Theater and Development

My right arm is wrapped up, but I use it as if I wasn't worried about future chronic tendonitis.  I can now brush my teeth without pain.  Dealing with my bra is a bit more challenging.
I can't help but wonder what it all means, as saturn goes forth with its orbit again.  I haven't juggled in two weeks.  I can't ride my bike.  I can dance, but how I want to go upside down on my hands!  I wonder how long I can hold the resolve of taking a rest.
This week I have worked on crafting my letter of intent for the Theater and Development program, at Concordia.  I just discovered the program!
"Collective collaborative and multidisciplinary approaches including street theatre, environmental staging, popular, participatory, and celebratory theatre are studied within the contexts of community building and development, cultural democracy, and historical and contemporary relationships between art and activism."
Art and Activism?  Ritual and Politics?  Sounds like my cup of chai latte!
Well, they don't mention ritual anywhere, but that's what theater should be as far as I'm concerned.  And I'm not quite sure of my talent as an actor or even as a clown, but I do see myself as a leader and a good metteur en scene.
Clowning is a state of mind.  I understand it.  I intuit it.  But it is so hard to integrate and embody!  I keep facing this harsh truth about myself: that I am working with so much judgment of my contemporaries, so that it is quite a challenge to actually come off as Fool of Love.  I mean, the title is the goal and the path.  I'm not quite there yet.  I know that my judgement is but a projection of my own inner critique.  I can hear the voice so loud in my head!
I want to reconcile myself with the world.  Oh how I want to reconcile myself with the world.  I want to trust the world, I want to trust the public, the other, and myself in the dynamic which is always operating.  I want to be a medium for the Divine.  I wish to hold it in my heart and mind at all times, that is, I want to trust that I am - that we all are - held by the Divine.  Perhaps then I'd be better able to relax and simply feel how I am Fool of Love.
Even basic play is a challenge.  You tell me "please go ahead and play with anything in this room.." and I am bound to look at you "you mean.. I can play with this?  Is this okay?  Like this?"  as if I needed directions and consent before letting my imagination take the reigns.  In fact, sometimes I fear that I don't have that kind of imagination.  I do believe everyone is Creative.  But when it comes to my own creative power I freeze, and I wonder.  As I explore this issue I discover that one thing I am afraid of is a certain emotion that tends to arise.  Aggressivity comes up a lot, and I don't even understand why!  I just have this fire inside, this rage, this drive to scream and throw things around.  I wonder if this energy even belongs to me.  I don't understand why my inner child would feel so angry...
Maybe she doesn't want to behave for once.  Maybe she doesn't want to be smart and social.  Maybe she just wants to be free.
So in this clown quest I've been visiting threatening territories.  These are feelings I am slightly embarassed with.  But I guess I need to dialogue with those parts of myself if I am to come out on the other side: Fool of Love.

I don't know if Concordia still accepts applications at such a late date.  Writing the letter has helped me envision some of the work I could do.  I've notice how alive I feel when I imagine myself studying the technical aspects of theater, such as playwriting, directing, design, etc.  There's a voice in my head saying it's a bit too late to take this up.  But my heart wants it.  I am a thinker, and theater is a serious matter.  Performance can be ritual. Performance can be healing.  Performance can lead towards better tomorrows.  That's what shamans did.

courrielamamere

Les reflexions? 

... j'essaie d'en sortir un peu.. je m'entraine a ne pas sombrer dans l'analytique et a ecouter mon coeur... Il semble changer incessemment d'avis, mais je lui pardonne et je continue d'ecouter. :)

Ces derniers jours je me dis: c'est soit l'allemagne, soit montreal... Et "du coup" (ah ah!) j'ai peine a concevoir de quitter san francisco.  C'est vraiment trop beau ici!  Alors je me dis que je peux tres bien reconnaitre que san francisco est peut-etre la plus belle ville en Amerique du nord, ET que je peux quand meme choisir de ne pas y vivre.

Car il y a autre chose.

Point.

Virgule.

Ridicule.

J'ecris comme une pianiste, comme dans une vision d'Antonin Artaud. Je pense au corps.  Je pense, en corps.

corpse (et quoi alors?!)

Omar Sosa.

Orishas. Ache!

J'ecris comme une pianiste. Noir sur blanc. Virtuellement.

