I'm Directing a Play(?)
& Other News From The Front
01 The Headline
I found myself directing my friend’s one-woman show opening July 4th weekend here in Portland - Lobotomommy (scroll down to the last section) - which i think i came up with the name/concept for in a text thread? - and they totally fucking ran with it and have created an epic dark sci fi comedy piece about modern motherhood.
It’s a good fire horse year thing to attach yourself to collaborative momentum, and find the people who have the power/qi/resources you do not, but that you can assist to the level of your constitution. Now obviously summer yang is peaking and the next few months will be about managing it’s decline (the dragon’s tail) and not constantly starting new things, but there is still time to cautiously and curiously open up to the possibilities of ACTION, even if last year’s snake qi was extremely closed and/or stagnant.
It’s been great to be able to use all the skills i learned and honed in san francisco bay area, and mix that with my nondual animist decoloniality in a creative way with an actor/writer/person who completely gets it, trusts the process, and has their own wisdom horse to ride. It’s in times like this that the old parable “too soon to tell” has its obvious clarity, as I had really closed the door on physical acting, teaching and other associated endeavors due to to the terrible confluences of fate, health, societal madness & stupidity and economics. Being in the creative process without the burden of also having to be the actor/writer etc is nice, because i find myself at my limit, in a good way, without feeling like i’m going to burn out.
It’s made me reconsider what is possible for me in this kind of creative space, the idea of an “idea doula” (cringe maybe but possibly accurate for my skillset and demeanor), and transitioning into Voice Over work as a means to sustain my head above the waterline in late stage povertyism. The road to any career change or even basic-ass survival in the current state of society and generational lack is long and ultimately fruitless in terms of access to meaningful resources, but this nightmare bardo is nothing if not a training area for miserable spirits that were forced into incarnation by other miserable spirits called parents/ancestors.
Working on a play about motherhood turns the corkscrew eye toward mothers and ancestors, and the naked hubris of hormonal youth which births children with no real stability. The baby producing madness of agricultural peoples just popping out kids as a war of attrition against time, oligarchy, patriarchy, malnutrition… (Hunter Gatherer peoples - matrifocal - have on average 1 kid every 4-5 years, while patriarchal agriculturalists have on aveerage about 1 kid per year.)
I’m not speaking ill of the dead or soon-to-be-dead, just musing about the fucking insanity of giving birth to children without having the actual means to nurture them in such a world. I’ve had to make my own kind of “peace” with incarnation, and i don’t recommend it — incarnation i mean. But we have to play the ball where it lands, including this many-faced hell realm.
Bottom line, some people get a good hand, and some people do not, and creating a society where those with good hands and bad hands assist each other, aka actual RECIPROCITY (gan ying) is potentially the only shot at sanity we have. It really does take a village, but that means being a villager, not a consumer, individual, or “influencer”. But no one really listens to what poor people have to say, do they?
Chop wood, carry water.
If you’re in the Portland area around the July 4th time, there are 4 shows, July 2-4th Show at 7:30pm & July 5th Show at 5pm, at Coho Theater in Northwest.
02 Assorted Tings
Rope incense from women owned worker initiatives in the Himalayas (amazon link, non-affiliate). If you have an incense burner with a small hole for putting stick incense in straight up, you can jury rig a large paperclip as a hook for the incense like so:
Finally finished the animated series Scavenger’s Reign. Weird, cool, horror tinged, very creative.
Now to finally finish Bee & Puppycat - also very creative, but with 10,000% more sweetness & whimsy.
A Garden of Spheres, Volume 1 by Linnea Sterte is up for an Eisner award. Linnea’s illustration is peak. Unreal stuff. Their instagram’s here.
Elastic magazine, a premium, once-a-year art magazine project. Issue #2 is out now. My favorite kind of art-book-thing: graphic design, illustration, speculative fiction/writing/poetry, archival documentation…
Eunoia By Christian Bök, a really bonkers book to read out loud. Pure linguistic shenanigans. Each chapter contains short paragraphs using only one vowel sound. This shit does amazing things to the brain, mind and tongue.
Some of my past writing was recently published in this anthology: Defending the World Tree, A Journal of Animist Awakening Volume 1 from Severed Branches Press. Thanks for including me!
03 Mish Mash
Having some brand new dental issues, will be at the dentist a lot for a while. Not fun. Totally derailed my already perpetually derailed flow this last week and still trying to come back to some kind of non-anxious state. But this also coincides with the dreaded first of the month and rent being due so, difficult.
Just taught class 2 of 4 in the seasonal lab intensive co-hosted with Kaila June of IMS somatics. Teaching online is a total bummer and i’m remembering why i have such a love-hate relationship with it, no offense to the students, they are all great. More fuel to the fire of trying to to switch careers. The healing/teaching industry is the pits tbh, even if i am good at it and what i teach is technically valuable, the economic, marketing and audience capture part of it is fucking awful. Totally unsustainable and similar to giving up a career in theater, i now have to work through the material and emotional nuances of giving up of this career i’ve cobbled together to get out from under the thumb of wage slavery and bosses and time cards. Incarnation in the American Underclass is really stupid.
Rad that you are directing!