On My Knees: a "public divorce ceremony" by Cathy Gordon

A quick heads-up for anyone in Toronto: Cathy Gordon, a close friend and colleague, will be crawling across the city -- on her hands and knees -- on Monday, August 13th.



Cathy is a very gifted artist, and this should be a particularly interesting project. All I'll say for now is that I'll be there -- and I encourage anyone reading this in Toronto to see it.

For more information, please visit her website -- www.cathygordon.com -- and check out the article in today's Toronto Star newspaper: An Extremely Public Divorce.

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(Photo is from Cathy's website.)

"I Drew a Map of Canada, with Your Face Sketched on it Twice..."

I sit in full lotus on the grimy station floor, little white headphones in my ears... humming Joni Mitchell as I wait to board the London train.

I feel happy.




I am still leading a surreal life -- hovering between nations and suitcases (linen skirts and poetry). I feel content here, in this state of suspension -- more content to hover than to land.

But it seems I am landing -- gracefully, like a weightless dancer -- in the second land I've grown to love; Ariel has asked me to return to Toronto in October -- to love and live with him -- and I have agreed.




For several months now, I have been thinking about the nature of love -- feeling gratitude for my loves (past and present). I've grown so much with them, and in such unexpected ways -- just as I have also grown (in different but harmonious ways) in the spectrum of my solitude.




I'm agnostic, with no desire for illusions of god, fate, or destiny. I do not believe in "soul mates" -- cannot imagine that each person has only one partner they are somehow "meant" to find. I simply believe in the love, friendship, and trust that two people can mutually construct over months and years. I believe in passion -- and (atheistic) transcendence.




And I know of at least two men who feel like part of me -- who I love more deeply than my jagged tongue can say. Each man is so much of what I want (close friends... romantic lovers... intuitive artists... trusted companions...) and so much more than I had really hoped to find.




There is no right choice here -- and no wrong one.

The fallacy is in the choice itself: the insistence of monogamy, the dichotomy of "lover" and "friend," and the fear that imposes limits on ineffable love.




To the one I couldn't choose: I love you. I do. And I'm sorry...

Butterflies and Gnawing Locusts

After six months apart, we met on a park bench.

I sat in the sun, a flowing pink skirt brushing against my calves; he arrived with a guitar case slung over his shoulder.

We embraced.




And then -- what exactly?

It's so difficult to say...




We spent seven hours together.



He played a few songs...

We shared a picnic on the top of a hill in Riverdale Park (fresh multigrain bread, seasoned olives, Canadian brie, and smoked fish) while children tossed baseballs to each other on the fields below...

We trekked through the Don Valley, charting new paths...

We argued -- as we so often did.

But we stayed -- as we also often did -- and found points of connection: the words unsaid, and the real sense of words we'd each spoken.



I am learning to live with less certainty -- and more trust.

Pigeon-feeding, Popular Culture, and Echoes of the Freemasons

I intended to take a ballet class tonight -- but as I was stuffing my workout clothes into my backpack, a friend called to invite me to dinner. With my calves already sore, and already feeling a bit hungry and rushed, I pulled the workout clothes out of my bag and hopped on the subway to meet him for Thai food.

Emerging at Yonge and Bloor, I found a strange woman with a shopping cart piled with buckets of birdseed. As she sprinkled seeds on the sidewalk, she cooed at the pigeons and began speaking to them -- affectionately, it seemed -- in a language I couldn't understand.




Then -- with bellies full of mango chicken and green curry, I walked with my friend to a building on Yonge just North of Bloor: the headquarters of MTV Canada.




It's quite an exceptional space -- a former Masonic Temple that has been converted to various small TV studios. My friend (who runs lights for a few of the MTV shows) gave me a tour, and I snapped a few photos -- with a strange degree of trepidation.





Despite its conversion to a pop culture mecca, the building retains many original details -- which lend the space an incongruous sobriety. I felt like an interloper...

To see abandoned fragments of the masons' rituals, out of their formal context, felt surreal -- and perhaps even disrespectful. What right do I have to photograph the relics of the freemasons -- and to document something I do not understand?



So I've decided to do a bit of reading about the masons... and to go back again in the next few weeks.

I hope that a deeper awareness of their rituals may let me capture something I felt I couldn't really see tonight.

Injera, Four Used Paperbacks, and a Blues Bar

This was another delightful day.

I intended to see "Gladstone Variations" at the Fringe Festival -- but after waiting in line for an hour and a half, I still wasn't able to get a ticket for the show. So I ended up eating Ethiopian food on Bloor Street with Moses (a sweet friend I lived with in Madison seven years ago)...

Then I dropped by the bookstore to see Ewan, the lovely poet/translator who inspired another blog entry: His Eye is on the Sparrow. We wandered through a nearby park, sprawling beneath old trees and talking about literature and theatre...

Later in the evening, I arrived at the University of Toronto to stage manage the show in the swimming pool, and I found my friend John waiting in the lobby. I noticed his datebook -- scrawls of blue ink and fringe shows:



After another exceptional performance, I headed off with the cast to Grossman's tavern, the legendary blues dive on Spadina. The band (two guitarists and one drummer) was incredible, and the drummer was simply phenomenal; I watched the rhythm course through his body, and because I could see the music (instead of simply hearing it), I felt (and understood) the music on a truly intuitive level...

A Martha Graham Moment

This morning, still feeling a bit fatigued from last night, I showered slowly: feeling the heat of the water dissolving points of tension in my neck. Then, after toweling dry, I stood before my closet, looking for the path of least resistance.

