It all seemed so innocuous at first. Thursday in class we began by taking a chair and noting how many separate movements are required to approach and sit in it. To be sure this came after a brief and seemingly unrelated comment about how music is distilled emotion and how certain chords or chord progressions are known to evoke strong emotion (and how advertisers manipulate us through their use). But that dropped from notice as I counted 1) look at the chair, 2) turn toward the chair (beginning with the pelvis!), 3) step toward the chair with my left foot, and so on. Sitting down took me 20-24 movements. Then all of a sudden we're in a different world. Amy told us she was going to put on a piece of music and wanted us to imagine returning to an important place and finding it destroyed. See it, walk through it. Touch parts of it.
I didn't notice other people, but I know I wasn't the only one bawling a couple of minutes later. I didn't think I had it in me. (One draft of a blog piece I never published reflected on how I think I've forgotten how to cry freely. It's not that I never cry. It's just that I always rein it in as soon as the emotion crosses a certain threshold.) Then she put us through the exercise once more without the music. Tears again. Then she offered some of us the opportunity to do it again wearing expressive masks, which cover your whole face except for the eyes. Which all led to a discussion of the need to and difficulty of moving past the point either where your own emotion overtakes you, or where it simply runs out and you're still in the position of sharing that experience with an audience. This is where relying on the space you're in and the specific objects around you comes in. (Thus the chair exercise, I guess? I'm still not sure. Some of us wondered afterward how we got from Point A to Point B in this lesson.)
For any others who also wonder about such things, I think Amy said the music was from Elgar's Enigma Variations. She also used Barber's Adagio for Strings later in the hour.
When I wrote my essay as part of the application to come here, I mentioned how sometimes in preaching the connection that happens is when the person speaking reflects and expresses the thoughts and emotions of those who are listening, and how that's probably a bit like theatre in some way. Not that you should gin up the emotion just to make a point or to manipulate those you're speaking to. Then again, that wouldn't be theatre at its best either, so it's another similarity. I've been thinking again over the past several weeks about how there's a generosity in theatre performance (I find myself avoiding the word acting) in helping the audience feel something deeply by feeling it yourself and reflecting it back out again. That's not the most elegant way to express it, I'm sure, and no great insight to some who might be reading this, but for this novice to this whole endeavor it's important. This whole experience is certainly giving me an even deeper respect for actors.
Show and tell
I mentioned expressive masks above. It's always better to show these things than to describe them. The video on Lispa's new website shows some of them, as well as the neutral mask and some of the larval masks (and other masks made by students). It also gives a general taste of the school and of Thomas's approach. And an extra bonus: if you wait and watch through the stills in the five panels at the top of the webpage, you'll see Isabel a couple of times.
The billionaires' convention
OK, this one has nothing to do with Lispa. The company I work for as an "administrative associate" (that is, a lowly office worker) had a booth at an exhibition for investors yesterday. We were told to be at our most professional as we handed out information because the people who'd be attending have beaucoup moolah--millionaires and billionaires. Who knows how many fit whatever category, but it was clearly a mixture of people enthusiastic either to give advice or to get it. There was a mad rush to the podium after one guy finished giving his tips for the coming year. (Which included be patriotic about Britain, wait for the Tories to come back to power and reinstate Mrs Thatcher's policies--and buy German real estate. Not quite sure how those go together, but I'm not his intended audience anyway.) Men in suits were running down the aisles to be the first to get whatever materials this man was giving out as soon as he said thank you and turned from the mike. The program said this guy--whoever he is--is worth about £700 million and that his predictions of a year ago proved dead accurate. I was curious, though, to note that he had the most nervous ways of wringing his hands and brushing back his hair as he spoke. (The jumbotron didn't do him any favors in the credibility department, I thought. Then again, I'm just a part-time administrative associate at a small company.)
Anyway, the convention made for great people watching. We've often worked in school with the idea of noting whatever animal seems to animate different people--how some are like mice or ferrets or komodo dragons--and at times yesterday was like a day at the zoo. Great fun. An arkful of eccentrics.
I'm not sure which animal another particular fellow was, but he stood out with his (seemingly intentionally) ill-fitting gold and black sports coat, oversized black horn-rimmed glasses and electric blue socks. I was told afterward that there's an an image among the British that the wealthy are particularly known for wearing bright (usually red) socks, and that this fellow is very well respected as an investor.
