Messiness of being

I went to these two performance (second was more a participatory discussion) yesterday.  The first was a dance piece (in progress, I think), followed by a performance of Rimbaud's poetry featuring a dancer, a cellist, and an actor, which I liked quite a bit.  The second had three pieces dealing with identity, authenticity, and belonging, I think, and then the audience broke into small groups to meet with each of the performers (or groups.)  It was to start conversation.  (A lot of the same people were at both.  Two different venues.)

How do you share in someone else's culture without co-opting it?  How do you use any privilege you might have to better things for someone else who lacks it?  Someone implied you needed to act, but acting blindly without knowing what the other wants or needs (paternalism?) can be as bad as doing nothing.  You need to have the courage to ask, "What's wrong?" "What do you need?" "What can I do to help?"  There needs to be a conversation.  How do you start it?

Someone mentioned feeling isolated until they somehow realized other people felt the same way...what takes so long for those conversations to happen?  What's getting in the way?  Why is it not safe to have them?  It reminds me of something I was told about a women's craft co-operative that had recently been started in Costa Rica when I was studying there in college.  Someone said that there had been a lot of domestic abuse, and the extent of it hadn't been known because no one was talking about it (shame? normalizing it?) and then this co-op was started and women started talking to each other and sharing experience, and realizing that it was common, and also, not acceptable, and because they were able to build community, things started to change.

And then someone else mentioned her fear of crowd mentality, and how fast people will join a group, or adapt their behavior to the group. And how we lose (or are perceived to lose) our individuality, or our individual discernment in those situations.  And in a herd (which she studies) that can be a safety move, but what if that group is actively against your best interest or what you know to be right?

And related to that?  Why have so many of us silenced ourselves?  Why have we become afraid to express what we really feel?  We nod our heads in agreement, or say nothing when we should speak up, and I think a part of us dies every time we shut ourselves down.  I'm not suggesting to always be contrary or confrontational, but there are times we should say something and yet remain silent. (To keep the peace, to not rock the boat, whatever.)

And then on a more performance/artistic level, how do you find your authentic voice?  How do you get to the place where you are presenting who you are and not what you think will please an audience, drive tickets sales, make money?  How do you stay true to yourself?  The world probably needs more of that and less of everyone trying to cash in on the flavor of the day.

In the end, the conversation was specific to that space and the art form (dance) and an exclusion people were feeling, though you can feel it in society as well (especially if you find yourself always in the midst of people like yourself, which is easy to do...there was more diversity when I was growing up than there has been since I left home, and I know that has affected me, and I have to actively fight against it.  But you don't resist things you are not aware of.)  I went because I thought it would be thought-provoking, which it was, though I'm not a dancer.  The facilitator commented on that at the end, saying that her husband, a musician, can walk into a store and have other musicians acknowledge him for his work, regardless of the color of his skin, sexuality, beliefs, culture, etc.  Her point being that the music community is more inclusive, more open to experiencing the other, working with each other, etc...so how do the rest of us embrace more of that attitude, and less exclusivity?

Saturday

Listening to "Year Without a Santa Claus" while writing this.  Walked around the lake just now, it was this luminary event the neighborhood does every year.  Technically, it was over, but they hadn't extinguished all the lights, and there were still crowds walking, so I went, too.  Saw a shooting star.  The sky is very clear tonight, the air still, water reflective, and it was in the 40's, so, also not too cold.  A good night for walking the lake.  I actually thought it happened last week, but saw a sign for it this morning.  There was no moon out, so lots of stars.  I sat on a bench for a while and star-gazed, miss being able to see them.  There's usually too much light.

We had our annual concert/Finnish Christmas dinner earlier today (which was why I was late walking the lake), and clown jam right before that.  Added a fourth person to mine, so I'll have to figure out how to write that, as one person said, "Get all the air out of it."  I'm not sure what the game is, and because we added the fourth person, which really changes the dynamic and focus, we just played with it, so I'm not sure where we are.  I'll probably write a couple of versions this week, as some form of outline.  Still working on my personality, too (though, I'm flirting more, so that's progress.)  I need a map.

