A note on posting text

Hi all,

so as we begin posting textual/visual research, I thought I'd take a moment to take about blog organization.

When you are typing a new post, in the bottom right hand corner of the writing box there is a place to label your post.

DO THIS!

When you post text or pictures, label the post with the author's/artist's last name. That way we can easily explore the archive we're going to build up throughout this process. Also, if you're posting text, label your post 'text'. If you post visual research, label your post 'visual research'.

To recap:

1. All posts should be labeled/tagged
2. Use the author's/artist's last name
3. Text should be labeled 'text'
4. Visual research should be labeled 'visual research'

Ok, now I am done be a tech dictator. I can't wait to read/see what everyone comes up with!

-Mark

Spring Break!!!

Hello, everyone!

Writing to remind everyone of what our spring break assignments are, esp. because I've decided to revise them to make this all more egalitarian-like.

1) 2 minute etude: Create a 2 minute performance piece using an object we find over break. We should each look for an object with which we do not have a personal history, but we should each look for something that is very personally evocative. The etude can be a silent physical action, it can be dance, song, text: any or none of these. The important part is for us each to push ourselves to break past the patterns that we've already noticed ourselves falling into in rehearsal, and to commit to the use of the object we each find.

2) Review and even expand upon the two actions we came up with 1: after the grandparents house and 2: based on the text I gave everyone.


3) (THIS IS THE NEW AWESOME ONE). I've decided that a: I'm really busy over spring break and I worry about being the only one looking for text. b: it doesn't make much sense for me to be picking all the text, even if this is just a preliminary round-up. SO, I want us all to look for textual and visual research. I think it'd be best if we each start with the same texts, but of course bringing in additional research is always awesome. The sources I think we should look to first are:

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (Murakami)
Kafka on the Shore (Murakami)
Sputnik Sweetheart (Murakami)
To the Lighthouse (Woolf)
Nobody belongs here more than you (July)

All this assignment is is amassing text we think has good performative potential for people who have just died and are trying to get a grasp on themselves/their surroundings. I hesitate to say we should just pick text we like, but because our play is at this point fairly vague it ALMOST boils down to that. So start posting text!

Let's also keep posting on what we think of these assignments, and if there are any ways to specify them/modify them so as to improve upon them.

Hugs!

-Gedney.

Open the blog!

Let the newcomers in!


Open the flood gates!!


Oh I would get so drunk to celebrate but It'll have to wait for friday.


Time to work!

Also!

As far as gathering unfamiliar material,

I would like to look into

Meeting with some hymnody people

If we're going that route.

As a group.

It would be pretty fuckin' sweelll.

Asa Actually Posts Something (No fuckin' way!)

It's radical. But it's happening. Oh, it's happening.


So I love you both. That's the first thing.

Second is, that, I just sent emails to Poland.


I didn't tell you guys, but I ended up applying to Village Harmony and I found out recently that I was accepted. They also told me that both Georgia and Ukraine have many open spots if people are still interested. Drop this into your pipes and smoke it.

SO I am thinking many many things. May I share some?


First of all, I am realizing how wonderful wonderful creativity, creating as life is. I spent a lot of this week recording part of a record with a dear friend (I will post it as soon as it's mixed, next week, first I am going to Yosemite...) and realizing just that we can only make with what we have right here, with ourselves, even if we're sick, stupid, lonely, etc. And that's really liberating because then there's nothing holding us back, ever, we're always at home, and ready. Wow. Important thing.

And seeing my Zen teacher and making art is good and full, but parents are at best compassionate fixtures. Rilke says, don't expect understanding, and don't share your fears, but find a feeling that they agree with strongly and share that with them.

That sounds less compassionate than it might be, right?


As far as text goes, I've done the reading except for Kafka on the Shore (I finished Windup instead, will get to Kafka this week), and I've liked everything. Nothing has been like "we MUST put this in", except for parts of V. Woolf.

If Campbell's "Hero" is out of print, read Campbell's "Pathways to Bliss", especially the essay called "personal mythology". If you can't find either, why not read Jung's "Memories, Dreams, Reflections." Or just wait untill school starts and I can loan the Campbell, which is more accessible than the Jung.


In another note, is anyone reading Dickinson?

I've been reading Rilke's non-young poet letters, and they're full of amazing things. I really want him to be a big part of whatever we do, not so much because he himself is so fascinating (which is he), but really because he can be a teacher for all of us about what it is to lead a creative life in a full and honest way. Every time I read the Duino Elegies I discover something new.

Another note, that "Ahead of All Parting" has been published in paperback as "The selected poetry of Ranier Maria Rilke", same translator (Stephen Mitchell) and with an introduction by Robert Hass.

In Los Angeles, I dug up many of the physical excercises from this summer, and I am happy to lead physical work with my dearies. And auditions! Yes.

Anyways, this is getting rambling, but I just wanted to give a huge loving shout of "whoa!" to both of you from the left coast.

Last week I went for a hike in 60 MPH winds and almost got blown off a cliff while shouting "Christ Has Risen" in Russian with my insane friend Bob. It was pretty fucking epic, and I thought of you guys a lot, because we had one of those conversations that goes on and on and on and on and everywhere and nowhere.


Okay, 'tis all. Call me if you're bored, I'd love to talk to either of you, although I'lll be climb/hike etc in YoSEMITE! Yeauh.


Love and Joy,


And Wish our letters good luck to Jarek. Even if we don't go.