As a Minnesotan, it makes me wonder what this says about Garrison Keillor's portfolio (he of the trademark red socks)--no surprise that he's wealthy, but is his sock choice at all influenced by the current market? Someone will have to fill me in. Or for that matter, what would Brits think of the mayor of my hometown, who's known for intentionally wearing mismatched socks. If he were in politics here, would people read anything about his fiscal policies into what peeks out above his shoetops?
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Monday, April 20, 2009
Stepping it up a notch
The coursework is getting more demanding, as are the critiques. Several times this term when we’ve presented our Creation pieces on Mondays, Thomas has broken in before a group was finished and closed them down because the piece was taking too long and had become uninteresting. And after months of really having no homework to speak of, now we have it in several classes. The final three weeks of this term are stacking up to be quite full—final presentations ahead in Creation and Acrobatics and a Movement analysis class and perhaps in Voice, too.
In that last class we’re finally working with text. More on that below. There’s been some disgruntlement with the pace of that class, which led to a group discussion with the teacher in which anger and frustration (on both sides) was openly expressed. (I’d volunteered to moderate the discussion.) And today after presentations there were a few direct questions about why not everyone has been taking part in the past few weeks. We’re at a point where the stress lines are showing. I don't think it has to do with the increased work load. More that we’re way past the polite stage by this point, and long-simmering frictions are being expressed. Such is a life in community. Maybe especially so among creative types.
We continue to work with masks. First it was larval masks, then more human ones. Then our own expressive masks, which we made last week. (I enjoyed it so much, I made a second one over the weekend.) And tomorrow we start working with expressive masks that are more expertly, professionally made. I’m learning a lot. The pace of our movement on stage has become slower, more patient, more carefully articulated. I was going to say more deliberate, which may be true, but maybe more aware is a better way to put it. I do think the quality of the work is a lot better than it was a month or two ago, but it also seems that we’ve hit a bit of a plateau, thus the more pointed critiques of our work. In a way that’s a compliment. We’re being held to a higher standard now. And the critiques are less gently delivered. I remember hearing from Isabel and her friends that the critiques were pretty brutal (my word, not theirs), focusing on what didn’t work and why, with no mincing of words. For the first several months, I saw pieces of that, but the critiques were gentler than I expected. They’re becoming less gentle now.
Our Acrobatics class this term is half Acrobatics, half martial arts. Friday is hapkido day. I’ve never studied martial arts before. It’s a whole new world of discipline and tradition for me, often pretty interesting and as often confusing. The coordination is of a whole different sort. Wednesdays—our other Acrobatics day—is dedicated to those damn headstands, neck springs, different kinds of forward and backward rolls, and a myriad conditioning exercises, some of which verge on the diabolical. But I do admit to enjoying the conditioning. I’m in better shape (and thinner) than I’ve been in years.
Moving from the physical to the poetic, we’ve each chosen a passage or monologue to work with in Voice class. I’ve chosen a passage from Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead. This being a school of physical theatre, though, the approach is very physical. We’re just getting started on it, but the technique of learning your chosen text is a way of getting it into the body, building up a wealth of associations and neural pathways for remembering the text. We’ve spent some time finding a place in the classroom (like speaking into a particular corner, with your head at this particular place and your right hand on that cinder black on the wall and you left one just there, your head at that particular angle) where a key word sounds exactly right. And we ended class the other day pacing the room, breaking the text into groupings of two to five related words and changing direction in our walk every time we move from one group of words to another. It’s a new way of learning a passage for me. I’m intrigued. We’ll see how it goes as we move on. In the meantime, I have to find time to work on breaking down my text outside of class.
Today we got our final assignment for Creation for the term. We’ll work on it for three weeks. The topic: The Brawl. For next week we create a situation and a build to the point where violence breaks out. The following week we present the build up and the fight (maybe incorporating some hapkido), and then we refine it again after the teachers’ critiques and present it to the second-years at the end of the term. Oh, and we continue our ongoing work of using animal behaviors as an underlayer beneath the human characters. Say what, you ask? It’s a bit hard to explain. Maybe you should just come visit some Monday and see it in action. That’s an open invitation.
