Mojo, The Bard, & Me

 

A virtuous maid, the daughter of a count

That died some twelvemonth since; the leaving her

In the protection of his son, her brother,

Who shortly also died: for whose dear loss,

They say, she hath abjured the company

And sight of men.

 

-Captain

Twelfth Night          Act I, Scene ii, Line 36

It’s a long answer to Viola’s short question of What’s she? This is, of course, a bit of a setup scene where we, the audience, are given some basic information about some of the players that we are about to see.

Wouldn’t it be nice to occasionally have the opportunity to watch a setup scene for the play that is our own lives? I suppose we do? I mean, we do run into people like the captain here who give us info about someone we are going to be meeting. Yeah, never mind. Skip that comment. I don’t know what I was thinking. I'm afraid that my  mind is a little bit scattered this morning. 

But speaking of scattered minds, and going back for a moment to the book I've been reading: I was learning yesterday that it was said that Will wrote in such a fashion that he never had to rewrite; that what came out on the paper on the first shot is what we have today. That's almost inconceivable to me. Ben Jonson, another writer in Will's time and someone who knew Will, apparently found this upsetting, perhaps partly out of jealousy? I dunno. I find myself jealous of anyone who could do that. Is that ability an indication of a laser focused mind (as opposed to my scattered one)? Or is there something else going on there? I don't know, but it's interesting to think about.

Now here's a perfect example. We're talking about writing, and I'm giving you a picture out of my Audubon Society Baby Elephant Folio of hummingbirds. What's up with that? Well, I'll tell you. I looked out the window as I was writing this and I saw, naturally, a hummingbird. It's September 19 and I hadn't seen one in several days so I thought they had migrated, but apparently not. See? no focus at all, let alone laser focus. Oh well.