Earlier today, I walked over to Starbuck's (yeah, yeah, yeah, I frequent many coffee shops) and while waiting in line, I saw that I could get a free $5 gift card with the purchase of that Via instant coffee, so I grabbed some of that, it'll probably save money at some point, I'm often feeling lazy in the morning.  When I got up to the register, the man rung me up, and I asked if he'd charged me for the coffee, and he said someone else had paid most of my bill (via an anonymous gift card.)  I had been meaning to use the gift card to pay for the coffee, but forgot about that, at any rate, since I didn't end up paying for the card, I gave it to the man selling papers outside (I didn't have any cash to buy the paper.)  I didn't really have any plans for it.

Then I went to the grocery store and was looking at Christmas cards and thinking I should write some and send them (before the New Year.)  I walked back on my way out and decided I would splurge for these cards with an odd Finnish-looking character on them.  They didn't say they were on sale, but they rang up for half price.  And then at the Finnish dinner, I paid my way (we always have to pay even though we are hosts, though we get a discount)...a little while later, someone handed my money back to me saying that someone else had wanted to pay for my dinner.  I do always seem to be broke, but I wasn't today.  It was a nice run of that though.

Down to 9 1/2 library books (not counting Dickens) and five movies (there are more now because I stopped by Scarecrow Video on the 2/1 night, you get those for a week.  Oh, the guy gave me a discount on that, too.  I think because he couldn't find one of the movies, and I had to switch it.)  Been kinda' stressed out over everything, was thinking Christmas was this week for some reason, but I was wrong.  The Finnish choir only has one more gig and then we have almost a month off.  The other choir doesn't get any time off (except for the holidays that fall on rehearsals.)

Most of my waking thoughts, and every dream I've had recently have involved theatre somehow.  Got a lot I need to get done, and soon.  Outer commitments are slowing down, but have all that stuff I have to make happen now.  Cheers.

Record high

Went to this birthday party last night: it was fun.  I left early-ish (after 10), but it took over an hour-and-a-half to get home, so I kinda' wish I'd stayed longer.  When I left people had started to either to do a trick, a roast of the birthday lady, or both, and it sounds like a lot more people finally got up.  Initially, people were holding back.  And it was cold waiting for the bus(es), it had been almost 70 degrees in the morning, but had gotten considerably windier and colder by 11 pm.  The first bus, I barely missed and ended up waiting 25 minutes for the next one, which was late and so I missed the second connection and had to wait another 30 minutes for that one.  Went into the all-night grocery store to see if they had coffee or something warm, had to settle for a deep-fried burrito sitting under a heat lamp, for $1, but it killed time.  It's an interesting scene, I haven't hung out in a grocery store late at night in a long time.  Years ago, I kept applying for Denny's waitressing jobs because I wanted to work the graveyard shifts there, because I was interested in the life that happens when everyone else is asleep.  Now, I like sleeping too much.

Anyway...the invitation had asked people to dress up in costume, and normally I have a really hard time with that (coming up with something.)  But I did come up with an idea, and when I thought about it, and also when I was putting it together at home, there was a definite personality to it: a way of speaking, moving, acting.  And while I didn't end up putting the whole thing on at the party, nor pulling off the personality, it did dawn on me how much those choices matter for character.  Also that part of my confusion with my clown is the clothes.  I need more inspiring clothes.  The ones I have don't do anything for me.  They inform nothing.  I just like them, but that's milquetoast.  This is why rehearsal clothes matter, and suddenly I understand that.

Also, someone I was dancing with mentioned that years ago when he had studied clown, they'd "ranked" them, and that had helped with figuring out personality as well.  We didn't do that.  And I tend to run at a lower energy level emotionally, but the character I found last night was probably a five or a six.  (Out of a scale 0-7.)

Enlightening.  Funny what triggers understanding.

Well, that was short-lived

Okay, so I wasn't able to stick to my media fast, I like reading.  (And I have 12 books out from the library, plus three movies...though none of those are "news" related.)

Take a deep breath.  An airing of secrets, a cleansing of corruptions.  I don't want to see retaliation, because that never ends, but there needs to be a reckoning.  People should have to face up to what they did.  There needs to be accountability, or every thing you say you believe in or stand for amounts to nothing.  And until there is accountability, there can be no trust, and we need trust for society to function.