Asa

The Benefits of Working at a Catholic Store

Hi guys. I was bored today at work and discovered my new favorite saint:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guinefort

Saint Guinefort. He's a dog. Also see here for a primary source:

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/guinefort.html

I am really into this story. It's got everything. Religion vs. superstition, the bond between man and animal, snakes (talk about symbolism), betrayal, guilt, remorse, shrines...

Can we talk soon?

-M(uch love)

Gedney Checks In! (like Dunstin Checks In, but no monkeys, and no Jason Alexander)

I feel bad because Mark sent me a message on facebook telling me, among other things, that I had become distant. He is right. I've been having weird dreams lately, and to boot I feel like my sleep patterns have been off. I don't know how stuff like that affects you guys, but dreams involving real people and weird sleep cycles warp my perceptions for a while, so everything gets warbly. When that happens, I make a little cocoon of movie channels, chocolate, and my cats and don't come out for a little while. I think I'm slowly reemerging.

I've been turning Dubliners and Kafka over a little bit in my mind, and am slowly working through To the Lighthouse. A few things I'm thinking of:
-the parentheticals of deaths in To the Lighthouse. Why? How else could the deaths have occurred? Would that have lessened or increased their impact?
-the gore of Kafka on the Shore, it's explicit and straightforward languages. The phrase "rock hard cock" comes to mind. How is this different/similar to the deaths in Woolf.
-the darkness in Dubliners. Can we put a finger on the mechanism of melancholy Joyce creates? Stories I'm thinking of in particular:
An Encounter
Araby
Eveline
Clay
A Painful Case
The Dead

I'm not asking these to initiate a purely literary discussion, but rather to look at why these works function the way they do, flow the way they do. Also, I love Lily in To the Lighthouse. I just reread her scene with Mr. Ramsey in The Lighthouse section. "What beautiful boots!" I also think the entire section in Time Passes works so well for what we may be exploring.

Also, not on our reading list, but something I discovered while I way this weekend was a little book called Novels in Three Lines by Felix Feneon. They are true stories that were anonymously published in the French Newspaper Le Matin, but they're quite violent and cheeky. IE:
A criminal virago, Mlle Tulle, was sentenced by the Rouen court to 10 years' hard labor, while her lover got five.

Nurse Elise Bachmann, whose day off was yesterday, put on a public display of insanity.

Since childhood Mlle Mehnette, 16 had harvested artificial flowers from the tombs of Saint-Denis. That's over; she's in the workhouse.

A certain madwoman arrested downtown falsely claimed to be nurse Elise Bachmann. The latter is perfectly sane.

Caged, tortured, and starved by their stepmother, the three little daughters of Joseph Ilou, of Brest, now rescued, are skeletal.

Finding her son, Hyacinthe, 69, hanged, Mme Ranvier, of Bussy-Saint-Georges, was so depressed she could not cut him down.

Seventy-year-old beggar Verniot, of Clichy, died of hunger. His pallet disgorged 2,000 francs. But no one should make generalizations.

"To die like Joan of Arc!" cried Terbaud from the top of a pyre made of his furniture. The fireman of Saint-Ouen stifled his ambition.

The guys who wrote these was an anarchist and a publisher. Very private.

Thoughts on our project, and I'm just throwing them out there as honestly as I can:

I think, for simplicity's sake, I would prefer for us to work with Pig Iron this summer. From my end, to go to Europe and back while trying to get a job would be more difficult than getting a job in perhaps New Haven or coming back home, then going to Philly, then coming back to the West coast. Because both of you are going abroad, that might not be the case. Also, and again Asa this is not because I don't trust you, but I know Pig Iron, I know and admire their work, and I know they're really supportive of me and Asa and our trying to make new theater together. I don't know anyone in Poland except for Gey Pin, and I feel like I still don't quite know what we'd be doing in Poland. These are, again, my inclinations, and I can be persuaded.

Additionally, I've been thinking about the work we've been talking about doing, and I wonder if it wouldn't be better if we still do the reading we've planned on, but maybe use songs/text with which we aren't nearly as familiar, and thus don't have many prior attachments or associations with them. Already when I read Emily Dickinson, I have this grandiose idea of what it could be, this over-mystified idea of what her poems are about. I think we should challenge ourselves to find text that really makes us dig and investigate, and isn't something that we've been in love with or fascinated by forever.

We can talk about this tomorrow via phone, of course, and I can't emphasize enough that over the past few years at Wesleyan I hadn't found people I really felt I wanted to collaborate with. Then you two came along, and I finally feel like I won't necessarily leave Wesleyan without some really good friends who are also really great collaborators.

Many hugs, much love,
G.B.

Magritte Images

So I've been bored and looking at images, and some of Magritte's stuff really struck me, espcially in connection with To the Lighthouse. To me, the book has a sort of ethereal tone, one tha's grounded in reality but also a bit unmoored from everyday life. The characters seem to exist outside of time but at the same time can't escape it. The paintings I've posted below remind me of this off-kilter english imression I have of the characters and the novel itself.

The Son of Man

The Therapist
(Couldn't find this title)

The Lovers

The Lovers

(Couldn't find this one either)

No One Belongs Here More Than You

Oook, kids, first discussion post.

I just finished rereading the Miranda July and I am SO excited for you guys to read it. Some things I think:

A lot of phrases really strike me as true in a sort of off-kilter way. It might be interesting to cut-in/juxtapose more classical text, like the Woolf, with this more modern stuff that is about the same things: human emotion, human relationships, etc.

