Friday, November 25, 2005
Quotations:
Barbara:
"FEAR! FEAR! WHAT ARE YOU AFRAID OF!? SUCCESS! THAT'S WHAT YOU'RE AFRAID OF!"
"If you were completely balanced it would just be boring. There's vulnerability in imbalance"
Merton:
"Christianity is fundamentally humanistic, in the sense that its chief task is to enable man to achieve his destiny, to find himself, to be himself: to be the person he is made to become. Man is supposed to be God's helper in the work of creating himself. Dei adjutores sumus. Salvation is no passive thing. Nor is it an absorption of man into a kind of nonentity before the face of God. It is the elevation and divinization of man's freedom. And the Christian life demands that man be fully conscious of his freedom and of the responsibility it implies."
"Any person who pretends to love God in this day, and who has lost his sense of the value of humanity, has also lost his sense of God without knowing it. I believe that we are facing the consequences of several centuries of more and more abstract thinking, more and more unrality in our grasp of values. We have reached such a condition that now we are unable to appreciate the meaning of being alive, of being able to think, to mae decisions, to love. We have been trying for so long to turn ourselves into machines that we have finally succeeded. The logical consequence is to destroy everything."
"I certainly agree with you that we ought to scrap the notion that mental health is merely a matter of adjustment to the existing society - to be adjusted to a society that is insane is not to be healthy. The trouble is that those who are not adjusted to it, even for the right reasons, have a rather hard time too...As a priest and a man dedicated to God in a monastery, I am bound to say that I am deeply worried by the falsity, thee superficiality nd the fundamental irreverence of what is so often hailed, nowadays, as a 'return to God.' People have resurrected a lot of 'words about' God and a lot of concepts of religious things, but it sometimes seems to me that they -- we -- are not too anxious to find the Living God."
"All our 'humanism' really flows from the right understanding of the mytery of the Incarnation and of the recapitulation of all in Christ."
"I am steeped in that experience of bafflement, compunction and wonder which is the experience of those who have been rescued from tyranny, only to renounce freedom and in confusion and subjection to worse tyrants, through infidelity to the Lord. For only in his service is there true freedom, as the Prophets would tell us."
"It is the duty of man to try to focus on the truth whatever it may be, and not to deceive himself by trying to make the 'truth' conform to what keeps him happy. Of course the first truth of all is that we cannot do this perfectly, and that if we think we can we are not going to take the first step."
There's more to come. I'm just taking a rest.
"FEAR! FEAR! WHAT ARE YOU AFRAID OF!? SUCCESS! THAT'S WHAT YOU'RE AFRAID OF!"
"If you were completely balanced it would just be boring. There's vulnerability in imbalance"
Merton:
"Christianity is fundamentally humanistic, in the sense that its chief task is to enable man to achieve his destiny, to find himself, to be himself: to be the person he is made to become. Man is supposed to be God's helper in the work of creating himself. Dei adjutores sumus. Salvation is no passive thing. Nor is it an absorption of man into a kind of nonentity before the face of God. It is the elevation and divinization of man's freedom. And the Christian life demands that man be fully conscious of his freedom and of the responsibility it implies."
"Any person who pretends to love God in this day, and who has lost his sense of the value of humanity, has also lost his sense of God without knowing it. I believe that we are facing the consequences of several centuries of more and more abstract thinking, more and more unrality in our grasp of values. We have reached such a condition that now we are unable to appreciate the meaning of being alive, of being able to think, to mae decisions, to love. We have been trying for so long to turn ourselves into machines that we have finally succeeded. The logical consequence is to destroy everything."
"I certainly agree with you that we ought to scrap the notion that mental health is merely a matter of adjustment to the existing society - to be adjusted to a society that is insane is not to be healthy. The trouble is that those who are not adjusted to it, even for the right reasons, have a rather hard time too...As a priest and a man dedicated to God in a monastery, I am bound to say that I am deeply worried by the falsity, thee superficiality nd the fundamental irreverence of what is so often hailed, nowadays, as a 'return to God.' People have resurrected a lot of 'words about' God and a lot of concepts of religious things, but it sometimes seems to me that they -- we -- are not too anxious to find the Living God."
"All our 'humanism' really flows from the right understanding of the mytery of the Incarnation and of the recapitulation of all in Christ."
"I am steeped in that experience of bafflement, compunction and wonder which is the experience of those who have been rescued from tyranny, only to renounce freedom and in confusion and subjection to worse tyrants, through infidelity to the Lord. For only in his service is there true freedom, as the Prophets would tell us."
"It is the duty of man to try to focus on the truth whatever it may be, and not to deceive himself by trying to make the 'truth' conform to what keeps him happy. Of course the first truth of all is that we cannot do this perfectly, and that if we think we can we are not going to take the first step."
There's more to come. I'm just taking a rest.
Fags Generally Don't Like Christmas
Here's a fragment of a conversation I just had. The dialogue is unassigned, but I'm the one who says "WHAT?", and it just alternates from there:
fags generally don't like christmas

WHAT?
that's the most preposterous statement I've ever heard in my life!

except the really greedy ones... and a few genuine ones like you but those are rare

hahahaha!

really?

yes

you'd think we'd love it. it's sparkly and glitzy (if you like your christmas sparkly and glitzy), there's lots of drinking, lots of eating, and you get to go to the gym a lot afterward.....oh I see. It's the heteros encroaching on our territory.
they get to be tacky, and drink lots.

yes... it's a reminder that we are "different" from the rest of our families... and then we actually have to hang with our families and then we get drunk and drunk + family = drama
 //
This just confirms for me my estrangement from the gay community. I don't feel different from my family. I feel TERRIFYINGLY like my family. It's because there was no drama about me coming out of the closet, and at the ages of 16 and 18 respectively, my mother and my father came out to ME, telling me that they knew, and had always known that I liked the boys. I don't share the experience of my gay brothers and sisters who have a hard time with their families. Don't get me wrong, my family is broken and nice and dysfunctional, but the dysfunction doesn't revolve around my lifestyle, which is lucky for me. My dad and his wife invited me to bring Ben for Christmas. I'd love to introduce him to them over the holidays.
fags generally don't like christmas

WHAT?
that's the most preposterous statement I've ever heard in my life!

except the really greedy ones... and a few genuine ones like you but those are rare

hahahaha!

really?

yes

you'd think we'd love it. it's sparkly and glitzy (if you like your christmas sparkly and glitzy), there's lots of drinking, lots of eating, and you get to go to the gym a lot afterward.....oh I see. It's the heteros encroaching on our territory.
they get to be tacky, and drink lots.

