Mamma mia!

Over the course of the past two days, the inhabitancy (is that a word?) of my house has swelled from about five to nine people. Agnese is back from working all her festivals, Natali is back from her travels, Pablo is back from doing his show in Edinburgh, and Karim's back from the States. (Jed, Rebecca, Carrie, myself, and our poor hapless Polish housemate who has no connection to LISPA whatsoever have always been here.) I love it, I love it, I love it. There are people everywhere, and it's a tight, joyful squeeze. It'll probably start getting on my nerves after a week or two, but right now it's bliss.

Last night was the first night with everyone home, and so what did we do? You'll never guess. We broke out a couple bottles of wine, added a couple of feet to the kitchen table, pulled it out to the centre of the room (allowing about 12in of squeeze-through room around the sides), cranked up the Justin Timberlake, rolled up our sleeves, and made pasta. Like, actually made pasta. From scratch. With eggs and flour and stuff. Agnese, being Italian, organised and generally oversaw the event, and Jed, being an absolutely phenomenal cook, spearheaded the actually making of the pasta, and showing the rest of us how. Angese made the most amazing sauce with fresh cherry tomatoes and olive oil and basil and garlic, and various people made various ravioli fillings (goat's cheese and ricotta, butternut squash with goat's cheese and cinnamon, goat's cheese and spinach, and "white trash filling," i.e. goat's cheese, cheddar cheese, and olives. [We had a lot of goat's cheese.]) We rolled dough until our arms were sore, and cut out all sorts of silly ravioli shapes (fish, pac-men, skulls, stars, etc), and stuffed the ravioli, and Agnese cooked the ravioli, and would bring in new plates of steaming fresh ravioli every five minutes or so, which everyone swooped on with forks and fingers while still making new ones. When the sauce ran out, we switched to olive oil with rosemary as dressing. And when the stuffing ran out, Jed made linguine.

This linguine was quite possibly the best thing I've ever eaten in my entire life.

The ravioli was good, but we didn't really get the effect of the fresh pasta until the linguine. This is why people go on and on about the merits of freshly made pasta. Because it really is that good. Depending on how ambitious I'm feeling over Christmas, maybe we'll have to have a pasta-making party. How great would that be?!

As you may be able to tell, I'm feeling a lot less sad, a lot more happy these days. Sure, I haven't been able to ride my bike all week because of Yet Another flat (this can't be normal, right? Three times in as many weeks? Back me up on this, biker buds), and sure, my shoulder's still a bit wacky, and sure, the clouds have rolled back in over the course of the past couple of days, but I'm good. I'm happy. I lead the good life in London.

Here's to the artists

Just poking around online (because what else does one do at work, really?), and wanted to share that I am inspired and awed by how many really, really, really talented people I know or am connected to, either directly or indirectly. There's such a wealth of (dare I say it?) art and heart, tremendous arty hearters in my immediate communal proximity that it's staggering, and exciting, and joyous. And think of all the potential collaborations! I think I could be very happy being a foil for other people's talents and visions for the rest of my life. At least until I figure out what my vision is.

One of the things about LISPA, and I may have mentioned it before, is that it asks the question (among others), "What kind of theatre do you want to create?" Another pertinent one is "What do you want to say through your art?" My answers to these are a stuttering "...g-uhhh..." in the first case, and something slightly more articulate but similarly vague in the second. Basically, I don't know yet. I have a sense of something, but it doesn't have a shape. I have No Idea when or how that shape will form - hopefully the second year will help somewhat. But I've decided that it's ok. And the most recent answer I have for people who ask me what I'm going to do after I graduate is this:

I don't know.
But I'd love to spend a year or more bouncing from project to project headed by my friends, helping them to realise their visions until I realise mine.
(And if this necessitates living all over the world, well then, who am I to say nay?)

Link-a-licious

You know what makes things better though? The fact that I figured out how to make links on my blog. It makes me feel techno-savvy and cool.

That and the fact that the weather has been sunny for the past six days. Maybe not always warm, but sunny nonetheless. Keep it up, London! You're doin' great!

Busy bee... but still sad

What I've Been Doing With Myself Since Wednesday:

Thursday:
Cycled to work, then cycled to Covent Garden for the August Thursday-night Covent Garden Night Food Market. Noplace does markets like London. I love 'em! Portobello, Camden, The Stables (I haven't even been to that one yet!), Spitalfields... there are many, and all are awesome. This one is no exception. Simon, Carrie, Niamh, and I all convened for dinner - Simon and I got Ghanaian food, Carrie and Niamh got Indian, and we huddled under parasoled picnic tables eating out of our little take-away dishes in the chill. And then we got organic mango-passionfruit-lime ice cream. And then I ate the Richest Most Chocolatey Brownie I Have Ever Eaten. Literally, as soon as I took my first bite my head snapped back with the power of the chocolate. Unbelievable. We love the Covent Garden Night Market. Tomorrow is the last night, and you'd better bet we'll be there.