Stories to pay particular attention to: The Shared Patio, Majesty, The Sister, Something That Needs Nothing, Making Love in 2003, Ten True Things, Mon Plasir, How to Tell Stories to Children.
*I realize this is more than half of the stories, but all of these have really interesting narratives or relationships that we might be able to utilize.

Ok, so I guess we can start a discussion in the comments when you guys have finished.

Back to To the Lighthouse.

-Mark

AHH somewhat urgent

Just realized that the application deadline for Village Harmony is the 1st.

So these will need to be overnighted by FedEx or Mail on the 31st.


Let's talk soon.

I am busy all morning/early afternoon, but early evening today would be a perfect time for me to talk.


Much love and merry christmas, from the jew,


Asa

Post-Christmas Update

Hello, you two. First off, merry belated christmas, I was thinking of you both but wanted to think of a better way to let you know than a text message. I couldn't, so I'm left saying it late.

Christmas left me a little blue but mostly pensive, but that's how I get around the holidays. I also think I'm getting over a flu, which may account for my general laziness and holiday-induced anomie. I have a few ideas about our stuff already, but I think I'll let the thoughts simmer for a bit.

I think Gey Pin sounds terrific; I'd love to work with her again if we can come up with the money somehow.

In other news, I found my favorite pen, and got a great new dress for $3.00. I'm doing yoga with my mom tomorrow from 9:30-10:30, and after that could be available for talking online or on the phone. I've already started playing piano again, and though it's discouraging to have my skill level so depreciated, I'm slowly improving (I think).

Much love to you both!
-G.B.

Update

Zar is in the reublic of georgia, hence the lack of contact. One of their actors messaged me yesterday and told me that they'll get back to us ASAP.


Asa

Merry Christmas, Europe

Hello my friends,

I have entered the grey zone trying to contact the polish. It is complicated.

"What do you mean a group?"

"I'm sorry, I can't give you_____'s email"

Or, most commonly, no reply.

No, not really, it's just been Christmas. But doubt is also very good, it's really important, I think, good seeds for new things.

So yeah. Working on that, I will get back ASAP.

You both got the news from Gey Pin, yeah?

Anyways, we should talk on the phone soon.

Love

Asa

discussion

Ok, so I think that now that the reading list is finalized, we should create a seperate post for each piece of reading. Then, we can use the comments of each post to discuss/record ideas and thing to remember. Sound good?

Ayo technology (thank you, Fiddy)

BREAKFAST NOTES

"I've done a lot of things for a ring [rim] job." ~M.M.

READING LIST (I've added the stuff from the ritual/theatre class, so it's listed):
-No One Belongs Here More Than You by Miranda July
-The Hero with One Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell
-"Tu es le fils de quelqu'un" by Jerzy Grotowski
-The Complete Rilke
-Dubliners by James Joyce
-To the Lighthouse, by Virginia Woolf
-"A Room of One's Own" by Virginia Woolf
-Kafka on the Shore, by Haruki Murakami
-The Sacred and the Profane by Mircea Eliade, Chapters 1&2
-Theatre and the Sacred by Erika Fischer-Lichte, Prologue: Electra's transgressions & Chapter 1
-"Bodily Knowing, Ritual Embodiment, and Experimental Drama: From Regression to Transgression" by Bjorn Krondorfer, p. 1-12

MUSIC:
-looking at writers and reactions to war,
-American hymnody and European folk music?
-Over break, Asa wills tart to look at music in the bay area, perhaps Hildegard songs
-Mark will look at incorruptibles and mystics while at work
-Whatever we pick, it must be ours, not necessarily temporally/spatially "appropriate"
-Ukranian songs sung by women in the 1700's
-were a reaction to when Russians came, the songs were about war, about political violence
-polyphonic singing

TO DO:
-Read
-Listen to Asa's CD
-look at images
-Think about: 3-4 songs that we will earn and be able to sing together (Ukranian, Georgian, perhaps?)
-THREE-WAY [phone calls]

SAVE THE DATE:
-Farm in the Cave comes to Yale: March 31 & April 1, workshops; April 3-5 performances/symposiums
-Ghost Vaudevillians on the Summerland Circuit: April 3, 4, 5
-Big Love: April 10, 11, 12

Love love love,
GB

Negotiations

Hi guys.

First up, yes, let's meet sometime this week. Maybe early morning breakfast at Ford News Cafe (on main st)? Might be fun. Anyways.

I feel like I have been relatively absent/distant from this process this week, and for that I am sorry. There's been some ridiculous stuff going on, that definitely warrants further conversation when we meet.

But for now, I will say that I've been thinking a lot about ego and art. This whole big love thing has made me think a lot about why I do theater. I am working through the role of my own ego in my drive to create, and I just want to tell you guys that I think both of you are role models in that regard. You both seem to want to do art for its own sake, and not for recognition/acceptance/bullshit, which I find incredibly inspiring. I am so, so excited to spend next semester creating with you guys, and experiencing the joy that comes from doing something pure with people that you love.

So yes, let's meet this week, to firm up the reading list, etc., and make plans for contact over break.

Love you both.

-M

Leaving for Break

Hey friends,

I am leaving for break on saturday morning.

Would we like to meet before then?

I am insanely busy tonight and tomorrow morning but pretty free after that (more or less).