yes... it's a reminder that we are "different" from the rest of our families... and then we actually have to hang with our families and then we get drunk and drunk + family = drama
 //
This just confirms for me my estrangement from the gay community. I don't feel different from my family. I feel TERRIFYINGLY like my family. It's because there was no drama about me coming out of the closet, and at the ages of 16 and 18 respectively, my mother and my father came out to ME, telling me that they knew, and had always known that I liked the boys. I don't share the experience of my gay brothers and sisters who have a hard time with their families. Don't get me wrong, my family is broken and nice and dysfunctional, but the dysfunction doesn't revolve around my lifestyle, which is lucky for me. My dad and his wife invited me to bring Ben for Christmas. I'd love to introduce him to them over the holidays.
Tuesday, November 22, 2005
Dance
Now that the show is over, I'm going to focus on technique, because I have that luxury. It's able to be more about the details of my body, than about putting up a show. Also, I'm going to take lots of classes. Ballet and such. And join the gym.
About butoh, Jay said some interesting stuff today: " butoh, there's not much movement - but what's there is expectant - pregnant with meaning"
As a reminder, here are some of the characteristics of butoh
The body in crisis
The goal is to remove the "I", and dance only from image
One is also being the image - be paper burning - not just trying to show the image
There is also the same value for each image, so flushing the toilet is the same as ascending to heaven, and they are all sacred,
or none of it is sacred. However, my feeling is that it is all sacred by virtue of being in a performance
One is transforming space and time by moving.
My absolutely serious question is this: could you do this in a strip club and have it still be butoh? I think so. A la Karen Finley. Or also, what if you did a strip tease - all the movements of a strip tease. This could be butoh. There's something about the undressing of butoh being about vulnerability and openness. It would be very interesting to be vulnerable and open in a venue where you are definitely not being witnessed, but being spectated. I think there's something show-wise in there for me. Something about my desire to be a spectacle - to have people look at me at all costs.
About butoh, Jay said some interesting stuff today: " butoh, there's not much movement - but what's there is expectant - pregnant with meaning"
As a reminder, here are some of the characteristics of butoh
The body in crisis
The goal is to remove the "I", and dance only from image
One is also being the image - be paper burning - not just trying to show the image
There is also the same value for each image, so flushing the toilet is the same as ascending to heaven, and they are all sacred,
or none of it is sacred. However, my feeling is that it is all sacred by virtue of being in a performance
One is transforming space and time by moving.
My absolutely serious question is this: could you do this in a strip club and have it still be butoh? I think so. A la Karen Finley. Or also, what if you did a strip tease - all the movements of a strip tease. This could be butoh. There's something about the undressing of butoh being about vulnerability and openness. It would be very interesting to be vulnerable and open in a venue where you are definitely not being witnessed, but being spectated. I think there's something show-wise in there for me. Something about my desire to be a spectacle - to have people look at me at all costs.
Monday, November 21, 2005
This is scary somehow
Long Before MTV, There Was Streisand TV
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By STEPHEN HOLDEN
Published: November 21, 2005
Some pop stars (the Beatles, Bruce Springsteen) inspire love. Others (Frank Sinatra, Barbra Streisand, Madonna) demand worship. Between love and worship, there is a world of difference. Love is warm, trusting and generous and allows for forgiveness. Worship is cooler. It involves an exchange of power in which adoration is shadowed with fear.
Enlarge This Image
Peter L. Gould
Barbra Streisand in her 1967 concert in Central Park, broadcast as a television special the next year.
Forum: Television
Enlarge This Image
"Barbra Streisand: The Television Specials" is a new DVD anthology of of her five one-woman shows that were broadcast between 1965 and 1973.
CBS
Barbra Streisand in "My Name Is Barbra," her first television special.
To watch "Barbra Streisand: The Television Specials," a DVD anthology (Warner Strategic Marketing) of her five one-woman shows that were broadcast between 1965 and 1973, is to spend nearly five hours in the presence of a self-styled show business goddess. In these meticulously conceived three-act specials, Ms. Streisand wields her star power with a concentrated intensity that is magnetic, intimidating and ahead of its time. Turning her famous bump-in-the-nose profile to the camera, she challenges you to say she isn't beautiful. Directing her cold, critical gaze into the camera, she dares you to look away. But the force within that gaze is transfixing.
The first two specials made television history. "My Name Is Barbra," filmed in black and white and broadcast in 1965, when she was 23, nationalized the New York phenomenon who had recently conquered Broadway in the musical "Funny Girl." It departed from the standard variety-show format in which a genial host greeted famous friends who "dropped in" on the star for neighborly chitchat and musical exchange. It also broke with tradition by taking the star out of the television studio and into the corridors of Bergdorf Goodman. With its childhood sequence and Ms. Streisand's singing in a voice that trembled on the edge of hysteria, it is the only special in which the star exhibited traces of a girlish vulnerability.
A critical and ratings hit, "My Name Is Barbra" was followed a year later by "Color Me Barbra," filmed in balloonlike hues, in which the singer visited the Philadelphia Museum of Art, where she interacted with paintings by Eakins, Renoir and Modigliani, and posed as Nefertiti gazing into a reflecting pool. An elaborate circus sequence found her singing uneasily to a menagerie while observed by a sleepy caged tiger.
It is not until the third special, "The Belle of 14th Street," an elaborate vaudeville show, that a guest, Jason Robards Jr., shared the stage with Ms. Streisand, playing the second-billed performer. This special, in which Ms. Streisand celebrated her roots in the cultural melting pot of the early-20th century vaudeville world that produced her "Funny Girl" alter ego, Fanny Brice, is an ambitious hodgepodge of special material: musically fragmented, strenuously zany and rarely funny.
These first three shows spotlight the youthful star's talents as a fearless comic actress, doing accents, playing dress-up and adopting characters like her eccentric, thrift-shop fantasist, Second Hand Rose. This comic side has been a crucial humanizing ingredient of Ms. Streisand's mystique, right up through the movie "Meet the Fockers."
Viewed in retrospect, the first three specials, in particular "The Belle of 14th Street," reveal the limited shelf life of special material. Often you wish the singer had forsaken her latest too-schematic concept to devote more time to singing ballads in that cry of primal yearning that speaks to the lonely romantic in all of us.
"Barbra Streisand: A Happening in Central Park," broadcast in 1968, a year after it was filmed in the Sheep Meadow before an audience of 250,000, is a distillation of a two-and-a-half-hour concert in which Ms. Streisand's dramatic command largely offsets the thin outdoor acoustics. A feral, unforgiving rendition of "Cry Me a River," in which the singer lashes out like Medea, is nothing less than astounding.
Finally, there is "Barbra Streisand ... and Other Musical Instruments" (1973), a return to the three-act format. One segment, introduced by "I Got Rhythm," follows the star on make-believe jaunts to Europe, Africa, India and the Far East in a world-music vaudeville tour. It is the only special in which a guest star (Ray Charles) steals Ms. Streisand's thunder. He performs a witty, soulful version of "Look What They've Done to My Song, Ma" that she follows with her own tense, strained attempt at soul singing. A heavy-handed spoof, "Concerto for Voice and Appliances," in which toasters, washing machines, vacuum cleaners and other household gadgets supply percussive texture, is typical of the specials' labored attempts at novelty.
But if these shows have dated, their influence on the future of pop performance on television and off is considerable. Here, for the first time, is the spectacle of a single performer uninterruptedly acting out her own fantasy of being all things to all people. By the time MTV arrived a decade after "Barbra Streisand ... and Other Musical Instruments," the public was primed to embrace the solo pop performance as flamboyant ego trip.
Until Ms. Streisand's ascendance, the term diva had been restricted mostly to operatic prima donnas. Its current application to every talent-challenged pole dancer lip-synching through a music video really began with Ms. Streisand's assertion of self-glorification as the first principle of pop performance.
It is a principle that Madonna has since standardized. Ms. Streisand's ultimate descendant in the diva sweepstakes, Madonna may not be half as good a singer or actress as her forerunner, but in many ways they are the same person. The chilly, scrutinizing gaze, the playfulness that passes itself off as humor, the public obsession with pleasing a disapproving parent, the continual role-playing and wallowing in fantasy: these ingredients, which run through Ms. Streisand's specials, also define Madonna, who understood more clearly than her forerunner that mega-celebrity is its own popular art form.
The spectacle of one performer's will to power, harnessed to talent, imagination and iron discipline, may not be pretty. But neither is most of what we watch on television. Who wants pretty when you can have exciting?
E-Mail This
Printer-Friendly
Save Article
By STEPHEN HOLDEN
Published: November 21, 2005
Some pop stars (the Beatles, Bruce Springsteen) inspire love. Others (Frank Sinatra, Barbra Streisand, Madonna) demand worship. Between love and worship, there is a world of difference. Love is warm, trusting and generous and allows for forgiveness. Worship is cooler. It involves an exchange of power in which adoration is shadowed with fear.
Enlarge This Image
Peter L. Gould
Barbra Streisand in her 1967 concert in Central Park, broadcast as a television special the next year.
Forum: Television
Enlarge This Image
"Barbra Streisand: The Television Specials" is a new DVD anthology of of her five one-woman shows that were broadcast between 1965 and 1973.
CBS
Barbra Streisand in "My Name Is Barbra," her first television special.
To watch "Barbra Streisand: The Television Specials," a DVD anthology (Warner Strategic Marketing) of her five one-woman shows that were broadcast between 1965 and 1973, is to spend nearly five hours in the presence of a self-styled show business goddess. In these meticulously conceived three-act specials, Ms. Streisand wields her star power with a concentrated intensity that is magnetic, intimidating and ahead of its time. Turning her famous bump-in-the-nose profile to the camera, she challenges you to say she isn't beautiful. Directing her cold, critical gaze into the camera, she dares you to look away. But the force within that gaze is transfixing.
