Note: Yes, yes, I know. I have been remiss in posting. It's not as if anyone cares what I did on a boat anyway. But for the sake of completion, the travel journal continues, days after I have arrived home!
Upon rereading what I’ve written so far on this trip, I thought, “How dull!” Not that I’m not having a good time, but it’s hard to convey the languid energy of a cruise to a bunch of landlubbers such as yourselves. One good round of a trivia challenge or one too many teacakes is all it takes to wear you out for an afternoon. Perhaps the reason I’ve had a hard time figuring out the point of all of this is that it’s pointless. Or rather, there is a point, but it’s nothing. The goal is true leisure, broken only by the anticipation of destination. Even as lazy as I am, I’ve never really experienced true leisure before; my mind is at once giving into it and rebelling against it, creating the most appalling schizophrenia: my personal substitute for the traditional seasickness. Most of the people here, however, appear to have no problem with leisure. As intelligent and powerful as they may be in their everyday lives, the passengers have been reduced to the level of kindergarteners or residents in a sanitarium, wandering from one inoffensive activity to the next. Given the lack of anything else to distract us, a new kind of civilization has arisen on this vessel, sort of like Lord of Flies, except the pig is served buffet-style.
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Rob’s second presentation was this morning, on the topic of the future of Broadway. The two central theses were the continual tension between the artistic and financial sides of the theater equation, and that the predominant musicals from each decade match the zeitgeist of the times. His lecture was attended by a producer of The Producers, who later gave his own lecture and tomorrow is scheduled to preside with Rob over a question-and-answer session. (I can predict exactly which loudmouths are going to show up at that event. They have been asking questions the whole time, although by “asking questions” they mean "expressing their own unshakable opinions and inserting a question mark at the end.") Also, little does Mr. Producers Producer know, but I have been busily weaving a spell that will force him to arrange for Rob’s play Vanishing Point to be mounted on Broadway with an all-star cast, making trillions of dollars in its thirty-year run.
When people ask me why I have only written two point five pages of my book on this cruise, when I had intended to write twenty, I will shrug my shoulders and point out in an exasperated tone that spells just don’t weave themselves, you know!