Let me know,

Asa

Emily dickinson and protestantism

Emily Dickinson often modeled her poems off of the structure of Protestant hymns. I still need to figure out which ones she liked the best, but this could be great for our piece. I know my dad knows a lot of protestant hymns because for a while he sang with a church to earn money. Also Edward's mom is a minister.

God-war-poets play? It seems like we could be moving in this direction as far as the center of our play's focus. Also, if we DO do move in this direction, some things we should consider (maybe not now, but soon)
--I think 1 musician would make a great bard/m.c., with maybe a banjo, a fiddle, something that we associate as American. This doesn't mean there can't be other music (harmonium, piano, guitar, etc) but to have one musician m.c. could be neat.
--if we decide to do this in Russell House, how big of a cast do we feel could fit there? At this point I could envision a piece on this theme with just the three of us plus an m.c., but that depends on what direction we want to take it.
--One that note, if it's just about Rainer and Dickinson, who would other cast members be in relation to them? I'm not saying they have to be huge historical personalities, but we should consider what their relationship to the material and the space is.
--If we do pursue the poet/god/war triumpherate, I think Joyce (irish identity, easter uprising of 1916, catholicism, sexual repression) and Virginia Woolfe (gender and domesticity before and after world war I, depression and domesticity in post-Victorian England) would be great candidates of sources/characters to add to the pile.
--Joe Hill would be a neat musician to consider because of his relationship to the labor movement in america and his response to immigration industrialization in the wake of world war I
--Stephen Foster is the quintessential white American composer (cause really, slave songs and spirituals were the first post-settlement reindigenized American form of music. we could also look to what these offer.)
--Civil War v. WWI? Also, I couldn't help but notice that Emily Dickinson is from the U.S., Virginia Woolfe from England, Joyce from Ireland, and Rilke from Germany. I don't know what that means, but it's interesting. Both Dickinson and Woolfe had very queer relationships with the non-human world, gardens, trees, etc.

Sorry if these questions are pushing us ahead of ourselves; it's the way my directorish brain works. And even if we don't answer any of these questions/proposals now, I think it's good to get them in the air. I'll stop before I overdo it more than I already have.

The Rilke text is wonderful. So wonderful.

I am getting SO EXCITED!!!! Like even more excited than I was before.

Love,
Gedney.

Duino Elegies, Letters to a young poet

ear Sir,

Your letter arrived just a few days ago. I want to thank you for the great confidence you have placed in me. That is all I can do. I cannot discuss your verses; for any attempt at criticism would be foreign to me. Nothing touches a work of art so little as words of criticism : they always result in more or less fortunate misunderstandings. Things aren't all so tangible and sayable as people would usually have us believe; most experiences are unsayable, they happen in a space that no word has ever entered, and more unsayable than all other things are works of art, those mysterious existences, whose life endures beside our own small, transitory life.

With this note as a preface, may I just tell you that your verses have no style of their own, although they do have silent and hidden beginnings of something personal. I feel this most clearly in the last poem, "My Soul." There, something of your own is trying to become word and melody. And in the lovely poem "To Leopardi" a kind of kinship with that great, solitary figure does perhaps appear. Nevertheless, the poems are not yet anything in themselves, not yet anything independent, even the last one and the one to Leopardi. Your kind letter, which accompanied them, managed to make clear to me various faults that I felt in reading your verses, though I am not able to name them specifically.

You ask whether your verses are an y good. You ask me. You have asked others before this. You send them to magazines. You compare them with other poems, and you are upset when certain editors reject your work. Now (since you have said you want my advice) I beg you to stop doing that sort of thing. You are looking outside, and that is what you should most avoid right now. No one can advise or help you - no one. There is only one thing you should do. Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write. This most of all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write? Dig into yourself for a deep answer. And if this answer rings out in assent, if you meet this solemn question with a strong, simple "I must," then build your life in accordance with this necessity; your while life, even into its humblest and most indifferent hour, must become a sign and witness to this impulse. Then come close to Nature. Then, as if no one had ever tried before, try to say what you see and feel and love and lose. Don't write love poems; avoid those forms that are too facile and ordinary: they are the hardest to work with, and it takes great, fully ripened power to create something individual where good, even glorious, traditions exist in abundance. So rescue yourself from these general themes and write about what your everyday life offers you; describe your sorrows and desires, the thoughts that pass through your mind and your belief in some kind of beauty - describe all these with heartfelt, silent, humble sincerity and, when you express yourself, use the Things around you, the images from your dreams, and the objects that you remember. If your everyday life seems poor, don't blame it; blame yourself; admit to yourself that you are not enough of a poet to call forth its riches; because for the creator there is not poverty and no poor, indifferent place. And even if you found yourself in some prison, whose walls let in none of the world's sounds - wouldn't you still have your childhood, that jewel beyond all price, that treasure house of memories? Turn your attentions to it. Try to raise up the sunken feelings of this enormous past; your personality will grow stronger, your solitude will expand and become a place where you can live in the twilight, where the noise of other people passes by, far in the distance. - And if out of this turning-within, out of this immersion in your own world, poems come, then you will not think of asking anyone whether they are good or not. Nor will you try to inte4rest magazines in these works: for you will see them as your dear natural possession, a piece of your life, a voice from it. A work of art is good if it has arisen out of necessity. That is the only way one can judge it. So, dear Sir, I can't give you any advice but this: to go into yourself and see how deep the place is from which your life flows; at its source you will find the answer to the question whether you must create. Accept that answer, just as it is given to you, without trying to interpret it. Perhaps you will discover that you are called to be an artist. Then take the destiny upon yourself, and bear it, its burden and its greatness, without ever asking what reward might come from outside. For the creator must be a world for himself and must find everything in himself and in Nature, to whom his whole life is devoted.