In that last class we’re finally working with text. More on that below. There’s been some disgruntlement with the pace of that class, which led to a group discussion with the teacher in which anger and frustration (on both sides) was openly expressed. (I’d volunteered to moderate the discussion.) And today after presentations there were a few direct questions about why not everyone has been taking part in the past few weeks. We’re at a point where the stress lines are showing. I don't think it has to do with the increased work load. More that we’re way past the polite stage by this point, and long-simmering frictions are being expressed. Such is a life in community. Maybe especially so among creative types.
We continue to work with masks. First it was larval masks, then more human ones. Then our own expressive masks, which we made last week. (I enjoyed it so much, I made a second one over the weekend.) And tomorrow we start working with expressive masks that are more expertly, professionally made. I’m learning a lot. The pace of our movement on stage has become slower, more patient, more carefully articulated. I was going to say more deliberate, which may be true, but maybe more aware is a better way to put it. I do think the quality of the work is a lot better than it was a month or two ago, but it also seems that we’ve hit a bit of a plateau, thus the more pointed critiques of our work. In a way that’s a compliment. We’re being held to a higher standard now. And the critiques are less gently delivered. I remember hearing from Isabel and her friends that the critiques were pretty brutal (my word, not theirs), focusing on what didn’t work and why, with no mincing of words. For the first several months, I saw pieces of that, but the critiques were gentler than I expected. They’re becoming less gentle now.
Our Acrobatics class this term is half Acrobatics, half martial arts. Friday is hapkido day. I’ve never studied martial arts before. It’s a whole new world of discipline and tradition for me, often pretty interesting and as often confusing. The coordination is of a whole different sort. Wednesdays—our other Acrobatics day—is dedicated to those damn headstands, neck springs, different kinds of forward and backward rolls, and a myriad conditioning exercises, some of which verge on the diabolical. But I do admit to enjoying the conditioning. I’m in better shape (and thinner) than I’ve been in years.
Moving from the physical to the poetic, we’ve each chosen a passage or monologue to work with in Voice class. I’ve chosen a passage from Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead. This being a school of physical theatre, though, the approach is very physical. We’re just getting started on it, but the technique of learning your chosen text is a way of getting it into the body, building up a wealth of associations and neural pathways for remembering the text. We’ve spent some time finding a place in the classroom (like speaking into a particular corner, with your head at this particular place and your right hand on that cinder black on the wall and you left one just there, your head at that particular angle) where a key word sounds exactly right. And we ended class the other day pacing the room, breaking the text into groupings of two to five related words and changing direction in our walk every time we move from one group of words to another. It’s a new way of learning a passage for me. I’m intrigued. We’ll see how it goes as we move on. In the meantime, I have to find time to work on breaking down my text outside of class.
Today we got our final assignment for Creation for the term. We’ll work on it for three weeks. The topic: The Brawl. For next week we create a situation and a build to the point where violence breaks out. The following week we present the build up and the fight (maybe incorporating some hapkido), and then we refine it again after the teachers’ critiques and present it to the second-years at the end of the term. Oh, and we continue our ongoing work of using animal behaviors as an underlayer beneath the human characters. Say what, you ask? It’s a bit hard to explain. Maybe you should just come visit some Monday and see it in action. That’s an open invitation.
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Transformations
Before I get to any reflection and recollections about this week at Lispa, a Happy Easter and a Happy Passover to you all. I went to a Seder the other night at school. Seemed like as good a way to mark Good Friday as I could think of.
I read this morning about an Easter celebration in Sulmona, Italy, a ritual called "the Madonna who hastens in the square." The article describes this as taking place with statues carried around, but in my mind it's huge puppets. Anyway, thousands gather in the piazza to watch as statues of St. John and St. Peter knock on the doors of the church, announcing the Resurrection and imploring the mourning Madonna to come out. On the third knock she emerges, dressed in a black cloak. Slowly she walks into the square. Suddenly she's raised up as if on tiptoe and, seeing her resurrected son, breaks into a run. She throws off her shawl, releasing a dozen white doves and revealing her splendid green dress, a symbol of hope (and I would guess, spring). She drops her handkerchief, showing the end of her grief, and in its place there is a red rose.
The article in the Times concludes: "Claudio Pantaleo, prior of the Confraternity of the Madonna of Loreto, hopes that the ritual of hope and rebirth will be all the more poignant for the town this year, in the wake of Monday morning's earthquake which devastated L'Aquila, just 60 km away. He says that the parade will 'absolutely still go ahead...'"
