Audition Recap: ASIAN SEEKING ASIAN II

The path to fame and infamy and famine and faux fur ... is fun and steady.

My second attempt at auditioning for an acting role in New York City, the memories are so clear of my other attempts since they are always the times that I am faced with the behemoth of my unexamined Asian identity (first attempt was for an organization called 2nd Generation that produces new works by Asian American writers and directors. Lines from sides included, "I was wet like the hot springs at Chengdu!" and every, every play was overeducated. Ahhh .... us). These are roles to fit into. I would like to dare Sandra Oh to perform M Butterfly.

But this was a new play, 3 years in the making, by a Japanese American mongrel, speaking to mongreloid experiences:

about ophelia3:

A woman swept up in the rhythms of a foreign city discovers that she can live without ever uttering a word. The fragile microcosm of expatriated schoolgirls is shattered with the arrival of a new teacher and transfer student. Cultures clash in a theater producer's office and the translator bears the brunt. Japanese-American writer-director Aya Ogawa weaves a haunting exploration through movement and music of themes arising from the character of Ophelia in Shakespeare's Hamlet. Multiple disparate stories of disjoint and disconnection portray the convergence of dream and reality in a globalized world.

You are auditioning for the role of CISSY

CISSY. Schoolgirl. Asian (preferably East Asian, but not Japanese) Must have authentic Asian accent when speaking English, great physicality, and STRONG and unique singing voice. Must work well in ensemble.

I must say, I could have spent more time preparing except for the other audition I did the day prior and my insistently in-my-grill houseguest for the most of that Sunday.

I must say, I don't think I would have been any less nervous or neurotic otherwise. Coming before a panel of other obviously hybridized people doesn't make it any better. The fear of fraudulence is epic. "Authentic Asian accent"?! I've never spoken with an Asian accent in my life. She wants us to sing a pop or folk song, preferably in a language other than English. I mouthed silly nothings for Chinese New Year assemblies in middle school in Hong Kong, drooled in Mr Kong's Chinese class, and fell asleep with my one-on-one home tutor. The fighting spirit in me that has sought dance above all else honorable has been to insist that I am not Chinese--some would say, by ignoring the question of "What I am" all together.

But this refusal to be defined has its precedents, its glories, its downfalls. The Malay Straits-born Chinese have for generations considered themselves "orang china bukan china"--people Chinese, not Chinese. The conflicted personality is what has enabled us, inside of merchant port culture, to be the open, tolerant, and syncretic poster children of globalization, usually towards the goal of learning and advancement rahter than power. I often use the analogy of the televised speeches made at former Education Minister's wake to demonstrate how and how deeply Singaporeans' allegiances are forged through the universities they are sent to: two grandchildren are invited to speak, vanguard of the next generation--one voice purely British, the other short of nothing save her Texas gallon hat. Both women, meaning, not men. I just noticed that. I feel slightly ashmed that I have to notice Woman when she is Not Man. You feminists know what I'm talking about.

So back to the audition, and me, and my forgotten Chineseness, and my heightened not-Chinese-consciousness, and scripts kind of being written for people like me, but then, not quite, and how can I explain it other than for the fact that it has taken me 8 years of being Other in America to even accept the roleplay. I recall spewing a mental snot-rocket when Theatre professor Allen Kuharski emailed me an audition notice for an Asian American actress for a production in Philadelphia--poo! snork! Stop telling me who I am! I don't want to know in my happy belly-baby bliss! Let a thousand pot plants bloom!

But this, well, I could do this. " I can DO this!" thunk I. (I thunk it. Visit my website at tohavethunkthethought). I have reached a place of satiation with this dance thing where I know it is only just beginning, but it has taken so much from me and centrifuged it and put it back together again as a NEW BODY, a new old body, the same, but different, my point--that I can roleplay. (Melee the Humanimal -- I am also trying to get my shit together for MAKINGOFHUMANIMAL, my new piece to apply for the NY Fringe, side note).

So I can do this. I get a massage from Jeremy (taxation for him living in my apartment for a couple weeks). I do my laundry. I cook -- what?!? Obviously, I procrastinate. But I can do this. I convince myself that these mundane, useless, household activities are exactly what I best need to prepare. I wait for Jeremy to leave. At 6pm, before my 9pm audition slot--I prepare.

"Shit!" thunk I. "There is no time!" As usual, only NOW do I read the fine print to the audition preparation notice. Sure, the song I knew I would have to forge. The side--well, I don't understand it and I'm going to overact anyway, so hell why not play it by ear. But a contemporary monologue too?! Shit!

I clear my throat (I also, stupidly, so endearingly stupidly, ate jalapenos for dinner which have made my throat constrict) and start the search: I type a trepidatious "chinese pop song" into YouTube and hope for the best. Number 3 down the list provides me with exactly the simple kind of song I need .... perhaps an octave too high for my velvet-soul voice, but nevermind. The words--I can read these words?!?! Before my shock blows me down I see that it isn't hard to know these words. The lyrics are along the lines of

I miss your me / I am missing who? / You miss my you / You are missing who?

Etc, etc. Move on to the accent--but wait. I am rethinking this song. I rethunk it. The joke will never get too old for me. I can imitate the effortless childlike high pitch that is the ultimate value of any Chinese pop song (this one included), but that is not showcasing my talent! I am velveteen soul! I am Melretha! I am Mella! I am Mina Simone!

