ego

My birthday: the twenty-fourth time I've been twenty-nine.

... yes, well, okay... I'm fifty two.

Saturday's World AIDS Day speech went well. Many compliments, many eyes on me.

Tonight's Kagel concert – well, we'll see, but – the rehearsal went well; and Agustín is asking for even more attitude, more theatrics, more... me.

Of course even performing this relatively short piece (only ten minutes) has fairly strongly obsessed my ego: I rarely sing these days, so when I do all my natural narcissism comes to fore. Everyone must come to the concert, and everyone must say how wonderful I am, and buy me a drink, and wish me a happy birthday... and I will fuss over clothes, tea, timing, placement. Everything must somehow put me forward, must feature me in a starring role.

Ha. It's not quite so bad, of course. But the sheer wash of egotism is interesting to experience – such wash of egotism being the main thing that drove me from the ages of about fifteen to, perhaps, quite recently (and it still drives me of course, but in an attenuated and fragmentary way). That wash determined what I chose to do with my life, what I hoped to achieve, what I spent time doing....

Funny: well, in a way.

Happy, happy birthday, to me....

All right: you can applaud now.

***

Later: afterwards....

The performance, although with many mistakes and an unexpected hoarseness that came into my voice out of nowhere (too long all afternoon without warming up, then pushing too hard I think), was a success. And especially an ego success: I'm sure nobody thought it was a musical masterpiece, but everyone seemed to think it was a theatrical success – people kept using the word 'panache'.

Actually quite good: a sense that I should do more of this kind of thing – that I do it well, in fact better than I did when I was young; that my game of playing the great egotist is, in a way, somewhat less hampered by my own egotism.

And a sense that some of the ideas I used to so enjoy – playing with language, being creative with ideas, performing bizarre works – are still available, and that I should spend more time on them.

Which might make for a more interesting life....