I wish the article had ended there, but the last line of Mr. Pataleo's quote is "'unless the Bishop decides otherwise.'" Can you imagine canceling such a thing? Anyway, here's to loveliness, joy, and hope on this and every Easter day.
I'll be going to a friend's church for this afternoon. Afternoon seems an odd time for an Easter celebration, but I assume there are various services throughout the day. From what I can find on the internet, the church (St Leonard's, Shoreditch) has a long connection to theatre. The actor Richard Burbage, among others, is buried there. No surprise, I suppose, that a classmate would pick that one! And before that, I'm getting together with some other classmates for lunch.
Keepin' it larval
This week in school we've been working with larval masks. They're unpainted masks with simplified and exaggerated features and come from Basel, Switzerland. Many are basically just a nose on a face. They're related to the Fasnacht carnival masks used in that city at the beginning of Lent. My nephews and in-laws who lived in Basel will have special interest in this, though I'm sure we use them in a very different manner in class than they do at Fasnacht.
The first set of masks we used had no eye holes, so we couldn't see a thing. It's all about listening and reacting and moving slowly. It's a lot of fun for those who are watching. You read so much into the simplest of movements, like the tilt of a head. As you can imagine, though, it's quite a challenge for the person wearing the mask. And it gets so much more complex when you have two, three, or five actors on stage wearing larval masks, with no one being able to see what anyone else is doing. You're also not supposed to speak. Which again, makes it all the more enjoyable for the audience.
A side note here, which I may or may not have written about when I learned it in first term: In English we call the people watching the play an audience, which actually emphasizes that they are listening. In many other languages they're called spectators, which emphasizes the visual aspect. In English and American theatre, we tend to privilege language. In French and many other cultures, it's the physical that gets the emphasis, or certainly more of it. (This probably explains the French appreciation for Jerry Lewis. Whether it justifies it or not is another question. Do they love Jim Carrey, too, I wonder?)
As the week progressed, we worked with masks that were more and more human looking, though still very cartoony and all unpainted. And they did have eye holes, though tiny ones and not always in the most useful places. It's a real discipline to learn to do very little but to do it with a lot of focus. There seems to have been a theme in our work of late of doing less. It's becoming more Zen in a way, you could say.
I keep trying to include photos in my posts, but thus far have been unable to. But if you google larval masks you can get some pictures, including this one which also has another Lispa student's comments about the kind of thing we do in class.
All of this makes me recall one of my frustrations last term, having no idea what I look like performing. Working with larval masks takes that to a whole new level! But I'm really enjoying it and feel like I'm learning a lot. Plus, I just enjoy the mask work generally, as hard as it is. I'm less self-conscious, somehow freer when my face is hidden. We're also making our own masks this week, as I mentioned in my last post. I've made mine out of the kind of material that they used to to make plaster casts with. This morning I sealed my mask with glue. Tonight and tomorrow I'll paint it. (No school tomorrow. Bank holiday.) And then on Tuesday we start to see where we go from here.
I read this morning about an Easter celebration in Sulmona, Italy, a ritual called "the Madonna who hastens in the square." The article describes this as taking place with statues carried around, but in my mind it's huge puppets. Anyway, thousands gather in the piazza to watch as statues of St. John and St. Peter knock on the doors of the church, announcing the Resurrection and imploring the mourning Madonna to come out. On the third knock she emerges, dressed in a black cloak. Slowly she walks into the square. Suddenly she's raised up as if on tiptoe and, seeing her resurrected son, breaks into a run. She throws off her shawl, releasing a dozen white doves and revealing her splendid green dress, a symbol of hope (and I would guess, spring). She drops her handkerchief, showing the end of her grief, and in its place there is a red rose.
The article in the Times concludes: "Claudio Pantaleo, prior of the Confraternity of the Madonna of Loreto, hopes that the ritual of hope and rebirth will be all the more poignant for the town this year, in the wake of Monday morning's earthquake which devastated L'Aquila, just 60 km away. He says that the parade will 'absolutely still go ahead...'"
I wish the article had ended there, but the last line of Mr. Pataleo's quote is "'unless the Bishop decides otherwise.'" Can you imagine canceling such a thing? Anyway, here's to loveliness, joy, and hope on this and every Easter day.