So I waste time (a) looking for the one Chinese folk song I do know, but only by the first lyric, and (b) preparing a second song in English that would better showcase my skill but that I think will be inappropriate for the character (NOTO BENE that the role is a 15-16 year old, and that I have looked 32 since I was 14. A bit of a stretch, but really -- my stock is the old hag or new babe, not the Mickey Mouse club, and certainly not named "Cissy") I sing Indie Arie in the kitchen and realize that I can be a LOT more off pitch than I thunk. And that I cannot modulate very well (up and down trills, small steps). I settle on "Do Right Woman, Do Right Man" and pray to the invocation of spirits that jalapenos wear off within 3 hours and that my faith (in....?) will get me through.

Song-trauma over, it is time to practice my accent. Now, I can hold an authentic Asian accent forever, and despite my own doubts I know it is authentic everytime I step into a Chinatown market. And really--who's gonna know? But the pro'rrem is dat this authentic is exactly of the marketplace and the market seller--perhaps not the foreign exchange student from some elite school visiting another elite prep school in America. My accent is like my dancing--usually a touch too strong.

But I get through this, struggling in the inbetweens with Hong Kong and Singapore intonations (is 3 "free" or "tree"? Is "with", "wiff" or "witt"? Is the emphasis on the high first syllable, or the emphatic, drawn-out last?) I record 25 minutes of myself singing and Cissying and run to the train with no minutes to spare.

The audition itself is relatively painless. I am goofy, and it is because I want them to like me -- the clown. They laugh a lot (I am used to this), but I don't realize just how little I understand the scene I am reading from (so focused was I on the accent, and the authenticity) until I jump back on the train afterwards. Of COURSE when she is describing the split nature of Hamlet ("dividied in two"), she is describing her own situation, being bicultural, a split self, "the good one and the bad one". And I wrote "Scene Study" on my resume.

Well, Aya was gracious, and said she enjoyed my work. I am frankly not too disappointed, since to jump in at the end of a 3 year process for a new repatriate to the theatre would probably give me a heart attack ("myo-car-di-al in-farc-shun"). I want to get Jeff's site off the ground, I want to keep dancing and training, I want to get my American legitimacy, I want to write/devise my own play. Shifting from conduit to conductor can only happen so many times in one day.

So that's the close of Battle With The Self Episode 2.2. It is very, very strange to read and speak Chinese again. I dare say it's a little exciting, ooh! ooh!, maybe even exotic?!?! I jest, but how else to handle the warm awkwardness of returning home?

I want Tim Etchell's job

...I want Tim Etchell's job.
www.timetchells.com
www.forcedentertainment.com

I am overwhelmed with the minuteness of Being in America (as an alien, no doubt worse, from a tiny island with no diaspora-based cultural-capital, no doubt worser) that I come home greedily to watch Grey's Anatomy on the internet after my days at work-plus-rehearsal, failing which (when I discover that 1am Friday does not yet mean "Fridays online") I watch the full 2-hour launch special of BRUNO AND CARRIE ANNE'S DANCE WAR.  I thought I was allowed this much escapism since I am not having any sex, but then I see the lifework of someone like Etchell's and I think: my God, there is so much I have not done in order to become a cultural icon.  

I can do this!  I think, I watch, I write, I save every damn program note, I draw, I defile (Ok confession: I spent a season drawing on stickers and only once did I actually paste one on the subway), I make dances, I make texts, I make videos, I like to improvise, I want to work on improving my improvisation, I want to do this with a core group of similarly-motivated people but I can't find any as ...I dunno, hungry? as me, it's true that I sometimes want to look pretty which is evidenced to myself every time I check myself out in window reflections, it's true that I presumptuously judge which is evidenced by how I condemn myself to social and creative isolation by drowning my enthusiasm every time I check myself out in reflections because I think I am too vain for depth.  I want to write as freely as I do on this personal blog when I am writing about performance and cultural phenomena but without the constant triple-time self-referencing, but I don't know, this is just what happens with my words.

I got the feeling today that Steffe only loves me as a reflection of himself, not as my own person and a potential part of his life. I sensed that he doesn't know what part of me is real and what part is a fantasy he is afraid he made up.  I thought perhaps I have the same fears -- but I am used to thinking things through more, and I understand that this feeling of "dissociation" affecting me now (feeling a little unrecognized) is part of the cost to love him.  I know that this is who he is, and similar to how I struggle with the loggerheads of passivity and action, he struggles with the conflict between dreaming and self-concern. We both get lost in other people. I get lost in them to the point where I am either doing nothing with them or doing everything without; he gets lost in them in a kind of universal love that makes the details disappear--a place where he can and often does get lost.  I know you can't really choose who you love (so it is not like I no longer love him because I had these feelings- I am trying to get to know him and myself better), but since I am treating this like a relationship I sure would like him to do the same.  Steffe, I need you to say you want us to happen. But I know that is too much to ask. 

Transnational Zeitgeist

Happiness Committee formed in Perkins Cole
At the Chicago office of Perkins Coie, partners recently unveiled a “happiness committee,” offering candy apples and milkshakes to brighten the long and wearying days of its lawyers. [Law is] an industry in which about 20 percent of lawyers over all will suffer depression at some point in their careers."
Crown Prince of Qatar invites Singapore Civil Defence Force to help build Qatar's civil defence academy
This is actually old news, but I am damn proud.
Taser International releases new product line
A handy new holster from Taser International Inc. holds not only your stun gun but a music player too. 
The latest Taser -- in a leopard print and costing $379.99 -- ''provides a personal protection option for women who want fashion with a bite,'' said Chief Executive Rick Smith.
Buyers for the Sayang Singapore showcase get 1 free ticket for every 5 purchsed if they say "I love Singapore" when ordering tickets
A very small part of me deep inside aches because I could be one of these people

Tim Etchells:
"I think it comes back again to absence and presence. We feel presence more acutely when the possibility of absence is raised. That's why one's interested in deletion, in absence. Because to think of it points back to the absolute uniqueness of presence."