But after this descent into yourself and into your solitude, perhaps you will have to renounce becoming a poet (if, as I have said, one feels one could live without writing, then one shouldn't write at all). Nevertheless, even then, this self-searching that I as of you will not have been for nothing. Your life will still find its own paths from there, and that they may be good, rich, and wide is what I wish for you, more than I can say

What else can I tell you? It seems to me that everything has its proper emphasis; and finally I want to add just one more bit of advice: to keep growing, silently and earnestly, through your while development; you couldn't disturb it any more violently than by looking outside and waiting for outside answers to question that only your innermost feeling, in your quietest hour, can perhaps answer.

It was a pleasure for me to find in your letter the name of Professor Horacek; I have great reverence for that kind, learned man, and a gratitude that has lasted through the years. Will you please tell him how I feel; it is very good of him to still think of me, and I appreciate it.

The poems that you entrusted me with I am sending back to you. And I thank you once more for your questions and sincere trust, of which, by answering as honestly as I can, I have tried to make myself a little worthier than I, as a stranger, really am.

Yours very truly,
Rainer Maria Rilke

About ten days ago I left Paris, tired and quite sick, and traveled to this great northern plain, whose vastness and silence and sky ought to make me well again. But I arrived during a long period of rain; this is the first day it has begun to let up over the restlessly blowing landscape, and I am taking advantage of this moment of brightness to greet you , dear Sir.

My dear Mr. Kappus: I have left a letter from you unanswered for a long time; not because I had forgotten it - on the contrary: it is the kind that one reads again when one finds it among other letters, and I recognize you in it as if you were very near. It is your letter of May second, and I am sure you remember it. As I read it now, in the great silence of these distances, I am touched by your beautiful anxiety about life, even more than I was in Paris, where everything echoes and fades away differently because of the excessive noise that makes Things tremble. Here, where I am surrounded by an enormous landscape, which the winds move across as they come from the seas, here I feel that there is no one anywhere who can answer for you those questions and feelings which, in their depths, have a life of their own; for even the most articulate people are unable to help, since what words point to is so very delicate, is almost unsayable. But even so, I think that you will not have to remain without a solution if you trust in Things that are like the ones my eyes are now resting upon. If you trust in Nature, in the small Things that hardly anyone sees and that can so suddenly become huge, immeasurable; if you have this love for what is humble and try very simply, as someone who serves, to win the confidence of what seems poor: then everything will become easier for you, more coherent and somehow more reconciling, not in your conscious mind perhaps, which stays behind, astonished, but in your innermost awareness, awakeness, and knowledge. You are so young, so much before all beginning, and I would like to beg you, dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer. Perhaps you do carry within you the possibility of creating and forming, as an especially blessed and pure way of living; train your for that - but take whatever comes, with great trust, and as long as it comes out of your will, out of some need of your innermost self, then take it upon yourself, and don't hate anything. Sex is difficult; yes. But those tasks that have been entrusted to us are difficult; almost everything serious is difficult; and everything is serious. If you just recognize this and manage, out of yourself, out of your own talent and nature, out of your own experience and childhood and strength, to achieve a wholly individual relation to sex (one that is not influenced by convention and custom), then you will no longer have to be afraid of losing yourself and becoming unworthy of your dearest possession.

Bodily delight is a sensory experience, not any different from pure looking or the feeling with which a beautiful fruit fills the tongue; it is a great, an infinite learning that is given to us, a knowledge of the world, the fullness and the splendor of all knowledge. And it is not our acceptance of it that is bad; what is bad is that most people misuse this learning and squander it and apply it as a stimulant on the tired places of their lives and as a distraction rather than as a way of gathering themselves for their highest moments. People have even made eating into something else: necessity on the one hand, excess on the other; have muddied the clarity of this need, and all the deep, simple needs in which life renews itself have become just as muddy. But the individual can make them clear for himself and live them clearly (not the individual who is dependent, but the solitary man). He can remember that all beauty in animals and plants is a silent, enduring form of love and yearning, and he can see the animal, as he sees plants, patiently and willingly uniting and multiplying and growing, not out of physical pleasure, not out of physical pain, but bowing to necessities that are greater than pleasure and pain, and more powerful than will and withstanding. If only human beings could more humbly receive this mystery - which the world is filled with, even in its smallest Things -, could bear it, endure it, more solemnly, feel how terribly heavy it is, instead of taking it lightly. If only they could be more reverent toward their own fruitfulness, which is essentially one, whether it is manifested as mental or physical; for mental creation too arises from the physical, is of one nature with it and only like a softer, more enraptured and more eternal repetition of bodily delight. "The thought of being a creator, of engendering, of shaping" is nothing without the continuous great confirmation and embodiment in the world, nothing without the thousandfold assent from Things and animals - and our enjoyment of it is so indescribably beautiful and rich only because it is full of inherited memories of the engendering and birthing of millions. In one creative thought a thousand forgotten nights of love come to life again and fill it with majesty and exaltation. And those who come together in the nights and are entwined in rocking delight perform a solemn task and gather sweetness, depth, and strength for the song of some future poets, who will appear in order to say ecstasies that are unsayable. And they call forth the future; and even if they have made a mistake and embrace blindly, the future comes anyway, a new human being arises, and on the foundation of the accident that seems to be accomplished here, there awakens the law by which a strong, determined seed forces its way through to the egg cell that openly advances to meet it. Don't be confused by surfaces; in the depths everything becomes law. And those who live the mystery falsely and badly (and they are very many) lose it only for themselves and nevertheless pass it on like a sealed letter, without knowing it. And don't be puzzled by how many names there are and how complex each life seems. Perhaps above them all there is a great motherhood, in the form of a communal yearning. The beauty of the girl, a being who (as you so beautifully say) "has not yet achieved anything," is motherhood that has a presentiment of itself and begins to prepare, becomes anxious, yearns. And the mother's beauty is motherhood that serves, and in the old woman there is a great remembering. And in the man too there is motherhood, it seems to me, physical and mental; his engendering is also a kind of birthing, and it is birthing when he creates out of his innermost fullness. And perhaps the sexes are more akin than people think, and the great renewal of the world will perhaps consist in one phenomenon: that man and woman, freed from all mistaken feelings and aversions, will seek each other not as opposites but as brother and sister, as neighbors, and will unite as human beings, in order to bear in common, simply, earnestly, and patiently, the heavy sex that has been laid upon them.

