My housemates are fleeing town for the break. Two took the bus to Edinburgh Friday night. Another bikes to Brighton today. The fourth is going somewhere soon, Liverpool tomorrow, I think. Feels like Spring Break in a dorm. Which isn't far from the truth. I'll have the place to myself for a day or two before I go to Exeter and Dartmoor from Thursday to Sunday. Until then I'm pounding out the hours at my jobs. I look forward to my out-of-town break. As these term gaps approach, I've been looking forward to opportunities to get together with classmates to reflect on what we're doing, what we've been through. But so many of us leave town that it's not as easy to have those conversations as it might have seemed.
I've been thinking back on another of the films that we watched this past term--the one about different ways of seeing. It was called something like "Window of the Soul" or whatever that phrase translates to in Portuguese. In particular I've been thinking of the blind photographer who was one of those featured in it. It's not just a surprising thing that there would be a blind photographer. How can he see what he shoots? is an obvious question (and reminiscent of a very funny David Sedaris vignette about how blind people can get a hunting license in Michigan, but that's another matter entirely). But of course this particular photographer has found ways, even without an autofocus camera. The film showed him taking close-up portraits by measuring how far away his subject is and focusing the camera in that way. He also tells a story about having his niece wear a small bell as she ran through a field, and him pointing the camera according to where he could hear the bell's sound. (I assume he used autofocus then.) It produced quite a lovely shot, which someone else must have printed for him. That's all interesting, but what intrigues me more is this: He can't see the results of his own artistic process. As I mentioned before, one of the difficulties I've been having here is that I have little or no sense of what I'm doing well, of how I look, of how I sound. It's not exactly analogous to the blind photographer's art, but it's close enough, and I suppose that's what keeps me hearkening back to him. The Initiation Course at Lispa isn't much about results, but it's hard to find the mileposts on your journey in a situation like this. As I think I mentioned before, the goal here seems to be to foster a creative drive that isn't too dependent on or cowed by others' reactions to one's specific artistic vision. But getting there takes one through a bit of a Tolkeinish swamp.
Nights at the theater
I know I should be seeing more shows, but I've seen few thus far, partly because of my schedule, partly because of finances, partly from my own inertia. The production of "Brief Encounter" I wrote about last fall has definitely been the highlight. Other than that I went to a Butoh piece at Sadler's Wells (my first and thus far only exposure to that art form--the set and costumes were in shades of sand and bone that reflected the spareness of the movement; a few arresting images in a long and slow drama without an apparent narrative), and a pair of events that were part of the London International Mime Festival. One was a collection of mechanical Rube Goldbergesque thingamajigs that simply took turns doing their thing. The other was, for better and for worse, an example of what happens when creative people say yes to every impulse. It was a Russian trio who presented an over-the-top high energy hour of high decibel music, mural painting, hammering light bulbs on the back of each other's heads, and audience involvement (including passing out fruits and vegetables for people to throw at their naked drummer--a guy who looked like he must have been Paul Shafer's separated-at-birth Russian twin). It was either simply awful or admirably bizarre. I don't think this is quite what Lispa is after--clearly these guys didn't give a shit about what their critics might have to say--but they certainly were committed to whatever their artistic vision is. And I came away amazed that they have enough of a following that they get a booking at an international arts festival.
Oops, my mistake: There was one other highlight besides "Brief Encounter." A production of Tom Stoppard's "Every Good Boy Deserves Favour" at the National Theatre, a witty, haunting, technically brilliant piece that is rarely staged, in large part because it requires having a full orchestra on stage for the whole show.
And I had plans to see a couple of other pieces with Isabel (one that she wrote music for, another that she was to be in), but her getting turned away at Heathrow prevented those.
Oh, and there was my own theatrical debut. If there's a London equivalent of off-off-off-off-off Broadway, this was it--in an artist's attic way out in a suburb. But that one may get its own post, another time.
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