come hither
Part of a series of collages I did years ago…
03.12.06
An Attack of Nerves
Tonight we go to the theatre- six 15 minute plays by six different companies doing all kinds of wonderful things as part of a local arts festival. It’s theatre by my specific demographic, for our specific type of people. Not just young people but this awkwardness and selfobsession and odd mix of irony and magic. Well the audience is full of people I know or have known once upon a time, and perhaps once upon a time I felt some connection (or, more accurately, desired some connection) to them. Audience also may contain parents, aunts, uncles, or shrivelled olde-worlde grandparents of the same. And I have an attack of nerves. My eyes grow wide in a mirror of Andrea Tucker’s work – displayed on site. And I’ve just got the feeling that i’ve got to get out of there. It’s like nausea, when you know you have to leave right away because you’ll throw up.
I don’t leave. I sit and am nervous. I enjoy being in the dark and watching the show. Gut-tossing laughter at unexpected humour. My hands are clammy, though. And they don’t believe me when I say I am shy. If I could have unzipped and peeled off my skin I would have.
Now, I’m a pretty intuitive person and depend on my gut instincts. But facing fears isn’t intuitive. It goes against everything natural. My animal nature kept my bloodline alive for thousands of generations. This caution, this clamminess, this scatter-eye taking in every exit and every nuance, THIS is how we survived. It seems like Anxiety Meds are as common as chocolate, but all they do is prevent us from developing past our animal histories. So I sit down and take it all in and make sure I know every exit and every nuance, and think about how in the days of caves and predators, my ancestors must have been the ones who heard the hungry cougar’s whispered breath. And directed our loose social unit back to safety with the tiniest flick of their hand. But now, I remember, I don’t need to listen for the slip of a constrictor’s snake scales. And these audience members, aquaintances and friends in my particular and specific demographic (east van artistic age 25-35 post-secondary educated non-organized-religious former food regimist closet social anarchist open elitist queer friendly and microbrew loving 70% female) no longer need to compete with my tribe for resources. So perhaps I can just smile, sit back, and relax.
Lawns and Gardens
Today I wandered for hours taking photos of dormant gardens. Of early bloomers stretching sleepy arms up to the sky. And ignore those green expanses of lawn. Those perfect squares of grass with no weeds or saboteurs, dotted with the last remains of this morning’s heavy white westcoast snow, display themselves openly or hide behind brick fences. And I think about the difference between gardeners and lawnkeepers. It’s a small thing but a big one: the essential activity.
Lawnkeepers spend their time cutting things down. Like loggers or very dull, vegetarian hunters. Imagine spending your life looking for something alive to cut down. Lawn becomes symbolic of limitation. Your entire act is to LIMIT.
Gardeners spend their time coaxing things to grow up. They only cut down to encourage growth and more often are seeking ways to include more and more growth. Imagine spending your life looking for something more you can foster. Garden becomes symbolic of directed development. Your entire act is to EXPAND.
Today I played a game: imagining the people who live inside those houses, their outlooks as represented by the amount of garden versus lawn. So many were 75% limitation, 20% expansion, and 5% controlled (by concrete walkways they did not design). A couple that I loved the most were almost 100% expansion – even the walkways were subverted from cityspace to directed, symbolic wilderness. For a moment, gazing at these gardens, I felt free.
03.07.06
Movies
We watched two movies over the weekend – well, videos. MUNICH and HUSTLE AND FLOW. The former would make a collosally depressing double feature with THE MACHINIST – both feature formerly good looking men who hollow out mentally and physically, with a pinch of paranoia, and a heady dose of violence. And both of them go on far too long. Is there no editor willing to stand up to a director any more? Length does not automatically indicate value. Munich was involving if not engaging, building a progressive feeling of gastrointestinal discomfort. I’d give it three tums and a swig of pepto.
Hustle and Flow however was fantastic – a complex story that was miraculously both WELL EDITED and well acted. Couldn’t have been happier while watching a small-time Memphis pimp and friends come together to follow a dream. It was what 8 Mile could have been if Eminem hadn’t such an enormous ego. Verse and beat and the pathos of poverty come together in this one without romanticizing “the life”. Everyone is ugly in this movie, too.
In other news, I did it. I made one little movie and put it online [insert your caveats here regarding quality, pace, and my inexperience!] and I suppose that is that.
03.04.06
The Underground Kitchen
I dreamed we were purchasing bill pasnak’s apartment (before he was nawab). It was on two levels, had a raised living room, or maybe it was a sunken kitchen. This apartment was underneath a conservatory that has been in my dreams before. the kitchen had a little passthrough to give food and stuff to the living room, but the passthrough and counter was at the same level as the living room floor. it had a good-sized table in the kitchen, but the table was covered in carpet as an extension of the living room floor. in the kitchen above the sink – high above the sink – was a window at ground level, opening to the conservatory jungle above. This window had herbs growing in little jars up there.
i climbed up the counter to see the herbs, what was there. but there was also a collection of envelopes small square manila envelopes, labelled oddly. I picked one up, and on the back my full name was written in grandma-style script as if to decode the strange numbers on the front. I opened the envelope, and inside were photographs.
photographs of my life – or rather of my past within the dream identity. Each photo was about the size of a slide, small and square and hard. And when I looked at it, it was like going inside a little television, and all the action started moving. There was me, around 12 years old, wearing a skimpy blue sequinned get-up and too much makeup, sparkles on my cheeks, doing a 1950’s tap-dance routine with a similarly dressed girl in red. And me, even younger, dressed up as a branch of a christmas tree with silver and gold baubles hanging off my arms, singing. And in my teens doing dramatic small theatre, cat on a hot tin roof and all that. Gritty and teary-eyed acting. I had been some kind of performer as a kid, and bill had kept all these pictures. My husband looked at the pictures and said ‘i didn’t know you did all that’ … neither did i.
