Sunday, October 11, 2009

things that happened this weekend

I performed for a total of 12 hours in an installation as a part of CELLspace Open Studios... well... we took breaks, and we spent some time setting up, but STILL! I feel like a super woman! A very bruised and battered super woman, but all the same.

The week before the show, I wrote down stories that I didn't necessarily want to tell anyone... embarrassing moments and awkward social interactions (mostly about boys... gah). I then crumbled up the pieces of paper and put them in a big plastic pitcher. In my improv in my living exhibition area, I would occasionally knock over the pitcher accidentally on purpose and the paper would spill out on the floor. Embarrassing moments and awkward memories out in the world! I would stare at all the surprised art viewers in my vicinity (Did she mean to do that? Was that my fault?), scurry to the floor, and begin picking up the pieces of paper and shoving them back in the pitcher. Occasionally I would read one and look mortified.

My idea was that this was an inner motivating factor for movement and character development, and I didn't necessarily care that people knew what the papers meant. I had meant at some point to make up stories that related to my character, but I ran out of time. Oh well, I figured, they're not to be read anyway, so as long as the intention is there it will probably work.

This weekend, I learned: Do not write down anything and put it in an interactive art gallery if you do not want it read. The visual artists with their art on the walls kept asking me, "Can I take one?" "Is this a choose your own adventure?" "Can I take one NOW?" To which I responded, always, "NO!" (Dana heard me do this once and burst out laughing, because as one of my bestestes girlfriends she knew what the papers meant.) Then, when I was running sound for Dana's solo, I looked down from the sound booth to discover a group of girls going through the papers in the pitcher, reading them one by one. It was torturous. It was probably good for me.

So, in the spirit of this past weekend, here are those stories (save one that I'm really not prepared to share). They are all separate instances with different people and are represented here with no regard to chronological order. As I look through them... I realize they may not be that embarrassing. Perhaps even in writing them down I didn't reveal all of the memories I think of when I read them... ones that make them really actually a bit painful to think about.

After we'd stopped seeing each other, he told me that I was the weirdest/most artistic person he'd ever met. To which I'm pretty sure I responded with the incredibly creative, "Oh."

"Have you ever seen the backs of your knees?" I hadn't. I stood there for awhile, twisting backwards to see them in the mirror. They were awkwardly beautiful.

The best flirtatious conversation I ever had was the one in which a boy working at the corner market explained how to make peanut butter with a food processor.

I had a pantomime conversation on the train with an old Chinese woman who laughed with me when the train started and I stumbled. Together, we practiced how to hold on so that wouldn't happen.

We went for a walk in the rain and he told me he thought we'd be great together. I mumbled something about still being with but not really with my high school boyfriend who was visiting next week. Honestly, though, I'd was really in to him.

I got over my ex by having a relentless crush on a coworker much older than I. I wonder if he has any idea of the role he played in my love life. While I probably barely scrapped the surface of his consciousness, he played a huge part in my head.

I think the moment that cemented it was when the cab lurched and I grabbed his knee. Later, I read on the internet that that's one of the ways to tell that a girl is in to you: she grabs your leg. Oops.

Thursday, October 8, 2009

the internet is a place for me to grumble

Things I currently CANNOT STAND!!!
a) the improper use of the "reply to all" function of email
b) the way I chew pens
c) the ratio of office work to dance work in my life
d) persistent and ineffective feelings of attraction
e) the itch for change, unaccompanied by the motivation to do anything

I'm trying to figure it all out.