After the Night Market and a beer, Simon, Niamh, her French flatmate Camille, and I all went and saw The Lives of Others. Phenomenal film. Best I've seen in a long while. And then I cycled home at 1130 at night for seven miles through central London, and didn't die. Go me.

Friday:
I took the bus into work because straightaway after work I was going to Waterloo station to catch a train to Hampshire. Went to Hampshire with Simon (Mr Jackson) and his friend James (Mr Read) to meet Jack (Mr Lakey) and Kevin (Mr Stott) at Jack's place of employ, the Gordon Brown Outdoor Educational Centre (no, not THAT Gordon Brown). What followed was an evening of revelry in the country, complete with a night walk through the woods with an impromptu exploration of an abandoned house and a premeditated exploration of an old underground air raid shelter. The former was fun. The latter was awesome. It was the darkest and quietest place I have ever been, and it made me feel like I didn't have a body, or like there was nothing except for my body. Or something. And I was sober. Super, super cool. Got to bed super, super late.

Saturday:
Simon had to leave, so the rest of us had a BBQ without him. Incredible food. Then I had to leave for work. Worked. Met up with Mr.s Lakey, Read, and Stott who had since come into London for the evening. Went and danced to soul music at Metro on Oxford Street. Didn't get home til 5am. Jack and Kevin squeezed into my single bed, James slept on the floor; I slept in Rebecca's room.

Sunday:
Got up early to make the boys breakfast. Then they went out exploring while I took a shower and tried to suck energy back into my de-energised body. Carrie and I met up with them at three to go to the Notting Hill Carnival, which is apparently the biggest street carnival in Europe. Or something. It's West Indies themed, which means lots of Steel bands, lots of really really loud, great music, lots of fantastic food, lots of floats and people in crazy colourful costumes; and it was in London, which means lots and lots of police, and lots and lots of really, really drunk people. We went on "Kid's Day," so it wasn't too bad. Cool sights of the day included:

• a troupe of about 12 reeeeally good rollerskaters that came outta nowhere and went flying down Portobello road
• impromptu capoeria circle
• people hanging out of windows to watch the carnival
• a lady handing out baby wipes outside some seriously sketchy port-a-potties
• more speakers than I have ever seen
• a group of 15yearolds dressed as superheroes
• music stages playing music so loudly it made my vision vibrate (no joke)

and, my personal favorite,

• two eighty-year-old ladies gettin' down to the funky beats of passing floats. That will be me and Janna in fifty years, mark my words.

After a couple of hours of that we were plumb wore out, so we hung out and walked around Kensington Gardens in the fading light. Then the boys went home to their respective countryside abodes, and Carrie and I saw Knocked Up. I'm a pussy; I totally cried when she gave birth. And it made me want to have a baby in a way I never have before, and it made me miss my parents, and have so much appreciation and awe for what they went through. Not bad for a summer romantic comedy, huh. Went home, slept eleven hours.

Monday:
Woke up with a headcold. Shit. But it was a bank holiday! No work! Hooray! Called Gemma (Happy Birthday, my love!), which made me a little sad. I miss her terribly. It's been a really really long time. To make myself feel better, I took myself out to lunch to my new favorite place, Graceland, which is a little cafe/lunch spot with big windows, wood tables, and high ceilings that's a 7min walk from my house. You will be able to find me there every weekend from now on. It's great. Came home to a quiet afternoon of chats with Natali, painting more paintings, and lounging around. Did some quarter-hearted house-hunting online. Watched Notes on a Scandal with Carrie...

And then got really sad again. Was sad all that night, and then all day yesterday. Luckily Niamh called to see if I wanted to come over for dinner, so I ended up spending the rest of the day and night with her, which was really lovely. I'm wearing one of her dresses to work today. She also gave me lots of new clothes. (I've resolved to start dressing cooler. Rebecca and Natali in particular will henceforward be my style gurus.)

Today, generally speaking, has been better. Still have the headcold and am pretty low-energy, but feel more in control, in a way. One thing that's been helpful is I've decided that tonight I'm going to prom - short for promenade, and it essentially means getting rush tickets to a classical music performance at Prince Albert Hall. Hopefully Carrie will be joining me, but even if she doesn't, ain't nothing wrong with a little solo classical concert going.

**Addendum**

The concert at Prince Albert Hall was awesome. The first piece was Strauss' Also Spoke Zarasthura, better known as the theme from 2001: A Space Odyssey, and boy, did I ever get the goosebumps!

duuun.... duuuun.... duuuun........... DUN DUUUUN! (dundundundundundundundundundun)

Acrylic therapy

Last night I was sad, and so I listened to the first mix Mike made me and made lots of little paintings. For some inexplicable reason, I felt tremendously lonely. I talked to Carrie about it and, as is often the case, the articulation of the problem solved the problem, in a way. Here's what I discovered.

