Days 5 & 6 at the Pillow: Oh Shit, We Have to Get Ready to Perform
I think the title says it all right there. Here we’ve been in class all week, and now we must whip up a professional-level presentation to be performed on the Inside/Out stage on campus, a beautiful outdoor stage with a gorgeous mountain vista. In the allotted period of 45 minutes, we must represent what we’ve been doing for the past 6 days. It might sound simple enough, but it gets complicated when you have two Caribbean artists at the helm who are used to working with full professional ensembles. Today’s classes were frenzied sessions, trying to figure out what we could put together considering the fact that the teachers hadn’t worked anything out (neither dance nor drum-wise). Everyone is exhausted and at the limit of their patience – teachers, dancers, and drummers alike. You could have cut the air that hung over our dinner with a knife. I am sure of failure, but I told Richard over dessert, “We’ll smile a lot, and everyone will have a good time.”
This morning they combined Richard’s and Marily’s classes into one, so as to give us a mental-health break that was longer than an hour, and then rehearse, beginning at 2pm for our Inside/Out presentation, which was to take place at 6:30. I thought I could handle this day fine, but it was quite the roller-coaster.
To begin with, I was already in a difficult place because I had only gotten 3 hours of sleep the night before. I had tucked myself in at 11pm, but every hour more people came back to the cabin, laughing and (seemingly) screaming. I got so frustrated, that when a gaggle of the young dancers burst into the cabin at 2am, I flew out of my bed, ripped open my door, leaped into the hallway, and howled,
“Shuuuuut…..UP. SHUT UP. SHUT……UP! SHUT UP!!!!!!!”
I was gesticulating wildly with my hands in the most menacing of manners, suggesting that I would violently strangle the next person who dared utter a sound. No one moved. I stomped back into my bedroom.
The next morning, one of those stupid noisy bitches came up to me and apologized. I still hate her, but you gotta have respect for her effort.
So anyway, due to the dance-induced and sleep-deprived exhaustion, I had a short fuse and was emotionally fragile. Richard’s class was great – it was the last he would teach here at the Pillow, being the end of his segment of the course. He heads to New Orleans for a workshop next week, and then to some others in a variety of places over the coming weeks, so I won’t see him for awhile. At the end of the class, his students lined up to say goodbye.
He hugged me warmly, and said, “Bless you.”
“What?” I stammered. I’m just not used to people saying such a thing when hugging goodbye, especially if it’s someone that is neither a family member nor a very close friend.
He smiled. “Bless you.”
“Oh!” I said, and turned and got out of the way of the next person. At that point, out of the blue, the tears started welling up, inexplicably, and I walked very quickly in what I hoped was the most inconspicuous of manners, out the door, and into the forest. When I was what I deemed to be a safe distance away from the studio, in a small clearing in the trees, I sat down and wept. I wasn’t sure why I was crying, but I cried hard, for a long time. I finally dried my eyes and pulled myself together, and went back to the studio to collect my things. I managed to get in and out of the studio with no one noticing.
I ran back to the cabin, showered, and decided to go into town and get away from everyone and get some lunch. I went to this pub in Lee called Morgan House, came back, got into my costume, and headed toward the outdoor stage for rehearsal. The Inside/Out stage is a beautiful facility overlooking the mountains. The audience sits on logs on the grass – there’s room for up to two hundred, when you include those that bring their own picnic blankets, beach chairs and such. My head was pounding and my eyes were red and swollen from crying, so I put on a pair of big plastic sunglasses. Here's a picture I took at that moment of Marily and a fellow student, Sita, who were sitting nearby while we were waiting to get on the stage to rehearse, and another of the guys rehearsing Oggun.
After watching the guys rehearse, I sat down next to Marily, who was observing the rehearsal with a professional, detached air. I began to make some small talk with her as best as I could in my broken Spanish, asking her how she felt about our prospects for the upcoming performance. I took my glasses off to help with the communication. She began to talk about her impressions of the dancers in the class, when suddenly, she went silent, her gaze wandered, and her breath quickened. A frightened look came over her face, and she began to grip her arms.
I don’t remember what she said, exactly, because the moment was just so strange. She seemed very confused and overwhelmed. She told me she was experiencing a twisting pain in her arms, and she could barely breathe. She slumped on the bench and was shivering, and looked down. She seemed to forget I was there, and I wanted to help her but felt I could not. Richard walked by, and I gazed at him imploringly, as if to say, “Help!”
He knelt by Marily, asked her if she had heart problems or diabetes, and asked her about her symptoms. She seemed totally shaken. Richard was concerned but not as frightened as I. I put my sunglasses back on, and touched her arm. It seemed she had forgotten I was there, and I wanted her to know I was there and I wanted to help. They both looked at me, and conversed a bit, said some things I didn’t understand. Richard suggested maybe Marily was feeling some sympathetic pain. I agreed I had some stiffness in my shoulders, and we all nodded, hoping that was the answer, but Marily looked down again and seemed lost in her thoughts. At this point I felt strange, like I should go away. I felt guilty somehow. I wasn’t sure what was going on.
