It's 6AM ladies and gentlemen, and I am enjoying the glory of summer - where I have the sleep schedule from HELL!!! Because it is simply way more fun just to sleep when you want, and be awake when you want, and lets be honest - the wee hours of the morn are just way awesome to be awake for. It is just so quiet and peaceful - totally conducive to creative thought. Most of us have the problem though that the only ways to get to the early hours of the morn are when we stay up all night, but then we are exhausted and can't get anything done, or we get up early, but then we are exhausted and can't get anything done.
But during the summer - I sleep from 9 to midnight, maybe stay up till 4am, go to sleep, wake up at 6, stay up till 8, and just basically do my entire day based on 2-5 hour naps. And every few days, I do a 12 hour sleep session.
So yeah, that's why I am awake at six in the morning. And I thought, since I don't have anything else I want to do, because I am a procrastinator and don't particularly want to write a poem about growing up and losing your childs view of the world and settling into reality, because that would be challenging, I am going to write a little bit.
So this summer, I planned on working on two projects, a human recreation of Thought Of You, and progress in the form of two new pieces for my Human Identity project, which I think I wrote about before, but to give you a reminder, I am going to explore human self identity through movement and spoken word (including dance, object manipulation, and aerial performance). I have finished the writing for "Passion" as well as most of the choreography, although I finished it just before my injury, so I may have to do it again - we'll see once I find a place to hang my aerial trapeze. I have also finished the writing for the Opening, which is about differentiation - the journey from a blank slate to a human being, which usually happens around when you are born. Babies have personalities, and this is a piece about how I view that working. Anyway, that one is mostly just a spoken word piece, I just need a very large pillowcase to sit in for it to work. So those are done, there are four more to write/choreograph (although the closing piece is just spoken word). I planned on writing the growing up piece (a corde lisse/rope piece set either to Björk or Puff The Magic Dragon, I am not sure yet) and the Cog In The Wheel (about getting a job and having it define your place in the world) which is a juggling/object manipulation piece.
Lots of writing to do, lots of choreography and exploration and object/personal research to do.
That was supposed to be my summer - mostly so far I have been enjoying myself. I figure I have a month and a half once I get back from Tucson, and I will be more than capable of getting all of this done in that time. I will probably get half of it done, and I am OK with that.
Oh, and in other performance art news, I am thinking of ways to step up my performance. I was confronted with a problem recently - I started researching fans (I don't say training, because I am not training - I am not learning tricks or technique, I am exploring the range of a particular object, in this case, fire fans) and realized they lend themselves so perfectly to be a companion of fire breathing. However, fire fans present a somewhat unique problem, unlike with fire torches, which can be manipulated together with one hand, one has to stand still while drinking fuel when using fire fans. There is no way to pass that off and be smooth about it. So I started thinking - how can I solve this problem. Solution: camelbak. Yeah - wear a camelbak full of fire breathing fuel, attach it to my shoulder, and all I have to do to blast flame in the air is take a drag from my little mouthpiece. All it has to do is be small enough to conceal under a robe without being too bulky, have a large enough bag (anything over 10oz is enough, which is all of them) and be easy to clean.
Also, I am working on a method for producing and extinguishing fire in my hand multiple times within a performance. I plan on doing this with a combination of Zip Poi and either Finger Flame or Fire From Palms. I'll give them both a look, since they are sold by a Tucson based company. With the combination of all three of these, I can conceivably produce fire from nothing, and then breath fire without taking a drink using my hands. IMAGINE THE POSSIBILITIES PEOPLE!!!
So - that is where my performance journey is at - choreographing the largest piece in my life to date, and special effects/hands free fire performance. Should be a good time. Also, hints for birthday presents can be found in the links above - just sayin.
On that note: my birthday is coming up in a few months here. Most people don't start thinking about that so far in advance, but it is the big two-one for me. Yep, I will no longer have to scour every show flyer for "21+ only" or tell my juggling friends "yeah, I know you want to go grab a beer and talk about awesome juggling and circus stuff, but I can't I have to go home and drink orange juice instead" or stay at home to watch Ducks Football - CUZ I WILL BE ABLE TO GO TO BARS! I am excited about the whole alcohol thing too - I like alcohol, it makes my brain fuzzy and makes me walk silly. It makes me more open about my emotions, and it temporarily makes me care less about the shit it my life (or, on rare occasions, it makes me care more - those are not fun days). But alcohol is not going to be the coolest part of being 21 - it will be the ability to go out with my friends to the Oak Street Speakeasy for Karaoke, or perhaps take a mosey over to 80s Night and have some fun there. Being 21 will open up a whole new aspect of society and interaction. Plus, drunk people are hilarious to analyze linguistically.