But everything that may someday be possible for many people, the solitary man can now, already, prepare and build with his own hands, which make fewer mistakes. Therefore, dear Sir, love your solitude and try to sing out with the pain it causes you. for those who are near you are far away, you write, and this shows that the space around you is beginning to grow vast. And if what is near you is far away, then your vastness is already among the stars and is very great; be happy about your growth, in which of course you can't take anyone with you, and be gentle with those who stay behind; be confident and calm in front of them and don't torment them with your doubts and don't frighten them with your faith or joy, which they wouldn't be able to comprehend. Seek out some simple and true feeling of what you have in common with them, which doesn't necessarily have to alter when you yourself change again and again; when you see them, love life in a form that is not your own and be indulgent toward those who are growing old, who are afraid of the aloneness that you trust. Avoid providing material for the drama that is always stretched tight between parents and children; it uses up much of the children's strength and wastes the love of the elders, which acts and warms even if it doesn't comprehend. Don't ask for any advice from them and don't expect any understanding; but believe in a love that is being stored up for you like and inheritance, and have faith that in this love there is a strength and a blessing so large that you can travel as far as you wish without having to step outside it.

It is good that you will soon be entering a profession that will make you independent and will put you completely on your own, in every sense. Wait patiently to see whether your innermost life feels hemmed in by the form this profession imposes. I myself consider it a very difficult and very exacting one, since it is burdened with enormous conventions and leaves very little room for a personal interpretation of its duties. but your solitude will be a support and a home for you, even in the midst of very unfamiliar circumstances, and from it you will find all your paths. All my good wishes are ready to accompany you, and my faith is with you.

Yours,
Rainer Maria Rilke

The First Elegy
Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels' hierarchies?

and even if one of them pressed me suddenly against his heart:
I would be consumed in that overwhelming existence.
For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, which we are still just able to endure,

and we are so awed because it serenely disdains to annihilate us.
Every angel is terrifying.
And so I hold myself back and swallow the call-note of my dark sobbing.
Ah, whom can we ever turn to in our need?
Not angels, not humans, and already the knowing animals are aware

that we are not really at home in our interpreted world.
Perhaps there remains for us some tree on a hillside, which every day we can take into our vision;

there remains for us yesterday's street and the loyalty of a habit so much at ease

when it stayed with us that it moved in and never left.
Oh and night: there is night, when a wind full of infinite space gnaws at our faces.
Whom would it not remain for--that longed-after, mildly disillusioning presence,

which the solitary heart so painfully meets.
Is it any less difficult for lovers?
But they keep on using each other to hide their own fate.
Don't you know yet?
Fling the emptiness out of your arms into the spaces we breathe;

perhaps the birds will feel the expanded air with more passionate flying.

Yes--the springtimes needed you. Often a star was waiting for you to notice it.
A wave rolled toward you out of the distant past,

or as you walked under an open window, a violin yielded itself to your hearing.
All this was mission. But could you accomplish it?
Weren't you always distracted by expectation, as if every event announced a beloved?
(Where can you find a place to keep her, with all the huge strange thoughts inside you

going and coming and often staying all night.)
But when you feel longing, sing of women in love; for their famous passion is still not immortal.
Sing of women abandoned and desolate (you envy them, almost)

who could love so much more purely than those who were gratified.
Begin again and again the never-attainable praising; remember: the hero lives on;

even his downfall was merely a pretext for achieving his final birth.
But Nature, spent and exhausted, takes lovers back into herself,

as if there were not enough strength to create them a second time.
Have you imagined Gaspara Stampa intensely enough

so that any girl deserted by her beloved might be inspired by that fierce example of soaring,

objectless love and might say to herself, "Perhaps I can be like her?"
Shouldn't this most ancient of sufferings finally grow more fruitful for us?
Isn't it time that we lovingly freed ourselves from the beloved and,

quivering, endured: as the arrow endures the bowstring's tension,

so that gathered in the snap of release it can be more than itself.
For there is no place where we can remain.