Many of you knew about my living situation for most of this past year - how I rented a room in an single mother-actress's house and while the house was beautiful and the people were nice and the rent was good, I felt very isolated. Especially seeing all my classmates become best of friends with their housemates around me (or so it seemed from the outside), it made me feel awfully alone. So I think I built up in my head that by living with people this summer, by living with my friends, I would automatically be best friends with everyone, and wouldn't ever feel isolated again.

Ridiculous, right? As soon as I articulated it, I knew that it was an absurd expectation, and that helped me to come to terms with it.

Not that I'll never feel lonely again. With the interminable dragging onwards of this grey weather I'll probably still feel bluesy from time to time. And it's a notable hole in my life that I don't have a best friend here. Simon's here, but I don't get to see him that often, and Gemma, Janna, Avye, and others so close to my heart are terribly, terribly far away.

Maybe I'm just a little homesick for those closest to my heart.

But I'm having coffee with Lyndal after work, and Niamh's back in town, and I've been invited to a party in northern Hampshire with Simon on Friday. And if all else fails, I can always paint more.

Back in the Saddle Again

I'm officially back in the biking saddle, and glad of it. After work yesterday when I took my bike in to have my flat fixed, the nice bike man did it for free! and life consequently got a lot shinier. Got home to dinner of pesto pizza, quesadillas, and caesar salad with housemates, and then hung out all evening with carrie, a pint of chocolate and ginger organic ice cream, and a copy of Peter Pan. The weather's still shit, but my mood has greatly improved. Knock on wood.

Ouch, says my wallet

This is getting ridiculous. I thought it was supposed to be cheaper to bike than to take public transport! Note the charges thus far accrued over a mere TWO WEEKS of biking:

Bike helmet: £8
Bike lock: £20
Bike lights: £17
Flat fixed (rear wheel): £10
New front wheel: £30
and attachment/labor: £10

AND I went to pick up my bike today from the spot it had been locked to all weekend, only to discover that the front tire was flat. Argh! The last time I rode this bike was before my accident last week; the last time the front tire had anything done to it was when I had my entire wheel replaced on Thursday. I'm suspicious that the bike guy inadvertently punctured my tire while he was changing the wheel, but I have little doubt that he'll charge me to mend it anyway. Thereby adding the following charge to my already-far-too-lengthy list...

Flat fixed (front wheel): £10

and bringing the grand total to a whopping ONE HUNDRED AND FIVE POUNDS.

(And no, I'm not going to convert to dollars. I'd like to continue to view the situation as eye-rollingly-irritating, as opposed to garment-tearingly-terrible, thank you.)

Luckily, a lot of those are one-off expenses - helmet, lights, lock, etc. And I suppose all the repairs are just something that happens when the bike itself is free. I mean, my friend Maria lent it to me, so it would've been free for me anyway, but I just found out recently that she found it in a bush somewhere in the first place. Perhaps too much to ask, then, that it wouldn't need as many repairs as it has. One thing's for sure: when the time comes at the end of the summer for me to get my own bike, I'm getting mine from an honest-to-God bike store. A used bike store, but a bike store nonetheless.

In other news, I had a lovely time at Peter Vanderford's wedding this weekend. I was able to dance after all (though now my shoulder is hurting again... oops!), the service was lovely, the company was lovelier, and it proved to be a nice relaxing couple of days. It was awesome to get a chance to catch up with Peter, and meet his beautiful wife (!) and it was great to see Mike and Mary, as well as other members of their extended family that I'd never met before, all of whom who immensely accomodating and very kind. And best of all, I got to see Paul! Paul! Paul of the best hugs known to humankind! Paul my favorite! Paul Paul Paul! Oh, it was so exciting. Unfortunately, he was sick as a dog, so I tried to be kind to him and leave him alone to rest from time to time. Mostly, though, I just hung around and beamed at him. He's so great.

You know what isn't great? The weather. The fact that it's been cold and wet and rainy ALL SUMMER LONG is really starting to get to me. I can tell that I'm crabbier than I usually am this time of year, and I'm putting it down to the fact that there's not any sun. Boo, hiss.

Fortunately, there are still fun things to do inside when it's shitty outside. Yesterday my friend Andy and his wife Mandy had a little get-together for his birthday, which involved about six of us sitting around their living room, looking up tabs on the internet and then singing with guitar, piano, and harmonious vocal accompaniment for seven hours. Lovely. I've warned them that I may be calling periodically to see if I can come over and sing with them. I'd forgotten that I missed it.