I'll be going to a friend's church for this afternoon. Afternoon seems an odd time for an Easter celebration, but I assume there are various services throughout the day. From what I can find on the internet, the church (St Leonard's, Shoreditch) has a long connection to theatre. The actor Richard Burbage, among others, is buried there. No surprise, I suppose, that a classmate would pick that one! And before that, I'm getting together with some other classmates for lunch.
Keepin' it larval
This week in school we've been working with larval masks. They're unpainted masks with simplified and exaggerated features and come from Basel, Switzerland. Many are basically just a nose on a face. They're related to the Fasnacht carnival masks used in that city at the beginning of Lent. My nephews and in-laws who lived in Basel will have special interest in this, though I'm sure we use them in a very different manner in class than they do at Fasnacht.
The first set of masks we used had no eye holes, so we couldn't see a thing. It's all about listening and reacting and moving slowly. It's a lot of fun for those who are watching. You read so much into the simplest of movements, like the tilt of a head. As you can imagine, though, it's quite a challenge for the person wearing the mask. And it gets so much more complex when you have two, three, or five actors on stage wearing larval masks, with no one being able to see what anyone else is doing. You're also not supposed to speak. Which again, makes it all the more enjoyable for the audience.
A side note here, which I may or may not have written about when I learned it in first term: In English we call the people watching the play an audience, which actually emphasizes that they are listening. In many other languages they're called spectators, which emphasizes the visual aspect. In English and American theatre, we tend to privilege language. In French and many other cultures, it's the physical that gets the emphasis, or certainly more of it. (This probably explains the French appreciation for Jerry Lewis. Whether it justifies it or not is another question. Do they love Jim Carrey, too, I wonder?)
As the week progressed, we worked with masks that were more and more human looking, though still very cartoony and all unpainted. And they did have eye holes, though tiny ones and not always in the most useful places. It's a real discipline to learn to do very little but to do it with a lot of focus. There seems to have been a theme in our work of late of doing less. It's becoming more Zen in a way, you could say.
I keep trying to include photos in my posts, but thus far have been unable to. But if you google larval masks you can get some pictures, including this one which also has another Lispa student's comments about the kind of thing we do in class.
All of this makes me recall one of my frustrations last term, having no idea what I look like performing. Working with larval masks takes that to a whole new level! But I'm really enjoying it and feel like I'm learning a lot. Plus, I just enjoy the mask work generally, as hard as it is. I'm less self-conscious, somehow freer when my face is hidden. We're also making our own masks this week, as I mentioned in my last post. I've made mine out of the kind of material that they used to to make plaster casts with. This morning I sealed my mask with glue. Tonight and tomorrow I'll paint it. (No school tomorrow. Bank holiday.) And then on Tuesday we start to see where we go from here.
Sunday, April 5, 2009
Breezy like spring
OK, it's been a long time, but here's a quick breeze through the past few weeks.
Robin arrived on March 18 and is here for just a few days more. It's really great to have her here. She's been able to come and see our presentations each Monday. The first Monday we presented "a journey through a landscape with materials." My group used tupperware lids of various sizes and created a seascape, with crabs, a seagull, waves (of course), a surfer, fish, and a sting ray. Other groups' choices included umbrellas (theirs included a moon landing as well as a seascape), feather dusters (eventually forming a peacock), three-ring binders (a land- and seascape), bananas (dolphins, fish, and a shark in yet another seascape), and paper (sorry, I couldn't quite make out the landscape or story). The second Monday was animals behaving as animals do, without imposing stereotypes or much of a story (monkeys, moose, meerkats, lions, vultures, wolves). Those were great fun to watch for me as well, because I didn't perform, since I'd missed classes the previous Tuesday-Friday when Robin and I went to Cornwall. I must say I was impressed with the quality of the work that my classmates did. It's really easy to overhumanize animals--especially monkeys and apes--and they did a great job of including a lot of details without overdoing it. At the end of last term when we saw the second-years do their presentations I was so aware of the gap between what they were accomplishing and what we were, but since then there have been moments when I've glimpsed how this group of first-years can be very good indeed.
Tomorrow is the third set of presentations since Robin came, so she'll get to see one more round. This time the task is to take the animals and put them in a human situation. This is where it gets even harder to let animals still be animals without Disneyfying them. I'll write later to tell you how it went.