Georges Perec, Species of Spaces and Other Pieces
“Note down what you can see. Anything worthy of note going on. Do you know how to see what's worthy of note? Is there anything that strikes you? Nothing strikes you. You don't know how to see.
You must set about it more slowly, more stupidly. Force yourself to write down what is of no interest, what is most obvious, most common, most colourless.... Don't say, don't write 'etc'. Make an effort to exhaust the subject, even if it seems grotesque or pointless, or stupid. You still haven't looked at anything, you're merely picked out what you long ago picked out. Force yourself to see more flatly…”

Title of titles

In conversation with Morgan today, we develop some interesting leads in terms of titles to make pieces to, oblivious to bored sales associates in FOXY LADY clothing store on 14th street.

"Never before seen!"
Perhaps, in the style of New York:
"Never before seen...even by the choreographer!"
"Never before seen...never before rehearsed!"

Killing time and killing feet circling blocks (that is an oxymoron - rather said, around the block and between and back again) we discover Chinese fashion apparel in the store next to HERS where almost every item is individually housed in plastic and most every item, in comfortable flashback to my Hong Kong/Singapore past, is usually passable except for one, or two, fundamental flaws.  This penchant for the designed faux-pas can also be coined:

"So close, yet so far"
Or
"So bad it's good"
Or
"No, we really mean it, this stuff is impossible, but you can get away with it if you are tall and skinny or Yves Saint Laurent"

A woman wearing a purple leather skirt and shag denim sweater and 3-foot-long rabbit ears walks into a yoga class full of optimistic, yelling bunnies. The men in the class are naked and perform downward dog with their dongs at attention. The class ends with a communal Bananarama chant and the simultaneous consumption of a 30-foot Italian hero.

I would like to consume an Italian hero.
If you do not wish to get my drift, you may stand upwind.  Hakuna matata pranayama.

Notes to Self

Trying to look at myself objectively for the purpose of the new year and in the hunt for red conviction.  I tell Emilie with breathless flourish that perhaps I should adapt to accepting myself for who I am, in the sense of someone who is motivated by continual interest rather than long-term goals.  Yet later on it is easy to doubt myself because everyone respects a purpose-driven life (hence the hardcover, best-selling book). And lack of purpose doesn't get you a job.
So I am closer to letting this life go than I have been.  I am reading up on dance therapy and realize that it's goals could be my mission statement if it weren't for just how uncool that would be.  "Dance that helps people" -- that's all.  It helps me. It could help you.  It could also help you understand other people that you would have no access to, verbally, or otherwise. 
Among the many things I am spending my time looking up on the internet, vocationally these currently include:
--yoga certification
--maintaining my pilates certification
--journalism: print (periodical, magazine, publishing, editorial):: arts and cultural criticism/writing/discourse (riding the wave of my studies and my interests) / medicine, health, the body (riding the wave of my current job that I am at this moment running late for and my growing professional interests)
--London
--Amsterdam
--California
--greencard
--fuck greencard, London
--London International School of Performing Arts (voice, mask, drama, movement, space studies)
--Singapore
All things vocational must have a context, many things passionate have no home.
I have been watching dance and theatre performances since I've had a mind of my own.
I am tired of being sad, being sad is tiring.

Assessments for 2008

Someone likened me today to someone I would rather not be likened to. She is nice but an emotional heavyweight and a messy thinker.  Uh oh. Is this me?

I don't want to make sense, but I think I don't have to not make sense so publically.  It's well-fitting to my age hypothesis for my life (18 at 14, 25 at 18, 32 at 23, 4 at 25) that technology has finally caught up to my needs (I willed them into being): voice over internet protocol, web blogging, photo blogging, idea blobbing.  Everyone and their third grandmother now can be a quiet entrepreneur.  Everyone can be a hobby artist.  Artaud, Rimbaud, Sartre, Hughes -- take an IP address and shove it.

It has taken me 7 years of living away from the home I always lived away from to send a video wave for the holidays. I can spend endless amounts of quiet time scribbling happily into blank journals and typing into private desktop widgets. When I am on an airplane and I imagine it crashing, I think first how to save or resuscitate, if necessary (mouth to plug?), my Powerbook, because if it died I wonder if I would be able to move on.

No no, Nostalgia.
No nostalgia.
Mo' nostalgia.
Nostaglia sounds Italian.
Nostaligula sounds Shakespearean.
My horoscope advises me to get ready to be as big as the Red Hot Chilli Peppers this year.
I am a little upset with myself that I found an author who works in line drawings and scribble-thoughts at the San Francisco MOMA Museum shop and forgot to write his name down.

I am not alone.
I am so alone.
I am only not alone when I am alone.
I am running out of space.
I forgot already what it was I actually wanted to write in this entry that was substantive and ambitious. 

Oh shit here we go: My Top Ten List of Performances in 2007

Not in any particular order:

TINO SEHGAL: This Situation
Where I saw it: Sammlung Beggruen, Berlin
Sum: A curious happening involving synchronized walking and posing bodies, quotes from the best and worst of the 20th century, and the occasional unison phrase: "Welcome...to this situation".

