Lichtenbergian Proposed Efforts 2024
/For those just joining us, some background: At the Lichtenbergian Society Annual Meeting, the central RITUAL in the evening’s agenda is 1) having our Proposed Efforts for the past year read out to us from the record book and accounting for what we did or did not accomplish; and 2) recording our P.E. for the coming year.
Here’s mine:
Proposed Efforts for 2023
MND
It was a charming, delightful production, and I enjoyed all of it. I especially appreciated the support of Paulo and Will at Southern Arc Dance and all their minions.
Writer’s Group
The Backstreet Arts Writer’s Group started back up, and although it’s still small, it’s still a thing.
March from the Dark Side
We did it again, and it was atavistic fun to the max. We’ll do it again next Alchemy.
Unsilent Night Newnan
After we announced the date and started publicity, I realized I would be in Munich that evening. Not a problem: I appointed one of my writers as co-chair and it went off without a hitch.
Revisit old compositions
I did that.
Compose
I did not work on Ten Little Waltzes or Seven Dreams of Falling, but I did crank out that piece for violin and cello at the behest of my (now former) cello teacher: Azure Stone. I also slapped together a new age/space music kind of thing for the GALAXY Soundtrack project, but none of the other hippies took me up on the offer to create our own CD of meditation music. (Just as well: We didn’t manage to get GALAXY to the burn anyway.)
Blogging
I blogged.
All in all, I accomplished — more or less — every goal, which earned me the censure of my fellow Lichtenbergians at the meeting. At least they didn’t defenestrate me as chair, like they did in 2017 after I published Lichtenbergianism: procrastination as a creative strategy.
Proposed Efforts for 2024
William Blake’s Inn
This is the big one. I will begin recruiting individuals and agencies to participate in the production of William Blake’s Inn in the first half of the year, followed by structuring the financial side of things and fundraising, then steering the creative workshop in designing the show. (The actual premiere will be in 2025.)
Read
Like any sentient being, I have more than one stack of unread books lying about, but my actual goal this year is to read (finally), The Landmark Herodotus: The Histories, translated by Andrea L. Purvis and edited by Robert B. Strassler; and Tristram Shandy, by Lawrence Sterne. Both are what the Duke of Gloucester called Gibbons’ The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (vol. 1): “Another damn'd thick, square book!” — and both are actually highly entertaining. Herodotus was a gossipy old thing, and Sterne’s work remains one of the masterpieces of gonzo art.
(I may have also mused that it might be fun [!] to create a musical theatre piece from the Sterne.)
Compose
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sure. Seven Dreams of Falling if I can find and convince Scott Wilkerson to pick his libretto back up. Ten Little Waltzes, why not? Tristram Shandy. All while raising tens of thousands of dollars for William Blake’s Inn.
Young Person’s Guide to Lichtenbergianism
This has been sitting on my laptop, complete and finished, for nearly two years now. It needs an introduction, preferably written by some bright young person, and I can shove it out the door.
Something tells me I am headed for another big-ass censure next year. My only hope in retaining my standing as a Lichtenbergian is just sitting on my hands all year and slacking. But even if I only get William Blake’s Inn up and running, I fear that I am in for a second defenestration.
