2) ABC: Advice, Birdsong & Co-Creation
Fri 7 June, 2024
listening to: ‘Butterfly Blue,’ by Mallrat; ‘For Those I Love,’ self-titled album & ‘Microcastle’ by Deerhunter.
reading: ‘Love song of Alfred J Prufrock’ by T S Eliot.
buying: nothing, happily, in the inherent anti-consumerism of the countryside.
A DRAWING EXERCISE
Fold your paper in half twice and unfold. Four segments the same size. In the first, draw something simple which you can see without having to move from wherever you are. Headphones, a chair, a flower? I’ll choose a mug.
Then, without thinking too hard, write ten ideas for how to change it on the back of your page. Mug has two handles, mug has another mug on top, mug is melted like mozzarella. Mug explodes so parts of mug splinter across the page.
Once you reach ten, ask a friend to choose one of your ideas. If no friend handy, number your ideas and use a random number generator from the internet. A random number generator can be a friend, after all.
In the second panel, draw the idea which has been selected. Even if you ‘can’t draw it.’ How do i draw a mug with the properties of mozzarella cheese? Guess I’ll just have to try. And then, ten more ideas. Rinse and repeat the process until you’ve filled all four segments of the page. Good times.
FOR THOSE I LOVE
Welcome back… if you’ve just tuned in, you’re listening to Harley-in-Europe FM. He’s visited the continent six times in his life for durations ranging from only-9-days to an idea-impregnate 9-whole-months. And now, lucky number seven, he’ll reside here for 4 and a half years. 9 semesters. 18 seasons of love.
Various musings ahead, a blend of personal and pedagogical that hopes to be of interest. Most common feedback from post numero uno: “I loved it, and I also didn’t make it all the way through.” Lol, so it goes, yolo, I’ll try write less, etc.
It’s been lovely watching beloved names subscribe to this blog during the week… it’s strength-giving, imagining particular readers as I let words flow onto this early-morning page. Like, ‘hey Mia subscribed, maybe she’ll enjoy this sentence more if it blooms into its most poetic, like a time-lapse tulip!’ or ‘Hey, Philip’s here, I should include the most inane theatrical antics of my week!’ or ‘my mum and my aunt have both travelled Europe, I wonder if this writing will make them reminisce.’
This subheading borrows its title from an Irish rapper I’ve been listening to a lot. His self-titled album about his friend’s death certainly not an easy listen but a portal straight into the heart of the power of art; one of the best tools we have for healing, processing, being. Probably why every culture throughout history has made art, performance & music, as fringe as they may sometimes seem.
”TO SING IN YOGHURT”
A French expression for when you don’t know the lyrics of a song so you make up nonsense syllables and sing them. Janne, the cook here, taught me this phrase as we were cleaning the kitchen and singing along to some shockingly crass French rap she put on. Her food is so incredible that we’ve all taken to saying “N'importe quoi!” every time she brings out a new meal. “Nonsense!”
So delicious, it’s simply nonsense!
HOW MANY PEOPLE CAN YOU LOVE?
Surely there’s no limit. Surely. Of course, ‘how many people can you have a weekly one-hour phone call with?’ becomes coldly finite, fast.
I’m embarrassed to admit that I made a google sheets called ‘Pokedex of Friends,’ to try catalogue all my European friends. It’s been a while since I was on this side of the world and I was trying to remember the wonderful people I’ve met over my life, think about who I should get back in touch with.
Dunbar’s answer is 150 - he described it as "the number of people you would not feel embarrassed about joining uninvited for a drink if you happened to bump into them in a bar." He suggested most of us devote 40 percent of our social time to an inner core of 5 people. It does resonate with me when people say that ‘we are a product of the 5 people we’re closest to.’ Kind of like the ‘you are what you eat’ of friendship.
After the core 5, there’s apparently a next circle of 10 more people to whom we devote another 20 percent of our time. Strange to think about it all in numbers, really. It’s not like you just feel nothing for person number 151. The Mewtwo of your life, if we want to continue with my weirdo Pokedex thing.
Personally, I get such a rush of specific energy from every different person. I feel like i’m receiving their uniqueness as a perfume when I encounter them, physically or even digitally, such a whiff of ‘oh yeah you’re like THISSSS.’
WISDOM FROM SIMÓN
So I’m here at a performance-making lab run by Kaimera, a live art company based in Paris and New York. 10 days mastering theatre which happens all around the audience, not just in front of them (immersive), which uses non-traditional performance spaces & listens and responds to those spaces (in situ) and where the audience have roles & tasks, say & do things (participatory).
I’ve been around a lot of incredible directors, drama teachers, facilitators, but I’ve never seen someone run theatre exercises quite with the skill of Simón. He makes even the simplest and silliest game seem important, profound, as if it contains the keys for how we must live.