Voices. Voices. Listen, my heart, as only saints have listened:

until the gigantic call lifted them off the ground;

yet they kept on, impossibly, kneeling and didn't notice at all: so complete was their listening.
Not that you could endure God's voice--far from it.
But listen to the voice of the wind and the ceaseless message that forms itself out of silence.
It is murmuring toward you now from those who died young.
Didn't their fate, whenever you stepped into a church in Naples or Rome,

quietly come to address you?
Or high up, some eulogy entrusted you with a mission,

as, last year, on the plaque in Santa Maria Formosa.
What they want of me is that I gently remove the appearance of injustice about their death--

which at times slightly hinders their souls from proceeding onward.

Of course, it is strange to inhabit the earth no longer,

to give up customs one barely had time to learn,

not to see roses and other promising Things in terms of a human future;

no longer to be what one was in infinitely anxious hands;

to leave even one's own first name behind,

forgetting it as easily as a child abandons a broken toy.
Strange to no longer desire one's desires.
Strange to see meanings that clung together once, floating away in every direction.
And being dead is hard work and full of retrieval before one can gradually feel a trace of eternity.
Though the living are wrong to believe in the too-sharp distinctions which

they themselves have created.
Angels (they say) don't know whether it is the living they are moving among, or the dead.
The eternal torrent whirls all ages along in it, through both realms forever,

and their voices are drowned out in its thunderous roar.

In the end, those who were carried off early no longer need us:

they are weaned from earth's sorrows and joys,

as gently as children outgrow the soft breasts of their mothers.
But we, who do need such great mysteries,

we for whom grief is so often the source of our spirit's growth--:

could we exist without them?
Is the legend meaningless that tells how, in the lament for Linus,

the daring first notes of song pierced through the barren numbness;

and then in the startled space which a youth as lovely as a god has suddenly left forever,

the Void felt for the first time that harmony which now enraptures and comforts and helps us.

titles continued

What if we called it The Alchemist and the Nun...or The Alchemists...Our group could be called Alchemists, or alchemy 101, or nuns 101

meeting

Hey guys. Do you think we should meet soon? About apps and stuff? To check out Russell house? I have a meeting tomorrow at lunch, but nothing after that. Yeesh I need to study like whoah.

-Gedney.

Good news

Nini says


"Email the people you want to work with and they will answer you as honestly as they can. (I can't speak for Jarek.) But do it soon before we start to plan the summer."

So I think this is possible, or not in the best way (as in they won't want to, not because of logistics.)

And I will get on this ASAP.

Love

Asa

Auxiliaries

Here's some photos:

Georgia:
http://www.guesthousenika.com/svaneti01.jpg


And Stephen Mitchell's Anthology "The Enlightened Heart" has incredible selection of Rilke and Dickinson.

Poets – Ranier Maria Rilke, Poland and Summer, Advent & Other Holidays

My dear friends.

I have been thinking that something that keeps coming up is poets. So maybe we want to do a play about poets, or a poet? Poets have lives that are full of good twists, difficult spots.

Both Emily Dickinson and Ranier Maria Rilke had extremely interesting lives, with depressions, spiritual leaps, imprisonment, reactions to the war torn world. T.S. Eliot is also fascinating, although maybe more known and less sensitive and impressionable. Rilke journeyed extensively but always felt imprisoned. Dickinson literally was imprisoned. Both were obsessed with death in different ways. I don't know what to say exactly, but I think there's something significant here.

Maybe we want to do something with these people? I really love both of their work and think that maybe they have something to teach us.

Rilke is best in Stephen Mitchell's translations. I will get you this for some winter advent holiday.

Did you guys ever do Advent Spiral? This is a very beautiful ceremony that comes from early christianity, really pre-Christian pagan traditions.

http://www.waldorffamilynetwork.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/adventspiral2003.jpg

It's also a Waldorf thing. Candles are placed in apples and brought into the center and lit, then brought out. I think it was something that got deep in me, influenced me a lot. If Annie sees this she'll know...


Speaking of which, there are some things.

Grotowski Texts:

Holiday
Tu Es Le Fils De Quelqu'un [You are someone's son]
Performer

All are really good and important for different reasons.

Another word about Holidays, look at this:

http://free.art.pl/teajty/pliki/english/etresc.php?go=4

Very interesting Cultural Lab in N. eastern poland. Doing interesting work with carols, carolling in the old sense. Check it out.

Good 'ol:
http://www.grotcenter.art.pl/

Maisternia Pisni:

http://www.maisternia.com.ua/site/index.htm

A good way to see what they're about besides the DVD Claudia has is to read Sergey's "Krai" although it's translated pretty poorly. In the photos section are photos of Brzezinka
and area around, which is the forest base.

I wrote Nini from ZAR, so we'll see if that can happen (or something), if you guys are still interested in going to Poland.

I think what would be great is if we could go somewhere and sing for a while – this could happen with Village Harmony, or with ZAR, possibly, and then see some theater in Poland and do some work sessions together to learn training, etc.

Also, next semester I am starting to learn the harmonium, and I'd definitely like to start playing with this in singing – it's really absolutely the most helpful thing in learning to sing together in multi voice.

Also, on wednesday at 1 pm at well being house I am performing Indian music, come if you like, there are lots of people performing so no pressure.

I know this week will be crazy, but let's find some time to just talk and hang out some time soon. I have house things tomorrow night until 8 or 9 but I'm free after.

I am also making mixes for you guys.