Je denote des courants, des idees,

noir sur blanc

blanc canvas like pure light

that i darken with thoughts

bemol

diese

Mais sans accents.

my arm screaming

I don't know how it happened but I injured my right arm pretty badly.  Perhaps it's a bruised radius, perhaps I've pulled a muscle, all I know is that it hurts like hell.
So I haven't juggled all week; and i've found myself going lots of emotional places instead.  I've wondered what the message might be.  What is my arm telling me?  To slow down, chill out, take a break from trying to do so many things?  To acknowledge the body's fragility, and its limitations?  What would it mean to depend on my physical abilities to make a living?
And I think of drama therapy.  And I think of where to be.
I've been taking a stand-up comedy class, and it's making me a bit depressed!  It's hard, to tell your honnest opinion of the world we live in and make it funny.  I mean, that's why I do these things, clowning and all, it's for that very reason: so I can develop a sense of humor about myself and the world.  It's the ultimate wisdom; I'm not there yet.  And I'm okay with staying on this path for a lifetime, I don't think I can turn back now.  I see something there and I just can't shy away now.  So I'm gonna keep observing the judgments I make.  I'm gonna get real good at noticing them, and then I'll play with them and twist them around and pepper them with absurdism(!) until I can laugh at what's going on around me.
It's a wonderful journey.  It's difficult, and often I lose step to find myself in that crazy mind-whirl, which is starting to get familiar.  You see that's the trick: familiarize yourself with your thoughts patterns.  Then you may take a step back.  Then you may avoid the storm.  Then you may remember to listen to what the heart has to say.
The heart knows.
That's what I'm working with these days.
That, and a lot of gratitude.

"stillness is like the speed of light"

Currents have taken me lately.  I have jumped back in the urban river of time, where the lights never fully go out and where energy concentrates so dramatically that sirens buzz inside our head, even as we sleep.  I have been busy, since I came back from Quebec, busy drinking from the abundant flow of san francisco.
Between butoh and modern dance classes, stand up comedy class, rehearsal with Harvey, and new gigs popping up for Johnny and I, I guess I can say that life is good.  The sun is out.  It's slackline season again!
Last weekend I juggled for money for the first time.  Jesse had asked me to tag along for his street show, and we ended up doing a lot of juggling while hanging out, trying to gather a crowd.  And it was fantastic for me because it took all the pressure off!  I could just hang out with Jess, as a sidekick but not claiming that I was putting on a performance.  I could just play, juggle and dance, while inviting people to take part in the fun and perhaps give a dollar for their appreciation.  I felt so grateful.
The next day was mother's day, and I went to Sebastopol to do another tea house show with Johnny.  We had worked a good amount on scripting and practicing for this one; and it was indeed a lot of fun!  Lots of magic, peppered with a couple of songs and some quality juggling; the patrons enjoyed it a lot.  I wanted more people at the tea house, I wanted a crowd and it wasn't quite that.  But what should I expect?  Mother's day in a small tea house of Sebastopol!  I was very grateful one more time, for the opportunity to share our passion with more people, children and adults.
Yeah, a lot is going on inside.
Friday I went to an evening of self-revelatory performances by the graduating students of CIIS' drama therapy program.  (It could have been me in three years!  That's if I had not decided to defer my inscription in the program once again.)  And as I sat in the audience, a witness to some deeply healing theatrical rituals happening in front and within all of us, I had a hard time understanding my decision.  "That's what I want to do!" The voice kept shouting in my head.  I want to create rituals like that, in which someone can be held by the community in order to delve into the wounds and fears that make up our individual and collective existence, revealing them for everyone to ponder.  For everyone to journey between laughter and tears, together.  "That's what I want to do."
I exposed my conundrum to a teacher I saw there, and she said "well, there are more than one way to go about this path".

I know something is forming.
I know something is transforming.

I have come to a new sense of being an artist.  I have read somewhere "The most important characteristic of a work of art is unity." (William Ball, A Sense of Direction.)  And you see, that's exactly what I'm seeking!  I am searching for a mean to be whole.  I don't want to sound presumptuous when I say that I do hope to be a work of art.  I believe we all are just that, naturally.  We are works of art, waiting to be conscious of this endless creative source we're all involved in!
So I am an artist, if it means that I have an aptitude for harmonizing parts; if I have an aptitude for transforming opposites through the creation of a third part.  If I have visions for a better, more creative and perhaps egalitarian way of life.
But that is also on shaky grounds.  I should admit that I have held space for the possibility of hierarchy as possibly legitimate politically.  For I wonder about mass mentality, I do.  And I wonder about leadership.  I'll forever disagree with hypocrisy and greed, but I do wonder about the laws of the jungle.

And where do I fit in with my dreams of sacred clowning and my human needs for acceptance and safety?