Also in the cards for me: I am moving! The lease on my house is almost up, and as much as this house has been a great place to live, I simply cannot deal with this noise anymore - when the girls upstairs walk around in heels, it sounds like gunshots - when they move a chair, it sounds like they are dragging their refrigerator. I love the floor heating, and the neighborhood, and the lovely park, and I love my room mates - but if I have to deal with one more year of skipping, one more year of drunken parties, one more year of girls upstairs talking where I can hear them, one more year of ceiling pounding "we just got engaged" sex (ok, that one is kind of over, but soon it will become "we are newlyweds" sex*), I will either put a bullet in my ear, or in the ceiling above my pillow. Srsly.
But yeah - I'm moving to an awesome house with a new friend of mine, gonna be a great place. It's halfway in between work and school and I'm very excited for that, pics to come once we get it set up (perhaps another foray into vlogging is in my future, should I decide to do a video tour again).
*Congratulations to Whitney, my upstairs neighbor, for her engagement to her boyfriend, Ben, who I get along with great - he is a fantastic guy, they are perfect for each other, and I wish them the best of luck.
On a related note, WHY ARE SO MANY YOUNG PEOPLE GETTING MARRIED! I mean, I know you are young and in love (I am not talking about Whitney here) but really? Getting married at 19 in this day and age is just asking for trouble. Sure, 80 years ago, when marriage (and the world) was a much different place, you could get away with that - just ask my grandparents, they have been married since... well, I'm not sure, but it was a long time... and have never been with anyone other than each other, and they are still together. And they never let me forget it. But really - 19 and you met the man/woman who you are going to spend the rest of your life with, and you have a part time job, so you decide that you can follow your heart and marry him/her and live together and be alright? Honestly, if you decide to do this - the best of luck to you both, I would never wish ill on you. But really - back in my grandparents day, back in the WWII times, things were different. You got a job at 20 (assuming you were not enlisted) and that is what you did. There was a greater sense of permanence and stick-with-it back then. Now we have colleges that encourage you to explore and see what you want to do, and once you graduate, they tell us that we have the rest of our lives to figure out what we want to do. That is not how it was. Back then, a 19 year old marriage was a not insane thing to do, because at 19, you actually were expected to be making decisions (or have them made for you) that would stick with you for the rest of your life. But now, we are expected to be making mistakes and "learning about me" for at least another 5 years. Why do we think, in this day and age, that it is acceptable to make decisions about a life partner (note - "life," because it is supposed to be till death do you part) when we know that we are not making decisions about job, lifestyle or anything else. It seems that we are lagging a little bit in this department. We have changed our society (with the advancement of medical technology so that our lives are longer) proportionally so that we take longer to get to an age where what we do is what we do forever, why has marriage not caught up?*
*Note: this was inspired by my Grandpa Bill, with whom I have had discussions about marriage and love and stuff like that, and I was trying to explain how my world is different from the world he grew up in, and while there is nothing wrong with what he and my grandmother did, that what happened there would be next to impossible in my world. However, I could not describe how the world was so different so as to explain why what I do, and what he did, are both reasonable things to do in their respective worlds. This is that explanation at is seems to me, as to why I should not be expected to do what he did in terms of a life partner or life career. I love you Grandpa.
This wasn't supposed to be a blog of little mini-rants, but that is how it is turning out, isn't it?
There are plenty more things I could update you on. I could talk about Faerieworlds, I could talk about my relationships, I could talk about my Blues Dancing adventures (not dancing to blues music, mind you, it is something different - google it), I could talk about... well, that's all I got, actually. However, I feel that this blog has gone on long enough, and I got enough of the "what's going on in my life" and the "what's going on in my head" to satisfy all of my readers, so I'm gonna call this one quits.
Goodnight(morning?) and as usual, if you have any comments (or questions about which brand of camelbak would be the best for my purposes *hint hint*) feel free to leave them in the box or in an e-mail, I always love to hear from people.
Love for you all,
Fenix
No comments:
Post a Comment