Some mysteries remain

"Sasquatch" sighting, January 14, L Herlevi 2015

Sasquatch sighting

Things back to normal, a normal that has shifted, but not much standing out.  Started serious work on the Sibelius music for March, fun, but difficult. (Venematka.)  I guess we won't be doing Oma Maa until next autumn, we've done it before, but not enough time to get it ready, it's long.

I went to a concert last night, there was a pre-show dinner that I decided to go to, for my birthday, to myself, and I got sat at a group table.  The conversations revolved around, WWII and Eastern Europe, the 1936 Olympics, the Winter War (Finland), Finns, saunas, the Finnish language, and new ways of treating waste water.  When we were leaving the dinner, one of the other guests mentioned a radio station that plays Scandinavian music (KSER?)  I'd mentioned that I sang in the folk choir.

Waiting at the bus stop after the show, some friends stopped their car in the middle of the road to ask if I wanted a ride (again, they don't live any where near me; a week or so ago, some other friends stopped and picked me up because it was raining and drove me to rehearsal, no where near where they were going, been lucky that way.  And my first reaction is always, "why are these people blocking the bus zone?" before realizing they are doing it for me, that I know them.) and so I ran up a block to get in the car (they had to get ahead of a bus), and then we were in the wrong lane because I ride the bus all the time and I assume the driver will know where they are going, which of course, not being the bus driver nor mind readers, they didn't.  So, they had to swerve out of the wrong lane (several vehicles did the same thing) which led to the topic that they had once rented a car, and the driver (a sister) had damaged the car pulling out of the parking garage, and hadn't bought the rental insurance.  Somehow they found a mechanic (in a strange city, mind you) that would repair the car overnight if they paid cash, which I guess happened.  It must've been a good job, they didn't get dinged by the rental company.  Gutsy.

Then the most interesting thing today has been that I went to lunch early, because I was hungry and had an appointment with a furniture vendor during my normal lunch time, so while walking to the Ave, I see a giant (7 foot, maybe) Sasquatch-type figure walking toward me.  At first I wasn't sure if it was Sasquatch or Chewbaca.  As it came closer, I saw it had a Native American mask on, and I think the "fur" was made of what looked like cedar bark.  Not sure what it was (or for.)  I thought it might be for the museum (the Burke) but it walked in the opposite direction across campus, not too many people paying attention to it, oddly enough.  Maybe it walks across campus every day.

When I finished lunch, I saw it coming back in my direction.  It stopped by a car, and eventually the man wearing it stepped out.  Hope someone writes about it.  I have a picture, of its back, striding away, and probably blurry, which seems fitting for a Sasquatch sighting.

Almost done reading the book.  Not remotely anywhere with the clown piece.  I need to go into rehearsal space and move...thinking too much.  I'd like it to be more physical now, plus I need to find a story arc.  When, I do not know, no free time until Sunday, now.

After the workshop

A bit anti-climatic, coming home on the bus, fog and rain.  The group this weekend built trust quickly, and there was something alchemical.  A lack (or suspension) of ego, perhaps?  All I know is that when people put it all out there, that makes it a safe space for everyone else to do it, too, and that happened this weekend, and so, there was a lot of growth.  There was a lot of magic going on in that room.  Someone mentioned that they felt they knew everyone intimately without knowing anything about their lives.  Yeah.  And for me, a definite break-thru, 600+ hours of training since I started this (acting.)  You practice until you get it.  And then you keep practicing.

Something I was able to articulate today, is that for me to deliver I need to know the rules of the world I'm inhabiting...I think this might be what happened in that long improv last spring.  My reactions made perfect sense in that world that had been constructed.  So, I need to figure out how I find that, and if it's in a show, that probably needs to be agreed upon to an extent.  If you believe it, the audience believes it, too.  Little kids do it all the time when they play "make believe," they create worlds with established rules and play within those, sometimes breaking them, but always doing that on a conscious level:  you need to know what the container is.  And after all is said and done, this work is essentially play, sometimes serious, but always play.

I feel free.