Cornwall was wonderful. We spend four nights in St. Ives, which is on the Atlantic coast, a lovely little cobblestone town with a long history of attracting artists. The Tate museum even has a branch there. (There are two Tates in London.) We got a really good deal on a self-catering apartment right in the center of town, and it was great to get out of London and have time just for the two of us, walking on the sand, taking photos, visiting art galleries. One evening we went to a bar that had a mixed bill of entertainers, original songwriters doing their own songs and a few old standards, as well as two local poets reciting their work. Another night we took in a movie, The Young Victoria. If you're in England when a movie about the monarchy is playing, you have to see it, right?
This coming week we begin working with what are called larval masks. Not quite sure what this will entail, but apparently a larval mask is a big white mask with no eye holes, so "your whole body becomes your eyes." Tune in for an update later. Today Robin and I got together with a few classmates to begin making our own (non-larval) masks. As with everything here, the teachers didn't give us any specific instructions on what to do or how to do it. The masks are due in a week, when we'll find out which ones work and which ones don't, and why.
As for London, it's actually an attractive city at this time of year. We've only had a day or two of rain since Robin has been here, and lots is in bloom. From this visit she has no idea of how dreary it really is in winter here, but even in this weather Robin can see what I meant when I described living in this damp and dark house. After leaving the mask-making session at a classmates flat today (and having had dinner at other Lispians' flat a week ago) she said, "Why do all your friends live in such nice places and you live in such a pit?"
Sigh.
Robin arrived on March 18 and is here for just a few days more. It's really great to have her here. She's been able to come and see our presentations each Monday. The first Monday we presented "a journey through a landscape with materials." My group used tupperware lids of various sizes and created a seascape, with crabs, a seagull, waves (of course), a surfer, fish, and a sting ray. Other groups' choices included umbrellas (theirs included a moon landing as well as a seascape), feather dusters (eventually forming a peacock), three-ring binders (a land- and seascape), bananas (dolphins, fish, and a shark in yet another seascape), and paper (sorry, I couldn't quite make out the landscape or story). The second Monday was animals behaving as animals do, without imposing stereotypes or much of a story (monkeys, moose, meerkats, lions, vultures, wolves). Those were great fun to watch for me as well, because I didn't perform, since I'd missed classes the previous Tuesday-Friday when Robin and I went to Cornwall. I must say I was impressed with the quality of the work that my classmates did. It's really easy to overhumanize animals--especially monkeys and apes--and they did a great job of including a lot of details without overdoing it. At the end of last term when we saw the second-years do their presentations I was so aware of the gap between what they were accomplishing and what we were, but since then there have been moments when I've glimpsed how this group of first-years can be very good indeed.
Tomorrow is the third set of presentations since Robin came, so she'll get to see one more round. This time the task is to take the animals and put them in a human situation. This is where it gets even harder to let animals still be animals without Disneyfying them. I'll write later to tell you how it went.
Cornwall was wonderful. We spend four nights in St. Ives, which is on the Atlantic coast, a lovely little cobblestone town with a long history of attracting artists. The Tate museum even has a branch there. (There are two Tates in London.) We got a really good deal on a self-catering apartment right in the center of town, and it was great to get out of London and have time just for the two of us, walking on the sand, taking photos, visiting art galleries. One evening we went to a bar that had a mixed bill of entertainers, original songwriters doing their own songs and a few old standards, as well as two local poets reciting their work. Another night we took in a movie, The Young Victoria. If you're in England when a movie about the monarchy is playing, you have to see it, right?
This coming week we begin working with what are called larval masks. Not quite sure what this will entail, but apparently a larval mask is a big white mask with no eye holes, so "your whole body becomes your eyes." Tune in for an update later. Today Robin and I got together with a few classmates to begin making our own (non-larval) masks. As with everything here, the teachers didn't give us any specific instructions on what to do or how to do it. The masks are due in a week, when we'll find out which ones work and which ones don't, and why.
As for London, it's actually an attractive city at this time of year. We've only had a day or two of rain since Robin has been here, and lots is in bloom. From this visit she has no idea of how dreary it really is in winter here, but even in this weather Robin can see what I meant when I described living in this damp and dark house. After leaving the mask-making session at a classmates flat today (and having had dinner at other Lispians' flat a week ago) she said, "Why do all your friends live in such nice places and you live in such a pit?"
Sigh.
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