(no subject)

I was laying in bed daydreaming, when I heard the drums. I live in a fairly Hispanic neighborhood and often there are parades for saints through the streets with school marching bands, so I just sort of ignored it, but eventually got up to open my window.

Every year in this neighborhood we have the Rites of Spring festival to open our community gardens, and costumed people parade through the streets as flowers and seasons. It's a product of the fact that this neighborhood was once very ugly and very dangerous and the people who lived here took control of abandoned lots and turned them into gardens. And so my neighborhood has weeping willows and roosters, koi ponds, pagodas, a tower of discarded toys 4 stories high and outdoor stages -- all of it with names like Little Versailles, The Secret Garden and The Children's Plot just a block from the projects.

The gardens have been a fight, over the years, with the city and private enterprises wanting to develop the lots as the demand for housing and the gentrification of this neighborhood coincided. Many of the gardens were destroyed, including one where the building I live in now stands (we're reminded of this regularly by people spraypainting on the sidewalk out front "This building destroyed a community garden" and by the handprints in red paint people feel compelled to leave on our window (something I need to go outside and scrub off again today)).

At any rate, a parade of about 100 people, all of them colorfully dressed, many leading 20 ft. high puppets has just passed under my window, with people drumming and singing as if we were in some fanciful Middle East. The parade goes through the neighborhood, to all the gardens, eventually stopping at the largest and oldest of them where there's an all day festival.

I love where I live because it is a difficult place, and we are happy here, because of that. We have the privledge of feeling strong, and of seeing sunlight because both the economy and the ground here (we're not on bedrock, but on fill) is too weak for us to build any higher.

it's all in the muffins

While baking corn muffins and listening to opera very very loudly, I came to the sudden conclusion that Atlantic is not where I need to be right now. Big fucking surprise, I know. But the fact is, right now, the technique plays to my strengths as opposed to helping me with my weaknesses and allows me to stay far too protected and in control. So I'm registering for some stuff at HB for June that terrifies me, but should shake me out of my nonsense, while I figure out where I'm supposed to be.

I've been all into "but Atlantic's prestigious" because people react to it really well, but that doesn't mean shit if it's not helping me not just improve my work, but get over some hurdles. And it's certainly not the technique that's most compatible with the type of work I want to be doing now. There's also the minor fact that the most amazing performance I've ever done came in an Atlantic class, where I didn't follow the rules of the as if at all, and instead used an emotional touchstone from my past -- so what does that tell you? Exactly.

I was worried this would feel like a negative decision, and that's why I avoided making it for so long. But I feel great.

Right now I'm looking at Physical Storytelling (using styles like Kabuki and Comedia D'ell Arte to explore movement in theater) and Technique I (which is lots of improve crap designed to get you past self-consciousness -- which is what I need -- I can analyze a scene and develop a character, I just need to learn to get past my shit). They also have a directing class and a ton of speech classes. I'll wait another term before I touch directing (at least in classes there -- I want to see if a place works for me first) -- and I think I'll go for Technique I and a Speech class actually -- just because I'm starting up yoga right now, and want to get into that physical routine first.

Oh, this is a huge relief. And bringing headshots into the retoucher on Monday. My humanity and hope has returned.