We are coming up on the 2nd in-house visitation of our MCA residency, and it is a workshop with the renowned Butoh artist Diego Pinon Sepp.  I have not yet met the man, I have been corresponding with his stateside facilitator Nicole LeGette, and today, she told me that some of my plans for the weekend will not work for Diego.  Mainly, he doesnt want any observers, only participants, and he doesnt feel comfortable with the process being videotaped.  This creates some problems for me, for various reasons: too many people, our documentary, the feature article the Reader was going to do on the workshop, etc…and when I looked inside myself for irk, though I had a moment when I felt my will being stifled, there was some, but to be honest, mostly I understand it.  Ideally, I insist on privacy, and participation, its the Schroedingers Cat thing, observation changes the thing being observed.  At the MCA I have compromised this because of the situation, people are invited to come in and visit and observe, and it was not a problem during our first workshop.  I did notice, inside myself, at that time, that observers were very evident to me, and I had a bad moment when I felt that the thing we were doing was not going well.  I do tend towards constant external evaluation bounce, anyone watching mysteriously becoming a projected part of my interior monologue of self-criticism.  So even though I am bothered by not getting what I think I want, I am kind of pleased to be protected in the process.  I have absolutely no idea what to expect.  This is a totally unusual experience for me.  At 50, having an artistic opportunity that is truly a mystery to me is quite thrilling.  I am scared shitless, dont get me wrong.  My fat ass will be hanging out there to dry, I know that for sure.  I have no physical strength, my body is ungainly and slow, I feel off my game, and I will have the pressure (self imposed) to make sure my people dont somehow come up short, or hate the man, or something like that.  But all that being said, I am just going to show up and do my best and allow something to happen.  Fuckin’ A, if I can chaperone two parents out of this world and one kid into it, I can fuckin do a weekend workshop. 

As the residency with MCA continues, and more things become clarified, I am really excited to add one more facet of the complex gem that is my artistic practice, and that is being a teaching artist.  Though I might cynically say that if I were stinkin rich I would stop teaching because I only do it for money, it is, in fact, a big part of my life, and my art making mind.  It does sap me, I won’t deny that, but I am finding more and more ways to fold it back in and use the fact and the resources of being a teacher to my artistic advantage.  All that being said, the semester has just started, and I am thinking a lot about how to juggle and spread the wealth of the MCA experience around.  Trying to bring students there, as part of the work, trying to use the fact of being there to give me some traction in the academic world.  Things are in the works on all these scores, and I am feeling less exhausted this year than I normally do. 

At Crooked Mouth rehearsal last night, there was a stink and a moth.  Not going to deny it, it was there.  I kept apologizing for it, saying, “I know there is a stink, I am sorry about it, and the moth, but thats how it is, gentlemen…”  They politely demurred, but I knew they were judging, they were thinking ill of my family, my housekeeping, I wished that they knew how hard I worked at sitting at the computer editing video all day, how I slaved to put the Martinos pizza on the table, or couch as the case may be, that my housekeeping kept getting in the way of my rehearsals, and if one thing has to go, it’s self evident which thing it must be.  I searched after they left, for the stinking thing, I know where the moths hang out, in all the cereal and in the treat boxes on the counter.  I wondered anew why, when the treat boxes are closeable and airtightable, they never seem to be closed or airtight…oh well, I went to bed in the cloud of unknowing.  Then this morning, when Stefan allowed me to sleep in, and I staggered out at 7:30, a full 90 minutes past the regular up and at em time, I couldnt stand the stink a minute longer and I went on a search, and guess what?  I found it.  It was Lena’s fault after all…I knew it!  It wasnt the failure of my good enough mothering, it was the zipped shut lunch box with the festering treat left over from the gig on friday night when the kids ate everything but the thing that was now stinking up the joint.  I threw it away and thought about how the life of an artist is so difficult. 

At the Curious meeting the other day, Kathleen said, “wow, you should just video tape yourself talking about the big project and that could be the beginnings of it…” and I thought, actually, I wouldn’t want to do that, but I might want to write about all the things flying around in my mind…Bivens and I emailing back and forth about films to look at for that attention sculpting, me thinking about Altman’s “The Wedding” particularly, him mentioning Tati’s “Playtime”.  The audience has to make choices within the frame as to what to look at, the overweening omniscent authorial eye is not shoving it down their throats and saying “this is the meaning”.  How we can create that on a stage is the question, and using the largeness of the MCA stage, faces kind of lose their immediacy, so thinking about strategies to bring the faces into play a bit more.  The next step for me, I see clearly, is to get the first workshop dates and times nailed down, the participants, and a budget to the museum, so we can proceed on a planning level.  The participation of the choreographer who is a Butoh mover is also something to nail down…got a little overwhelmed yesterday what with all the Thesis crap happening (left out something big on the postcard, ooops…) and yet very engaged.