Weird head space

Searching for what to do with "dried green field peas" wondering if they are the same as "pigeon peas," starting to think, no, but related?  Ate pigeon peas as a kid, in rice dishes mostly (Puerto Rican.)  Finally getting the rice dust to flush out of my eye (from airborne dust at a performance, beautiful, that I went to last night.)  Got it there at the standing ovation (dust got to a good height), and then there was another 10 minutes or so of one dancer raking the rice in a circular pattern.  Meditative.  And then back outside into the noise of a building Friday night.  The performance was Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan, Songs of the Wanderers.  Originally performed in 1994, a mixture of Buddhist story/eastern and Georgian chant/western, and 90 minutes of falling rice, or maybe 80.  One performer stands unmoving, at the front corner of the stage under a stream of pouring rice the entire time (until the raking part.)  It affected me the same way the throat singers did; I see them as similar, even though one was very active dance and the other musicians sitting in chairs: both spiritual in nature.  This one was a journey to search for enlightenment, which at it's core is universal.  Even if you don't adhere to a religious belief or practice, underneath the striving for the surface stuff, you are searching at some point.  For meaning.  For God.  For depth.  For purpose.  For love.

I went to the talk before the performance, and the speaker spoke briefly about how the choreographer doesn't like to tell you what the show's about, because he likes movement for movement's sake and even in a performance like this one, he wants each audience member to have their own interpretation.  Yes.  But still we have a sense of where this piece came from (kids playing in a sandbox in New York, Georgian chants, Siddhartha, etc.) and some backbone to the story.  I'm re-looking at my thoughts on that (that statement certainly stood out for me, and I'm going to an audience engagement workshop next weekend and they asked a similar question they want us to answer before the conference.)  Again, I don't want it spelled out for me (that also would get in the way of engagement; I wouldn't need to bring my own imagination to the performance), but I do want an entry point.  I want to know how to enter your world.  I want you to want me there to experience it because you created it to share with an audience and not just to perform it for the ticket price without any back and forth of experience or conversation (with my imagination.)  Yeah, you need to get paid, but that can't really be the main reason you choose to do art (also, doesn't pay well, overall, you would make more money doing something else, and probably be happier, if that was the main reason.  So, if you take that off the top, you want to share something with someone.  So, bring them into that.)

Need to get out and take clothes to H&M before the rainstorm's back, and get back into my character.  I was doing some writing as her before the performance last night, and I was starting to get an inkling of where she was coming from.  Can't articulate it yet, and it's a little disturbing to go into that head space.  But I need to have an action before tomorrow.  Have the text down most of the time now, meeting w/scene partner 2x before class, so hoping to flesh something out before class.  In a weird head space, need to get out into the world.  Ciao.