The first two specials made television history. "My Name Is Barbra," filmed in black and white and broadcast in 1965, when she was 23, nationalized the New York phenomenon who had recently conquered Broadway in the musical "Funny Girl." It departed from the standard variety-show format in which a genial host greeted famous friends who "dropped in" on the star for neighborly chitchat and musical exchange. It also broke with tradition by taking the star out of the television studio and into the corridors of Bergdorf Goodman. With its childhood sequence and Ms. Streisand's singing in a voice that trembled on the edge of hysteria, it is the only special in which the star exhibited traces of a girlish vulnerability.
A critical and ratings hit, "My Name Is Barbra" was followed a year later by "Color Me Barbra," filmed in balloonlike hues, in which the singer visited the Philadelphia Museum of Art, where she interacted with paintings by Eakins, Renoir and Modigliani, and posed as Nefertiti gazing into a reflecting pool. An elaborate circus sequence found her singing uneasily to a menagerie while observed by a sleepy caged tiger.
It is not until the third special, "The Belle of 14th Street," an elaborate vaudeville show, that a guest, Jason Robards Jr., shared the stage with Ms. Streisand, playing the second-billed performer. This special, in which Ms. Streisand celebrated her roots in the cultural melting pot of the early-20th century vaudeville world that produced her "Funny Girl" alter ego, Fanny Brice, is an ambitious hodgepodge of special material: musically fragmented, strenuously zany and rarely funny.
These first three shows spotlight the youthful star's talents as a fearless comic actress, doing accents, playing dress-up and adopting characters like her eccentric, thrift-shop fantasist, Second Hand Rose. This comic side has been a crucial humanizing ingredient of Ms. Streisand's mystique, right up through the movie "Meet the Fockers."
Viewed in retrospect, the first three specials, in particular "The Belle of 14th Street," reveal the limited shelf life of special material. Often you wish the singer had forsaken her latest too-schematic concept to devote more time to singing ballads in that cry of primal yearning that speaks to the lonely romantic in all of us.
"Barbra Streisand: A Happening in Central Park," broadcast in 1968, a year after it was filmed in the Sheep Meadow before an audience of 250,000, is a distillation of a two-and-a-half-hour concert in which Ms. Streisand's dramatic command largely offsets the thin outdoor acoustics. A feral, unforgiving rendition of "Cry Me a River," in which the singer lashes out like Medea, is nothing less than astounding.
Finally, there is "Barbra Streisand ... and Other Musical Instruments" (1973), a return to the three-act format. One segment, introduced by "I Got Rhythm," follows the star on make-believe jaunts to Europe, Africa, India and the Far East in a world-music vaudeville tour. It is the only special in which a guest star (Ray Charles) steals Ms. Streisand's thunder. He performs a witty, soulful version of "Look What They've Done to My Song, Ma" that she follows with her own tense, strained attempt at soul singing. A heavy-handed spoof, "Concerto for Voice and Appliances," in which toasters, washing machines, vacuum cleaners and other household gadgets supply percussive texture, is typical of the specials' labored attempts at novelty.
But if these shows have dated, their influence on the future of pop performance on television and off is considerable. Here, for the first time, is the spectacle of a single performer uninterruptedly acting out her own fantasy of being all things to all people. By the time MTV arrived a decade after "Barbra Streisand ... and Other Musical Instruments," the public was primed to embrace the solo pop performance as flamboyant ego trip.
Until Ms. Streisand's ascendance, the term diva had been restricted mostly to operatic prima donnas. Its current application to every talent-challenged pole dancer lip-synching through a music video really began with Ms. Streisand's assertion of self-glorification as the first principle of pop performance.
It is a principle that Madonna has since standardized. Ms. Streisand's ultimate descendant in the diva sweepstakes, Madonna may not be half as good a singer or actress as her forerunner, but in many ways they are the same person. The chilly, scrutinizing gaze, the playfulness that passes itself off as humor, the public obsession with pleasing a disapproving parent, the continual role-playing and wallowing in fantasy: these ingredients, which run through Ms. Streisand's specials, also define Madonna, who understood more clearly than her forerunner that mega-celebrity is its own popular art form.
The spectacle of one performer's will to power, harnessed to talent, imagination and iron discipline, may not be pretty. But neither is most of what we watch on television. Who wants pretty when you can have exciting?
Sunday, November 20, 2005
Is Anyone Actually Surprised by this Result?
 | You scored as Hermione Granger. You're one intelligent witch, but you have a hard time believing it and require constant reassurance. You are a very supportive friend who would do anything and everything to help her friends out.
Your Harry Potter Alter Ego Is...? created with QuizFarm.com |
Number Two
My bosses at Restoration Hardware are offically twits.
Okay. So, customer comes in, has a $300 gift certificate. she wants to buy some stuff, and she also wants to make a reservation (ie, to order something in from the California warehouse). So, she wants to use the gift certificate. Fine. We use it for both her store purchase and her reservation. Apparently, along the way, I press a wrong button, and don't notice at the time. Having worked at Restoration Hardware for about a year three years ago, and having just returned, I find the order of things a little odd, but considering that some changes have occured in point of sale computer procedures since I last worked here, I think this must be one of those changes.
So, today at the 7.45am meeting (!), one of the managers asks me about the transaction, describing it as a cheque transaction. This is the incorrect button I must have pressed, so there you have it. When I go over it with yet another manager today, she can't fathom that there was in fact no cheque. But where's the cheque? There is no cheque. I must have pressed that button by mistake. But it prompts you to enter the driver's license. Yes, I must have thought I was entering the gift certificate number. But where's the gift certificate? I gave it back to her with the original balance crossed out, and the new balance written in. So we've lost that money!
Okay. To my mind, this is an easily rectifiable problem. In the mind of the customer, she's not walking around with the original $300. She's walking around with the remainder after her order and purchase of yesterday. So here's whatcha do: post-void the transactions if you need to. I'm not convinced that you need to, but that's just my opinion. So, post void them, and then repurchase the items from both the order and the store purchase, without pressing incorrect buttons, as I admittedly did. This will produce a credit note, which is what is stressing you out so severely. Then, I call the customer, and tell her that I made a mistake, and to bring her gift certificate in the next time she comes to the store, because as it stands, the thing is useless, and we would like to give her an actual useful piece of paper in its stead, but we require the paper trail of the actual gift certificate in corpora. WHY IS THIS SO DIFFICULT TO UNDERSTAND?! It's this one woman in particular who is a deer-in-the-headlights-twit of epic proportions. You don't need to teach me how to redeem a gift certificate. That's not the issue here. The issue is just that I pressed an incorrect button by mistake, NOT because I didn't know what I was doing. Good lord. And! How do we issue a credit note when doing a reservation anyway, since reservations don't go through our cash registers at all?
Okay. So, customer comes in, has a $300 gift certificate. she wants to buy some stuff, and she also wants to make a reservation (ie, to order something in from the California warehouse). So, she wants to use the gift certificate. Fine. We use it for both her store purchase and her reservation. Apparently, along the way, I press a wrong button, and don't notice at the time. Having worked at Restoration Hardware for about a year three years ago, and having just returned, I find the order of things a little odd, but considering that some changes have occured in point of sale computer procedures since I last worked here, I think this must be one of those changes.
So, today at the 7.45am meeting (!), one of the managers asks me about the transaction, describing it as a cheque transaction. This is the incorrect button I must have pressed, so there you have it. When I go over it with yet another manager today, she can't fathom that there was in fact no cheque. But where's the cheque? There is no cheque. I must have pressed that button by mistake. But it prompts you to enter the driver's license. Yes, I must have thought I was entering the gift certificate number. But where's the gift certificate? I gave it back to her with the original balance crossed out, and the new balance written in. So we've lost that money!
Okay. To my mind, this is an easily rectifiable problem. In the mind of the customer, she's not walking around with the original $300. She's walking around with the remainder after her order and purchase of yesterday. So here's whatcha do: post-void the transactions if you need to. I'm not convinced that you need to, but that's just my opinion. So, post void them, and then repurchase the items from both the order and the store purchase, without pressing incorrect buttons, as I admittedly did. This will produce a credit note, which is what is stressing you out so severely. Then, I call the customer, and tell her that I made a mistake, and to bring her gift certificate in the next time she comes to the store, because as it stands, the thing is useless, and we would like to give her an actual useful piece of paper in its stead, but we require the paper trail of the actual gift certificate in corpora. WHY IS THIS SO DIFFICULT TO UNDERSTAND?! It's this one woman in particular who is a deer-in-the-headlights-twit of epic proportions. You don't need to teach me how to redeem a gift certificate. That's not the issue here. The issue is just that I pressed an incorrect button by mistake, NOT because I didn't know what I was doing. Good lord. And! How do we issue a credit note when doing a reservation anyway, since reservations don't go through our cash registers at all?
Number One:
go to The Flying Shwa, and check out the post about me! Yay! Me! All about me!
Friday, November 18, 2005
By Popular Demand
post something on your blog all about me. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAALLLLL about MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
Thursday, November 17, 2005
Music
Clair de Lune makes my heart ache.
Stupid Debussy and his stupid excellent music.
Ravel does the same thing to me.
Stupid late 19th/early 20th Century French composers.
Stupid Debussy and his stupid excellent music.