SASA ASENTIC: My Private Biopolitics
Where I saw it: Podewil, Berlin
Sum: A brave, hyperintelligent, and endearing (if not seductive) young man delivers a lecture-demonstration problematizing the definitions of contemporary dance. Set includes laptop, academic research, vases, stick-on body fur, a shrine, audience participation, a couple dance sequences, and a significant amount of the performer's conviction and sweat.

SARAH MICHAELSON: Dogs
Where I saw it: Haus 1, Berlin
Sum: The most traditionally avant-garde thing I have seen since the documentary Ballet Russes. More balls-in-hand (and silken-night-gown-on-dagger) than tongue-in-cheek, this London/New York doyenne of dance-theatre delivers an evening's hallucination of razor sharp, repetitive movement sequences, subtle yet bizarre light projections, and fills the auditorium with pink-lit stage smoke to the point where theatre and audience sublimate.

CHRIS HARING & LIQUID LOFT: Art of Seduction Posing Project B
Where I saw it: Semper Depot, Vienna
Sum: Operatic lip-syncing, pristine white breasts, shag carpets and whirring fans, all in the most beautiful old stable (?) space imaginable, this fabulous site-specific experience sashayed away with the Venice Golden Lion Award earlier in the season. Superbly talented cast. Entertaining and engaging scores so well executed you can't complain it's too sexy to be art.

JILL SIGMAN/THINKDANCE: Rupture
Where I saw it: Danspace Project, New York
Sum: No personal bias (I was close to being in this piece), Rupture is an almost transcendent totalizing and ritualized space full of eggshells, video screens, ladders, and smart, smart thoughts. Sigman's red-frocked solos coexist in parallel but colliding worlds with the group movement scenarios of her extreme-bodied cast. The text is as lulling as the movement is jarring, although once the conceit unfolds and audience is invited to participate in the space my sense of philosophical provocation is over and I want to be alone so I can rewind to the beginning again.

ALAIN PLATEL with BENJAMIN VERDONCK+FUMIYO IKEDA: Nine Finger
Where I saw it: Vienna
Sum: So unique is the experience to say "I've never seen anything like it before" that it is possible for an enjoyment of new alienation to twitter alongside one's rage at the injustice of the scenarios presented. Based upon the semi-fictionalized narratives of child soldiers in Uganda, outstanding performers Verdonck and Ikeda embody characters that I would name A Child Dehumanizing, and A Woman: Lost Mother of the Imagination, respectively. One cannot forget the opening image of a childish Verdonck yelling, "FUTUUUURRRE!" before leaping headfirst into a cardboard box, or his later discombobulations and violations of himself and of the Ikeda girl figure in his midst. The feeling if raw, the feeling is forgiving, the feeling is lamenting, the image is of a tragic Caliban who is so deformed at just six years old. I walk outside and sign a petition.

LUCIANA ACHUGAR: Franny and Zooey in the Nothing Festival
Where I saw it: Dance Theater Workshop, New York
Sum: A pure disco show where only lights move (all the guns in DTW's array) begins this celebratory collage of formalized female bodies, cats on a screen, a vagina that crawls to recede into the horizon, and a glorious mass of nakedness dancing to a YouTube clip of Dora performing Chicken Noodle Soup. If Achugar's previous work philosophy has been seen as "dance is labor" then hand me the overalls because labor, it seems, is liberation.

SUSAN RETHORST in the Nothing Festival
Where I saw it: Dance Theatre Workshop, New York
Sum: What at first glance may seem like a Dogma 96 domestic drama (multiple generations of women peppered amidst Rethorst's home furniture with stern and contemplative gazes) becomes an idiosyncratic display of gesture and action/reaction dance-ping-pong between bodies. One performer traces the outline of another, posing, with her hand, while another assaults a friend with a pillow and then herself replaces the couch. The work is a lacing of unique character threads; a polysymphonic harmony of unique body voices; each dancer is dressed with such detailed dignity and determination that Rethorst's piece is both comic and empowering.

JOSH FOX & INTERNATIONAL WOW: You Belong To Me & Death of Nations Installment 5
Where I saw it: Performance Space 122, New York

JANEZ JANSA nee EMIL HRVATIL interviewing MEG STUART
Where I saw it: Podewil, Berlin

Ok, ok, #11:

JEN ROSENBLIT/BOTTOMHEAVY PRODUCTIONS with ADDYS GONZALEZ: That Sick Sound
Where I saw it: Judson Memorial Church, New York
Sum: Rosenblit is a fierce heart on the stage, and she and her dance partner Gonzalez develop a fierce vocabulary of gestures that speak of frustration, insistence, surrender, and the journey. Their relationship in the duet is not at first romantic or filial but somehow connected in resistance to the foreboding space around them. What comes as a natural result of having the dance and the fantastic live music (performed by Jules Gimbrone and band) be of equal emotional weight and resonance is that, to the dance-focused viewer, the power of the physical seems to concede to sonorous, but dramaturgically this balance of elements leaves an airiness that gives room for the viewer to feel too ... and for Rosenblit to emerge (we hope) with more dancing to come. A well-deserved standing ovation from the Judson crowd.

