Day 10-12
Thursday, May 1st - Day 10
I had a light breakfast and tried this really interesting green cookie (a riff on an oatmeal cookie)
Then I went to the library to conquer the projector. I got scared that it wouldn’t work and in the interim, I updated the lone wolf video even more. added a few more vintage wolf cartoon moments, also pulled footage from news coverage of Columbine. David walked in on me editing, we had a short chat about Rebecca’s revue last night and finally I got the projector to work. Success.
I sat down to do some more polishing on the text. I had only asked Tyson to be a reader and I intended for the presentation to be a monologue. But in reading it, I began to feel that the world was bigger, so I did a bit of narrative theatre breaking of my own text with characters like “Animal” and “Her” and “Man”…very creative names. I printed off my copies. Committed to it.
Ran back to my studio to inhale lunch and then go on the town run, but in my haste I went to the wrong meeting place and missed the van to town. Erik generously offered to get me melatonin. An absolute necessity. My sleep schedule is so disrupted by becoming a morning person for these hot gourmet breakfasts.
Took a break to watch some of Nickel Boys before dinner.
After a delicious dinner of scallops, we slowly lumbered over to the library for my presentation. It started fairly casually. I turned off the lights and asked the actors to use their phones as little flashlights to read the script. Then I started the video which silently played behind them.
Things were going well and then an AppleTV notification came up in the middle of the screen asking if I wanted to update my settings. I tried to click it away, but it took my screensharing to the AppleTV home page which began to blast ad footage for Severance. As a Severance fan, I felt betrayed.
We reset and the rest went off perfectly. The discussion was interesting afterwards… about how I see the setting of the play since I haven’t really incorporated scene directions yet. I said that the internet and the woods are similar…you can get lost in both. There are monsters lurking in the dark corners of both places. The small snippet of news footage from Columbine took up a lot of mental space. I’m still figuring out how that factors into everything…there’s just a very compelling connection between the silver bullets of werewolf lore and the school shootings of my teenage years.
After this ended, I had a few brief chats with fellow artists and we went back to Bond to play preferences.
My first round of it…I got gravity, sex with an ex, landing strip (on girls), and soft boobies. In the deliberation of my order, there was a little chatter about how sex with an ex is a safer type of sex. Also how I would like gravity because it is consistent and has rules. Also, nature based.
I don’t think I’ve begun to fully grasp just how sexually repressed I am
Like I think I’m not because I had a few wild experiences but somehow my body is both a precious little doll that shouldn’t be touched and also this filthy thing that will stain anyone who touches me.
Putting soft boobies last was controversial, but I hate the word “boobies.” (I spent time really considering this later…like landing strips are a conscious act…like putting an arrow on your body. I’m not sure still. This is the fun of preferences.)
I walked with Jung Hae to Pan and talked a bit about how her confidence has grown here.
“This place makes you feel welcomed and loved and that allows you to grow” - Jung Hae, outside the laundry room
Work from this day:
Friday, May 2nd - Day 11
Woke up and headed over for a light breakfast. Rain was in the forecast and the morning was misty and mysterious. Kinda like walking through a Bronte novel.
My normal haunting spot in the library was closed off for some library staff meeting so I sat in the big window space by the interdisciplinary section. It got sunny. Collette told me about how during COVID she sat in every possible chair in this library. I asked if she had a favorite spot, but it sounds like she was following the sun.
Great chat with Jessica about my presentation…about it being unfiltered…animalistic. We talked a bit about how people suppress their natural animal selves and how this leads to anxiety, etc. I talked with Juro Kim about my presentation a bit too. Felt like the ideas were starting to swirl again. All good stuff.
I wrote a few pages more of my childhood screenplay. Added more stuff to the playlist…like Truly, Madly, Deeply and some Backstreet Boys. The process has made me meditative about the core musical memories…the twirling to BeWitched’s C’est La Vie or believing that Shaggy was a woman singing “It Wasn’t Me” (this was very scandalous to 9 year old me…a song about lesbians cheating and lying about it…I felt betrayed when I found out it was a man).
Also had to do a lot of YouthPLAYS work. Tried to get that done so I could enjoy a nice walk in the “rainy day.”
