I prefer to whisper in poems rather than speak in riddles.
Most people would find my natural tongue confusing, but knowing that you select few who think with a different lens inside the camera of the mind understand my words, I speak to you all through my personal literature.
The pages that I have grown to call home have up and abandoned me: and I find myself in a sea full of novel yet alien worlds where my words neither act as shield nor sword. Drowning in the sea of technology that not only surpasses and exceeds my knowledge of the world--- I slowly sink into the doubt of being an anchor to a sailing ship.
But before I continue let me explain myself and my set of unusual circumstances that coincide with obstacles that have arisen and obstructed my path like a road on apple maps.
I'm in theatre.
It is a curse in which I have inflicted upon myself.
Loving the philosophical and intellectual world of dramaturgy & playwriting, I had freely souled my soul to the verse and prose of this year’s main-stage production.
I have been fairly familiar with William Shakespeare's: The Tempest, but as the chance to dissect and analyze the play came closer to my grasps, I had jumped ahead of the starting line and finished my construe earlier than due. I found myself jobless and useless.
And now as tech week approaches I find myself in the same position as before. These fingers were made for creating lyrical images, not building these massive towers of stature and power. A set is a key component to any production. Fearing that my clumsiness (I have severe gravity issues) shall conflict with the needs of the production I have shied away from any and all chances of "building".
Yet it seems to me that on the tapestry the fates have so carefully weaved, manual labor and physical injuries are in my near future: and sadly even in the present.
Having my lack of balance and finesse get to me once again, I found myself hobbled with an injured ankle. However, the show rapidly approaches us and every hand is needed on deck. Lately I have found myself cowering behind the means of sheet music and educating the actors in proper technique of music... which also has not been going well on my part.
Bound by my unconscious fear of anarchy, I constantly find myself abiding the rules so intensely that there is no room for error. And when error occurs it occurs as a bomb that destroys all safe walls I have built to protect me from such things.
My own reluctant will to be safe has become a guilt in which I use to protect others from having to deal with my falters.
But art is failing, as someone smart recently explained to me.
Art is about falling: and falling from the tallest mountain. You know you will end broken but on the way down you discover how to be fixed and how to fix others.
It is scary to jump of the cliffs of insanity but in a way, it is the feat in which one must conquer to know that sanity is a tangible thing.
I know that I want to be an artist but jumping off the bridge is something that has terrified me for the longest time.
I've been told that it feels like water; when it first splashes onto your face. Once you have leap off the diving board, it consumes you . When you touch the bottom of the glass it begins; that's when your lungs began to hurt.
I think that art is the metaphor for the burning in your lungs and you have to swim for your life to reach the top of the polar surface--- or maybe it's the moment right before you break through the watery barrier. All the colors and faces augmented and disoriented. But their beautiful. And then you come up and question the beauty around you... and think back to the glossed over watery images and ponder which reality you prefer.
And even when you don't know how to swim and only sink: you discover that the curiosity for existence makes you float to the surface. When your lungs stop hurting you know you've succeeded. But you want that feeling again so you go back and jump.
I guess that is the only way I can try to explain what art is...to me at least. It's a constant circle of exploring the universe in dangerous situations.
Exploring The Tempest has been, and is, a whirlpool with never ending laps to swim. I haven't discovered the glass bottom but I just need to keep drowning deeper to discover the balance of artist and student.
I can't cower behind my prose any longer: so I might as well fess up to it.
As you may have been wondering by this point, of why I am self-dubbed "The Non-tech Tech"... it is because my handicap label will be soon repealed and I must put my words to rest. I shall soon be building a set.
The process has already begun to a bright start. The designs of Lea Anillo and her husband Red have sprung from the pages of a model to the openness in which our stage has offered the design. The lumber has erected itself to upstanding platforms, and the 2'4'' pieces of wood have arranged themselves in such a way to form ladders and staircases. The silks have been hung in a wonderful knot, and are all draped over the electrics to form a cascade of perfect ivory white.
I look at this skeleton upon the once barren flat-- and just pray to whatever is up in the sky that I don't destroy this chance. I want to create and I need to complete what has been laid at my feet.
Dreaming of disasters have been no help to me... so I ask of anyone out there reading this:
How does a natural disaster do any good?
My mind chooses the obvious answer: it doesn't do any good.
But I choose the possibility that perhaps... maybe I'm not a disaster after all.
We'll just have to wait and see.
Sincerely,
The Non-tech Tech