::EXTRAS::

I liked, but lots of people liked better:

IVANA MUELLER: While we were holding it together
Where I saw it: Vienna

Raved about, and I missed it:

JEREMY WADE
Where it was that I missed it: Joyce Soho, New York

It was good, very very good:

LUIS LARA MALVACIAS: There is no such thing
Where I saw it: Dance Theater Workshop, New York

JONATHAN BURROWS & MATTEO FARGION: Speaking Dance
Where I saw it: Vienna

CLARE BYRNE DANCE & HOT YOUNG PRIEST: Rounds / The First Last Dance, or, The Last First Dance, or, An Ordination
Where I saw it: Dance New Amsterdam, New York

CRISTINA MOURA: like an idiot
Where I saw it: Danspace Project, New York

THE FORSYTHE COMPANY: Three Atmospheric Studies
Where I saw it: Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York

BATSHEVA DANCE COMPANY: Three
Where I saw it: Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York

Sorry, I hated it, and I'm pretty good about appreciating most things for something:

CHRISTIAN RIZZO/L'ASSOCIATION FRAGILE: comme crane, comme culte
Where I saw it: Vienna

SIDI LARBI CHERKAOUI & TONEELHUIS: Myth
Where I saw it: Opera House, Vienna

MORGAN THORSON: Faker
Where I saw it: Performance Space 122

i suppose this was something about art-making, and i don't know why i didn't publish it until now (addendum 2009)

"the art of confession and concealment within the group...to avoid what is unspoken and yet that Every Body knows"

From its inception and up to this point, I have been asking myself what "it" is.  What is unspoken?  What is the cause of so much torture?  What is the motivation for our Gentle Cruelties?

Although it may seem deductively obvious, it is interesting to me that it was not obvious to me until now, that the Unspoken can as much be the rage against indifference, neglect, withholding, and absence, as it can be the Unspoken of "I love you."  As JK deciphers for me at the bar last night, "Shut the fuck up" is code for "I know, me too."

This "gentle" realization (paraphrase: there are no epiphanies for those who are paying attention) comes in the nick of time to push this work forward.  It has been uncomfortable in some ways to be working on a remake of a piece that was created in such an emotional environment of dependency, longing, and regret (yes, yes: post-break-up).  Watching and working off the video of our one-night-only performance in May, I feel very disembodied from the rawness of myself and my creation.  The hermitage period that was my summer in Europe (unplanned as such, and not without a fight) had positioned me far away from those previous desires for explosion.

Or so I thought. Creation is explosion. Explosion (expulsion) is creative. Big bangs. Aloud is allowed. 'Allowed aloud' is the driving force of moving and sounding the way I do, in life as well as in the condensation machine of the rehearsal studio. I ought to recognize, trust, and run with those scissors. There is still that taste of bitter mixed into my bowl of brussels sprouts, but there is no good reason (with two weeks to show) to deny the natural state of a once living thing.

Flowers fall from the sky

While I was crying about the moon, pre-post-prandial-menstrual dysphoric disorder, love, my fear of intimacy, my painful need for isolation which sabotages my absolute necessity for company, and missing missing missing my twin (complement/mate/match/bear/dog/fox/mouse) -- while this was happening and I was also lamenting the superfluous use of my time with pixelated screen-people constructed by actual writers (not mediocre try-hard-retrograde-teens like myself, at 25) -- I receive a halleluia "beep" from my phone inbox (almost full to capacity with old messages that record significant times that have long evaporated. Why do I keep them? I don't know. I don't find that much authenticity or pleasure in them now. But they are documents. They mark time.) A picture message! Who could this be? What could it be? Who is my redeemer at this critical moment of self-discovery, self-actualization through pain and longing?

CINGULAR: You recived a picture message your phone can't display. See it at the URL below-expires soon. Use code 5q342fn9 http://www.cingular.com/inbox.

It's so mysterious. It's so magical. It's from a (405) number. WHO? WHY?

It's a picture of a $20 bill. Andrew Jackson. What is this secret code? Why the note? What is this message? Realize: I am still hoping for some fortuitous message, some sign that I am loved, or that I matter, or that all my efforts are not just robotic attempts at validation and that really I can hawk off all my belongings and move to London as soon as my work here is done. Forget theory. Ditch grad school. That's for ambitious workaholics with no access to soul. I want soul. I'm gonna get me some soul with my $20 enigma.

I call the number.

Who the fuck is "Chip"?

it's all a pathology

"I am nostalgic for conversations I had yesterday. I am nostalgic for right now."

I can't stand it.
The feeling that tomorrow, You will disappear.
You will all disappear.

I can't stand it.
The feeling that all that has disappeared once was.

I can't stand it.
The feeling that these feelings that I could not once stand, are now understandable. 

I float, knowing that the deeper longing exists, that simplicity was actually the answer, and that letting go was the solution, not the defeat.

I can't stand it -- that there are spaces for can't-standing and there are other spaces for standing, and that I know where I am in those places, but that I can't stand not knowing where I am until it's left.  Maybe I chase and hurry along so that I can recognize .... something.  I want it all to be over so that I can remember.  Maybe Oliver Sacks has a phenomenon to name after me.

It's so odd, to feel the shadow like an impending doom and then to see the monster walk away.  When does failure really start?  Weren't you failing all along?  Always making the wrong choices?  These are not angst-filled regrets -- they are just a nod to the memory of dreams that were thankfully shattered, because the dreams were from Some Body else. Can I coin it "oppression by hope" without seeming a cynic?

Was it cheap? Was it the easy way out? Who is the overseer? Who is the standard of comparison?  These are all just nothing questions. 