Ravel does the same thing to me.
Stupid late 19th/early 20th Century French composers.
Neglectful
I have been neglecting the blog world. Yesterday was the public presentation of Zero to the Power - part one of Sunyata. It went well, although I messed up pretty nicely at the beginning. Then it came together again pretty quickly. There was a standing ovation, which surprised me, but was pleasant nonetheless.
I've been re-thinking the Japan thing recently. I'm not sure of the efficacy of training for its own sake. I'm more interested in training through working on a show, as I've done with Kokoro. If I'm to go overseas and work with anyone, I'd like it to be an extended process that includes the production of a show.
I've also been thinking about the purpose of art, especially theatre, in the face of the reality of audiences not being interested in going to theatre that much. The purpose of our work is not to change the world (we're deluding ourselves if we think that all art, whether it be theatre, film, dance, music, or writing is transformative), but to to do our work with a mind to speaking to individuals. If something grand happens as a result of art, that is wonderful, but one way or another, it is not up to us to hope for that. Only to do our work with integrity and tireless vigour.
I've been re-thinking the Japan thing recently. I'm not sure of the efficacy of training for its own sake. I'm more interested in training through working on a show, as I've done with Kokoro. If I'm to go overseas and work with anyone, I'd like it to be an extended process that includes the production of a show.
I've also been thinking about the purpose of art, especially theatre, in the face of the reality of audiences not being interested in going to theatre that much. The purpose of our work is not to change the world (we're deluding ourselves if we think that all art, whether it be theatre, film, dance, music, or writing is transformative), but to to do our work with a mind to speaking to individuals. If something grand happens as a result of art, that is wonderful, but one way or another, it is not up to us to hope for that. Only to do our work with integrity and tireless vigour.
This is oddly accurate
You are 'Silent Night'! You really enjoy
Christmas, and you like your Christmases
conventional. For you, Christmas is about
family and traditions, and you rather enjoy the
rituals of going to church at midnight and
turning off the lights before flaming the plum
pudding. Although you find Christmas shopping
frustrating, you like the excitement of
wrapping and hiding presents, and opening a
single door on the Advent Calendar each day.
You like the traditional carols, and probably
teach the children to sing along to them. More
than anyone else, you will probably actually
have a merry Christmas.
What Christmas Carol are you?
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Tuesday, November 15, 2005
Perspective
A friend from the Voice Intensive who is currently immersed in the Voice Certificate program at York just sent out one of those Bill Gates will give you a grillion dollars e-mails. I just deleted it, because perhaps they don't have that particular e-mail in Germany, where she's from. Okay, well, one of the people on the forward list sent a reply-all that was pretty relaxed, just saying that this was a hoax, and to check out Snopes to get more info on this. My Voice Certificate friend blew up and told everyone to chill, that the response she got was weird. She was very defensive and angry, for no good reason that I could see. Also, my friend and roommate from Toronto (also in the acting program at York) attacked me earlier in the week because he thought I was charging him for a parking spot about which I hadn't told him.
These incidents remind me that when one is in a stressful situation, one becomes very defensive, and reacts to events that haven't even taken place. One's perspective is skewed by one's busy-ness and the intensity of one's situation. Perhaps this is what happened with my October reaction to Ben......
We're doing the run at the Roundhouse (the theatre) today, and then the public presentation tomorrow. Whee! I'm nervous, but it was a decent run yesterday (kind of bad but good that it was bad).
These incidents remind me that when one is in a stressful situation, one becomes very defensive, and reacts to events that haven't even taken place. One's perspective is skewed by one's busy-ness and the intensity of one's situation. Perhaps this is what happened with my October reaction to Ben......
We're doing the run at the Roundhouse (the theatre) today, and then the public presentation tomorrow. Whee! I'm nervous, but it was a decent run yesterday (kind of bad but good that it was bad).
Saturday, November 12, 2005
The Persian
I had relations with the Persian a couple of nights ago. It was very enjoyable. I think a lot of my issues about sex are beginning to fall away. I was still a little removed from the whole thing, in that I was observing him a little, but was much more comfortable in myself than is usually the case in a first time thing. He was very passionate, and zealous, which has its advantages.
However, as with Massage Boy, I find that the relations confirm that I really like Ben, and that he's a good fit. The intimacy with Ben is very straightforward and simple and most importantly, honest. It's unembellished, it's just intimacy, efficiently, in the positive meaning of the word - as Barbara uses it: to mean that it is essence, and therefore communicates most effectively. This might be something for me to think about in his general relations. Efficient, and only what is needed. I miss him, and in our conversations, he's been pretty responsive. I think the key (a good key for me to cultivate generally, actually), is just for me to do my work, and enjoy his company.
I look forward to December.
However, as with Massage Boy, I find that the relations confirm that I really like Ben, and that he's a good fit. The intimacy with Ben is very straightforward and simple and most importantly, honest. It's unembellished, it's just intimacy, efficiently, in the positive meaning of the word - as Barbara uses it: to mean that it is essence, and therefore communicates most effectively. This might be something for me to think about in his general relations. Efficient, and only what is needed. I miss him, and in our conversations, he's been pretty responsive. I think the key (a good key for me to cultivate generally, actually), is just for me to do my work, and enjoy his company.
I look forward to December.
Friday, November 11, 2005
Ed Wood
I just finished an egg nog latte from Starbucks. I'd love to be able to say that Blenz is better than Starbucks, but it's simply not the case.
Something interesting about Face Acting came up in rehearsal today. Barbara said "let the feeling that you want to put on your face trasmit through your whole body, and then let your face reflect the emotion. If you go straight to your face, you're stuck there." This is useful information, and provides a better alternative than "don't face act!", which is my wont.
Also when we went to get beer afterward, Barbara was talking about art and said "People say we're intense, but if you don't have intensity, what do you have? Just mediocrity. Maybe my work is just the worst crap you could ever see, or then again maybe it's brilliant, but I hope it's not just mediocre. Because Ed Wood was awful. Reeeeeeaally awful, but people are still talking about him."
Mediocrity is death.
Something interesting about Face Acting came up in rehearsal today. Barbara said "let the feeling that you want to put on your face trasmit through your whole body, and then let your face reflect the emotion. If you go straight to your face, you're stuck there." This is useful information, and provides a better alternative than "don't face act!", which is my wont.
Also when we went to get beer afterward, Barbara was talking about art and said "People say we're intense, but if you don't have intensity, what do you have? Just mediocrity. Maybe my work is just the worst crap you could ever see, or then again maybe it's brilliant, but I hope it's not just mediocre. Because Ed Wood was awful. Reeeeeeaally awful, but people are still talking about him."
Mediocrity is death.
Christmas
I'm back listening to Christmas music again. Loreena McKennitt. I miss it. I can't wait until I get a small tree for this apartment, and pick up some pretty little ornaments. I might have to stop by winners and the Bay to see what the offerings are this year.
Also, I love jumping. We did an exercise today with grand jetes, and it's just so freeing and fantastic.
Barbara said "what's happening? You're getting good!"
Heh.
Also, I love jumping. We did an exercise today with grand jetes, and it's just so freeing and fantastic.
Barbara said "what's happening? You're getting good!"
Heh.
Wednesday, November 09, 2005
Taking it Personally
I can't sleep so I'm sitting here with a cup of recently finished warm milk (I think I might heat up some more), having done some dull repetitive tasks like dish washing and general cleaning.
I'm noticing a pattern of mine, which is to become insular and reserved and removed and sullen when I get nervous. I think this is general, but specifically I'm noticing this around performing next week. I'm taking everything personally. Now of course, I don't live in a vacuum, so the other people around me are going through their process as well. On Wednesday, Barbara took a day away from rehearsal, and Jay led, which was fine. She came back yesterday with a lot more perspective, but she was I guess nervous enough to be taking it out on the dancers before that point, and I was reacting very gracelessly to this. I felt like she was playing one dancer against another - let's be honest: I thought she was favouring the other male dancer over me, and this brought me right back to the heady days of Joanne McLeod (my massively co-dependent skating coach). However, I was struggling (and will continue to struggle I think) with the fact that my reactions in this sort of situation are highly conditioned by the negative emotional training I received while skating (not just with Joanne - although she was my coach for the longest time). In all logic, I don't believe that someone like Barbara would play dancers against one another, because I think she's smarter than that. And if she actually is doing that, then I can choose not to play along. I'm not skating anymore, I am a smart man, and I have choices about how I act and react. As I say, yesterday was waaaaay better, so this sort of thing may not be an issue. However, it's useful for me as a tool to observe myself.
Anyway, c'est ca. I had relations with the Persian. Heh.