Broke through a wall

Exhausted, and it's late.  Broke through something, I don't know, the group I'm working with, the clothes, the day, the space that feels safe where I've let my guard down before, something clicked.  A lot of the self-consciousness that I feel on stage was gone (still felt it when I wasn't on stage), I was able to run with the impulse without wondering if I was having any (this has been a problem), and my energy levels went much higher.  All of this in spite of the fact that when it's not my turn, I sit and fret and think I'm gonna suck, that nothing will happen, that I will have to fake it.  And then I let the unexpected happen, I played by whatever ridiculous rules presented themselves, and I felt like something finally shifted.  I may not always get there in the future, but I got there today, which means I can do it.  It's there.  A personal victory.

I am also a giant bruise, I seem to have hurt my right foot, and I might have pulled something in my abdomen, though I don't currently feel that.  I was pulling myself over a theatre block via the back of my ankles from a starting position of lying on my back, and I felt a twinge in my side.  I did make it over.  (The block was an obstacle that we had to find a way over.)  Except for games, it was mostly solo work again.  I think we might do partner work tomorrow.

In spite of my lingering anxiety, today was fantastic.  And again, whenever I enter that space, every other worry in my life vanishes, and I am only there.  I love that.  Seven hours of being present.

Went to a show at ACT after.  I was only gonna stay for the first half, but the second half ended up being more meaningful to me.  It was a solo show about Shakespeare.  One thing he said had to do with nothing Shakespeare wrote was original, he wrote about the human condition, and that's common to all of us, only his language was better.  And in that, it should be accessible to all people, you shouldn't have to be "smart enough" to understand it.  He also talked about studying voice and speech, and that how to change the way you speak, to make it genuine (not fake, something you put on) you actually have to change yourself since speech is a huge part of our identity.  That reminded me of how I was told to raise my pitch (which I haven't done), and how much it freaked me out to think about it.  We have so many reasons for why we speak the way we do, what we believe it conveys.  But my vocal resonance is higher than where my current pitch is.

Also, when I was driving home on Christmas Eve, my voice was sore, and I started singing "operatic."  I have very little pitch control when I do it, would need to work with someone, but interestingly: it didn't hurt to sing that way, my volume probably doubled, and I had a bigger range.  Something to explore in the future.

For now, I need to sleep.

Birthday

Four more minutes of my birthday.  Then ten hours until tomorrow's class.  Seven hours of class.  Impending sense of dread between every exercise, not knowing what will be expected next...except failure may always be the option.  Came up last summer as well.  I have a ticket for a show tomorrow, but he mentioned he was pretty wiped out after last Saturday's marathon class.  Being "on" that long, is exhausting.  Plus, I have to do my full trip thing tomorrow, as I didn't have the right shoes tonight (I had clogs on, not conducive to tripping and not getting hurt really, at least not at this stage.)  Again, so much to remember, and I'm so out of regular practice.  The whole energy levels, the sharing, the unexpected reaction, the unexpected, the discovery, running with impulse, how you enter, and how you exit...not shutting yourself down, or letting your energy flag.  Tonight was mostly technical stuff about tripping, and physically (as well as vocally) reacting, walking into a door (I wanted shoes for the stairs and the door parts.  I was okay tripping on the flat floor barefoot.)  I should write notes.

Some friends took me out for a drink after.  I think it must have been straight alcohol, no mixer in there.  So, I guess I'm restarting the allergy testing tomorrow...it's okay, I've been kinda' flaky.  I mentioned that I felt like a slug earlier, and when I was away from my desk, my boss dropped off a mocha for me.  She told me after I'd already drunk it. (Had been almost a week off of coffee, and nine days off of alcohol.)  At least I'm still taking the main supplement, though it tastes nasty.  I do want to feel better.

I also need to look over my notes and cast this thing, already.  (Two potentials are in the workshop this weekend.)

Facing fears.

Tired.

Sleep.

More change

And yet another direction.  I need to make the casting choices solid so that I can make the game solid.  The coaching session was helpful and makes the time we have seem short, and yet, also really fleshed out the work, and gave us all more to explore, makes it more interesting to watch.  Plus, covered a lot of the details we hadn't gotten to yet (what makes it a performance?  What makes it clown?  Where is the focus?  Where is the energy?  How are you entering?  What do you need to do?  Building?  Discovering?  Sharing with the audience?  Exiting? - basic acting questions, really.)