Letter to Sminz

Just some thoughts as they come to me standing on my balcony blowing smoke in salute to your graceful and oafish presence missed --
Who are the "others" that I presume will judge me for feeling so perfectly comfortable and appropriate wearing eclectic colors, a bright blue hoodie, and boots made for the Appalachia, searching for your hand? Perhaps they are chefs and hostesses at fancy vegan restaurants -- perhaps, more likely, they are my fears.
The manic life I lead--I need--I bleed for--this seems like an ass laughing in the face of my happiness with you ("ridi" + "culo", English to Italian transliteration = "ass laughs"). I loved dressing up and dressing down with you by my side. I am waiting still for one day in coat and tails and silk dresses (oh, but which one of us shall wear the high heels?)
I am waiting already for Lego-man and Lego-woman body suits (perhaps both sitting in lifesize, cardboard port-a-potty toilets). There are many costumes I wish so much to share with you still.
I am missing you like a deck of cards misses its box; like a chopstick misses its twin; like a pot of boiling water misses its lid. No boil. Slow steam -- evaporate. Sense -- maybe no. Free - thanks to you.

Tonight I returned to the free performance at the Judson Church and it was great. Full of performers I know and like and strong, sensory, idea-fueled pieces. The last was a happening, really -- 20 or more people piling up cardboard boxes in the space, along the sides of the space, blocking the entrance/exit. My friend Tin from Singapore was there and we went out after for a Nutella crepe and love stories.

I smoked two cigarettes (=kissing you). I ate a bagel, plantain chips, a salad, a slice of pizza, ginger ale, an apple, half a mocha chocolate chip vegan cookie.

I found 2 "new" pins on my shelf.
I wore my black hat with 2 pins on it, not 1.

HELLO MY NAME IS...

...under the watchful eyes
...enigma of the amygdala (AMGINE)
...SPUTNIK: The Invisible Face of Infinite Invitation: Magnificent Dream!
...Halibut Endofdays, vigorous upstream swimmer
...SPUTNIKERS: Flies both ways (also known as Man on Mars)
...PROFANE (it hurts your between the ears and armpits that I am true)
...EPIPHANY (the childish hide and seek with perfection which secludes itself in berry bushes)
...IMAGENA: Tetrapak Generation

****
P.S. the memo is that I've been drawing

Rhythm of the head

No. No no no, no no, no no no no no no no.  No no  no No No no no no, no!  No, no no no ... no no no no no no no no no.  No--no no, no no no no, no no No No no no no, no no no.

Yes, yes yes yes.  Yes yes yes, yes yes yes!  Yes!  Yes Yes, yes yes yes yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes, yes yes: "Yes, yes yes yes, yes yes yes.  Yes, yes, yes, yes--yes yes yes yes, y.e.s.  Yes yes yes yes: yes."

From Project Fantasy to Project Happpiness: Welcome back to Brooklyn

Back in my space in New York again, I feel innocent with experience, light with an understanding of heavy memories. I choose my thought patterning, or at least, I choose to acknowledge them for what they are, desiring not so much to tear them out or rip them apart, but to source their roots, contents, and consequences.

"Observe your thoughts, they become your words.
Observe your words, they become your actions.
Observe your actions, they become your habits.
Observe your habits, they become your character.
Observe your character, they become your destiny."

The self-reflexive eye of inadequacy and fear is like projectile webbing from spiderman's wrist--only you are spiderman, holding your power at an arm's length, having it glare at you and you stare and spit and holler back. DIRECTION and INTENTIONALITY. PERCEPTION of SPACE and RELATIONSHIP to SPACE. It's all a dancing. Step outside of yourself for a change.

FEELINGS 101
A curriculum for school of soft knocks and emotional warriors

How amazing, the subconscious! How amazing, memory! How revolutionary, the warping of time with memory! How wondrous, dreaming! How scandalous, the sabotage of unbelief! Luckily I have been advised: kick your evil twin's ass. Do it tenderly and compassionately...but don't stop kicking until you convince your evil twin to take greater responsibility for his or her personal share of the world's darkness.

What is believing?

Wind from the window makes my door open of its "own" accord. Tailwinds fight with an impassioned heart on flight 983 to cause a purposeful delay, a forced fortuitousness (code = I wanted to miss that connecting flight. Did I make it happen?). Wind on a sunny Paddington streetside pub bench makes fuscia teardrop flowers fall "from the sky" onto the crease of my sweater at the front of my sternum while I talk about love, risk, playing it safe, playing the game--future. Tit for tat. Why not tat for tit?

Believe a little!
Belittling, leave!
Bereave the riddle--resolve to breathe!

I regret the times when I am not awake to begin with, but perhaps instead of crying over spilled opportunity-milk, I can learn from my hesitations (caused by ignoring and disbelief) that these are the habits I recourse to (how windy does it have to be before you close the window? did I even stick my head outside to check?). Working backwards, I see myself in my snail's hut of fragile spiraling shell, again conducting the habit-forming action of yelling into silences that yesterday's room was louder. I see the molecular thoughts of fear-of-losing-so-defense-is-never-to-want-and-always-to-resist coalesce and sediment into a hard crystal nugget (which I would like to see whittled into a flat stone by breaking waves, which I would then like to skim across still water to make rectangular ripples. Tada!).