I took a walk while listening to the new episode of This Had Oscar Buzz about American Splendor. Got back to the studio to eat lunch…some really yummy grapes today!
I went to Bond Hall to meet with the Regular People producers about this dry spell. I was listening to my Spotify Discover Weekly…it played “You Always Hurt the One You Love” by the Mills Brothers, only to follow it with the Game of Thrones title theme. I laughed for a solid minute. Then I had a great 20 minute Zoom with the producers.
Met Leona outside Bond wearing this super cool bat dress. She told me she liked my kind of filthy sense of humor in my writing. I said something like…yeah traumatic things do eventually become sickly funny in their own way.
New arrivals at dinner tonight including Jessamine from Chicago! We had pomegranate molasses salmon, baked yams, and sautéed rainbow chard. Then we walked down to Peterborough for Marcus’ presentation. I led the way for a little bit. Keegon the leader :)
I sat in the front row. Marcus did this live sound art performance. Improvised. The whole thing was ethereal, a bit unpredictable. There were these little bells and jingly trinkets…there was a guitar thart got dragged around. It felt exploratory and playful. Sometimes the way the music would loop back around was startling. It made me want to look up at the speakers. Made me feel small in a similar way to the performance piece he collaborated with Mairead on.
His keynote presentation was really cool as well! This piece “Mass” (where he translated mass shooting data into sound then played it through these almost Grecian / ritual looking plinths) was very thought provoking and sonically overwhelming too.
A lot of us went to Harlow’s Pub afterwards. A huge thunderstorm started…rumbled the place.
Jessamine got me a beer (Chicago solidarity!) and I quietly panicked about us being in the servers’ way (they had one pathway like Bites…I was annoyed on their behalf). Had two Wild Bloom Blue Jay IPA’s (think this was meant to be blueberry flavored, which gives me war flashbacks to serving Cubs fans pints of “C’mon Blue!”)
As we left, Karma Chameleon started playing…made me think of do no harm again. Marcus’ lovely friend Summer was chatting with me… “What do the colors mean? Red, gold, and green.” “I think it’s the colors that the chameleon can change into,” I reply.
We chat more about “every day is like survival” before she goes her separate way and we wander uphill. We see a frog! I walk and chat with Marcus for a bit about the presentation, his friends, and this place. We literally cross paths with Tyson.
They get late night snacks at Bond and I go. I see another frog. Now I’m terrified of stepping on one. They’re so small and they blend in perfectly with the gravel paths. Good for them until a Sketcher’s non-slip sneaker comes from the heavens.
Work from this day:
Saturday, May 3rd - Day 12
Woke up so groggy from the melatonin. I surprised the turkeys on my way to breakfast. Frankly, they scared me too, but you just can’t explain that to them.
I had a lighter breakfast so I could try the blueberry coffee cake. My god. Opulence.
I tried to call people back in the real world, but everyone was busy!
I watch a little bit of Cronenberg’s Crash with lunch. Pimento cheese sandwich, a banana, and a cookie. Checked in on my favorite chicks in the coop. I ask them if they’re ready for the rain. They do that gorgeous purring trilling thing.
I wandered back to my cabin to take a nap, but Alice calls and we catch up about Sarah’s play and life here in the wilderness. Then Tyler calls me…more shenanigans. The sky opens up and I take a naughty little nap while Austin Powers plays in the background.
Dinner is this yummy ginger chicken (apologies to my favorite chicks), stir fry veggies, jasmine rice. Dessert is this pistachio cake and peanut butter / chocolate / coconut powerballs. Aaron says he feels that I’m a cinephile. Then Mariam unveils (very exciting) the fresh off the presses new DVD of her film “What We Left Unfinished.” We propose a movie night tomorrow night in the library. Carina shares some yummy rose tea with us and we see Camille’s daughter’s prom pictures (unreal).
Laughed a little bit about the idea of writing a monologue about the story my sister sent to me. This dog in France was pushing kids into a river because once it rescued a child from the Seine and was promptly rewarded with a steak. So the dog just started recreating the circumstances so it could keep getting steaks. I came up with the title “in seine.”
Tried to watch something back at my cabin, but I decided to fall asleep again to the sweet nothings of The Spy Who Shagged Me.
Work from this day:
resting and eating, talking with the chickens, etc