A painful, piteous rite of passage

I had my first biking accident yesterday. If I were in the mood I'd recount the details of the event, but the short version is that a three-year old ran out in front of my bike when I was whizzing down the bike path in Hyde Park and I had to swerve to avoid him, consequently crashing into the meter-high, foot-in-diameter cylindrical cast iron partitions that lined the right-hand side of the path. (Dad - remember that time we went rollerblading and you had to get stitches in your elbow? They're like the things you crashed into, only metal, twice the size, and connected by metal bars instead of chains.)

Injuries sustained are as follows:

Right index finger purple and swollen with gray fingernail
No skin remaining on top knuckle of said finger
Severe scrape on right forearm
Left shoulder all fucked up (can't move left arm very well or raise it above shoulder-height)
Right thigh severly bruised
Left thigh scraped, bruised, and swollen
Left ankle devoid of skin
Assorted smaller bruises and abrasions
and, perhaps most upsetting, front wheel of bike bent.

The kid is fine. (Though, truth be told, I wanted to throttle him. He actually looked, saw me coming, and THEN decided to run in front of me. I know he's young and doesn't know any better, but come on!)

After the accident, I was running late to meet Annika for dinner/drinks, so instead of going to the hospital as I perhaps should have done, I locked my bike up and caught the tube across town to meet her and drown my sorrows. By the time I got home it was almost midnight, so all there was to do was go to bed. Hobbling into work this morning, my co-worker chastised me for not going to the hospital, and doesn't understand why I came in at all. I had plans tonight, but I think I may have to cancel them so I can go get my injuries checked out. I'm particularly concerned about my arm. Guess I won't be starting those acrobatics classes next week after all...

I am filled with self-pity. My wounded bike is still locked up in Knightsbridge (provided it hasn't been stolen - bike theft is rampant in London), I don't know how or when I'm going to get it to a bike repair shop, I'm bruised and sore and walk funny, and the kicker is that in this state, I won't be able to dance at Peter Vanderford's wedding tomorrow. Taking the bus into work this morning I was sick at heart watching all the bikers - I wanted to be biking too! I hate not being capable of simple things - it took me about ten minutes and a lot of grimacing to dress myself this morning. And I'm dreading trying to shower - seeing as I could barely raise my left arm enough to put on deodorant this morning, I have no idea how I'm going to manage to wash my hair properly.

Wah, wah, wah, poor me.

If there's a silver lining, it's that I feel that this is a rite of passage. I had to have a biking accident at some point, and though it did involve a large piece of metal, at least that large piece of metal wasn't a car. And since I managed to bruise both legs and not just one, the resulting limps kind of cancel each other out, so now I have this jerky weird little walk that looks like I either a) am always trying to hold myself back from breaking into a sprint or b) really have to pee. It's kind of delightfully ridiculous, though I'd probably find it funnier if it didn't hurt so much.

So there you have it, ladies and gentlemen. She's down, but she's not out. The moral of the story is: Don't talk to your friends about how you really haven't had much to blog about lately, because then you'll find yourself bloody, bruised, and wrapped around a pole.

* Addendum *

Several hours later, life is looking a lot better. Shortly after writing the first half of this entry, I called my manager who gave me the rest of the day off, which I spent going to the hospital (no serious damage, thank goodness, I'll just be sore for awhile), retrieving my bike from Knightsbridge, and wheeling it for a couple of miles to the nearest bike shop. Unfortunately the bike-doctor's verdict wasn't as shiny as the me-doctor's - the wheel was bent beyond repair, so I had to shell out 40 quid for a new one. Oh well. If nothing else goes wrong this summer (knock on wood), it'll still be cheaper than public transport. My arm is already feeling better, with considerably more range of motion than last night or this morning, and my finger feels better, too. Most importantly, the pity party is over. The plan for the rest of the day is to attempt a shower, take a nap, and go see Bourne Ultimatum. Life could certainly be worse.

Lessons in Adulthood

Adult things I have done this week:

Filled out my tax return form for Her Majesty's Inspector of Taxes
Learned how to make Pumpkin and Feta Pie (which is actually made with butternut squash)
Carmelized onions to go into said Pie
Filled out my visa application form

The End.

Isa-bunny ain't so funny

I feel like a rabbit. A grumpy rabbit. It was completely my own decision to do this gall-bladder detox thing again, and I know I'll feel amazing afterwards, and even not that bad once I start properly fasting, but this part at the beginning when I'm only allowed to eat raw food in preparation for the fast is no fun.

So far today I have eaten: half a bag of baby carrots, two oranges, a 300g pack of blueberries, two baby cucumbers, a pear, and nearly all of a 300g bag of pistachios. What I really want is a hamburger and cheesecake.

Salt in the wound is the fact that there IS cheesecake in my house, but I'M NOT ALLOWED TO EAT IT! Not only that, but it's homemade ginger cheesecake!!!, brought into being by my dear housemate and all-around goddess Carrie. There is no way that I would be able to describe the yumminess in mere words, so I'm not even going to try. I ate about a third of this Incredible concoction the first evening it was made, amongst much sighing and little shivers of joy, and let's just say that I now worship at the Church of Cheesecake.

