When will I stop peeing in hallways? Each night returning to the 9 meter dream, camping out in the city. One morning a mouse drowned in my toilet. I awoke to see it struggling, quivering in the dirty water..helpless, as I was to help it. I closed the lid on the toilet. A miniature of my existence, helpless, drowning, glamour-less.
I had been told multiple times at Lecoq how wrong I was the way my body didn't expand to bear the mask, that I rushed through improvisations, or, at times, certain teachers wouldn't respond to me at all, had already stopped believing that I was capable of growth and therefore didn't talk to me whatsoever. I couldn't respond to the criticism, the "provocations' because it was a chorus of voices, like my mother, telling me that I was wrong. What do you do with these provocations. Puzzle with them, make work out of it. Well, if you are a student, on a grant, with a benefactor or a series of benefactors, you can have the time the invaluable gift of creating work of the poor... stage pieces with minimal props, manipulating found objects, creating soundtracks from metal pots and wires. I found that the most prized productions were often, not always, constructed by students who were solely in Paris as students. Who had their mornings or afternoons for rehearsal. Could show their dedication to the artistic struggle by solely being an artist, without economic inhibition.
Or, binge-eat and nanny thank-less children who pee on your stockings and nearly break your nose with plastic swords. Cycle, repeat....too exhausted to rinse. I played the counter role to the crisp, well-tailored, parisian sophisticate . The wealthy living in a dream reality where they spoke slowly and each person, lays on their words, lounging and without motivation. Listless, breathy, without duty. I had wanted to come to art school to be inspired by unconventional creative license..Insanity that is condoned. But the lower middle-class duty shrouded my freedom to make openly..I felt bound by duty and work..very germanic. Tell me what to do and I will put my head down and do it. The creative process is one where you advocate for yourself. You get nowhere without self advocacy. I found myself in a whirlwind of conflicting doctrines/methodologies/ideals. One being Lecoq-ian "Push the space", make your presence known, advocate for your ideals the true work you want to make, and the other the doctrines/annals of Paris..squeeze into a box, hide, scurry, take arms in the face, hands in the crotch..disappear on the subway...microwave your bagged solo entree.I saw now that the Parisian romance was saved for wealthy girls on vacation in the city of love. I can’t afford my nails being done or the time to comb my hair. Paris tells me to shut up..to close the space..be small so I can fit in the metro train, my clothes, my room. Be small. Then fight for your space on stage to sit. It is amazing that such a sophisticated world tears you..breaks you…makes you a raw wild animal..unless you are good to look at and have the money and time to maintain..which I don’t, didn’t..could. But there are loopholes, and anyone who’s waited in a line in Paris knows that the loopholes are dark and ceaseless like the windmills of your mind..Intellectualism, survival of the fittest, meltdown of the childhood trauma victim. At least I know what my limits are..what environments condone my growth..what conditions I need in place to create…love and belief..Wait. I already knew I needed those conditions..I guess I just needed a 9-month long whopping aching blinding reminder.
Sigourney Weaver said that art school is a waste..a tortuous place where she and Meryl Streep lost themselves..were stripped and afraid to create. Do artists need to go through this experience? To reach the bare brittle bones their basest being so that nothing hurts them any longer. Criticism sleeps and you can create because you’ve been so badly burned bruised beaten you don’t care if people like it or not..it is for you and not them. Just make and let people tell you you can’t hold the space. Just take a loud dump in the stairwell toilet. They’ll all hear.
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