Rough Music

Plutarch says that Homer died of chagrin because he couldn't solve a certain riddle. Rough music, in England, was the clanging of pans and such, in the yard of someone who had breached propriety. To town, for lunch with TR and talk opera. Actually he ate lunch and I just had a draft as I'd had a monster protein shake for a late breakfast. My schedule is screwed right now, because I'm getting up at three or four in the morning and writing for an hour or two then going back to bed. A couple of very nice messages today saying that I'd been outstandingly good at the writer's festival. I knew at the time that everyone liked me, mostly, I think, because I come from outside their purview, not being an academic, but it was nice to hear. I like a kind word as well as the next guy. TR was in good form. He seems to have a plan. I've been reading about fireflies. Many different varieties, and they emerge at different times in the night. The males put on the light show, and the females wait in the grass, when they see a light they like (I'm guessing here) they illuminate, things are consummated, and we have another generation of fireflies. Life should be so simple. Death is a failure in the system, so what would be a death of chagrin? Heart failure, probably, or forgetting to breathe. At TR's wedding, there were so many beautiful people I nearly died of apoplexy. You could die of longing, I suppose, or of embarrassment. I was writing the lyrics for a country song tonight, TR had tasked me, and I'd gotten to the place where she went away and took the dog, a heart-breaking chorus about pawning your Daddy's guitar. One thing I noticed, doing serious opera, was that the lyrics sucked. The singers just wanted good words to sing. The composer, task-master that he is, is concerned with the beat. I went for a nice walk, in the afternoon, got a few mushrooms, considered my dinner menu. Ate a small streak with a gravy it took more than hour to prepare, I was reading at the island, who cares how long it took. Later, I was having a wee dram and smoking a cigaret, a noir figure, probably perched in the doorway, none of it made any sense. It started to rain again. Patter song on a Quonset hut. I love the way it sounds. Little gusts of wind.