So why!? Why have I decided to go on this fast NOW?

Phooey.

(she sighs resignedly and reaches for another carrot stick)

At least I have moral support. Rebecca is doing it with me this time around (I think last time I was on my own), and to be honest were it not for her I'd probably talk myself into doing it Not Now... like, say, in a month or so. And it will be nice to have someone to sit in a corner and drink juice with while everyone else is eating real food. And to self-congratulate with when we make it through, and feel Awesome.

But enough of that. Have I mentioned how amazing it is to be living in a house full of friends? I love coming home from work to people in the kitchen, people in the living room, people in the yard. I love that the entire evening consists of cooking and eating and getting stuck talking around the beautiful black hole of the kitchen table. I think (knock on wood) this may be the summer that I learn to cook. I've been watching other people cook very carefully, and sooner or later I may feel empowered enough to take the plunge myself! (You know, when I can eat again.) I've already decided that I'm going to steal that ginger cheesecake recipe so I can try to make it for folks at home over Christmas. How awesome does that sound, folks at home?! Yeah, that's what I thought.

We also have a piano at this house. Get this - it's a piano they found on the street, for free. (I love London.) As you might expect, it's horrifically out of tune, but who cares!? It's a free piano! I've also discovered that the Kensington Library checks out piano scores, so I've been spending about an hour every couple of days or so pounding out melancholy nocturnes made even more melancholic by the ridiculous out-of-tuneness of the instrument. I try to do it when I'm the only one in the house - the only way I can suffer through them is because I know what they're supposed to sound like.

Also, we have foxes living in our back yard.

Let's see, what else? I'm really happy these days. Raw-food-inspired bitch sessions and angsty spells over long-lost friends aside, I'm actually doing really well. I'm loving biking places. I'm loving my living situation. I'm more well-rested than I've been in probably a year. I'm happy to be where I am. For the first time in years, actually, I'm not making plans to be somewhere I'm not. I really am happy here in this moment. And this, indeed, is something to be happy about.

I must be getting old...

I found my first grey hair this morning.

Weeeeeeeird.

I blame it on that final creation project.

I give up.

Disclaimer: it's probably a bad idea to write this entry. I get the sense that writing about things so personal in a forum so public is both an exercise in playing with fire and a recipe for disaster. But if I'm going to be honest about my day today, and about how I'm feeling, then I'm going to have to write about something I don't usually talk about.

That said, here we go:

I keep trying to write about this, but I keep failing. This is my... fourth entry? All the others have ended up erased.

Brian's in a three-person show about old friends reuniting co-starring Garrett and some girl I don't know, and mid "break a leg" email to Brian, I was slammed with severe nostalgia, melancholy, anger, sadness, etc, over all the memories of the three of us meeting five years ago, the memories of wonderful times with Garrett, memories of awkward times with Garrett, and memories of the shittiness and heartbreak and pain as I was effectively cut out of his life. None of this was mentioned in my email to Brian, because I decided a long time ago that I wasn't going to drag him into this, and with one forgivable exception I've stayed true to my resolution. But you know what? It's shitty. It's shitty to have one of your dearest friends just stop calling. It's shitty to be stood up by them when it looks like things are going to have the chance to be okay again. But it's even shittier to feel like you're supposed to follow their lead and cut them out of your life as well; shouldn't mention them, and shouldn't acknowledge their existence, let alone how much they meant to you.

I should mention here that this has nothing to do with Brian, and everything to do with me. Brian's wonderful. Brian's wonderful enough that I really don't want to put him in an awkward position by making him listen to whatever Garrett-related angst I may have. And in fairness, I don't really have it anymore. It was just the combination of them being in a show together, and that show being about reuniting old friends, and that show having a two-boys-one-girl cast of three (which was essentially... well, it was us that summer. To me, it was us. Though I know nothing about the show itself and the relationships between those characters, I keep feeling like I'm that girl). This triple-whammy kind of made it all come roaring back.

I hate that friends get lost sometimes. I hate that circumstances, or misunderstandings, or whatever turn a seemingly unshakeable friendship into ether. I hate the sense of abandonment, and the always wondering if I could've done something different. Most of all, I hate that I feel lame for still caring.

Monday morning never looked so good

I biked to work this morning for the first time (despite the rain!) and sashayed into the office like a conquering hero, oh so pleased with myself. It was faster than the bus! It was faster than the tube! It was exercise! It was fun! I really wish I could bike in every day, but until I get paid on the 15th I can't afford a helmet; and without a helmet, I refuse to bike. Carrie very generously lent me hers this morning, but she'll need it herself for the rest of the week. Sigh. But! I spent much of the morning plotting bike routes on JourneyPlanner for the rest of the summer and next year, so this but the beginning...