I have two shows (different ones) over the next two months, and neither of them are written.  One has yet to be conceived.  That's a sobering thought.  I'll be better for all of it though.

I need to apply for auditions, too, and soon.

There's absurdity I want to explore with clown.  Leaps you can make because it's clown.  Suspension of disbelief, like in cartoons, that I want to play with.  I won't be using it in this show, but have a bunch of fragments (or threads) to follow for now.

I'm glad we are doing this.

New direction

Inexplicably, now have heat in the attic.  Curious.

More than halfway through 1984.  No recollection of any of it at all.  Fell asleep reading it last night, and between that and the giant spider near the head of my bed, had a lot of strange (some disturbing) dreams.

Two interesting observations by Winston in the book, "the world-view of the Party imposed itself most successfully on people incapable of understanding it.  They could be made to accept the most flagrant violations of reality, because they never fully grasped the enormity of what was demanded of them, and they were not sufficiently interested in public events to notice what was happening.  By lack of understanding they remained sane.  They simply swallowed everything, and what they swallowed did them no harm, because it left no residue behind..." - and "if you can feel that staying human is worth while even when it can't have any result whatever, you've beaten them...if the object was not to stay alive but to stay human, what difference did it ultimately make?  They could not alter your feelings; for that matter you could not alter them yourself, even if you wanted to.  They could lay bare in the utmost detail everything that you had done or said or thought; but the inner heart, whose workings were mysterious even to yourself, remained impregnable." - George Orwell, 1984.  The latter stemming from thinking about how the proles were more human than the Party members.  Do we ever know what separates one from the other?  Why did some people become Party members, subject to all the control, and others were allowed to continue to live like humans live?  The former as good an argument for a broad-based education with critical thinking (as well as a free and independent press) as any I can think of.  As far as events of today go, I've talked about those elsewhere.

The clown piece was getting too complicated, so:  Start over.  Will try to spit out some sorta' outline for this for tomorrow.  Pretty sure it's down to three characters.

Sheer terror and exhilaration.  (For current things.)  You show up because you have to.  You make art because you have to.  (At a New Year's Eve party, I was telling someone that my degree wasn't all that practical, and he commented something to the effect, "Well, at least it's not acting, " to which I replied that that was my back-up, and we both laughed and I said I wasn't doing it for money, but because I had to.)  You make art because you have to.  You love because you have to, and in all these, the resistance just breaks down.  We are who we are.  And who we are is good enough.

Cheers to a weekend of failure.

Yet another book

My co-worker took a picture of me to hang on her bulletin board because I'm wearing the goofy owl sweater and she says it makes her smile every time she sees it.  I looked like a very geeky teenage boy in the photo (though in defense of the sweater, it does have a nice cut.)  (If it were a movie, Toni Collette would probably be my mother, never mind that I'm actually older, but she often plays the mother to the type of boy I resemble today.)  I need a new haircut, and I subsequently put on a little make-up.  I am also extraordinarily clumsy today.  Missed my bus because I kept knocking stuff over, and spilling things, in the kitchen.  At one point, knocked a can of coconut milk toward my head (it missed), smacked into the counter, knocked over some bottles into wine glasses (which thankfully, did not break)...all of it making quite a racket.  (Like when you are trying to be quiet, and that focus on the act makes you make more noise than you otherwise would've, if you weren't trying.)  It's a clown-moment morning.  I'll leave it at that.

Picked up a copy of 1984 at the bus stop.  One of those bus libraries.  I've started it before, but got bored, I think.  I wasn't planning on taking a book, mostly I look to see what types of books are in them.  I have a bunch I want to add to the collections and am feeling out the offerings to see where to leave them.  Anyway, gave me something to do while waiting for the next bus.

