrick’s plays back in college: Kennedy’s Children, “Cornered,” and Kama Sutra, which is I swear is by Patrick but is not in Cheep Theatricks. Nostalgia.
• Sarah Palin’s comment at Rolling Thunder, praising our veterans because “they give us our rights, not politicians or journalists.” Honey please. Can you say “fascistic thinking”? Only of course she’s so damned stupid that she doesn’t even know what she said.
• Reinhold Gliére, whose three symphonies I snagged at an estate sale around the corner (along with a whole box of CDs at 75¢ each–woot!). He’s mostly (only) known for his ballet The Red Poppy, so I was interested in what else he had done. Since I was listening to these in the van while driving to Atlanta and back, I couldn’t do any due diligence by reading the CD inserts, so I had to form my opinions just from what I heard. Geez, I thought, here’s a composer who never got in trouble with the Soviet Composer’s Union. Dutiful, sometimes tuneful, always bombastic/heroic schlock. And so it proved. An interesting side note: when I had the van checked out for emissions, the young technician who did the tests came in and began chatting about his love for classical music. I told him I’d leave him the CDs when I was finished. I must do that.
• The Alexander McQueen exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, “Savage Beauty.” It was the most intense artistic experience of the trip, a trip that included seeing Derek Jacobi in Lear and singing at Avery Fisher Hall. The man’s designs, his concepts, the craftmanship, all of it gorgeous. Very very scary, but every single bit of it beautiful. The design of the exhibit itself both showcased and competed with the fashion. It was perfect, and you walked out of it exhausted. Go to YouTube and look for videos of his shows.
• Carefully generic post about how much fun I am having in my new job as director of GHP. It’s like one of those dreams where you are shoved out onto a tightrope, or you’re flying, and it’s very dicey but you find that somehow, miraculously, you can do it.
• A typical post whining about how I have not worked on the cello sonata. Earlier this week I made myself pull out what I’d done so far on the second movement and listen to it. Sort of pulling the scab off kind of thing. It still worked, so that was good. The building blocks I thought I had come up with will serve. So now all I have to do is find the time to futz with it and cobble together something respectable to separate the first and third movements. I know, I’ll do that in my free time at GHP.
• I treated myself to some items from my wish list on Amazon, and a couple of those were CDs of music by Lowell Liebermann, his piano concerti and his second symphony. The piano concerti did not impress (too many minor seconds, Herr Liebermann, too many minor seconds), but the symphony, a choral thing with texts by Whitman, was very nice. Still exploring that one.
• How I became an ordained minister and a notary public in one week. And why.

I’m pretty sure there were more, but memory fails. If more bubble to the service, I’ll make a note of them–I can get another blog post of them.