THE WORLD IS MY CLOISTER

John Runciman's King Lear in the Storm

Stuck in the block room all day, which has the sole but happy benefit of allowing me to enjoy Arkangel's King Lear. (That serie's is fantastic btw. Their production of Julius Caesar in particular.)  Thoughts, if such they is or were or are to be:

When I finally produce my silent visual Lear-inspired masterwork, it's going to either started with a sort of atonal trumpet piece (kind of this sad whimpery drawn out demented regal flourish), or just with the first thirty-five-ish second section of Beethoven's String Trio in C minor. Or maybe even just the first four notes. The rest is silence. I would use Rostropovich's version though, but the recording on YouTube's lousy.

Also totally forgot that Gilead's final line "I'll pray, and then I'll sleep" is from Lear, which is bizarre since it's one of my favorite lines from the play. It's fitting, too: in King Lear, which consists entirely of moving lines, one of the most beautiful and moving and haunting is quiet and tucked away in the middle of the storm/play. I'll pray, and then I'll sleep. Gilead elevates those little quiet things tucked away in the middle of the storm/life, and then puts the quietest bit of Shakespeare in the position of greatest honor: last.

Still processing if there's any more significance to choosing Lear of all plays. Lear : : Ames? There's the duh quality of coming-to-terms-w/-mortality-at-rather-late-notice -- or perhaps Robinson's suggesting that Ames himself only began to cherish the things he writes about and cherishes after he learned about his heart condition (though the book itself doesn't seem to suggest this (though it was written by Ames)) a la Lear's sort of death-catharsis/catharsis-death. Probs all that and more. Really, it's just another case of I am he as you are me as we are all LearAmesHereComesEverybody together.


Hearing the play also really brings home the amount of times the word "nothing" gets used in the first half. The only thing more terrible than hearing the word used like a drum-beat for the second-half too is hearing its echo. And of course there's "never, never, never, never, never."