We'll see if my enthusiasm is maintained on the way home. Did I mention that it's mostly downhill from home to work? Work to home may be slightly less invigorating, slightly more grueling...

End of Term Four, part IV

To continue our story once more...

Luckily, I wasn't alone - I had six other group members to support me, to keep the piece moving, to pick up my slack. Alexander in particular was my knight in shining armour that day, allowing me to burst into tears when I needed to while still gently prodding me towards productivity. I'm not sure how much we really got done that evening (I was feeling so useless that I think any progress we made may have been lost on me), but we got through it regardless, doubtless with something to show for it. I slept very well that night, both emotionally and physically exhausted.

Sunday was worlds better. I had the whole day to myself, and we were only meeting for a couple of hours in the evening. It was still a bit difficult - as the day before the performance, the heat was on and tensions were high - but we were able to set our piece, and go home and sleep safe in the knowledge that come what may, it was done. It wasn't perfect, but by God, it was done. All there was left was to perform it the following day.

To be honest, though, I still wasn't completely happy: as with all things at this school, our accomplishment of finally building a piece came with a lesson to be learned. A disappointment I had been struggling with was the fact that the piece we’d finally started to form was, well, light. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with light – I wasn’t out to make a melodrama – but was turning out to be something that could be described as “a playful romp” or “farcical delight”. And you know me, always going on about theatre’s capacity to change the world – I have to admit that I was a little disappointed that the only thing we’d really been able to come up with was something that felt so fluff, so inconsequential, so… so…. ROM-COM. (though looking at our theme, in retrospect it’s hardly a surprise.) And sometimes, watching other pieces that truly seemed to manage to tap into some form of poetry of the human condition, and to gracefully transpose it onto the stage… well, I felt a little jealous, and it made my heart twinge just a little.

But there’s poetry to be found in having fun, as well; and once I realised that there’s certainly nothing wrong with building a piece that, while it may not demand much of its audience, is full of joy and play, it was easier to give up the ghost of all my dramatic and “meaningful” ideas of what our piece could’ve been. Because it wasn’t. And that’s ok. And that's the mindset I went into Monday night with.

And the performance itself? It went great. I nearly fell off a platform and tore down half the set at one point from sheer over-enthusiasm, but I like to think it only added to the spectacle and over-all enjoyment of the piece by the audience.

Really, the most special part of the evening for me was the fact that Simon was in the audience. For those of you who have never spoken to me and never read my blog before and live under a rock, Simon was my placement partner in Uganda - we lived and worked together for eight months, he never killed me, and he knows me as well as anyone does, I think. For all our experience-rich friendship, though, he'd only ever heard about this obsession I have with theatre; he'd never seen me act, had only heard stories about the school, and had certainly never seen me in a show (let alone one of my own devising). To have him there on Monday, then, was Huge for me. Not only did I have someone in the audience, it was Simon; and not only was he watching, he was learning the Why and the How in addition to the What of theatre for me; and not only did he see the performance, he enjoyed it!; and not only did he enjoy it, he Got It! (I'm speaking less about my piece now and more about the performances that night as a whole.) I can't tell you how good that felt, to have him see the show and start to understand what this past year's been like for me, the kind of work I've been doing, the kind of goals I'm hoping to achieve. I only wish everyone so dear to me could've been there.

Anyway. As you can imagine, the evening after the performance was an immensely enjoyable one - everyone was in high spirits and correspondingly headed to the pub, where spirits got higher. Simon and I split a falafel from up the road and hid out at a smaller pub with a select few others for the first drink or two before joining the masses around the corner. Then we wound our way home, chatting and enjoying the evening air. It was a lovely night indeed.

Can you believe that that was on the 8th of July, with still two weeks remaining of the term?! We couldn't. It was a bit difficult to get motivated for more class and presentations, but luckily the pace had slowed down enough that we were able to keep up. That next week we had our final acrobatics presentations and final classes - mostly a tying up of loose ends, and a clearing of the way to the final week of individual performances...

The End of Term Four, part III

I can't remember if we stuck around to rehearse that evening after discovering we had not two, but five days left to prepare for our final presentation or not. I have the feeling that we probably did. And over the course of the next couple of days, my schedule went a little something like this: wake up late, rush to work; work at my desk job for four hours; rush to school; be at school for about eight hours, rehearsing or presenting and being critiqued; go home, go to bed, do it all over again. The good news was that in those last couple of days, our group started to find devices that worked, characters that were fun to play, interactions that we enjoyed. It still wasn't perfect - it was still far from perfect - but things were starting to congeal. On Friday, we managed to present a piece for the teachers that was still far from fantastic, but was definitely the bones of something, and took risks, and was starting to feel like a piece. Finally, after weeks and weeks of treading water and swimming against the current, it felt as though maybe our toes were starting to touch the earth beneath.