I found a pair of (khaki) linen pants and slipped them on. Then I pulled a stretchy green blouse over my head and paused as I twisted to the side to stretch my back.

It was there -- spine twisted left, eyes cast down, elbows stretching the fabric in unnatural angles -- that I caught a glimpse of myself in the dresser mirror. There was something surreal about that moment -- a resonance that took me a moment to identify: in some small (and accidental) way, I resembled Martha Graham.




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(Photo credits: Top image is from Graham's "Letter to the World," photographed by Barbara Morgan; bottom image is from "Lamentation," photographed by Herta Moselsio and displayed on the Library of Congress website.)

I Was "Summa Cum Laude" -- Would You Like Fries With That?

Arriving home last night, I slowly unlaced my shoes and peeled off my clothing. Note the mandatory black and white color scheme; after seven years of working primarily in the performing arts, I have taken a part-time job as a waitress...

I slumped on the couch and could still smell the odors rising from my work clothes: deep fried catfish, baked cabbage, and stale cigarettes. I pushed the pile further away with my foot. (Apparently, I no longer lead a glamorous life. But was my life ever really glamorous -- even if it may have sometimes appeared to be?)

I slipped on an old cotton T-shirt and limped to the kitchen to make a cup of herbal tea. Leaning against the stove, waiting for water to boil, I scanned my body as a dancer might: feeling for points of tension, strain, and injury. My lower back ached from five hours of sprinting across the concrete floor, my shoulders were tight, and my throat felt sore. (My wrists -- with tendons like Achilles -- felt okay: not good, but okay. After many months of excruciating wrist pain -- and appointments with neurologists -- and an electroencephalogram I still haven't been able to pay off -- "okay" is pretty fucking wonderful.)

So I ran a bath with lavender salts and soaked for an hour, sipping camomile tea.


~ * ~


Reflecting on the night: it went surprisingly well.

I waited on several families with kids, and I genuinely enjoyed most of them. (To my surprise, most of the kids also enjoyed me.)

The loveliest by far was a four-year-old girl named Brooklyn; she wants to be a waitress (like her mother), and because I appeared to be living her dream, she liked me instantly. She promptly left her grandmother's side and followed me around like an acolyte.

I had intended to give her a tour, but she was a regular customer and knew her way around the restaurant better than I did. So I enlisted her help as a "junior waitress," pointing at the broom and vacuum cleaner. She began an anti-crumb crusade: dutifully sweeping (with the handle of the broom wobbling at least a full foot above her sun-bleached head)...


~ * ~


The men appeared to like me also.

(Naturally, I preferred hanging out with the kids. Their motives were simpler.)

Sometimes the middle-age male attention was fine. Several men who came to dine alone at various points in the night were perfect gentlemen; most were widowers, grateful to be fed (and conversed with) in genuine kindness. One left a tip that was nearly as much as the cost of his entree; as I stood (on aching feet) clearing his table, I felt a rush of gratitude.


~ * ~


Another man (divorced and in his 50s) required subtle distancing.

He told me I was "beautiful" and he asked my name... then tried to hold my hand. He kept flirting in a rather stomach-turning way...

So I told him to behave himself. I warned him that perceived indiscretions would be punished by motherly finger wagging, accompanied by his full name in a disapproving tone. I also cautioned him be polite since I had access to his food and was not afraid to enact revenge surreptitiously...

(He laughed -- heartily -- and mostly kept a respectful distance -- though he frequently stared as I moved through the restaurant, and I felt mildly disgusted by the time he finally left.)

Still Life with Fireflies (and Einstein)

The fireflies are swarming.

On my arms like preludes to approaching rain, I feel their tiny bodies ricochet.

Most dive and recover, arcing off my skin; others land, stunned, and crawl across follicles that are nearly half their size.

Everything is relative, it seems -- their obstacles are thin as filaments.

I strive to walk slowly...

I don't want to impede their flight.

Thoughts on Artistic Inspiration -- and Hunger -- and Advocacy

I am writing a series of articles about the sources of my inspiration: the people and companies that have shaped my artistic vision.

I have a rather eclectic aesthetic... so writing about inspirations is an inherently interdisciplinary task. I intend to touch upon contemporary dance, interdisciplinary text/image collaborations, performance art, writing, and film. Geographically, I intended to focus on two of the cities where I recently lived and worked: Toronto and New York. (Occasionally, I will venture outside of these geographic boundaries -- especially when writing about film, which is a migratory art.) For the most part, I'll omit high-profile influences who have well-established funding structures; I'm more interested in writing about early- and mid-career artists: people whose work I have seen live (not just in photographs or archival videos), and many of whom I have been fortunate to work with in some capacity.

~ * ~

I feel it's important for me to articulate what inspires me -- and then distill that inspiration -- to see if I can apply my passion for the arts to another field -- perhaps one that will place me above the poverty line (for the first time in my adult life). I am thinking seriously about graduate school in 2008, and there are several fields that interest me; I think writing may clarify my choice.

But I also have a pragmatic motive, and I want to make it quite overt. I want to celebrate gifted artists who -- despite pathetic underfunding -- manage to create inspiring work. While I lack the financial resources to be a "patron," my voice is unfettered; I hope (perhaps naively?) that my advocacy might increase awareness of their work. And even if the impact is negligible, it is still an impact. And if someone reads about a choreographer in my blog and then supports her/him by attending a performance (or slipping a small donation into an envelope for any of the artists who so desperately need the support) then my words will help a hungry dancer afford to eat.

~ * ~

I'll begin with a post about Susanna Hood, a very talented Toronto dancer/choreographer.

(Posts about other artists will gradually follow, over several weeks.)