Love

Asa

Hey guys


1) My cell phone is broken/dead. So please email me or just show up at my house if you want to see me.

2) I heard that emily is cast, is everyone?

3) Let's exchange music sometime soon, also try and meet this weekend and finalize 2nd stage app and reading list.

Love

Asa

Dude, in our play can I be Emily Dickinson? Can we use her poetry? No really I think her poems are really interesting. Here are a couple I just found:

These are the days when birds come back,

A very few, a bird or two,

To take a backward look.

These are the days when skies put on

The old, old sophistries of June,--

A blue and gold mistake.

Oh, fraud that cannot cheat the bee,

Almost thy plausibility

Induces my belief,

Till ranks of seeds their witness bear,

And softly through the altered air

Hurries a timid leaf!

Oh, sacrament of summer days,

Oh, last communion in the haze,

Permit a child to join,

Thy sacred emblems to partake,

Thy consecrated bread to break,

Taste thine immortal wine!

-------------------------------

I felt a funeral in my brain,
And mourners, to and fro,
Kept treading, treading, till it seemed
That sense was breaking through.

And when they all were seated,
A service like a drum
Kept beating, beating, till I thought
My mind was going numb.

And then I heard them lift a box,
And creak across my soul
With those same boots of lead, again.
Then space began to toll

As all the heavens were a bell,
And Being but an ear,
And I and silence some strange race,
Wrecked, solitary, here.

2nd stage...?

So 2nd stage apps are out...

do we wanna get together and fill one out?

Ok, so I was listening to my ipod today, and today I decided not to listen to music but to listen instead to This American Life from my NPR podcast. And I thought it might be a really great place to look for a story. Say we have a basic story we want to follow, then grab text from lots of places, and then add a musical liturgy to add on top of that, and it could create a really neat structure from which to work. Just adding another option to the table. Also recorded sound I think is great to use and layer with physical action.

The episode I was listening to (which I wasn't crazy about, but it is what triggered this post) was about a woman who, with her husband, planned her own death for about the last 20 years of her life. She wanted to take a bottle full of pills, lie down on her bed, place a plastic bag over her head, tie the plastic bag around her neck with a scarf, and fall asleep and wait to die. Her husband died unexpectedly, however, and so she asked her son to help her. You see, she wanted to kill herself before she died of natural causes because her mother had died in very late stages of dementia, and this woman feared that was going to happen to her. She was already starting to forget things, like how to make a pot of coffee, etc. So she needed her son to help her rehearse her own suicide. He would come over, have dinner with her, and then walk her through the steps, minus the pills and actually keeping the bag over her head. His brother kept trying to take her out to dinner, make her more excited to live, but she said the problem wasn't being depressed: she was just ready to die before her mind escaped her. And so after months of practicing, writing down instructions for herself in case she forgot, and notifying family members that she was going to do this so they could say their last good-byes, she called the son who had been helping her to tell him she was going to do it. So he came over, helped her get all of her "tools" laid out, said goodbye, and left. He went to the supermarket, just drove around for a couple hours, and when he came back, she was dead. So he called the police and then got ready for her funeral.

You guys can get this episode on itunes for free. Just search podcasts for This American Life and subscribe. This story is Act II of an episode called "How to Rest in Peace" and it's about how people deal with murdered loved ones.

yes, let's try to hang out tomorrow, bed, theatre, sexiness, saw and all.

love,
gedney.

Post callback ramblings

Blech. I will be v. scattered in this post.

Asa, go to http://wesleyan.edu/glsp/profiles/alabama_08_profile.html. Ok you know what's freaking me out is how the save now button grows as I type. Has anyone else noticed that?

Anywho, go to that website and click on "Register Now" to get the appropriate forms.

I really think it should not be out of the question to create a reader, as in a packet. Poems we can post on the blog, but short stories will be easier to photocopy and give to each other if we want to keep each other from buying loads of books. I think the two books being more theory stuff makes sense, but if Mark say wants to assign that collection of short stories on the atomic bomb or if I wanted to have Dubliners be one of mine that's also a possibility.

Callbacks were neat cause I got to see people work, but then again Kieran's callbacks had a different dynamic from David's. Still a clash between control freaks sometimes, but what can you do. I just want this whole process to be over because I hate knowing more than my friends and being unable to do anything with that knowledge. Oh the burdens I bear.

You both rock my socks and I will try to post more material-material, as in material for work-inspiration, soon.

Love,
Gedney.

couple of things

Hey Guys


First off, sorry about the lack of tags.

I hope call backs were great for you, Mark, and I hope you, Gedney, enjoyed watching all those egos rubbing up against each other in lovely and exciting ways.

As for the reading list, I think Stephen Mitchell's translations of the Duino Elegies (Rilke) is one of my two. I will try and figure out where this can be found.

What do you guys think about the KIND of reading. Because everything that's poetry I can just post here. It might make more sense for the books to have a more philosophical bent, or about theater? I guess it's just up to each and every one of us, oh my, responsibility. I will think of something.


Events,

1) Dec 5th, around 5 pm, I am singing Indian music at an undisclosed location (soon to be disclosed). Come if you like.

2) Dec 14th, the night before I leave, party in my room.

3) Let's meet soon, although I have the week from hell ahead of me. I don't want the blog to replace the sexy two of you on my bed.

Gedney, can you send me the info about the paperwork for GLSP?


Okay, love love


And such.


Asa