Barry Brenesal responding to Mimi's excellent post:
>Somebody once referred to poetry as emotion recalled in contemplation.
Wordsworth called poetry "emotion recollected in tranquility." Well,
that's probably true of Wordsworth's poetry. I do like the idea of the
composer or poet as an actor: the emotion is realized through technique
and contemplation and there's a certain distance between the artist and
the emotion "for real."
Anyone ever see the movie A Double Life? It came in at the tail of the film
noir craze of the 40s. Ronald Coleman plays a Shakespearean actor in the
role of Othello who comes to believe he is indeed Othello. As scary as Di
Niro got in Taxi Driver, you knew deep down it was a performance and that
someone was in superb control. An actor who completely melded with the
part scares *me*, by golly.
Steve Schwartz