I'm noticing a pattern of mine, which is to become insular and reserved and removed and sullen when I get nervous. I think this is general, but specifically I'm noticing this around performing next week. I'm taking everything personally. Now of course, I don't live in a vacuum, so the other people around me are going through their process as well. On Wednesday, Barbara took a day away from rehearsal, and Jay led, which was fine. She came back yesterday with a lot more perspective, but she was I guess nervous enough to be taking it out on the dancers before that point, and I was reacting very gracelessly to this. I felt like she was playing one dancer against another - let's be honest: I thought she was favouring the other male dancer over me, and this brought me right back to the heady days of Joanne McLeod (my massively co-dependent skating coach). However, I was struggling (and will continue to struggle I think) with the fact that my reactions in this sort of situation are highly conditioned by the negative emotional training I received while skating (not just with Joanne - although she was my coach for the longest time). In all logic, I don't believe that someone like Barbara would play dancers against one another, because I think she's smarter than that. And if she actually is doing that, then I can choose not to play along. I'm not skating anymore, I am a smart man, and I have choices about how I act and react. As I say, yesterday was waaaaay better, so this sort of thing may not be an issue. However, it's useful for me as a tool to observe myself.
Anyway, c'est ca. I had relations with the Persian. Heh.
Tuesday, November 08, 2005
The Catholic Church is a Liberal Body (!)
PUBLICATION: The Ottawa Citizen
DATE: 2005.11.05
EDITION: Final
SECTION: News
PAGE: A1 / Front
BYLINE: Martin Penner
SOURCE: The Times, London
DATELINE: ROME
WORD COUNT: 458
Darwin 'perfectly compatible' with Genesis, Vatican says: Stance seen as rebuke to U.S. Christian right
ROME - The Vatican has issued a stout defence of Charles Darwin, voicing strong criticism of Christian fundamentalists who reject his theory of evolution and interpret the Biblical account of creation literally.
Paul Cardinal Poupard, head of the Pontifical Council for Culture, said that the Genesis description of how God created the Universe and Darwin's theory of evolution are "perfectly compatible" if the Bible is read correctly.
His statement is a clear attack on creationist campaigners in the U.S., who see evolution and the Genesis account as mutually exclusive.
"The fundamentalists want to give a scientific meaning to words that had no scientific aim," the French prelate said.
He said at a Vatican press conference that the real message of the first chapter of Genesis is that "the universe didn't make itself and had a creator."
This idea is part of theology, Cardinal Poupard emphasized, while the precise details of how creation and the development of the species came about belong to a different realm -- science. "Science and theology act in different fields, each in its own," he added.
Cardinal Poupard said that it is important for Roman Catholic believers to know how science sees things so as to "understand things better."
His statements have been interpreted in Italy as a rejection of "intelligent design," which asserts that the universe is so complex that some higher being must have designed every detail. In the U.S., this view is often advocated by groups that say schools should not teach only Darwin's view of the origins of life on Earth.
Cardinal Poupard will speak before an international conference at the Vatican next week that will bring together scientists, philosophers and theologians to talk about the concept of infinity.
Gianfranco Basti, the conference co-ordinator, was even more blunt in his rejection of creationist arguments, saying that they were simply false. He added: "To say that the principle of evolution goes against the principle of creation makes no sense."
Since its first horrified reaction to Darwin's book, The Origin of Species, published in 1859, the Church has edged closer to accepting his ideas. Pope John Paul II said in 1996 that the principle of evolution was "more than a hypothesis." Mr. Basti said: "In favour of evolution, there is now evidence that makes it a consolidated scientific theory."
Vatican analysts said that Cardinal Poupard's remarks were partly designed to distance the Church from American conservatives campaigning against the teaching of evolution in state schools.
A court in Pennsylvania is hearing a lawsuit brought by parents against a school district that teaches intelligent design as well as evolution. It is a test case, the result of which is expected to affect the curriculum in thousands of schools.
In 1987 the U.S. Supreme Court abolished a law that banned the teaching of the evolution theory unless creationism was also taught. President George W. Bush has said that he believes schools should teach both.
DATE: 2005.11.05
EDITION: Final
SECTION: News
PAGE: A1 / Front
BYLINE: Martin Penner
SOURCE: The Times, London
DATELINE: ROME
WORD COUNT: 458
Darwin 'perfectly compatible' with Genesis, Vatican says: Stance seen as rebuke to U.S. Christian right
ROME - The Vatican has issued a stout defence of Charles Darwin, voicing strong criticism of Christian fundamentalists who reject his theory of evolution and interpret the Biblical account of creation literally.
Paul Cardinal Poupard, head of the Pontifical Council for Culture, said that the Genesis description of how God created the Universe and Darwin's theory of evolution are "perfectly compatible" if the Bible is read correctly.
His statement is a clear attack on creationist campaigners in the U.S., who see evolution and the Genesis account as mutually exclusive.
"The fundamentalists want to give a scientific meaning to words that had no scientific aim," the French prelate said.
He said at a Vatican press conference that the real message of the first chapter of Genesis is that "the universe didn't make itself and had a creator."
This idea is part of theology, Cardinal Poupard emphasized, while the precise details of how creation and the development of the species came about belong to a different realm -- science. "Science and theology act in different fields, each in its own," he added.
Cardinal Poupard said that it is important for Roman Catholic believers to know how science sees things so as to "understand things better."
His statements have been interpreted in Italy as a rejection of "intelligent design," which asserts that the universe is so complex that some higher being must have designed every detail. In the U.S., this view is often advocated by groups that say schools should not teach only Darwin's view of the origins of life on Earth.
Cardinal Poupard will speak before an international conference at the Vatican next week that will bring together scientists, philosophers and theologians to talk about the concept of infinity.
Gianfranco Basti, the conference co-ordinator, was even more blunt in his rejection of creationist arguments, saying that they were simply false. He added: "To say that the principle of evolution goes against the principle of creation makes no sense."
Since its first horrified reaction to Darwin's book, The Origin of Species, published in 1859, the Church has edged closer to accepting his ideas. Pope John Paul II said in 1996 that the principle of evolution was "more than a hypothesis." Mr. Basti said: "In favour of evolution, there is now evidence that makes it a consolidated scientific theory."
Vatican analysts said that Cardinal Poupard's remarks were partly designed to distance the Church from American conservatives campaigning against the teaching of evolution in state schools.
A court in Pennsylvania is hearing a lawsuit brought by parents against a school district that teaches intelligent design as well as evolution. It is a test case, the result of which is expected to affect the curriculum in thousands of schools.
In 1987 the U.S. Supreme Court abolished a law that banned the teaching of the evolution theory unless creationism was also taught. President George W. Bush has said that he believes schools should teach both.
Letter
This is a letter that I sent to a talented actor who I'm trying to recruit for my theatre company for future. It talks about my time here, and encapsulates my feelings on it very well. It serves as a good reminder for me:
Sorry for horrifically butchering the spelling of your name.
And there's no reason to be intimidated! Good God. I'm waiting for someone to really discover that I'm a big dumb phony, and actually call me on it. In the meantime, I'll just keep doing what I'm doing, and hope no one notices.
Working on this project in Vancouver has been unbelievable. First of all, I haven't been in such kick ass shape since I was 15, and a competitive figure skater. It's also great to be able to apply the work from acting (character work, breathing) to a different medium. There is a lot of carry over from acting to butoh, since it is not a dance form that allows the dancer to get away with just being pretty onstage. This company is not a company that allows that either. They work very very hard, both physically and emotionally, and expect the company to bring absolutely everything to the table - they do a hybrid of butoh and contemporary dance. The piece we're working on, Sunyata (if you want more info on it, and images, check the Repertory section of their website, www.kokoro.ca), is 2.5 hours long, comprising three sections loosely based on Dante's Divine Comedy. It's comprisied of everything from a manic waltz, to 25 minutes of dancing in mud, to vomiting (pretend), to flying, and runs the emotional gamut from utter despair to complete joy. As you can imagine, it's all encompassing. Also, it's really excellent to work in a medium where I'm not immediately virtuosic, and where I'm not the best in the room. I'd say I'm definitely the weakest dancer in the piece. It makes me work really hard, and it's refreshing to be working toward something instead of holding the room. This is the genre of work I'd like to continue in, as well as the type of working environment, where everyone is excellent, and we're really challenging one another (this is where you come in!).
So, as I say, I should be back in May, and it may seem ridiculously far away on the calendar, but when you're going from project to project, as we two are, I find that it approaches rapidly. I can't believe that I've been in Vancouver for over two months! That's already 1/4 of my time here! Love's Labours will fly, so will Voyage, and before you know it, you'll be performing your Archetype project, and saying a fond sayonara to the walls of York University.
Anyway, that's about it for now. I think I'm going to drop a note to Jill as well. Now, I do have to tell you, that as it stands right now, I can't offer you anything in the upcoming show for The Thistle Project, but what I'd like to speak with you about is more the general philosophy of the company, and see if it's something you'd be interested in working on in future (depending on success, funding, longevity, and all that action). In a way, this is advantageous for you, because you get to see our work, and see if it's an aesthetic that appeals to you at all.
So, keep in touch, and if not before then, I'll see you in May.
Regards,
Matthew
Sorry for horrifically butchering the spelling of your name.
And there's no reason to be intimidated! Good God. I'm waiting for someone to really discover that I'm a big dumb phony, and actually call me on it. In the meantime, I'll just keep doing what I'm doing, and hope no one notices.
