Saturday

The damp air continues to drop across my skin from the open window, there's been a coolness in the air flowing over the heat of the sun all day.  Planted seeds in the garden, watermelon (probably too soon, though I'm hoping to make the best of a hot summer) and broccoli raab, to feel like I'd done something.  Had coffee with two other clowns to talk about upcoming show.  (And fingers crossed, I asked one to direct me.) Walked home.  Napped.  And went to work for a while.  Red and orange setting sun turning the stained glass of the library into copper.  Later stars bright in the sky without a moon to block their light.  In all, a lovely day.

Ihana

My favorite time of night: the eastern and southern edges of the sky darkening first, the west and north the palest of greenish blue, the brightest stars beginning to shine, pale at first, barely visible.  The air is still warm with the occasional puff of cooler air now and again as I walk.  The further I walk, the darker it gets, and the more stars break through the canopy of sky.  Far, far above, the distant light of long distance flight speeds northward.  The squeak of a screen door, the sound of a conversation in the dark, through a window or in a yard, I can't see at any rate, just voices, alone in the vastness, sometimes the clink of a fork on a ceramic plate.  It's not just the clouds from last night that made it seem so, night does fall quickly now once the sun has set.  I imagine it in my head as a lingering dusk, but that's not quite the case.

Tonight, I was able to sit on the floor cross-legged without tipping back, which is what I do/did, but not the typical posture for most people, most people tip forward.  I have an aversion to the ground.  Not sure when or where that started, I notice it when I try to sit on the floor, in the way I revert in walking if I'm not conscious about it.  I tend to think of it as my center of gravity drifting up, but that's probably a symptom.  I do know I wasn't always that way.  The wrist injury makes it more pronounced, because I'm afraid of doing more damage, but I know this tendency was there long before the injury, it only exacerbates it.  I studied a martial art for a couple of years and was pretty good about falling, and last summer in clown there was some breakthrough (as in biomechanics class, with the awareness of walking and how my feet moved against the floor).  I guess it's like my body is attached to my head to carry it around, to be in service to it, rather than being one whole being.  If I learned it, then I can unlearn it.

The workshop is fun, and nonthreatening, even if we do have to do things in front of everyone else.  There's no judgment.  I was given an add code, so I guess I'm in it officially.

Missed the bus home because the first one was late and I thought I had to wait another 15 minutes and so I caught a different one and then walked 22 blocks...it was a lovely evening for a walk.

Spectacle

The spectacle and choreography were beautiful at times, and conceptually, it was interesting, but in the end I was unmoved, unchanged. Nihilism and hedonism are overrated, destroying the self in pursuit of what? Shock value (but it's not shocking, not in this age.) I did feel compassion, early, but it was fleeting, it left. It wasn't a waste of time, I certainly didn't hate it, but I feel kinda pissed off today (well, I guess that would be "moved" in a way.) Most people who are truly suffering would often choose to not be, given the choice. And yes, it is the flawed that makes beautiful, I agree with that. It reminds me of people in college dressing up like women for a joke or to see what that experience was like, when it was only playing, touching the surface. They could always take off the clothes (I'm refering to straight dudes).  Or kids with trust funds playing at "being poor" when  they know very well escape from self-imposed poverty is a phone call away.  Or dyeing your skin to see what racism feels like.  There are other ways of using the power you were born with.  You can have empathy without actually having experienced the same suffering as someone else.  In the end, only spectacle to say we are nothing, will be nothing, go to nothing. (And if that's true, aren't there already more powerful forces in the world preaching the same thing as they take as much as they can as fast as they can? And should art offer another view? I don't know, should it?)  Lovely spectacle, but empty. (At least for me. Perhaps I'm too shallow to "get it," or not pretentious enough, or both.  The latter is always a struggle, to fight against being the "us" in the know vs. the "them" who don't get it. It's insecure bs, and I'm guilty of it, but again, fighting it hard.  Think about it, if we can't even have a conversation where we are on the same page, share the insights, we're never gonna communicate, and what you hope to achieve will get lost in the widening chasm of us vs. them. We are all sharing the same space.)

And I suppose this is all a strange thing to say from someone studying acting/theatre, which is itself a form of spectacle, of playing at other to hopefully communicate something. Will have to reconcile that somehow, I guess. (Perhaps I woulda' been more receptive with narrative or context, even just a little. Or the brain-cell killing, could the performance have happened, been as meaningful without it? If I'm honest, that was probably my biggest barrier, I didn't see the point. I went in with an open mind, but with filters, like everyone else. I liked the first part alright, it had context for me.) I'm sick of watching people self-destruct. It happens too often. Maybe that was the point. And obviously, I don't currently believe in the futility of life, or of my own life.

And I'm not looking always for safe and happy, in spite of how it might seem. I don't know how barriers can be pushed, how do you say something that's been said before in a way to get people to pay attention and not muddy the message with excess? Or is the excess the message? I don't know the answer. At what point does oversaturation reach the point of ho-hum and make us numb in our actual lives and in our interactions with the world? This is just a general question, not about the performance.  Where is the edge that you skirt and how far can it be pushed before the message is lost? And what is the message, or does one still exist? What is there left to say, anyway?

I'm sorry. I seem to be ranting alot lately. Nihilism really gets my goat. What you consume affects what you produce.

In a way it's stupid for me to get upset about it. No one is pretending to be anything else than what they are or say they believe.