We need a song and other notes

scolding their toes

We need a song. I think we need two. I think one is reprised from the first year and the other is new to us this year. I think one of them is sung by everyone and the other is sung by only one of you. Please forward via comment your thoughts about this.

We were always going to get here. This is why we did this.

I knew a young man couldn’t get over a girl, a broken heart. If he let it go, in his mind that would mean it hadn’t been very important. He couldn’t believe it was both important and over.

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Friday

What is it that you know now and think you will never forget? How do you remember?

The vision of the eye looking at itself
the thought about thought
remembering the memory
if we hadn’t asked the question on the first day we wouldn’t have been able to look back on it. I want to make something I’m happy to remember–something that feeds me in the future. This should be as complicated as it can be. Sometimes the response to a song request is shouting. And the names multiply and double back on themselves.

Friday, March 13th, 2009, 10am
We were scheduled to meet half an hour later than usual (I want everyone to know I did not confuse Tom and Matthew, only the name Matthew). Some people got to the studio early and were already at full speed by 10am. No one was late.

We discussed who would take positions along the path to the tree (Matthew, Henrik, Arian, and Chloe) and we set positions near the top of the path for the 6 who would be in place either before or after the tree piece. Three (Ben, Kalila, and Tom) would be in place as the audience went down the path and then three (Gash, Billie, and Alfie) would take their places for when the audience came back up. This facilitated travel to the preceding and following pieces performed by those people.

We then determined who would sing in the tennis court (Alfie, Gash, and Tom [soaking wet and shouting]), singers by the pool (Henrik, Billie, Katharina, Ben, Kalila, Gionna) and singers by the doorway (Jojo, Adrian, and Harriet) and from the roof (Billie and Ben), with Tom making a second appearance as soon as he gets changed into dry clothes.

photo by Benjamin Thompson

The last thing to discuss before a walk through was the hanging of the handkerchiefs in the tree by the audience at the end of the second field piece. Ben wanted some of them to be hung high on the branches so that the visual was not bottom heavy. Chloe did not think there should be so much emphasis on the handkerchiefs and that it was more elegant with just a few hanging in the tree. Discussion didn’t quite reach agreement but it was decided Karen would attempt to hang a few up high by the use of a stick. Ben agreed to supply a stick. (We discussed this in several stages, as we could not come to an obvious resolution.)

[see deleted text on con’t page under the heading “Friday con’t”]

As we walked it through, we walked it through remembering that space triggers as well as seats memory (memory palace). We also tried the spacing of the few new parts finding, in particular, that having one person stand closer to the audience while the others stand a distance behind gave the last moment full heartbreak potential.

At noon we took lunch, agreeing to meet back at the studio at 1:30pm to sing together and then get ready to perform at 2pm.

At 1:30pm we sang “Ain’t no Sunshine” as modified by Harriet. A large group assembled in front of Aller Park to see our presentation. Some of our eyes widened at the sight of the gathering crowd. Class participants came out and formed a large semi-circle facing the audience. I gave a brief introduction and we began the performance.

It was excellent.

The audience didn’t want to move when Matthew started singing nor did they want to walk by the performers on the path or in the abandoned school areas where people where singing. It was hard to get the audience to leave locations where performance was still in progress. The audience did not stand on the side of the pool we expected them to. The field pieces took a long time to start. Everyone’s heart was broken as Billie sang in the studio while birds were drawn with mud on the wall. The water circle started too soon while most of the audience was still down the path. When Karen shouted to Kalila in the field that we couldn’t hear her text she repeated Katharina’s text. Karen forgot to hang the hankie’s on high branches. (My heart was breaking.)

You were all magnificent and these unexpected flaws mattered not at all. None-the-less they remind us of the event as it was and they instruct us as to what holds together and what falls apart and we can learn from this observation.

After the end of the presentation, we met briefly in the studio. We had 15 minutes. I asked everyone to remember what question they had written down on the first day. In a beautiful progression from banal to profound these questions were remembered and said aloud. I suggested it was useful to look back to that day and to have something specific to look back to and that in order for this to happen we had to plant that seed on the first day. And I wanted people to feel how they had changed since that day. And I hoped remembering those questions would remind you how you felt on that first day of our workshop now that we were at the end.

I hope to see you next year so we can make something again. Something new.

Contributions coming soon from Gash & Tom

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