More and more, I sense that great facilitators have an integrity which stretches beyond the moments they’re working with the group. Integrity as connected to ‘integrated,’ all the parts of your life linked to the way you show up as a leader, a teacher, an artist, etc. How you dress, what you choose to write in your journal, how you walk down the street when nobody is around, what snacks you eat. It might sound like a lot of pressure, but I don’t think a great presence can be switched on. It needs to emerge from a congruence of being.
I remember a sunglasses salesman in Barcelona. He was so good at his job that while none of our group had planned on buying sunnies, everyone walked out with a pair. He took the time to connect with each of us, to find the exact sunglasses which would suit them. In the course of engaging with us, he organically brought up his house, his family, like those parts of his life linked to this world here of the sunglasses hut. You could just tell that he didn’t clock off at 5pm and immediately call a friend to say: ‘I hate sunglasses, I hate my job.’
A few notes from the Lab:
- Many people don’t feel seen in their day to day lives, thus, eye contact in immersive work can be powerful.
- A careful ‘threshold’ is vital, how people enter and cross over into this performance space. Audiences must acclimatise to the environment of the show, get a sense of how this world works, what the rules are, what their role is, and most importantly trust that they are safe (even in a ‘horror’ experience).
- The magical element of live performance is that it brings us together. Audience and performers, all connected through the advent of this work unfolding. Held in connection for a moment in time, and thus forever joined in shared experience. This is what is so exciting about making live art.
- When the audience is collectively responsible for something, there is tension, everyone is engaged. Nobody is passive. For example, the audience together needs to use their phone lights to ensure a character is always lit.
- ‘Make a show which asks a question rather than giving an answer.’
NO SMALL THING
It’s spelled MIN-U-SCULE not MIN-I-SCULE… are you freaking kidding me !?!!?
TAKING A BREATH WITH A MINUSCULE SECTION FROM MY JOURNAL
What’s feeling nice, upon waking to the Normandy birds singing their lil French birdy hearts out, is to still feel supremely connected to so many legends from home. Perhaps that will fade, become more heart-wrenching as time goes on and the physical absence of friends is felt. Perhaps empty chairs at the dinner table assigned roles. Perhaps walking down the street, feet in step with absence. Perhaps realising its impossible to cycle to Georgia’s house from here. And so on.
As much as I hate to say it, I do feel an affection for the online realm and what it enables. I’m as down on toxic facebook as the next person, but I do love putting something out there, never quite knowing who will respond. Often it’s some unexpected person who I was closest to in a different chapter. Sometimes, this prompts a brief reconnect. Allows for old lives to entwine, spiral around one another like double helix. So, a glimmer of goodwill for insidious social medias.
What do you think about all that, gleefully singing birds out the window?
I guess i’ve set myself up for some sort of ‘tweeting’ pun here.
GRATEFUL
For the cows, for the insects buzzing in the summer air. For Eric’s guitar, which he’s been letting me play this week. For my remote work, which is so utterly flexible. For messages, for co-creation, for invitations. For the efficacy of simple practices like listing gratitude.
ME AND ANNA MADE PETER OYSTEN AN ‘OYSTER SHELL’ SHAPED THANK-YOU CARD. LOW HANGING FRUIT, BUT I’M GLAD WE DID IT.
A beloved theatre lecturer I had, Peter Oysten (R.I.P. <3) said many great things. One that’s stuck with me is: ‘life involves buying tickets for the next train while riding the current train.’ We must cast our mind to future planning, while also relishing the present. Enjoying the scenery out the window of the ‘train’ we’re riding on, while scribbling ideas in our notebook for which train we’ll ride next.
In the case of Tuesday morning, I was buying a literal train ticket. From Poitiers to Toulouse. I wrenched my mind from the present carriage of experience, this bustling breakfast table, to consider the tracks of my future. As we all must, sometimes. Or, at least, it’s hard not to. There’s an argument for living in the moment, leaving your future un-tetrissed with scheduled blocks. Personally I feel that making awesome things happen requires careful planning. Behind every great happening is an ever greater admin hour-of-power. To never plan is liberating, and definitively “life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans,” but purely going-with-the-flow can see one arrive at a train station to discover that all the train tickets for the week have sold out.
In an artist’s life, the need to ‘buy tickets for the next train while on the train’ seems paramount. There’s always the project into which you’re currently pouring your energy, but you mustn’t forget upcoming forays: apply for that grant for the thing you’ll make in two years time, jump onto that call to scheme with a later-in-the-year collaborator. Even teleport back into trains of the past, replying to sales inquiry emails regarding work from ages ago.
