Before

Need to finish "Wow." Some pictures to record. Then turn to a Greek piece. I have to move off the parking lot. That is hard because I have been there so much lately. A lot of finished pieces that sit there. Some Greek. They are not being produced. I must not let that bother me. The job is to keep going like Theophilos and Seferi and Katsimbalas and Makryanni. And Chris. And Bob Briggs.

This can be another flow. I have before me the Marsh thing and the two women on the beach. I say they are "one for the other." Explain what the thing I say means. Then turn to the photo of the Armenian kids on the beach and you have a show right there. A statement on the power of the foto to show good fun and innocence. Sheer polite pleasure. Not grotesque, not sexual, not insistent, not anything but what it is. People at ease, being with one another. Not tense, but quiet and satisfied. This is so often the case until the creative author has to rile up the waters so we can have some drama and action and tragedy and comedy. What Marsh does in his photos is give us the actors off stage before he muddies up the waters with their sexual and personal needs.

All of Chilson's work is people at ease in the home environment. That is their power to me. People as they were meant to be. People just living and being. Not alienated or searching for a career or some object to wear or drive or put on their feet.

Pure people before commercialization. My feeling is Benny is always this way. So is the character we call Katsimbalas.

Change is not loss. It is change. But we must stay the same always. The way we do this is to tell stories and do things that emphasize togetherness. Power of the humans to adjust. No matter what.

Till the end of time. The shepherd on the hill. The pedlar on the street. The tremendous lovely and lively silence.

What is the Greek piece? Start with an idea. Then go to Marsh and to Mr. Frazier and Rowlandson. The idea is to do a story. When you don't know what to do, do a story.

Use the lady in the lot. She is dispassionate as she looks on at our silly and tragic lives. She keeps on smiling in the fifties. As we celebrated Christmas and that passed and living goes on and on. Let the joint be a firestation or an apartment house. It doesn't matter to her. She is always in her fifties kingdom, thanks to the choreographers at Sozio's.

The Greek experience is one of vastness and one that encompasses all sorts of things. Imagine being shut up for four hundren years. Imagine our civil war that followed the massacres of World War two.

And I talk to the detergents and ask when will you speak again? And say that Pote is close to Pote and that worries me. That our people don't stop to put their photos to tape so they will last a long time. And I worry that in Dover where I live. The same thing to save the old pictures of this place and Wrentham too.

Theme is powerful in our culture of the in-visible. What appears not to be there, is.

The muse is there, waiting for us. Like Blondy. page 35. Apollo still plays unconcernedly among the pines.

There is no escaping a world permanently ancient. And I live I believe amid American genius of all sorts. What is invisible to all but discerning eyes.

The American spices up the day's life to make it dramatic. So the line about the airport and the people believing in postcards. The Greek piece will speak to the wash that is American that spices up life on a daily basis. Seems the ideas are around page 39.

Then ask the questions what are you dressed up as? You must have compelling reasons for being the way you are. The American is in the art. Lonely and loony. Hopper or Marsh in mass scenes.

Or do we have the American before he or she gets into the drama when the person is at rest off stage. Before the author puts them through their paces > Our art as a Greek one is more natural in that we take our art as of two kinds. The one of performance in the theatre which is what the Americans do and the one before the show begins.

Before the show begins.

The last fifty hectic years have been dressup and we do not go back to the baseline which is the second big war and what we were like before. Many of us are there and have always been. Dover Band. 1889.

And now the scariest thing of all. We are leaving reality not with the drugs, the pot and the alcohol alone but with the techny media.

The dressup is but that. Not a real thing and not hard for an Aeschylusian to understand. You play act and then go home and take off the makeup. The Greek culture is important because it knows that. The Americans sometimes forget that the Patriots footballers and the Seinfelds are makebelieve and not real. That is what is real is one another and the most important thing is one another. As bob Briggs said and to have a smile.