Working on this project in Vancouver has been unbelievable. First of all, I haven't been in such kick ass shape since I was 15, and a competitive figure skater. It's also great to be able to apply the work from acting (character work, breathing) to a different medium. There is a lot of carry over from acting to butoh, since it is not a dance form that allows the dancer to get away with just being pretty onstage. This company is not a company that allows that either. They work very very hard, both physically and emotionally, and expect the company to bring absolutely everything to the table - they do a hybrid of butoh and contemporary dance. The piece we're working on, Sunyata (if you want more info on it, and images, check the Repertory section of their website, www.kokoro.ca), is 2.5 hours long, comprising three sections loosely based on Dante's Divine Comedy. It's comprisied of everything from a manic waltz, to 25 minutes of dancing in mud, to vomiting (pretend), to flying, and runs the emotional gamut from utter despair to complete joy. As you can imagine, it's all encompassing. Also, it's really excellent to work in a medium where I'm not immediately virtuosic, and where I'm not the best in the room. I'd say I'm definitely the weakest dancer in the piece. It makes me work really hard, and it's refreshing to be working toward something instead of holding the room. This is the genre of work I'd like to continue in, as well as the type of working environment, where everyone is excellent, and we're really challenging one another (this is where you come in!).
So, as I say, I should be back in May, and it may seem ridiculously far away on the calendar, but when you're going from project to project, as we two are, I find that it approaches rapidly. I can't believe that I've been in Vancouver for over two months! That's already 1/4 of my time here! Love's Labours will fly, so will Voyage, and before you know it, you'll be performing your Archetype project, and saying a fond sayonara to the walls of York University.
Anyway, that's about it for now. I think I'm going to drop a note to Jill as well. Now, I do have to tell you, that as it stands right now, I can't offer you anything in the upcoming show for The Thistle Project, but what I'd like to speak with you about is more the general philosophy of the company, and see if it's something you'd be interested in working on in future (depending on success, funding, longevity, and all that action). In a way, this is advantageous for you, because you get to see our work, and see if it's an aesthetic that appeals to you at all.
So, keep in touch, and if not before then, I'll see you in May.
Regards,
Matthew
Sunday, November 06, 2005
Posting like a mo' fo'.
I am not as convinced of the complete efficacy of words as I once was. The word love specifically has brought this on. I stated "I am in love with you" about Ben out loud right now, and I'm not sure that it's true. Or rather, the definition of the word has to become more plastic in response to the actual feelings I have around Ben. I think they're still love, but it's very different from anything I've ever felt. Heavier, more direct somehow.
I have to get ready for work.
I have to get ready for work.
Cry if you want to
Cry if you want to
I won't tell you not to
I won't try to cheer you up
I'll just be here if you want me
There's no use in keeping a stiff upper lip
you can weep you can sleep you can loosen your grip
you can frown you can drown and go down with the ship
you can cry if you want to
Don't ever apologise venting your pain
it's something to me you don't need to explain
I don't need to know why I don't think it's insane
you can cry if you want to
The windows are closed the neighbours aren't home
if it's better with me than to do it alone
I'll draw all the curtains and unplug the phone
you can cry if you want to
You can stare at the ceiling and tear at your hair
swallow your feelings and stagger and swear
you can show thing and throw things and I wouldn't care
you can cry if you want to
I won't make fun of you I won't tell anyone
I won't analyse what you do or you should have done
I won't advise you to go and have fun
you can cry if you want to
Well it's empty and ugly and terribly sad
I can't feel what you feel but I know it feels bad
I know that it's real and it makes you so mad
you can cry
Cry if you want to
I won't tell you not to
I won't try to cheer you up
I'll just be here if you want me
to be
near you.
I won't tell you not to
I won't try to cheer you up
I'll just be here if you want me
There's no use in keeping a stiff upper lip
you can weep you can sleep you can loosen your grip
you can frown you can drown and go down with the ship
you can cry if you want to
Don't ever apologise venting your pain
it's something to me you don't need to explain
I don't need to know why I don't think it's insane
you can cry if you want to
The windows are closed the neighbours aren't home
if it's better with me than to do it alone
I'll draw all the curtains and unplug the phone
you can cry if you want to
You can stare at the ceiling and tear at your hair
swallow your feelings and stagger and swear
you can show thing and throw things and I wouldn't care
you can cry if you want to
I won't make fun of you I won't tell anyone
I won't analyse what you do or you should have done
I won't advise you to go and have fun
you can cry if you want to
Well it's empty and ugly and terribly sad
I can't feel what you feel but I know it feels bad
I know that it's real and it makes you so mad
you can cry
Cry if you want to
I won't tell you not to
I won't try to cheer you up
I'll just be here if you want me
to be
near you.
Resonance
I've been thinking about resonance lately, and relationships in the context of resonance - I think spark is actually an agreement of principles or looks or goals, and that spark is actually the flash of recognition of yourself in someone else.
Regarding attachment, we must attach and let go attach and let go as artists, because we need to show people what attaching and letting go looks like. We don't have the luxury of ashramic release of attachment. Our transcendence is of a different order that requires the flesh as a part of it. And we don't have the luxury of comfort - finding states of mind that are comfortable and staying there. This does not mean that we must be in constant danger, just that our safeties must be as fully sensory as our dangers. We don't have the luxury of dullness.
I'm talking about myself, of course.
Regarding attachment, we must attach and let go attach and let go as artists, because we need to show people what attaching and letting go looks like. We don't have the luxury of ashramic release of attachment. Our transcendence is of a different order that requires the flesh as a part of it. And we don't have the luxury of comfort - finding states of mind that are comfortable and staying there. This does not mean that we must be in constant danger, just that our safeties must be as fully sensory as our dangers. We don't have the luxury of dullness.
I'm talking about myself, of course.
Drops
Sorrow is a lonely road
With a rain like your tears
It's heavy on the roof
On the roof above your head
Tomorrow is a lovers' town
That's been beaten down
The end of winter holds
The life we've lived
Instead of drowning in despair
for I find small comfort in a bottle
when we're apart
they say: don't let the teardrops rust your shining heart.
I used to drive all night for you
while the children were asleep
as the dawn broke on your room
back into my house I'd creep
where my husband slept alone.
of course he must have known.
for we always hide the truth
for fear of losing what we own
Now don't forget the words that we choose
and constantly misuse.
they were written down
every time we were apart
they say: don't let the teardrops rust your shining heart.
With a rain like your tears
It's heavy on the roof
On the roof above your head
Tomorrow is a lovers' town
That's been beaten down
The end of winter holds
The life we've lived
Instead of drowning in despair
for I find small comfort in a bottle
when we're apart
they say: don't let the teardrops rust your shining heart.
I used to drive all night for you
while the children were asleep
as the dawn broke on your room
back into my house I'd creep
where my husband slept alone.
of course he must have known.
for we always hide the truth
for fear of losing what we own
Now don't forget the words that we choose
and constantly misuse.
they were written down
every time we were apart
they say: don't let the teardrops rust your shining heart.
Trigger
“Trust your legs, Mattie”. This is what Barbara said to me the other day. It somehow struck an emotional cord. It feels like everything I have done, all that has occurred, the injuries I’ve sustained, are all as a result of this lack of trust in my legs. It’s something to really work on.
Having Chris in rehearsal is very instructive to me, since he’s a professional ballet dancer. Barbara and Deanna (one of the other dancers – probably the strongest technically in the group) use lots of ballet language for what we’re doing, so in addition to my process is this new language that is probably useful for me to have (if I ever teach movement….)
Here are some more Merton quotation (a really good batch):
“I think we owe it to ourselves and to God and thepeople we love to keep ourselves in the fight and not get knocked clean out of it.”
“I can understand how you feel about wanting to get out and be in some other country that can never own a bomb, never afford genocide, and lacks the joys of American know-how in alienating the rest of the universe. But wherever we might go we would take our America with us.”
“In my private opinion the contemplatives are a bunch of dolts and squares – at least the Catholic ones, and they have nothing to say to the modern world at least until such time as they wake up and come alive.”
“…we must not be so obsessed with details of policy that we block the deeper development in other people and in ourselves.”
“The violent man is, by our standards, weak and sick. Though to us at times he is powerful and menacing in an extreme degree. In our acceptance of vulnerability, however, we play on his guilt. There is no finer torment. This is one of the enormous problems of the time, and the place. It is the overwhelming problem of America: all this guilt and nothing to do about it except finally to explode and blow it all out in hatreds, race hatreds, political hatreds, war hatreds. We, the righteous, are dangerous people in such a situation. (Of course we are not righteous, we are conscious of our guilt above all, we are sinners: but nevertheless we are bound to take courses of action that are professionally righteous and we have committed ourselves to that course.) This is not for you so much as myself. We have got to be aware of the awful sharpness of truth when it is used as a weapon, and since it can be the deadliest weapon, we must take care that we don’t kill more than falsehood with it. In fact, we must be careful how we ‘use’ truth, for we are ideally the instruments of truth, and not the other way round.”
“Nevertheless, you will probably, if you continue as you do, begin the laborious job of changing the national mind and opening up the national conscience. How far will you get? God alone knows. All that you and I can ever hope for in terms of visible results is that we will have perhaps contributed something to a clarification of Christian truth in this society, and as a result a few people may have got straight about some things and opened up to the grace of God and made some sense out of their lives, helping a few more to do the same. As for the big results, these are not in your hands or mine, but they can suddenly happen, and we can share in them: but there is no point in building our lives on this personal satisfaction, which may be denied us and which after all is not that important.”