Melinda is a magician! An Italian magician! No, not quite, but MELINDA, FIRST LADY OF MAGIC is a regular showing at the Venetian Hotel, Las Vegas, ranked as one of the top three magicians in the world alongside David Copperfield and Siegfried & Roy.(1) MELINDA GOLDEN DELICIOUS is also an Italian brand of organic apples, coming not from a love affair in an orchard, or a dimpled girl with a bonnet (as on Melinda's XXX Super Hot Habenero Sauce label), but MELA + LINDA. Mela linda. Clean apple.(2) Can life be so sweet? Will you accept the premise of mission:project:happiness? Will you accept magic and clean apples?

There should be a more conclusive end to this self-reflection but my mind dived off a high board and is busy snorting water out its nose and dislodging its swimming suit from between its two round cheeks (hemispherical-mind-wedgie). This is a better situation than my mind chewing on yesterday's leftovers still stuck at the back of my brain-teeth, but luckily, however, when this happens, my head is already covered with...floss!

Footnotes:

(1) Las Vegas Entertainment Today reports:
Melinda, First Lady of Magic is the No. 1 female magician in history. USA Today ranks her as one of the top three magicians in the world along with David Copperfield and Siegfried & Roy. Melinda is the first and only woman to ever star in her own prime time magic television special, "Disney's Melinda, First Lady of Magic," which aired on CBS. The International Society of Magicians named Melinda "Magician of the Year." One of her signatures acts is to make a sports car disappear at the speed of 100 miles an hour.

(2) Italy produces about 2 billion tonnes of apples per annum, about 4.5% of world production. There is a MONDOMELINDA Visitors Centre in Taio in Val di Non, and MELINDA GOLDEN DELICIOUS are known for their signature "rosy face", a red blush said to be caused "by the rays of the early morning sun in late summer and early autumn: the apples, damp from the night dew brought about by the intense night excursion which is typical in the mountains at this time of the year, are “kissed” by the sun in the morning. Usually the rosiest apples grow on the outer branches, are more exposed to the sun and are sweeter and crunchier."

in researching for graduate school, i feel once again like i am being asked to choose a topic for my undergraduate thesis when i never really got to learn what i wanted there so i settled.

i don't even know how many hours were spent absorbing meaningful yet purposeless information that never had a career in mind; no one asked me about career, or what i wanted, or how i was feeling about it. was amanda bayer still my academic advisor at the time? i don't remember, although i do remember that she considered hiring me to teach her daughter tap during the summer.

i feel like an idiot. the only place my life makes sense is in new york and even then, partly, maybe because it's full of people who only partly make sense, and in this way it is a community that is interdependent. it is not a brave or noble statement to make with your life that you survived and had beautiful experiences, but then there is that taste of aristocracy in the desire to be brave or noble or Kim Basinger playing white savior/survivor Kuki Gallmann on a ranch in Kenya. this is what i mean by fantasies i have of myself in "serving the greater good".  I'll never be more civic-minded than a cop, for instance, yet I'll try to earn triple her salary by proving that i'm clever.

but i have a lot of knowledge.  what can i tell you? what do you want to know? 

i am the proudest idiot you'll find on this earth.

Letter to Elaina

My dear Elaina!

your beautiful email comes at such a poignant time. i keep much to myself in my room on this 5th floor berlin walk-up, battling demons and memories and phantoms of regret. I've felt on the edge and yet strangely at peace .... perhaps it's a process of dying to yourself .... in that way that is full of light, not darkness.

There are still many thoughts going through my head, fantasies of myself, realizations about chapters in my life and the wonderful people who have shared them that make them a chapter with a beginning ... and a necessary end. Being here I want to be in New York, finally, at a time when I am being questioned again where/how to stay there -- more specifically, in the service of what long-term vision? And who to serve? What is recreational and what is professional? What is it I want to do, and what is it I want to know?

I spoke with Sue earlier this morning and realized that with the opportunities we've been given at a school like Swarthmore, what you know becomes what you do. I suppose that's very clear to you, as a teacher?

I find myself free and then I find myself stuck again ... I have a venue on another mixed bill at the end of the year, I am finding comfort and joy -- finally! -- in my dance practice, and can't wait to go back to it in NYC. I am reconciling old blockages in myself to do with my family, my relationships with men ... I feel myself having a passion and wanting to share it and apply it for a greater good. Hmm! So I suppose things are not so bad! I think the only confusion remaining, then, is really what are the next steps and what is the real world applicability. I suppose, the confusion remains that my main love does not make a living. My love doesn't have ambitions. It's just love. But I have ambitions. So is it an unsustainable love? And in terms of knowledge, is it simply preservationism that wants to make authoritative my knowledges gained from this pursuit for so many years -- as a matter of justification?!? (sorry, concretely, getting an MFA for example rather than pursuing a separate line of academia which I find equally but very separately interesting and vital).

Doing a lot of research on graduate programs, this is the fuel for the wood burning in my brain. Otherwise, I'll be back in New York next week Thursday, with just more work to do on all fronts. I'd rather I didn't have to move to change so quickly. Naa Aku says that maybe there are no demons, but there is indeed inertia.

Lots of love -- liebe liebe

MEL

Letter to Daddy

Dear Dad,

It's been a strange and pondering time this last week. Since I came back from the Documenta Arts festival in Kassel--in a sleepy but amazed and art-filled daze--I spent a week and more almost entirely indoors ... the cold had me dropping the 'e' in this city in prefernce to "brrrrrrlin".