I’ve navigated literal and figurative train-ception a lot, and learned some lessons the hard way. So although I’m arriving at Toulouse at 2.30pm, before I book a train leaving Toulouse at 3.30pm, i double check which stations within Toulouse I’m arriving at and departing from. It’s happened before that I’ve assumed a big city will just have one main station for interstate arrivals and departures, like Southern Cross station in Melbourne. Then, to my dismay, I’ve wound up sprinting across Paris, say, from one major train station to another. Panting, red-faced, heavy backpack, the opposite of Parisienne chic.
Let me try my best to clumsily link this wisdom with the metaphor. As well as balancing present-moment mindfulness with future planning, one must pay attention to the transfer points. Being on the trains is pretty smooth, it’s usually in the transition from this train to the next that one might encounter problems. Alright, let me disembark before I crash this allusion entirely. Choo choo!
BUY MORE STOCK IN ROSES
In a coma of butter and sugar, involuntarily having drifted off into a white sea, fromage blanc, lounging outside on the lawn in a deck chair… visions arrive. A mostly white artwork with the most immaculate 3D gilded frame covered in real flowers, crocheted flowers, clay flowers. An intricate pink bouquet bursting in all directions, stems twisting well off of the fancy gold frame. The border as the art, a scented masterpiece hanging out on the fringes of a mediocre plain white mess. Something in it, maybe, add it to the list in any case; at the time I felt grateful for all the sugar for sending my brain there, the sunshine.
GREENER GRASS 2
We toast glasses of rosé at dinnertime, in a few short days these creatives from all over the world feel like family. The days are long and intensive, but collaborative and satisfying, and we’ve slipped into the routine of them like a rooftop pool. It’s pretty nice in here, could happily not emerge for a long while!
But one must always hop out again, sadly. Sarah switches from talking about the VR/AR/dance space she’s working in, the ‘spectrum of reality’ that contemporary artists now have to play with, to lament the fact this retreat shall end soon. We’re used to this, as creative types, projects are always temporary. This lifestyle, which we’ve gladly chosen, involves displacement. Moving on to the next. You become skilled at squeezing items into your backpack. At thieving meaning & nostalgia.. I’ll mail Sarah a letter next month like a long-lost friend.
Thieves like us wish for stability sometimes, but ultimately wouldn’t have it any other way. Aldous Huxley wrote about the ‘doors of perception,’ that perhaps dropping acid increases one’s empathy & creativity such that the mind is forever opened. I have wondered if a good 3-month solo travel trip works similarly, while acknowledging it’s not possible in many lives for various reasons. Solo travel is super scary! It does seem to gift a lasting shift of perspective, a whole new set of goalposts removed from societal expectations. My friend Imogen said it best, solo travel is like being a peeled prawn. Shell removed, feelings seeping into one’s skin more easily, and turbulence, and beauty, and growth.
TEACHING POETRY
Such an odd concept. A bit like teaching someone how to shower, or how to talk to their friends in a way that’s emotionally releasing. Or how to investigate one’s own soul. Still, there are certainly tools. And Thelma and I shall be co-running some workshops at a German festival next month, cool! During our little planning session, two pieces came to mind. One by Ezra Pound, a masterclass in putting two images side by side and letting the reader do the rest:
In a Station of the Metro
The apparition of these faces in the crowd:
Petals on a wet, black bough.
And a second, which I don’t think is actually a poem but part of a Steven Wright comedy routine. Yet, people have arranged it as if its a poem on Instagram-friendly tiles and I have to say that it’s as good as any short poem I’ve read:
Untitled
I was reading the dictionary.
I thought it was a poem
about everything.
I used to dismiss the super-short poem as not quite offering enough content to be meaningful. But I’m reconsidering. They certainly can pack a punch. And I like that they have so few words that they can be memorised verbatim and recalled, like a mantra or a turn of phrase. The kind of artform which you could easily fit in the back pocket of your mind, into your carry-on.
GREENER GRASS 3
On our rest day, a few of us noticed a sudden bunch emotions coming up. Outside of the soothing conveyor belt of routine, the mind gets frisky.
So, I think often of the Kurt Vonnegut quote ‘if this isn’t nice, what is?’ Speaking of pithy mantras one might store in their mind’s pockets. To truly not want to be in another place than the place one is. What a shimmering dream. Easier said than done. My pals talk about practicing LOMO, the Love Of Missing Out. Such a tricky and incredible thing to inhabit, to truly feel delight for the event you’re not attending, for the room you’re not in. Imagining the people, the situations, the fun, & actually feeling: ‘I love that that’s happening. I love that that place exists. I love that that person is bringing their beautiful thing to the world, even though we’re no longer close.’ LOMO, a lifelong art to practice.