“So the next step in the process is for you to see that your own thinking about what you are doing is crucially important. You are probably striving to build yourself an identity in your work and your witness. You are using it so to speak to protect yourself against nothingness, annihilation. That is not the right use of your work. All the good that you will do will come not from you but from the fact that you have allowed yourself, in the obedience of faith, to be used by God’s love. Think of this more and gradually you will be free from the need to prove yourself, and you can be more open to the power that will work through you without your knowing it.”
“It was a rather errie experience a few weeks ago to receive a Vietnamese translation of Seeds of Contemplation and a request to write a preface for the Viet translation of No Man is an Island. The whole thing brings home the futility of so-called spiritual literature in this day and age. Who is going to have time for pious medidations with the whole place getting showered in napalm? Maybe someone in a plush apartment in Saigon … I tried to say something, and to say it non-politically. Don’t know if it makes any sense. I was too embarrassed. I guess being embarrassed is a luxury too. Everything is. Life is.”
“I am sending you a photograph of a supernatural event [a picture of Merton himself] such as (of course) occurs around here at every moment and even more frequently than that. In between the moments. You have to duck all the time to keep from being brained by a supernatural event. I also have a picture of Meher Baba which says ‘Meher Baba loves you’ but I can’t find it. Probably swiped by some desperate soul who needs to be loved by Meher Baba.”
Having Chris in rehearsal is very instructive to me, since he’s a professional ballet dancer. Barbara and Deanna (one of the other dancers – probably the strongest technically in the group) use lots of ballet language for what we’re doing, so in addition to my process is this new language that is probably useful for me to have (if I ever teach movement….)
Here are some more Merton quotation (a really good batch):
“I think we owe it to ourselves and to God and thepeople we love to keep ourselves in the fight and not get knocked clean out of it.”
“I can understand how you feel about wanting to get out and be in some other country that can never own a bomb, never afford genocide, and lacks the joys of American know-how in alienating the rest of the universe. But wherever we might go we would take our America with us.”
“In my private opinion the contemplatives are a bunch of dolts and squares – at least the Catholic ones, and they have nothing to say to the modern world at least until such time as they wake up and come alive.”
“…we must not be so obsessed with details of policy that we block the deeper development in other people and in ourselves.”
“The violent man is, by our standards, weak and sick. Though to us at times he is powerful and menacing in an extreme degree. In our acceptance of vulnerability, however, we play on his guilt. There is no finer torment. This is one of the enormous problems of the time, and the place. It is the overwhelming problem of America: all this guilt and nothing to do about it except finally to explode and blow it all out in hatreds, race hatreds, political hatreds, war hatreds. We, the righteous, are dangerous people in such a situation. (Of course we are not righteous, we are conscious of our guilt above all, we are sinners: but nevertheless we are bound to take courses of action that are professionally righteous and we have committed ourselves to that course.) This is not for you so much as myself. We have got to be aware of the awful sharpness of truth when it is used as a weapon, and since it can be the deadliest weapon, we must take care that we don’t kill more than falsehood with it. In fact, we must be careful how we ‘use’ truth, for we are ideally the instruments of truth, and not the other way round.”
“Nevertheless, you will probably, if you continue as you do, begin the laborious job of changing the national mind and opening up the national conscience. How far will you get? God alone knows. All that you and I can ever hope for in terms of visible results is that we will have perhaps contributed something to a clarification of Christian truth in this society, and as a result a few people may have got straight about some things and opened up to the grace of God and made some sense out of their lives, helping a few more to do the same. As for the big results, these are not in your hands or mine, but they can suddenly happen, and we can share in them: but there is no point in building our lives on this personal satisfaction, which may be denied us and which after all is not that important.”
“So the next step in the process is for you to see that your own thinking about what you are doing is crucially important. You are probably striving to build yourself an identity in your work and your witness. You are using it so to speak to protect yourself against nothingness, annihilation. That is not the right use of your work. All the good that you will do will come not from you but from the fact that you have allowed yourself, in the obedience of faith, to be used by God’s love. Think of this more and gradually you will be free from the need to prove yourself, and you can be more open to the power that will work through you without your knowing it.”
“It was a rather errie experience a few weeks ago to receive a Vietnamese translation of Seeds of Contemplation and a request to write a preface for the Viet translation of No Man is an Island. The whole thing brings home the futility of so-called spiritual literature in this day and age. Who is going to have time for pious medidations with the whole place getting showered in napalm? Maybe someone in a plush apartment in Saigon … I tried to say something, and to say it non-politically. Don’t know if it makes any sense. I was too embarrassed. I guess being embarrassed is a luxury too. Everything is. Life is.”
“I am sending you a photograph of a supernatural event [a picture of Merton himself] such as (of course) occurs around here at every moment and even more frequently than that. In between the moments. You have to duck all the time to keep from being brained by a supernatural event. I also have a picture of Meher Baba which says ‘Meher Baba loves you’ but I can’t find it. Probably swiped by some desperate soul who needs to be loved by Meher Baba.”
Thursday, November 03, 2005
The Closest Thing I Can Liken it to is Alien Abduction
What a day (this is coming to you a day after the “what a day” day). It was long in the usual sense of long – I had physio at 8am, class at 10, rehearsal at 1.30 and work at 6. I’m just getting home and it’s 11pm. However, it’s not that that made the day so crazy.
1) 9.45am Barbara asks how I’m liking the process, and I tell her I’m loving it, and for the first time admit that I don’t really want to go home. It’s very complicated to let that stuff out into the open, because the implication is that I leave Ben completely, put the Thistle Project on indefinite hold, sell my condo, sell the contents, basically, leave my friends and family, and start over on the coast.
2) 11.45am walking home for lunch, I start thinking about Ben, and the fact that sleeping in the same bed with him was very easy, and about his beauty, and the easy affection from him. I call him, which is an emotional mistake, since I’ve said that I’m not going to think about him until I return in December, and figure out the situation at that time.
3) 1.20pm walking back to the studio I’m thinking more about Ben, and realise that if I’m brutally honest with myself, I’d leave him for my career, because it’s more important. And not only that I’d leave Ben, but more on the grand scheme of things: in a theoretical universe where I have to choose between my vocation (in the classical sense of the word – my calling), and a soul mate, I choose the vocation.
4) 5.25pm checking my messages, I have one from Christine, my best friend in the known and unknown universe (my surgically removed Siamese twin/wife if we lived in the 30’s/Artistic Co-Director of the Thistle Project/co-writer of the Gorey piece), announcing that we’ve been awarded $3000 for the workshop of our Gorey piece, conditional upon the granting of rights from the estate, which has already occurred. This takes care of whether I’m going back to Toronto or not – I’m at least going back for the month of July, and a week in August to organise and participate in the workshop.
5) 10.10pm in conversation with Ronya, I articulate the fact that though these sorts of difficult decisions – between love and vocation (which are still issues despite the fact that I’m definitely going back) – are harder, but better, and better simply by virtue of the fact that they are harder. That is, the fact that one must struggle with the decisions makes one confront one’s vitality – it makes you know you’re alive. And this is a good enough reason to rejoice in the dilemma.
So that’s a pretty full day, I’d say. I’m going to bed.
1) 9.45am Barbara asks how I’m liking the process, and I tell her I’m loving it, and for the first time admit that I don’t really want to go home. It’s very complicated to let that stuff out into the open, because the implication is that I leave Ben completely, put the Thistle Project on indefinite hold, sell my condo, sell the contents, basically, leave my friends and family, and start over on the coast.
2) 11.45am walking home for lunch, I start thinking about Ben, and the fact that sleeping in the same bed with him was very easy, and about his beauty, and the easy affection from him. I call him, which is an emotional mistake, since I’ve said that I’m not going to think about him until I return in December, and figure out the situation at that time.
3) 1.20pm walking back to the studio I’m thinking more about Ben, and realise that if I’m brutally honest with myself, I’d leave him for my career, because it’s more important. And not only that I’d leave Ben, but more on the grand scheme of things: in a theoretical universe where I have to choose between my vocation (in the classical sense of the word – my calling), and a soul mate, I choose the vocation.
4) 5.25pm checking my messages, I have one from Christine, my best friend in the known and unknown universe (my surgically removed Siamese twin/wife if we lived in the 30’s/Artistic Co-Director of the Thistle Project/co-writer of the Gorey piece), announcing that we’ve been awarded $3000 for the workshop of our Gorey piece, conditional upon the granting of rights from the estate, which has already occurred. This takes care of whether I’m going back to Toronto or not – I’m at least going back for the month of July, and a week in August to organise and participate in the workshop.
5) 10.10pm in conversation with Ronya, I articulate the fact that though these sorts of difficult decisions – between love and vocation (which are still issues despite the fact that I’m definitely going back) – are harder, but better, and better simply by virtue of the fact that they are harder. That is, the fact that one must struggle with the decisions makes one confront one’s vitality – it makes you know you’re alive. And this is a good enough reason to rejoice in the dilemma.
So that’s a pretty full day, I’d say. I’m going to bed.
Tuesday, November 01, 2005
Fear
Kevin the Burninator. It's making me crazy, driving me insane... says: (8:36:54 PM)
how's it going with ben then?