And I can love people who don't think like me, we can disagree.  You can be fully yourself, and hopefully I will also have the courage to do that, by seeing your example of putting yourself out there. (And yet, we are more aligned than not.)  And that that's progress for me right now, there's been a lot of fear living in my head.  (It's just the that courage has been lacking in me, not always the case, it just got dangerous somehow.)  It's the need to always be infallible that keeps a wall up; we could both be right or both be wrong, but neither would tell the whole story of our humanness.  We are all more than one belief or another, or the sum of many.  Again, we need to find common ground, start again, re-create...it's all so volatile.  Where are the cooler heads that can be trusted?

Little bit of free time now

Well, the final audition for the class was today.  I don't feel like I could nail an audition tomorrow, but I do know what I need to do.  Part of it is that on the first day, he said something about forgetting all of your acting choices and finding the driving action, which I tried to do.  I think though, that the point was that I needed to put the acting choices back in on top of the a driving action once I found it, and I didn't really do that.  So, noted.  Also, while I've increased the time I've spent working on monologues and cold readings, it's not nearly enough.  I need to spend more time, make stronger choices, get it memorized early, etc... all good to know.

I really need to find somewhere to study Shakespeare, it's offered here next quarter, but I want to work on solo performance stuff, mostly because it would help with the clown show, and I re-discovered the two-person performance idea I had earlier this fall, and the solo performance class would also be helpful with that (well, that one or play writing.)  Both of those are also being offered.  And right now, I need to look at the clown piece for next Saturday...luckily, no singing gigs this week, though I do have two rehearsals, and a couple of parties.  I'll just have to start getting up earlier, and dedicate some time to it.

Yesterday was suddenly overcome with a fair amount of despair and futility, but got dressed and went to my singing gig, way out in sticks: the moon was lovely, ride over was with people who are good conversationalists, ran into an unexpected friend, someone said I could have dinner even though I hadn't registered (I didn't register because I thought we were singing before dinner, and I wanted to leave after singing, to go work on audition stuff, but we ended up singing after dinner...the people who drove me over had offered to pay for me to stay, but I had earlier turned them down), my voice sounded better to me than usual, (though I don't think that's license to abuse it by belting in a key I shouldn't on a regular basis, still kinda hurts), someone offered to let me spend Christmas with them, and another friend drove me home, way out of her way, probably an extra hour of driving for her...the kindness directed at me (in a non-threatening way) restored me.  Humbles me.  It was what I needed in a way I could accept it, at the right time.  We are answered.  (None of them did it because I was sad, they didn't know.  They did it because it's who they are.)

Friday

Sang at the Figgy Pudding event tonight (a fundraiser for The Pike Market Senior Center and Food Bank.)  Not sure how we sounded, we were a rag-tag choir, all of us responding to an email, using only song sheets, with no music scoring, and only having two rehearsals...but it went okay.  We also had a tuba player who had only recently moved to the US, and so didn't really know our Christmas music, but did a great job of accompanying us anyway.  The rain held off, it got warmer, and the protesters ended up rescheduling the protest to another day, though there might have been something after we left, there weren't any while we were singing.  We left right after we sang to get our stuff out of the office.

My voice is shot.  I am supposed to sing tomorrow night, but I'll have to see if I still can, if I rest it.  A few of the songs were in difficult keys.  I'm not sure how long we sang, but I felt pretty exhausted by the end, not really paying all that much attention to what I was singing, partially that was because it was a lot of singing, and partially it was because my throat really hurt by that point.  (The women near me were saying the same thing...we were trying to sing Jackson 5 versions of a couple of songs, but Micheal could really belt out at quite a high pitch, and even trying to lower the pitch, it was still hard to do.  Probably should have warmed up beforehand.)

I was gonna come home and watch a movie that's due back tomorrow, but went out for a drink with a few of the singers after instead.  Most of us had never met before, but the conversation was great, there wasn't even really small talk, we just dug into it. We hung out for a couple of hours. Unexpected and cool, even if I never see any of them again.  Interesting group of people.  (What we had in common was that we all use car sharing.

Other good things: there was an adorable bull-dog (French, I think), on the bus, and the clouds parted just enough to let me view the full moon right before I walked into the house.

