Tonight PBS took us to the New York Metropolitan Opera and a performance of THE MARRIAGE OF FIGARO. You don’t need subtitles to be able to tell there’s a whole lot of Silliness going on. And yet Figaro and his antics have been gracing stages worldwide for more than 200 years. So I find to my considerable comfort that Silliness and Staying Power are not mutually exclusive.

Here I’ve done something quite Silly. The title’s two puns, there’s a Pathet-ically obscure reference, a human Mickey Mouse wears Mickey Mouse ears and a tie festooned with Minnie Mice, and there’s nothing but name-dropping in the lower right hand corner. But: there’s tricky asymmetric balance. There’s a pulse in it of letter size variance and oddly “coincidental” alignment. And there’s a relaxed unforcedness to it that implies an omnipresence of freedom. There’s subtler stuff I won’t describe but I hope will be discovered. So it exists and I deem it worthy of a viewer’s attention. A few days later, though, I may well wonder what the Hell I was thinking . . .

thyme out

there’s no such thing as the Pathet Lao
howbeit Romeo where art thou
yet SPICE invigorates sweet & tart
mercator fibs but o boy can he chart
enticed inducements wave & dart

tie min

tandy, jessica/novak, kim
ian, janis & hendrix, jimi
elfman, danny or elfman, jen