I wanted to get in to my car and drive back to NY and forget this whole thing, but I was committed to perform. If things went totally awry, I was ready to make some excuse to pack up my stuff and leave.
This morning they combined Richard’s and Marily’s classes into one, so as to give us a mental-health break that was longer than an hour, and then rehearse, beginning at 2pm for our Inside/Out presentation, which was to take place at 6:30. I thought I could handle this day fine, but it was quite the roller-coaster.
To begin with, I was already in a difficult place because I had only gotten 3 hours of sleep the night before. I had tucked myself in at 11pm, but every hour more people came back to the cabin, laughing and (seemingly) screaming. I got so frustrated, that when a gaggle of the young dancers burst into the cabin at 2am, I flew out of my bed, ripped open my door, leaped into the hallway, and howled,
“Shuuuuut…..UP. SHUT UP. SHUT……UP! SHUT UP!!!!!!!”
I was gesticulating wildly with my hands in the most menacing of manners, suggesting that I would violently strangle the next person who dared utter a sound. No one moved. I stomped back into my bedroom.
The next morning, one of those stupid noisy bitches came up to me and apologized. I still hate her, but you gotta have respect for her effort.
So anyway, due to the dance-induced and sleep-deprived exhaustion, I had a short fuse and was emotionally fragile. Richard’s class was great – it was the last he would teach here at the Pillow, being the end of his segment of the course. He heads to New Orleans for a workshop next week, and then to some others in a variety of places over the coming weeks, so I won’t see him for awhile. At the end of the class, his students lined up to say goodbye.
He hugged me warmly, and said, “Bless you.”
“What?” I stammered. I’m just not used to people saying such a thing when hugging goodbye, especially if it’s someone that is neither a family member nor a very close friend.
He smiled. “Bless you.”
“Oh!” I said, and turned and got out of the way of the next person. At that point, out of the blue, the tears started welling up, inexplicably, and I walked very quickly in what I hoped was the most inconspicuous of manners, out the door, and into the forest. When I was what I deemed to be a safe distance away from the studio, in a small clearing in the trees, I sat down and wept. I wasn’t sure why I was crying, but I cried hard, for a long time. I finally dried my eyes and pulled myself together, and went back to the studio to collect my things. I managed to get in and out of the studio with no one noticing.
I ran back to the cabin, showered, and decided to go into town and get away from everyone and get some lunch. I went to this pub in Lee called Morgan House, came back, got into my costume, and headed toward the outdoor stage for rehearsal. The Inside/Out stage is a beautiful facility overlooking the mountains. The audience sits on logs on the grass – there’s room for up to two hundred, when you include those that bring their own picnic blankets, beach chairs and such. My head was pounding and my eyes were red and swollen from crying, so I put on a pair of big plastic sunglasses. Here's a picture I took at that moment of Marily and a fellow student, Sita, who were sitting nearby while we were waiting to get on the stage to rehearse, and another of the guys rehearsing Oggun.
After watching the guys rehearse, I sat down next to Marily, who was observing the rehearsal with a professional, detached air. I began to make some small talk with her as best as I could in my broken Spanish, asking her how she felt about our prospects for the upcoming performance. I took my glasses off to help with the communication. She began to talk about her impressions of the dancers in the class, when suddenly, she went silent, her gaze wandered, and her breath quickened. A frightened look came over her face, and she began to grip her arms.
I don’t remember what she said, exactly, because the moment was just so strange. She seemed very confused and overwhelmed. She told me she was experiencing a twisting pain in her arms, and she could barely breathe. She slumped on the bench and was shivering, and looked down. She seemed to forget I was there, and I wanted to help her but felt I could not. Richard walked by, and I gazed at him imploringly, as if to say, “Help!”
He knelt by Marily, asked her if she had heart problems or diabetes, and asked her about her symptoms. She seemed totally shaken. Richard was concerned but not as frightened as I. I put my sunglasses back on, and touched her arm. It seemed she had forgotten I was there, and I wanted her to know I was there and I wanted to help. They both looked at me, and conversed a bit, said some things I didn’t understand. Richard suggested maybe Marily was feeling some sympathetic pain. I agreed I had some stiffness in my shoulders, and we all nodded, hoping that was the answer, but Marily looked down again and seemed lost in her thoughts. At this point I felt strange, like I should go away. I felt guilty somehow. I wasn’t sure what was going on.
I wanted to get in to my car and drive back to NY and forget this whole thing, but I was committed to perform. If things went totally awry, I was ready to make some excuse to pack up my stuff and leave.
posted by Clown Hair at
3:33 PM
1 Comments:
omigosh! what the?
i look forward to next post - i wonder how it went? it sounds like a LOT to absorb in such a short time. i hope it's as exhilarating as it is exhausting.
and that shut up bit - priceless. i can only imagine what the younguns were whispering back in their rooms!
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Anonymous, at 11:46 AM
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