The days that I cannot find a moment to write are rare. Usually, I can massage the day to fit my will – to squeeze at least a small window to write in.Today, the day has spiraled out away from me such that I am grabbing just minutes between things.

Today – I try to write but sir, I cannot. 

Guildenstern responds to this as if Hamlet’s been an asshole to say it. But it doesn’t strike me as particularly obnoxious. Guildenstern has said he’s been sent to him and no other particular request has been made.
I imagine if I had a friend who said to me, “Your mom sent me here.” I might say the same. I suppose the expectation is that Hamlet should ask, “What for?”
Guildenstern has clearly made a choice here – he’s chosen sides. Gertrude’s side has won and Hamlet has lost – or else surely he’d play along – say, “Thank you” to “You are welcome” and maybe take a seat and smoke a cigar with Hamlet for a moment before letting him know that he really ought to go see his mother because she’s freaking out and totally needs to see him.

Is it in-ter-esting or intristing?
Is it fair or fire?
Is it sheep or ship?
Is it out or oat, about or aboat?

For the most part, I am.
You won’t see me fight. You won’t see me buck or roar.
When attacked, I roll over immediately. I will apologize as a reflex – not because I did anything wrong.
I am led fairly easily.
If you say, “Come with me,” I am likely to go.
But I have a wildness that isn’t loud or violent.
I am very hard to bridle or saddle. I will slip away, shrug you loose. You might be able to get something over me but I will find a way to unclasp it, to shake it off.
I am wild like a wildflower – delicate and strong at the same moment. And while I’d like to have the wild ferocity of a lion, my wildness is quieter, more still, more cunning. I won’t be ridden or captured. I will bend in the breeze on a hillside.

I love when this happens in English. We don’t think of English as a particularly musical language. It’s not Chinese in that way but when you encounter “For for me” in this sentence, you absolutely have to do something with the melody of the line to make it make sense. If you read for for me with the exact some weight on each word, it would sound absurd. It looks crazy- but of course, if you HEAR “for for me” in context, it doesn’t raise the slightest bit of attention. It makes SOLID sense. But looking at it, it looks like a mistake. It needs the music to make sense.

I wonder what a Renaissance cure for choler was. What exactly would a doctor do if you came to him with a complaint of choler?

So, Claudius, what brings you here today?
Well, Doc, I gotta bad case of choler. I feel like, maybe, I could rage all night and get myself on a murdering streak. What can you do for me?
Well, Mr. King, that sounds like a fairly serious case of choler. We’ll need to balance your humors right away. Maybe a little dose of phlegm will do it? With a bit phlegmatic influence, you might find your choler mediated a bit. Or at least slowed down. I recommend a large dose of milk after every meal and when your nose wants to run, swallow it. Retain all the phlegm you can.
Doc, that sounds a little disgusting.
I’m a DOCTOR. It’s the MODERN AGE. This is the swinging 17th Century, Claudius. That’s why you come to me – to get the advanced treatments.

When I read Shakespeare as a teenager, I remembered being particularly taken with the lines about drinking. I didn’t do much drinking myself and watched a lot of people do a lot of stupid things and get themselves into a lot of hot water from the booze. There are a few real good lines for this in Othello – mostly due to Cassio’s relationship to the stuff. I wrote them down in my quote notebook. (I kept a quote notebook. A book in which I wrote down quotations I thought were meaningful and important.) I may have had a whole page of Cassio inspired alcohol quotes.
At the time, I think I thought the Shakespeare was trying to tell us something – that he had an opinion about drinking and he was expressing it through the plays. I see now how specifically character driven each reference to drinking is, Cassio talks about the evils of alcohol because it has gotten him into terrible trouble. Hamlet talks about drinking, mostly in reference to Claudius. That gives us some sense of a) how he sees Claudius or b) how he wants others he’s talking to to see Claudius. He returns to a theme here of a drunken king and again, it’s with a friend. (If we can still call Guildenstern a friend at this point in the play.)

Kings are hard to dismiss like this.
Railing against them
Praising them
Sucking up to them
Challenging them
Those sorts of things, when,
Talking of kings, are all within
The norm.
But indifference?
You can never
Take or leave a king.
“How do you feel about the king?”
“O, I could take or leave him. Doesn’t matter to me.”
Kings just generally must be
Responded to.
Any indifference is likely to be feigned.

I’ve been reading Charles Dickens’ Our Mutual Friend in which one of the characters asks another to read The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire to him. The character is illiterate but moneyed and his first attempt at enriching himself is this particular history. it takes a long time to read someone a whole history so quite a lot happens in the book before they finish and move on to another one.
But interestingly, the character, even when he moves on from this history, stays with histories. He clearly feels that they are the most edifying books of all.

I’m in Gotham Café – which is as New York an establishment as any I can think of. I cannot tell you why but it has a flavor of old New York while adapting to the new one. They have photos on the walls of jazz greats and landmarks.
And playing, quite loudly, too, is “Free Bird” which seems so out of context, I can hardly make sense of it. In some cafes in NYC, this jamming of “Free Bird” might be ironic. If I heard it at Café Grumpy, for example, or Birch, I’d understand that this was a guilty pleasure play or ironic enjoyment jam.
Here at Gotham, it feels like an earnest playing of “Free Bird” as if someone said, “Come, some music!” and when the opportunity for requests came, someone shouted for “Free Bird” and not as a joke.

I’d heard joke references to “Free Bird” for many years before I heard the song itself. It is the accepted joke to make at the request portion of an evening of music. I’d thought no one really wanted to hear “Free Bird” that they were just joining in the general shouting.
But people do want to hear “Free Bird” and not just in the South and not just ironically. Even at an old school café in NYC.