But today is sunny, in many ways. I just got an email from the curators at DNA (yes, same place where I was studying) with all the details of the performance this December -- I share the bill with 4 other choreographers. There is a little stipend, but otherwise its work, work, work -- and that's great news! I realize that I am looking at a lot of alternatives for my life right now in a bit of a panicky way, trying to prove to others that really I can "do it", but do what exactly? This show in December is just one more labor of love evidently already in the direction of my imagination and desire. It is true however that there are few foreseeable concrete rewards except for itself .... "dance as its own reward". I believe in that. I believe in the people that dedicate to that. It's work.

So I wanted to share that good news with you. Where ever I may end up after, later, in the future, there is this work to be done, and it is my job to make it sophisticated, thought-provoking, resonant, real. It is doubly my job to make sure I do this job, not to kill the baby of my creativity. Naa Aku wrote me today that maybe there are no demons, or if there are, the only solution is to pick something and work on it, to be satisfied with your accomplishments and let time judge the rest.

Another friend who is a visual artist was relating to me his affirmation of the artist path from Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet. Have you read that? I started it in the bookstore years ago and didn't finish--I suppose it wasn't that ground-breaking for me at the time. But Rilke's work is often an inspiration to artists, because he puts it so clearly and gracefully that you do it because you can't live without it.

There's another popular book, The Artist's Way, by Julia Cameron. Here's a publisher's description: "With the basic principle that creative expression is the natural direction of life, Julia Cameron and Mark Bryan lead you through a comprehensive twelve-week program to recover your creativity from a variety of blocks, including limiting beliefs, fear, self-sabotage, jealousy, guilt, addictions, and other inhibiting forces, replacing them with artistic confidence and productivity."

I think I'll join the "over 2 million copies sold!" at risk of jumping on a bandwagon. I'm sure that clearing my mind this way will allow for greater creative efficiency which will translate to any field.

So the concrete update for 2008 is that Sazali who brought me in to guest teach at NAFA is helping me link up with human resources at NAFA and Lasalle, so I will see if there are any opportunities there. When I think about home I get excited about the developments regionally that I was seeing from the Cambodian arts scene--neo-traditional performances (albeit somewhat trying, for a modern-dance viewer like me) Auntie Halcyon brought me to, and the producers of which I met at a function hosted by Keng Seng (they were off-season when I was in Phnom Penh, unfortunately). Of course, this is also tied into the work Pichet Klunchun has been undertaking to recontextualize traditional form, which you saw last year. So I imagine myself representing and/or advocating for artists, too, at some point--because I love artists. Maybe they will be artists attached to my art--a company?--or maybe my vision--students?--or maybe just my connections--a production house? Or maybe all, at different times?

Hope you are well, I'm sure busy. Mum mentioned you were travelling. She also mentioned that she's been having realistic dreams that confuse her--like emailing me that it was Oma's birthday (I thought it was yesterday, when it was the 6th!) but realizing that she'd only dreamed she did. Oh Mum!

Love you.

MEL

Letter to Angela

Aside: In New York it is high of 75, low of 60 degrees. In Brrlin, it is high of 65 degrees and low of 50. Mudder. Fudder.

Ang-hela, mi poomp-kin!

Thanks for you update and the long-ago email -- soo lovely to hear from you and that things are moving forward (ya big basketball!)! Every time I see a Madonna and child in NameYourEra Museum -- believe it or not, I think of you! Oh, also about pillage and how ugly the 16th century painters make life out to be (but it probably was, chickens, goats, blood, fat) and history and technique and how amazing that we've had hundreds of years of these techniques and development and West and East and audiences and everything else.

I miss New York. So far I have spent 6 weeks in festivals, 1 week+ in holiday, 2 weeks in depression in exile, and we'll see about my last 2 weeks. I come back on the 27th!!!!

I'm procrastinating from writing about the DANCE that I've been seeing, doing, I'm sort of (the usual) depressed / reluctant about this form. What keeps us so tethered to it? Vanity? Narcissism? Love? Spirit? Necessity? Dreaming? Are there unworthy dreams, that have the semblance of dreaming, but are not really, because they don't reach high enough? But now, writing this long-ago email reply to you, I am inspired - Ang-hela, poompkin, my muse, I will work today on DANCE DANCE DANCe.... oh have been trying to get clips of our work on YouTube but there is a 10 minute limit and god help me editing takes time, especially with kind of shitty footage. Sorry. I swore in front of your baby.

Miss you. AH I still have your lemurs video, I know how important that is for the pre-natal preparations (to tune into your already growing animal instincts). The minute I'm back I will steal a VCR and watch it and approach your new home on all fours.

Miss you. Give my love to Nate and the bellykins. Pre- or post-baby, we simply must work on a script dahling.

Love
MEL

Dürer's Melencolia I

Albrecht Dürer 
Melencolia I 
1514
engraving 
9 3/8" x 7 3/8"

"Yet in Melencolia I, the woman is unable to freely practice any art; the union of theory and practice required to do so evades her. She sits staring in a penetrating and thoughtful gaze, lacking the will or reason to actively make use of the surrounding items. Therefore, Dürer’s engraving is a representation of the "artist’s melancholy". Based on the writings of Agrippa of Nettesheim, which state that melancholy can affect genius in the three levels of "imagination", "reason", and "mind", the reason for Melencolia’s inactivity becomes apparent. She is the artist who can excel in the first level of "imagination", denoted by the "I" on the bat’s wing, but who, because of the limits of time and space, cannot attain the higher levels of thinking. Basically, she rejects what she can do, because she cannot do what she desires."

http://www.wfu.edu/art/pc/images/pc-durer-melencolia.jpg