But we weren't out of the woods yet - we still had two days to go, and I woke up Saturday morning exhausted, even though I'd slept for hours. Though I was supposed to work that night at the Comedy Club and desperately needed the money, I'd called in to cancel because that evening was one of the only times everyone in the group was free to rehearse. We were all meeting at 6, but I had to be at the school at 3 - my *other* job (yes, I have three) is working for the school as Space Caretaker, meaning that when there aren't any teachers in the building, I'm responsible for locking up and making sure noone dies. In a way, this is a really sweet deal because it means that I often get paid for rehearsal hours that I would've had to be at school anyway. This particular week, though, when I'd already been at school so much under such stressful circumstances, it was getting pretty painful to spend more time there than I had to. Sure enough, when I walked into the space, it was like the walls closed in. All of a sudden I felt anxious and upset, and if I'd had hackles they would have been raised. I can't breathe in here, I thought, and went to sit outside.

I spent the next three hours until rehearsal sitting just outside the door to the school, on the ground, crying, or staring empty and glassy-eyed at nothing. I was just so done. I don't think I'd realised how much the week and the creation had taken out of me, but I hit rock bottom that afternoon, as much as I ever have at the school. I just felt that I'd been putting so much energy into the piece, trying to come up with ideas, trying to move us forward, trying to mediate between members (apparently sometimes when no mediation was needed), and that I no longer had anything to give. It was a terrible, desperate, despondent feeling to have, that I was just empty, that there was nothing left.

to be continued AGAIN!

Reading a borrowed copy of Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man on a sunny Friday afternoon

There are some books that are a great joy to read, not because of their words or their story (though these are certainly important components), but because of the books themselves - the weight of them in your hands, the texture of the pages, the smell of them. New books have a smell that is pleasurable indeed; but it's the older books I'm talking about in this instance, particularly old paperbacks published decades ago that have somehow remained in good condition, though still noticably well-loved through many readings. There's a feeling of literally diving in when you open these novels, a submergence into its world. Maybe it's because you can feel the stories in the pages - not just the written ones, but the story of the book itself: its binding, its paper, its ink. You can feel the calm and the chaos contained in the buzzing stillness of its cover.

Minneapolis bridge is falling down...

I should continue my recounting of the end of the LISPA year at some point, but now doesn't seem the appropriate moment to do it. I was awoken last night at 1am by my little brother calling from New Jersey, telling me that a 1,000ft strip of I-35W had collapsed into the Mississippi river, not half a mile from our house in Minneapolis. He hadn't been able to get ahold of Mom or Dad, and was panicked. I told him they were ok, that I was sure they were ok, and we got off the phone. As I drifted back off to sleep, I remember thinking that this felt ever so vaguely like the end of days.

Mom called at 3am. She and Dad are fine. I'm still waiting to hear from everyone else I know in the Cities, but I feel a strange, calm, certainty that everyone's alright. It could just be shock. It's certainly not real to me that the entire 35W bridge is gone - I don't think it will be until I go home for Christmas and see for myself.

About the "end of days" comment - I know it sounds strange, or melodramatic. One should also take it in context that it was thought through the fog of sleep. But I have to admit that this bridge collapsing seems like another in a series of events as late that are varying shades of disastrous, surreal. Justin committing suicide. Brian being in a coma (though now I discover that he's awake! and getting better all the time). Sisters of friends dying, high school friends of friends dying, all of them in their twenties, all of these things in the past three months. I don't know that there's a conclusion to draw from all of this; in fact, I'm compelled to say there isn't. But it is strange, and it gives me a vague feeling of misgiving, and of sorrow.

These are the times that you want to be nearest to those you love.

But in a way, being further away makes all of this easier.

The End of Term Four, part II

So we were off! Off to research, without ever really touching base with each other, on the monstrous theme of Looking for Love. Kamili (playwright and teacher from Philly) went to a Love and Intimacy workshop, Alexander (London) and Marta (Lisbon, Portugal) went to Soho to people-watch at bars and clubs, Meire (Brazil) joined them at some point, and the three American girls (Xan from Seattle, Naomi from Wisconsin, and I) went speed-dating.

Yes, speed-dating.

A word on speed-dating: it's the single most exhausting thing I've ever done, and I've done some pretty exhausting things. Three minutes each for TWENTY-TWO guys, most of whom were either lawyers, accountants, or air-conditioning salesmen. (I'm not kidding). There was also one guy who worked for the Ministry of Defense who completely stonewalled any innocent attempt to get more information through casual conversation. That was fun. And it's amazing how long or short three minutes can feel, depending on the guy. And it's amazing how fucking tired you get of telling people what you "do" - especially when you're there with two classmates, so they've already heard it once and are going to hear it again. I can't tell you what a breath of fresh air it was when "UK" plopped down next to me and challenged me to a thumb war. Now there's a three-minute date!

