I’m in a café where they have recently installed a TV, which I hate, yet cannot keep myself from looking at on occasion. I have caught myself compulsively watching episodes of Jeopardy, a documentary about Tanya Harding, various scenes from soap operas and today there appears to be a Gospel competition on. There is dancing, singing and a lot of clapping. It looks pretty fun, actually, like the most effervescent prayer possible.I know that Hamlet is not LITERALLY praying for Guildenstern to play the recorder but that is the origin of the phrase, I presume. That is the kind of pleading that is so strong that it goes beyond the person you’re asking – on up to God, who could help push the person into fulfilling your request.

Maybe if he added lights and sound and some of the cool dance moves they’ve got going on this gospel show, he’d get Guildenstern to actually play that pipe.

I’d love for more social interactions to feature this exchange. You’re hanging at the coffee shop with your colleagues, maybe having a meeting – then you just pull out this pipe and ask, “Will you play upon this pipe?”
Or at a job interview, you could just offer up a pipe to play.
I’d do it. I don’t what that says about me. But if someone in a job interview asked me to play upon a pipe, I would.
Or you could have a pipe in your pocket when you go to visit the Senior Center.
Children, of course, will instantly play upon a pipe or absolutely anything else, if they’re interested.
When buying airline tickets, at sporting events, at the dry cleaners (why have I chosen all the things that I don’t actually do? Except airline tickets. I do buy those sometimes but always on-line.)
I guess I’d just like to see a random bit of pipe playing interrupt just about anything. . .but especially the more privileged worlds where everyone takes themselves so seriously.

After years of pushing against lousy leadership, it is baffling to be around excellent leadership. Baffling – and then – I can’t understand why everyone doesn’t do it.

I just got asked to join the planning team for a Shakespeare program because the Leadership understood that I could offer a perspective that almost no one else could provide. That I have been sitting around un-utilized in this capacity for some time is one thing – but the simple gesture of looking around and seeing a need to get multiple perspectives on something and then doing something about it? Why doesn’t everyone do this?

Also, the way honesty is so startling and refreshing – and that atmosphere of honesty radiates outward and creates an atmosphere so pleasant to work in, I don’t even care if they’re paying me. And I really need money. I’ve had to become incredibly mercenary in my work – and suddenly I don’t care?
Why doesn’t everyone lead this way?
This leader, she’s fearless, I think. She just doesn’t seem to worry about what anyone else thinks. She just does what she thinks is right and asks for the same from her team.
Why doesn’t everyone lead this way?
I don’t well understand that, not really.
It does seem simple on some level – while being very remarkable and unusual.

He’s begun the recorder metaphor already.
To play the recorder, one must cover a hole, to stop the wind. The wind here feels as if it is the air, the animating force, the inspiration and animation of the self. Or I think, too, of the wind in Chinese medicine – there must be some equation with the humors. . .what is the windy humor?
Or is it a fart joke?

I mean – the ESSENCE of the line is obviously, “Why are you being such a pain in the ass?”
But – the layers of metaphor and meaning are complex.
I picture it literally, like Guildenstern is squeezing Hamlet, a bit like a recorder, but also a bagpipe, trying to get him to make the sound he wants to hear. He blows into him, hoping to get music – but Hamlet’s not willing to be played.

When the going gets tough, the tough retract. I used to think I was not tough. I am soft. I am vulnerable. I am easily wounded, highly sensitive, and a sharp tone in a voice can ruin my day. But there is a toughness that can encompass those things – a toughness that protects and surrounds those vulnerabilities so as to mine them for art and spirit and so on.
So when things get difficult, I do not stay to fight – I withdraw, slip into my turtle shell and go inside. And sometimes from inside the shell, I will send out a little message from the softness, a little flag of resistance, sometimes of revolution.
But when all the world comes knocking, it’s time to withdraw even further. That is where the quiet is.

Sometimes, when I work with students, they’ll tell me they’ve got their little performance ready – that they’ve worked out their tableaux or their scene or whatever it is and that’s when I say, “Show me. Let me see.” If they claim shyness, I compromise and say, “You don’t have to show me the whole thing. Let me see just a part of it. Maybe just the beginning” – or if it’s three parts – “Just show me the first one.”
Seven times out of ten , they will concede that they are not actually ready and will need to actually go back to work to have something to show me.
When I come back, there’s something to see.

Recorders have mostly become a joke in American culture. I think this is because we learn them in our elementary school music classes and never see them again. Also, because there is very little contemporary music written for the recorder. Has there ever been a recorder featured in a billboard charting popular song? Probably not.

I grew up listening to recorder duets, however. My mother and her friends played recorders. There was something satisfying to me about the sound. These recorders weren’t the crappy plastic ones. They were larger and wooden and the sound was rich and full. They played beautiful music.

My mother played recorder in a local production of Twelfth Night. I went to see it and fell in love. I don’t know that I knew it was Shakespeare at the time. All I knew was that show had been very exciting for me to watch. I got a thrill every time my mom wore her Twelfth Night t-shirt because it reminded me of the magic of it.

Given the circumstances, it is possible that the recorder is responsible for my working with Shakespeare today. O, was this wise?
O, the recorders.

I looked up what this proverb is. It is: While the grass grows, the steed starves.
This is explained as if you wait too long, dreams may not be realized. I’m not sure this makes sense to me. It makes sense as it relates to Hamlet, sure –
But on its own. . .
Why is the steed starving? Do steeds not eat grass?
Is it that they eat hay – like, dried grasses?
I don’t know – it just seems like, if the steed is hungry, it’ll just eat whatever it can find, if the grass is to its taste or not. I’d eat grass if I were starving.

But. . .this proverb is VERY musty. It’s very probable that this was a well used proverb at the time – one every one could complete after hearing just the grass growing part. Modern audiences have to make up what the rest of it might be.

I think I imagined it was something like, “While the grass grows, the sun shines everywhere.” I wanted it to say something about glory going on without a person (or the grass. . .) so the actual proverb is a little bit disappointing compared to the one in my imagination.

Something musty indeed. Something musty in 1599, 1601 or so, is EVEN mustier here in 2016.

You and me both, Hamlet. You and me both.
For years, I searched for what it was that must be wrong with me that kept me from progress. Then I realized that the system was rigged and that no amount of positive thinking would fix it. Shifting the language around this is key – for example, saying I lack advancement is a lot less self-defeating than “I’m not as successful as I’d like to be.” Or “I’ve failed.” I lack advancement in the way that I lack a certain amount of privilege. It’s not something that’s wrong with me – just something that I don’t have in possession. It’s like not having a car. The car isn’t a part of me that’s missing – it’s a thing I don’t have. Would having a car be helpful in getting me where I’d like to go? Absolutely. Same as advancement.
Shifting things to an outside focus means that I can skip the self-flagellation and get about the business of tracking down the things I need – like a car and advancement. Except I don’t really need a car.

How we joke with one another can determine so much. Again and again, Hamlet proposes some opportunities for banter with his old friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and again and again, they let the offers lie. In the improvisation of their rapport, they’re almost always blocking him. He makes an offer. They insist he be serious. He makes another offer – they respond with frustration.
Yet if they found a way to support Hamlet’s play, if they joined in the jokes, in the games he proposes, they might find a more companionable Hamlet and might have a better shot at getting what they want. But they keep banging on the serious gong and lose all their credibility with him.