Dancing hurts less than walking says: (8:37:44 PM)
uh, with ben, I've decided I'm not pining.

Dancing hurts less than walking says: (8:38:03 PM)
I'm going to go and suss out the situation when i return in december, and if it's enraging then, then we'll part ways.

Dancing hurts less than walking says: (8:38:36 PM)
which makes me sad to think of, but I can't be attached to an idea, if the reality is poo, you know?

 Kevin the Burninator. It's making me crazy, driving me insane... says: (8:39:30 PM)
yes exacxtly

Dancing hurts less than walking says: (8:41:37 PM)
because it may just be that his communication skills are crap, or it may just be that he's not into me anymore. finding me annoying, loud, clingy, abrasive, and unnecessarily dramatic.

Dancing hurts less than walking says: (8:41:55 PM)
that's a good cross section of the fears I have as to why people will leave me.
how's it going with ben then?

Dancing hurts less than walking says: (8:37:44 PM)
uh, with ben, I've decided I'm not pining.

Dancing hurts less than walking says: (8:38:03 PM)
I'm going to go and suss out the situation when i return in december, and if it's enraging then, then we'll part ways.

Dancing hurts less than walking says: (8:38:36 PM)
which makes me sad to think of, but I can't be attached to an idea, if the reality is poo, you know?

 Kevin the Burninator. It's making me crazy, driving me insane... says: (8:39:30 PM)
yes exacxtly

Dancing hurts less than walking says: (8:41:37 PM)
because it may just be that his communication skills are crap, or it may just be that he's not into me anymore. finding me annoying, loud, clingy, abrasive, and unnecessarily dramatic.

Dancing hurts less than walking says: (8:41:55 PM)
that's a good cross section of the fears I have as to why people will leave me.
Chris, the new dancer came into rehearsal today. I'm not jealous, I'm not jealous, I'm not jealous. In fact, having another man in the room who is not in a mentor position brings out my healthy (!) competitive spirit, and makes me work harder, which is ultimately useful for me.
Anyway, here's some more Merton quotations:
...oh wow, I just got a massive charlie horse in my inner thigh.
Okay, Merton:
"To think that one has grown up to the distinction of belonging to the beast of the Apocalypse"
"I realize that I am extremely fortunate to be able to do exactly what I am supposed to do in life: a think which few people ever manage to get around to doing, and there is something pretty wonderful about it."
"All this nonsense could be avoided with a minimum of maturity."
And now, Antony and the Johnsons:
One day I'll grow up
and be a beautiful woman
One day I'll grow up
and be a beautiful girl
One day I'll grow up
and be a beautiful woman
One day I'll grow up
and be a beautiful girl
But for today
I am a child
for today I am a boy
For today
I am a child
for today I am a boy
One day I'll grow up
and feel the power in me
One day I'll grow up
of this I'm sure
One day I'll grow up
and know who I am
One day I'll grow up
feeling full and pure
But for today
I am a child
for today I am a boy
For today
I am a child
for today I am a boy
Anyway, here's some more Merton quotations:
...oh wow, I just got a massive charlie horse in my inner thigh.
Okay, Merton:
"To think that one has grown up to the distinction of belonging to the beast of the Apocalypse"
"I realize that I am extremely fortunate to be able to do exactly what I am supposed to do in life: a think which few people ever manage to get around to doing, and there is something pretty wonderful about it."
"All this nonsense could be avoided with a minimum of maturity."
And now, Antony and the Johnsons:
One day I'll grow up
and be a beautiful woman
One day I'll grow up
and be a beautiful girl
One day I'll grow up
and be a beautiful woman
One day I'll grow up
and be a beautiful girl
But for today
I am a child
for today I am a boy
For today
I am a child
for today I am a boy
One day I'll grow up
and feel the power in me
One day I'll grow up
of this I'm sure
One day I'll grow up
and know who I am
One day I'll grow up
feeling full and pure
But for today
I am a child
for today I am a boy
For today
I am a child
for today I am a boy
