I scorned the weeks of rain last month and welcomed the rain that fell today, along with the temperature. A cancelled lunch date, a cat by my side, coffee and Hit cookies, and four blissful hours of Wives and Daughters made my cocoon for the day. Wives and Daughters is one of several BBC miniseries I've been watching this summer, having already gone through He Knew He Was Right based on the Trollope novel and North and South, which like Wives is based on a novel by Elizabeth Gaskell, an author I've been interested in for a while and whose writings I have never been able to finish once started. I got through less than half of Mary
Barton though I can't remember why. I can't get enough of the dramatized adaptations--the Hamley brothers who send little bouquets of flowers to the young ladies before the ball (if I were a man I'd do just the same thing); the angry and surly Mr. Thornton, the proud Margaret Hale. Yes, sharing her name made me that much more attached. I can't help it. I've thought a lot about my name recently, as I deliberated on the domain name for the website that I've been working on. To include the middle name or just the initial--or no initial at all. My father wanted to name me Stillpoint. My mother's choices were Nora, Laura, and Anna, all of whom I'm fairly sure are also characters in a Gaskell novel. A search on Google for "Margaret Robinson Actress" found a curious posting on BroadwayWorld.com that includes one show that I was in as a teenager in 1994 along with several other Broadway credits of mine beginning in 1900 and ending in 1913. Further inqueries into my illustrious Broadway career provided this review from Feb. 6 1901: "Many of the other parts are well acted. . .the dainty prettiness of Margaret Robinson in her new blonde wig. . ." http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9B00E6DE103DEE32A25755C0A9649C946097D6CF And yes, there's the Margaret Robinson who--like the MR who got to the MR at AEA before me--got to the .com before me. A bisexual Canadian writer. Never have been able to find out who the other me at Equity is. I imagine her a Floridian octogenarian, regularly sending in her dues biannually with a relish for self celebration reserved only for actors. . .
Barton though I can't remember why. I can't get enough of the dramatized adaptations--the Hamley brothers who send little bouquets of flowers to the young ladies before the ball (if I were a man I'd do just the same thing); the angry and surly Mr. Thornton, the proud Margaret Hale. Yes, sharing her name made me that much more attached. I can't help it. I've thought a lot about my name recently, as I deliberated on the domain name for the website that I've been working on. To include the middle name or just the initial--or no initial at all. My father wanted to name me Stillpoint. My mother's choices were Nora, Laura, and Anna, all of whom I'm fairly sure are also characters in a Gaskell novel. A search on Google for "Margaret Robinson Actress" found a curious posting on BroadwayWorld.com that includes one show that I was in as a teenager in 1994 along with several other Broadway credits of mine beginning in 1900 and ending in 1913. Further inqueries into my illustrious Broadway career provided this review from Feb. 6 1901: "Many of the other parts are well acted. . .the dainty prettiness of Margaret Robinson in her new blonde wig. . ." http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9B00E6DE103DEE32A25755C0A9649C946097D6CF And yes, there's the Margaret Robinson who--like the MR who got to the MR at AEA before me--got to the .com before me. A bisexual Canadian writer. Never have been able to find out who the other me at Equity is. I imagine her a Floridian octogenarian, regularly sending in her dues biannually with a relish for self celebration reserved only for actors. . .
WHAT AN ENTRY!
ReplyDeleteStillpoint. Nice.
ReplyDeleteJust guessing, perhaps Nora from Ibsen, Anna from Karenina?
That would have been pretty mean spirited if true. No, I believe Nora after Nick and Nora and The Thin Man.
ReplyDeleteI bought your book btw. Though, of course, I can't promise to finish it. . .:)
ReplyDeleteS'alright. I barely finished it myself. Thanks for the purchase.
ReplyDeleteMean spirited? Hardly. The true, strange, strong force of life defies these easy categorizations and surface judgments about works of art. On occasion, things that we see, hear, read, or do are marked by an almost unfathomable depth. They distinguish themselves -- standing out from the rest of our lives, from the small beer of the ordinary. They send a deeper, uncomprehended signal. When we encounter these strange and wonderful things, perhaps a few each year, they communicate to us on a more profound level than average experience does. In the naming of a child, perhaps something deeply significant and rooted in the bloodline of ancient years asserts itself - something perhaps a bit strange and indecorous finds a necessary expression, and it creates a human destiny -- strange, forceful, unsavory, a bit unbalanced, and therefore truly human. And the tragedy/comedy/beautiful mystery continues through time. But it is perhaps better to have such a destiny than to have no destiny at all. At least then, in the end, one has a face to turn to G-d. A name.
(I'm not suggesting that this particular fictional character was an influence on the choice - you don't suggest this character to me at all, in fact, and you & M emit one of the all-time best "couple vibes" that I've ever seen - I'm merely pointing out that "mean spirit" might occasionally encompass some outlying territories of truth.)
And if all that didn't convince you not to read my book, I don't know what might.
;)
hahahahahaha.
ReplyDelete:)
ReplyDelete