It was written earlier this month, in the midst, or probably nearing the end, of a three week long walking pilgrimage through France (my three pages have come from Cabrarets), apparently a fall activity shared by many. Oh Europe.
Hofan eats berries off bushes and fresh figs off trees during her daily average-five hour jaunts, nursing blistered feet and washing clothes for the next day come evening. Though immersed in an experiential pilgrimage and period of sort-of-solitude of an entirely different quality (I scavange newspapers from trash bins and pray for forgiveness for eating a leg of fried chicken that felt instantly to my teeth as GMO), I smile openly to myself that we share the same thoughts on our journeys, which I am grateful she has articulated so well:
"I do not know if I can claim to be happy or content but at least I can say I am not discontented or unhappy. I do find myself grateful for a myriad of small miracles: a peek of a rainbow, a juicy mulberry, a cobweb laced in dew. I laugh out lough when a funny thought occurs to me. It is good to have food when I am hungry, and a place to sleeeep when tired.
Yes I am grateful for this abundance."
Me too, Hofan. I, too, don't know if I am happy, but I am not unhappy. I don't know if I want to be -- if I could handle it. On the other hand, I do know that though I am not alone, I am lonely. Maybe I will always be lonely. I often consider it a sacrifice of my enjoyable solitude to follow or to lead dual or collective schedules, but I yearn beyond all else to be among kindreds.
My food anxiety of late is directly related to this, although thank God the flood gates opened, my anxious eggs wash upon plastic shores and I am relieved of all-consuming cravings. Apologies for the hideous poetry, although I find it kind of funny?!?! If you don't get what I'm talking about, please don't try!
My food anxiety of late is directly related to this. Is this sick, or is this normal, or is this normal for New York -- that when I want to treat myself, I do so not so much with food objects specifically, but with the social interaction it implicates. I treat myself to strong coffee and a pastry and a good read or write at a cafe. I treat myself to Chinese take-out and beer. I treat myself to crusty unsliced bread in spiced olive oil with red wine. I treat myself to a cigarette.
These are all "dates" with myself, and with the items of consumption that I would otherwise be enjoying with somebody else. The fact that I can accept this selfitude -- perhaps a better word than solitude, since I am not in actual fact isolated from human interaction -- not only as way of life, but as a preferred way of life (people are exhausting, as is the negotiation of 'fair trade' in energetic/social interaction) is worrisome to me ... but only a little. I trust that things will work out in the end.
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So about dancing. About projects. About body.
My knees no longer suffer sporadic dull pains, whether sitting or walking or dancing.
My knees currently endure occassional sharp pains, sometimes sitting, sometimes walking, sometimes dancing. The good news is: the sharp is shorter, and easier to ignore. I'm serious!
They are stronger, though, and I do exercises to work to correct my alignment (my right knee is pronated quite severely inward) as well as to strengthen/lengthen my hamstrings and hip flexors to, as they say, "lift out of the knee", so I am surprised by the recent instances of new pain. Maybe it is transitional?
But I am also surprised about the development of my movement. I feel good about the progress of my technique. I am arriving at a comfortability about my body and the way I move. It is so much a work of mental concentration and calmness that its achievement is as satisfying in spirit as in physicality. Openness in the mind really does translate to openness in the joints and muscles, and hopefully, as Sally would advise in Yoga class, "openness between friends".
But I am no "born again," that is, I am still me -- I continue to yelp, sometimes swearing, when I get a little overwhelmed by a new move or by too much momentum. I'm still a little extreme, a touch out of control. I still put a lot of force into my movement, but I accept this as right for both who I am intrinsically -- my impatience combined with the force of my desire -- and for my age and level of experience in this form. I think it's a difficult thing to accept professionally -- that what "they" want may not be what one, as a performer, as a body, can give at a particular point in time, or the conundrum familiar to every industry: how can I get experience without experience? Here: how can I give them post-modern cool and quirky, when my body still wants large and lyrical? I think the comfort in this realization is in embracing and delivering one's desires of the present in the present. I think its true that you never know where you may be a week, if not a day, in the future, how you might change. This change, in the body, is always a surprise.
In terms of projects, it looks like I won't be doing Laura's kind of crazy Motown-singing kazoo-blowing piece about "Luh-ve" at Dixon Place in a couple weeks. Scheduling is hellish, and the other two dancing are her roommates, as well as, from my observation, her muses, who manage to read and translate her sometimes vague ideas like sugar translates cocoa. It's a match. It's a wavelength. It's a bit of relief, actually, on my part, although it would have been fun. We may still work together. Laura's still made of liquid steel, and we are still good friends.
Working with Keiko and with Jesse is great learning how to be in their way of thinking by trying to express their ways of moving. It's hard, sometimes, because the logic of individual expressive thinking is so specific -- why this syncopation? why this pause? how can i give them what they want, if what they want is for me to move like them? I mean, I have a lot more input into the process than that. But implicitly, I suppose in my role as eager performer, the pressure is there to perfect my rendering of them. In general, as an aid to my own improvisation and dancing, I really enjoy the specificity this tension encourages, the nuance, the detail. It's something I appreciate watching, so I am liking that I am learning to perform with such focus.
We're on break with Alice for a couple weeks, but I will still see her this weekend rolling around in peat moss and horse poo as I'm working tech crew on her performance in JoAnna Mendel Shaw's Equus Project (.org, if you're interested in details). It's taken me ten months here to get my name in a program, and it's under "Production". Still, seeing my name in print shocked me, and then I shocked me that it shocked me. It's just so ... brazen, so short, so up front: Melinda Lee. Don't get me wrong, I'm not disappointed. I like seeing my name like that, so succinct, so ambiguous, so undecorated. I just laugh at myself, because I think I entered this dance passion as a sort of dream of an ideal self that could be if I willed it strongly enough, someone elaborate, "deeeep", romantic ... someone coming from an identifiably ancient, sophisticated culture, of course: something dramatic. So seeing myself finally realized (that is, in the process of being realized) as a professional in this dream as, well, straight-up ME -- the Melinda Lee of credit card purchases and report cards and transcripts and half-hearted caffeine-soiled papers and internet sign-ups -- is somehow significant. If this makes it any clearer, I think I will feel the same way when I see my name printed in my sister's wedding program. Proud.
And lastly -- gosh, and it's already midnight -- there's the fledging though determined project trying to continue out of The Kitchen Summer Institute between myself, two dancers, and a Parsons Design student and his motion capture technology. I am getting crazy into dramaturging this, which I find highly enjoyable, and think it's good that the movement investigation is collaborative because otherwise I would take this bull by the horns so fast that I'd just as fast get swung off it and skulk off to the stands in a huff, abandoning the bull, the waiting audience, my otherwise promising future as a matadora. We're using the text and themes of Samuel Beckett's Not I, a monologue for a woman's mouth, and combined with my heavy personal investment in readings of phenomenology in the writings of Deleuze and Luce Irigaray, among others, I will admit to grand visions of playwrighting and directing and video work adding into this mix. We are applying for space grants and showing grants, etc. If I stick around long enough to make it happen, I actually think the premise and the talents are strong enough for this to be a successful experiemental piece. In the meantime, at least I have a driving force and outlet for my own mad creativity.