It is a bit boring starting out, I don't find anyone to sympathize with, but it picks up with the ideas of "history" continually being amended so that those are in control are seen as infallible, and so that one can no longer distinguish actual memories from fabrications, or even "when" it is.  And then there is the cloying aspect of always being observed, of always having to be on guard, of a lack of genuine feeling (of any kind.)  The only freedom being in your mind, but you'd better not trust those ideas to be spoken or written or otherwise known.  In a place where there are no laws, but the simplest act of autonomy can subject you to death.  How everything is falling apart.  I'm only on about page 38.

I need to stop starting new books before I finish the pile I'm wading through.  I've lost track of how many now.  Still, this is a good one for reading on the bus, it's very portable (Dickens is not.)

I should find somewhere to go write for a while.

Warm, Rainy, and Monday

A dark morning.  Dark, and schizophrenic weather, over 50 degrees again (it was in the 20's a couple of mornings ago); the office was boiling from the radiators being left open all weekend.  Had to open a window in the house during the night, too, the heat finally reaching the attic.  Then, walking to work, still relatively dark out, a glimpse of something white and fluttering to my side.  I think it must be paper or plastic caught in the breeze, but when I turn, it's a massive seagull, silently landing in the grass next to me.  I joked with someone that it was trying to sneak up on me, they're usually so vocal.

The clown thing.  I'm probably getting too psychological with it.  Too narrative, but then again, you can always back off of too much, I'm happy for a concept.  And I was told that mostly what I need to write are stage directions, that's a relief to get a handle on something...it was all this vagueness before.  Possible meeting with someone to hash it out this week, then a coaching session, then fifteen hours of "failure and frustration" (a clown workshop.)  Overall, a slightly unexpected opportunity, last summer he didn't think he'd be here in the winter.  The timing works for me.

I'm finding the Meisner exercises coming back to me now, and working for me in a way they didn't last year, which is great.  Surprised, I suppose by the direction things have taken, and I hope it all works out.  Even if we only perform for an audience of one, I want to be committed to it.

One last day of nothingness

On the curbs today: Christmas trees, disposed and dry, lying on the grass, waiting to be taken away.  Remnants of holidays hauled off and forgotten until next year.  In the trees, found gloves and other winter wear, adorning the otherwise bare branches.  The difficulty of going out in the cold, because I don't want to be cold.  But go, I do.  Walked the lake.  Cooked.  Watched some tv.  Walked out again to run an errand (actually, did that 2x.)  Made kale chips because I wanted "junk" food; tastes an awful lot like potato chips somehow.  All procrastination.  The intention was to write.  Finally, walked over to the coffee shop, drank hot chocolate, journaled, and then wrote more on the piece.

Lost glove, January 2/L Herlevi 2015

So...one of them puts in a personal ad.  The other reads it.  Realizes that they know who it is, and likes them, but figures, "well, if they liked me, they could've asked me out, but didn't, so..."  But then decides, what the heck, that since it's anonymous, to answer the ad anyway, who's gonna know?  The replies go back and forth and they decide to meet, under that pretense of being strangers, which is false.  2 hasn't come clean, yet.  Keeps putting it off.  Keeps meaning to get to it before they are scheduled to meet, but chickens out time and again.  So...here we are at the meeting place.  1 (the one who placed the ad, and who really is unaware) is there, 2 walks in, chickens out, walks back out.  Really doesn't want to hurt 1, so attempts to enter again, slightly altered in appearance from before...and where does that go?  The jig is up...how does it end (for now)?  Do I need the fourth character?  What's the "special?"  Need something tangible by Sunday.

Words or no?  Still unclear.  Need to figure out the length of it, too.  Still, the concept needs to be solid first.

Another break.  Time to mull it over more.

(Though I found all this from observing life, there are examples of it all around, (mistaken identity, tricksters, personal ads): Cyrano, Shakespeare, that Piña Colada song, "Must Love Dogs," etc..That song has been running in my head since Christmas from an association from an old Jazzercize routine, Knox Blox (piña colada and mocha) that my mom took to her class.  My brother was commenting disparagingly about Knox blocks(?) and I was remembering that I kinda' liked the mocha ones.)

Triggers everywhere.  Just got to write it down when it comes.