Hello!
The show is on Saturday!! In like 117 hours! All the magnets and therapy and friends and family are working and I'm slightly more on top of things now (not really). You are receiving this because you either have attended a show before or are attending this one :) if you are in the former there is 1 ticket available: https://luma.com/fojvq7z2
(if you are desperate to come email me and I'll see what I can do, but at some point it's a safety hazard).
Prior emails here: https://listmonk.sadgoldfish.com/archive
Here is an old essay about directing and Bloomshed I never released but sent to Caterina recently and she liked: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1gN16_xjT3KQXzKTihs4NT7Bl8IXZk3FSJ0nbQOOarok/edit?usp=sharing
And as always old reviews and essays on art and science and whatever here (you cannot filter, you'll just have to guess which ones are mine): https://kscopearts.wordpress.com/
Some things:
LOCATION: 15 Thompson Street, Kensington. Head up into the big empty courtyard and there'll be a room there. Please knock, I do not have FOH so you'll have to be a little brave. If you get confused call me on 0450 224 313.
TIME: 6:00pm!!! Don't be late! If you are going to be late that's fine, just open the door and slide in.
FOOD: Beautiful and intelligent friend-of-the-show Caterina will be cooking Revithosoupa (Ρεβιθόσουπα). It'll be vegan and yum (I assume). Would you like to bring dessert or bread or some kind of food? That would be lovely :) thank you :)
Looking forward to seeing you all!!
Okay little essay:
Lately, I've been feeling really hard done by. Never a good way to feel. Nobody's done me hard (lately anyway), but I feel that way regardless.
I feel like I'm a step below where I want to be. In all ways. Not a substantial distance, the view I have is nice and I am enjoying it. But I look up, see people on the step above and I think "Could I have what they have?" A dangerous way of thinking.
I feel like I reach out to the people who are one step up and ask for a boost. Maybe just something to step on and I'll clamber the rest of the way up myself. I'm strong. But the people above keep telling me to slow down.
"Just wait. I can still support you from up here and when I think it's right, I'll help you up."
"You don't want to rush this. It's a big step."
"I need to think about it first. There's a lot to consider."
It starts to bite at me. What's with all this fucking waiting? Just get me up there. I know if I was up there, I'd be pulling anyone who had the courage to ask up with me. I'd be pulling up people who didn't even ask, people who felt fine on the step below and really didn't care about this estranged metaphor. Why isn't there someone like me up there? What don't I understand? Why aren't we all up there, together, right now?
Lately, I've also been feeling weirdly fixated on time. Never a good way to feel. Time's not been weirdly fixated on me (lately anyway), but I feel that way regardless.
30 years of learning can be made completely redundant by an iPhone app that took 30 minutes to make. 3 months can start to feel like everything while 3 years can start to feel like nothing.
We start to see things whither. We start to look back at what we've left and wonder whether it's enough, whether we've lived the life we wanted, or deserved.
A dangerous way of thinking.
These two feelings frame this play.
Asking someone to use a different name for you is quite a simple ask. It requires very little of them. Still they ask you to slow down.
12 labours can seem like a monumental achievement, worthy of story and song. But when she looks back, was it the life she wanted, or deserved?
Almost everything that she achieves, she is forced to do. Why is her life not her own?
If she fought for what she wanted and struggled against it all despite knowing that the threads of fate have been woven, and she would forever be known as Herakles, what kind of a life is that? Is it hers?
I leave you now with a famous villanelle I keep thinking about while working on this play called 'One Art' by Elizabeth Bishop.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.
—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.