Autumn Makes Me Sing

"Change is a measure of time and, in the autumn, time seems speeded up. What was is not, and never again will be; what is is change." -Edwin Way Teale

Autumn has always felt very enchanting to me. I die for all things pumpkin flavored, I love deep saturated colors like maroon and teal, and I never met a scarf I didn't like. As a child I loved taking walks with my mother and picking up acorns (I picked up 100 of them for a project in kindergarten) and big fallen leaves, though few of them actually change color in my hometown of Houston. The sun always seems to multiply in size and adopt a slightly more orange hue, as if to mirror the jack-o-lanterns grimacing on our stoops. And let's not forget the harvest moon, who knowingly glows over the winds of change and falling leaves. She makes her life out of change and she gently attempts to shed light for we who do not accept transition quite as gracefully.

Perhaps it is the new chill in the air, maybe it is the dichotomy of our surfeited pantries against the barren tree limbs, or it could be the ominous threat of the inevitable winter, but there is something uniquely nostalgic and tender about this season. We are faced with having to simultaneously accept ends and beginnings, whether or not we are ready.

How befitting that this is the season in which we celebrate Halloween! It makes perfect sense that this would be the season during which we would fear the return of dead spirits. Whether or not you believe in the afterlife, I'll bet you experience the ghosts of your memories in the fall. I find it both intriguing and wonderful that we come to terms with the heartache of change by adopting a new identity altogether. Theatre comes from ancient rituals that involve the worshipers becoming possessed by the spirits around them. Anyone who has been alone in an empty theatre knows how haunted it feels - the spirits of all the characters who have ever lived in that space are still there, waiting to be realized once again through the body of a performer. Ask your actor friends, and if they are anything like me then they will tell you that characters stay with them for a while after a show has closed. The autumn is like this on a larger scale. We are changing, like it or not, with the leaves and the winds and the earth - for better or worse is always yet to be seen.

Now all I want to do is watch Chocolat.

"Gold's father is dirt, yet it regards itself as noble."

So all my horoscopes lately keep talking about words and how now is a good time for me to amp up my verbal communications. The only thing is....I have to have something to say first!

In my yoga teacher training one of our teachers has a habit of asking us questions like "Is yoga a technique or a skill?" or "Are we becoming stronger or more powerful?" The first day we had him I felt intimidated by him, and jarred by the starkness of his questions and his penetrating stare which would relent only after one of us choked out an answer (which usually sounded more like a question). However, after four classes in a row with him I have become very fond of this pedagogical approach. Why? Because it forces us to put words to the ideas we felt we were drowning in. Also, because we felt lost, we were then able to feel found. This makes sense coming from a man who constantly discusses the idea of a "Language of Opposites." It also made me trust him because he led us somewhere very specific and concrete after what seemed like an eternity of trick questions and abstract concepts.

So that's an interesting way to live, no? And what an amazing amount of faith it takes! To be comfortable being lost, believing that one day you will arrive at a clearing in the woods, to have complete credence that someone is leading you, despite your ignorance as to where. Of course this cannot be the only principle by which one lives if they hope to accomplish certain goals, but in the times when I feel like I'm metaphorically running in circles while wearing heels and tripping over road blocks after I've already run the wrong way into a dangerous neighborhood in the middle of the night without my cellphone or any money....it's nice to think there's a pot of gold waiting somewhere (PS - I've noticed the pots of gold rarely tend to wait on the other side of something as lovely as a rainbow, but more like on the other side of a tight rope suspended over a pit of angry alligators).

My acting mentor often says "Invite disaster!" I'm not sure it needs an invitation, but like a good hostess, I will always be ready to entertain it.

Representation

So it is election time, which has me thinking a lot about how we choose to represent ourselves. If anybody has the job of representing more people than they possibly ever could, it has to be the leader of a nation.

President Obama won many of us over because we felt that he could represent more of us than his predecessors and competitors. This may be true, but of course there will always be those who feel that they are not being emblamatized well or even at all. Right now the Sikh community in America is urging President Obama to reconsider his decision to cancel a trip to the Golden Temple in Amritsar, India. The president made his decision after questions were raised about how he would cover his head when entering the center. He has spent years trying to disassociate himself from being representative of Muslims and the mere thought of images circulating of him with his head covered was probably enough to give his advisors heart attacks. (Sikhs are not Muslim by the way, but rather practice a faith which draws from Hindu and Islamic beliefs)

Lying crumpled on a table, a piece of cloth has no meaning. But swaddle a baby in it, put a picnic on top of it, drape it over a piece of artwork, a bed, or a table, wrap it around your head...and suddenly the cloth takes on meaning. After performing any of these functions, the cloth is still the cloth. It is you that has changed. I think this is beautiful, but at the same time we have to be careful of situations like this. Why does a piece of cloth have the power to change a person's mind? Whatever power we give to an object, it still has the possibility of being nothing more than the piece of crumpled cloth.

Matters of state aside, we represent one another in very personal ways. Whether we mean to or not, we represent our families, our teachers, our mentors, our bosses, our hometowns, our choices; in fact, we ourselves are representations of every moment that has ever come before. I certainly know that I tear up any time one of my parents or mentors looks at me and tells me "I am so proud of you." They have done so much right by me, and it makes me extremely happy to know that they feel I am doing the same for them. In this way we represent one another.

I think I still have Genet on the brain.

Poor Lonely Blog

Dear Blog,

Again I have to apologize for neglecting you. This is so typically me - I get really excited about something...then it fizzles out. Blog, I started you because I felt that I wasn't using my mind enough, and you helped me stay opinionated and articulate. Thanks! It just turns out that over the past month or so I've had PLENTY going on to keep my mind busy.

I've been working on a project with a director I really love, and who also happens to be absolutely out of her mind. Her plan is to have 4 installments of "open rehearsals" throughout a year of her interpretation of Jean Genet's The Maids. I love Genet and love this play and have been helping her do research for a few months now. This 1st installment is turning out to be more of an art instillation than a theatre piece, and I love it. I'm having a hard time letting go though...I mean I know this is meant to be a rehearsal, and completely imperfect in nature, but the performer in me just hates that. I suppose I'll just have to stay in the moment with it. After the 4 installments she will either use our exploration to create a finished piece or she will use it as research for a staging of the complete text, or maybe she won't do anything with it at all. Who knows!

My lovely blog, I am also starting my yoga teacher training program this upcoming weekend, and I am VERY excited about it! I found out that the director of the program is actually from Port Washington, where I used to live, and that we share Lisa Bondy from Om Sweet Om as our most influential yoga teacher! She is also a performer and studied Suzuki and Viewpoints with the Siti Company for 3 years. It really is a small world!

I will have to be doing written assignments for my training, and I will try and put all of those assignments up here. I'll spare you any that I think are either poorly written or boring.

Talk to you later!
April