Not reading anything

I'm doing a media fast for a while, not sure how long.  Might write...I don't know.  There's just so much negativity; it makes me feel toxic, like I get angry and stressed out and cornered which isn't conducive for me doing or adding anything useful or helpful or de-escalating into the world.  (And I don't want to spill that over onto the people around me.)  I'm not burying my head in the sand; I'm not staying home.  Gonna go out and listen and try to do something positive and look for ways where I can see the whole world isn't going to hell right now.  I've currently lost faith in humanity.  (Just so much bad news today, so much injustice, so much fear and digging into camps.)  Strings are being pulled somewhere to make us all enemies, someone gains from this, all of the rest of us lose: we lose the ability to be able to trust one another, to have civil discourse, to feel safe in the world, to work for a common good, to have empathy, to see our common humanity, to see good in one another, to have a future where there could be equality, to have a voice in any future (yeah, and some people lose their lives.)

The man sitting next to me on the bus asked how one even begins to address this place where we've arrived at...I don't know.  Protest works until people feel heard, but are those with the means to change anything listening?  (An election would have been a good time to replace them if they are not listening, but the majority didn't feel like it was important enough to vote.)  Some "good faith" effort needs to be offered, or the fear is just gonna keep ratcheting up on all sides until it's out of control.  Things are broken.

Why

I haven't been writing as much as I used to.  Everything I think to write feels so self-indulgent and that it would be boring to anyone else that I just don't say it.  Mostly I started writing the blog to make myself write, and hopefully become better at it over time...and I suppose the act of not writing is counter to that.  I write off-the-cuff, and while editing might make it better, there's also the truth that if I think about it too much, I won't do it at all.

Have been inspired by a photographer I came across yesterday, both in what he's photographing and how he's presenting it.  Something to aspire to in the new year.  I haven't followed through (yet...been busy with other things) on other ideas, so will have to wait to see if this one sticks.  But I've challenged myself, it has to do with urban/wild boundaries/overlap...I've been working on and off with the idea for years, not always successfully, but I'm intrigued by it; mostly I wonder which will win out, and what that would look like.  In a place that's been "re-wilded," what remains?  (At any rate, it's what we've been left with.)

I had a lot going on last year, and not much currently: work, trying to not slide backward on everything I gained (internally) last year, and now working on this show...getting through the mud of life.  Figuring out what's actual as opposed to what I want to see (where it's not.)

If real people (as opposed to spam generators) are actually reading this, thank you.

Putting it out there

Well.  It was good to get the idea on its feet and look at it in reality.  The two clowns that improv'd it with me were great and went places I hadn't imagined...so that was awesome.  There are different parts that need to be fleshed out and explored further, but um...I think it'll work, which is crazy.  Seems it will have text, and I need to decide if my clown speaks, and what that sounds like if I do.  Up to this point, it has been mute for the most part.  Also, I need a personality, and a gender, just because I wear a skirt doesn't mean I have to be female...and I've known that the clown has needed a solid personality for a while, it's just that I actually have to have one now.  Lately, I've been feeling like an old man, but that's probably not right.  Have a week-and-a-half to get direction on that.  The feedback was helpful.  The set up needs to be solid.

There were good ideas all around tonight, I think we will have enough material for the time.  It'll be fun.  I'm glad someone put their foot down and decided we should do this (the clown showcase.)

I was telling someone about the show earlier today, she said if we came up with a good piece she might hire us for an event.

Anyway, I've got to get back to the audition stuff.  I'd forgotten to choose my cold-reading side, and I need to read that through more, as well as work on the Shakespeare.

Only five more scheduled rehearsals until the show...even with an outline now, hardly seems like enough time.

Monday

Yea!  Out of my ridiculous insomnia last night, aside from running monologues, I came up with an idea for our show.  I probably should have just gotten up and written, when I finally fell asleep, my dreams were disturbing.  (Unrelated to the show idea, I think.)  At any rate, exciting that I had an idea, and something to work with, wherever it ends up going.

Another ridiculous week, schedule-wise: four singing gigs (one out of town), a rehearsal, and the final audition thing.

One down.  So much to get done.

Here's a heron, because it showed up and stood there in front of me, earlier.

Great Blue Heron, December 1/L Herlevi 2014

Heron, December 1/L Herlevi 2014