Fits & Starts

Back in Cardiff ten days, and I've been busy trying not to lose momentum. I may have to get a job. I don't like this fact. Art might be nourishing, but I need other types of food too. Argh. I feel motivated, I lose motivation, I beat myself up for lacking motivation, take a break, feel motivated again. How do I make it stop?

But enough of that.

This past weekend, the London part of my theatre company came to Cardiff and we spent 24 hours playing around with the theme of "home". We'd cast our net out to everyone who knows and supports us through Facebook and Twitter for source material. We wanted...well, we just wanted to play. And see if the theme has any legs for future work. It may do. We scrambled and wrote a last minute grant application this week; if anything comes of that it will be nothing short of miraculous, so I'm trying not to think too much about it! The Texan cut together this video below of snippets of the day's work.



One of the best moments of the weekend was late Sunday night, after everyone had left. H and I ended up having a tired, teary conversation about various things for an hour, both wrapped in towels, halfway up the stairs. It was the just the sort of private, intimate moment between people who share a home we had been looking for all day in our playing.

What else have I done? Cut most of my hair off and shaved off some bits that were left. Walked out of one theatre production - an adaptation of The Hobbit; the production company is guilty of Crimes Against Theatre, but YES, I should have known better. Cooked many many meals for friends and colleagues, then picked up some sort of stomach bug which means I've mostly lived off toast and ginger beer this week. Humph. I needed a break from cooking anyway. Finally finished Lewis Hyde's The Gift, which is a tough academic read but entirely worth it, especially for any artist or those who care about the arts.

What else? I have felt sick with fear. I have felt like a child. I have faced a fear. I've thought a lot about love. I've had someone tell me something beautiful, which I will carry around like a brightly polished pebble in that innermost pocket reserved for beautiful things. Sometimes I will want to hold it up to the light. To do that I will have to find a pause, which can only be a good thing really.