BREADTH VS DEPTH
To settle into just one life is convenient. It’s what you’re meant to do. All the systems are structured for people who are living a single life. The government can write about you easily on the census. You can talk about yourself easily at dinner parties. But it’s never really been me.
I’m drawn to the documentary filmmaker life, coming into contact with all these other lives, inhaling various ways to approach reality. On video call, Yolan tells me about the joys, playfulness and exhaustion of being a new mum. She’s preparing to study horticulture. An IG message from Elin, who’s working at a reindeer park in Iceland, has her own studio to write films. Eric, on this theatre lab, is a singer/songwriter in Pennsylvania, hired to bring his sweet stringed stylings to restaurants and clubs. I made a 9 minute video of him singing, where I struggled to focus in many senses! It gives me life to flow, on the move myself, & coming into contact with all these fascinating souls. I want to sing, and write films, and be a mum! Sing in clubs, work with reindeers, own a beautiful property where I can start selling native plants. So ridiculous, to want all that.
Ridiculous, yes. Also, this approach holds breadth but not depth, as Robbie articulated well on a drive to Ballarat. Sadly, some live lives with neither a large range of experiences nor a deeply felt sense of one particular scene, theme, community. Instead, simply repeating something comfortable. “What we did, one day on a whim, has slowly become all we do.” Thanks, Tame Impala.
Still, comfortable definitely feels good. And perhaps the depth present in people’s lives isn’t immediately obvious. I guess that’s why its depth, hidden.
It’s possible to dive deep with a new person over the course of a 4-day festival. Perhaps you connect more thoroughly than with a peer you shared classrooms with for 4 years, but never stayed awake discussing God, holding hands supine listening to each other’s favourite song in full, confessing harebrained pipe dreams. Of course, there’s something in someone showing up for you repeatedly for years with which the most heartfelt festival connection cannot compete.
And now I’ve well and truly talked myself in circles and there’s nothing for it but to keep on with my whizzing-scenery breadth-heavy journey! More birdsong, as I type all these musings up, the babble of groups rehearsing on the lawn.
CARE VS EXPECTATIONS
I’m hurrying to the cottage called the ‘Gite,’ arms holding a tech scribble of projector, cords, phone, camera, zoom recorder. Shortly, it’s my turn to give a presentation. I’ve got twenty minutes to describe my art practice however I like. An accompanying slideshow was recommended, so I made one. Every night a couple of people go, thus we all get a proper sense of what each other does.
I pass Jonathan, the other Kaimera director, who says “good luck, I’ve got high expectations,” with a twinkle in his eye. I’ve known Jonathan for a few years, and so his gentle French smile isn’t intimidating when he says this. In fact, it’s motivating. It reminds me of attending teacher training, where they showed a graph with ‘care’ on one axis and ‘expectations’ on the other.
- Low care + low expectations = ‘doing nothing.’ Burn out, watching the clock, wanting the home time bell to go even more than the kids do.
- Low care + high expectations = ‘doing to.’ Strict, unfeeling, harshly telling people to hurry up and get the work done. No excuses.
- High care + low expectations = ‘doing for.’ Being the ‘cool teacher.’ Let’s just play games and watch a movie. Does anyone need a snack, let me get one for you.
- High care + high expectations = ‘doing with.’ Offering feedback, pushing people to excel, to develop, to understand how this task is relevant to them.
Anyone who has been a teacher has probably experienced themselves in all four roles at different times. Sometimes, all within the same one hour lesson.
WE ARE SO YOUNG NOW
There’s an old French theatre at the property here, and I got a real kick out of flipping through the costumes, the faded wooden sets, the big heavy lights with masking tape on them onto which someone had scribbled ‘ca ne fonctionne pas.’
We found speakers and a mixer that worked though, and suddenly and unexpectedly had turned the theatre into a dimly-lit club. Yuval and Uriel ran in as I was doing a soundcheck, blasting a remix of ‘So Young’ by The Corrs, a favourite song of my hairdresser in Melbourne. The three of us flailed in the dark, laughing. Perhaps this one will wear off quickly, but there’s certainly a kick from simply managing to do the things I already did but in this new overseas context where it seems that bit less likely to make them happen.
In making friends in my new life, I feel freshly aware of the privilege of someone wanting to connect. Back home I suppose I took it for granted that people would want to hang out, to become close. But in a new context the generosity of it becomes apparent. People have their full lives, their neatly stacked cupboards of friends and family and favourite TV shows and exercise and transport and work and weekly chess club and all that. To make a little space for you to fit in there, it’s no small thing. It’s so incredibly lovely.
Wow should I comment on your blog? Also will it come up under my name? This is the most geocitiescore moment of my life. Love u H, these updates are a delight!