Anyway, it was a fascinating way to spend an evening, though I wasn't able to appreciate it until several days later. As soon as the event itself ended, I was so overwhelmed, exhausted, and headache-tipsy on white wine that I made my excuses and fled the scene. What fodder for theatre, though! How full of characters, rhythms, sound, and desire! I was pretty pumped about figuring out our piece based on what we'd observed and experienced - now it was just a matter of getting our entire group together so we could start brainstorming and rehearsing together.

This ended up being MUCH more difficult than it sounds. Because everyone had split off and done their own things for the research, we were all on different pages in terms of images we wanted to use, themes that we felt were important, or just structure or the overall point of the piece in general. What resulted was hours and hours of struggle, compounded by very different styles of working and very different personalities which often ended up in conflict. If I'd blogged during the process I'd be able to give more specifics on the ups and downs of the journey, but in retrospect it's pretty much a general wash of "hard".

So why "hard"? Well, first of all, creation is often hard. It seems to take a very specific chemistry within a group for a creation process to go well, and often it's a chemistry of unexpected ingredients. Regardless, that "good chemistry" was one that, for whatever reason, my group had trouble finding. When the time came to start building a performance after two weeks of "research", the going got tough. The good news is that as much as we were struggling, there was the feeling that we were struggling together. There were a couple of fall-outs between individuals, but it could've been much, MUCH worse. The most difficult thing seemed to be that we didn't really know what we wanted as a group, and consequently weren't able to band together under the collective banner of our cause. So we tried, and we failed; and we tried, and we failed. Over the course of two weeks of relatively intense rehearsal (during which we also had class, and I also was working my two-and-a-half jobs) we constructed, performed, and scrapped about four different pieces, all drawing from experiences or observations that at least one of us had made. Try as we might, though, overhaul as we might, it still just. wasn't. working.

This is the point at which one gets very pleased that there's a deadline. Our final public presentation had been set for Friday, 6th July, and I can't tell you how much we were all looking forward to the following weekend. The Wednesday before we had a showing for the teachers, in which everyone (all eight groups - four from the morning, four from the afternoon) were characteristically picked apart over the course of hours and hours of presentation. After everyone had gone, they told us to take ten minutes and then come back. The presentations had already run grossly overtime, and the afternoon groups (mine included) were supposed to get in several more hours of rehearsal that night, so I think we were all feeling impatient and more than a bit exhausted when we were finally regathered. It was then that Thomas lowered the boom: we weren't going to be performing on Friday. He and the other teachers had determined that we were not ready to perform, the pieces were not performance-worthy, and so they were pushing back the performance to Monday. MONDAY. Three extra days of rehearsal; three extra days of Hell. You can imagine the looks on all of our faces as we saw the paradisical vision of our weekend slipping away from us. We were all aware of the upside, of course - we recognised that we really did need more time to make something that was actually going to be good, and that with the weekend at our disposal, we actually had a shot at it. But at that point, the news felt like nothing more than a cold, hard, stone in my stomach.

to be continued....

Playing Catch-up : The End of Term Four

So I was going to start from scratch, more or less, assuming that noone actually *knew* about this blog yet, and then I found Matthew's comments. I have been suitably chastized. Shame on me.

It's been months since I've written on either of my blogs, to be fair. Maybe this should be the official switching-over point where I tell everyone to disregard livejournal and come on down to blogspot. Regardless, there are other, more important things to write about...

I've finished my first year at LISPA. Holy fuck. It's been quite a ride - that last six weeks in particular pretty much sucked my brains out and had them for breakfast. Shall I tell you about them? Ok!

So. Normal, non-theatre schools have exams at the end of the year. Theatre schools have performances. LISPA has performances of theatrical pieces that you completely devise and create and research yourself, along with six to eight other people with whom you may or may not get along. I should say first off, for those of you that don't know, that this whole creating pieces thing is nothing new - every week we've been given a "theme" or "provocation" by the teachers, split into groups, and had 4-6 hours over the course of the week to create something. Every Monday we present what we've come up with, have it collectively eviscerated by the assembled faculty, receive a new theme, and start all over again. Over the course of the year I've helped to devise pieces around "A Place, An Event", "An Invisible Man", "Animals at the Olympics", "The Passions", "Battle of the Materials", "A Fantastical World" (twice), Jackson Pollock's "Summertime 9A", and "The Exodus", among others. This time, we chose our own themes, and had four weeks to research/observe them in the real world. There were four groups: "Smithfield Meat Market", "Buskers" (Street Performers), "Night Workers" (which eventually turned into "Tottenham Court Road from 3am-6am"), and my group, with the alarmingly vague and sprawling theme of "Looking for Love in the Modern World". I should've known I was in trouble.

(to be continued...)