I wonder if there is a moment in any new experience or immersion such as this -- such as Paris before it -- where words become completely inappropriate. When taking the time to find them, to place them together in strings of meaning that may or may not encapture that which you are living, is too long and cumbersome and in the end it doesn't say what you wanted anyway.
Maybe it's just the busyness -- that around a year of building, of negotiation, the seeds that were planted and watered and cared for are suddenly exploding out of the ground with the sheer joy of being free. Or maybe it's the craziness of someone working too many jobs and adding too many projects, and when I do have a moment to breathe, I spend it mostly playing silly games that do not require thought, or analysis, or negotiation.
Either way I've noticed the weeks flashing by and I think about the blog, but often find I have very little to say. Are there still cultural differences to be noted and learned from? Of course. Daily, hourly. Each moment of being here is a negotiation. But it's hard to put those into words, because they must be lived, and breathed.
It's funny, this blog has mostly been about life, about the fact of living here. Dance is referenced and mentioned -- as it would be impossible not to -- but often in the context of a job, like CTN, or a mention that it happens. But there is very little here about the conversations I have very regularly about dance, about my vision of it, the negotiations that take place around that subject.
In some ways I guess I feel like the blog was intended to track the cultural side of things, the adventures and challenges related to that, life as it tumbles along and my thoughts from the wake of it, and maybe dance philosophy wasn't exactly part of that.
I guess what I'm saying is, lost inside this existence where words seem very clumsy and time-consuming, I wonder what this blog is for -- it's certainly not written for a wide public audience, maybe just more for myself to keep a record of this time as it was happening. Looking back to things is cheating because then you have hindsight, and perspective that now lacks, and sometimes I like to look back at previous posts -- to find solace in the fact that SHE didn't know what she was doing either, or to see how far I've come, or just marvel at this crazy journey I've been on.
But there are things to be said. There are remarks to be made, things that have struck me as beautiful or profound. I suppose I'll try taking the Pixie Dust Chronicle into a new direction -- not just long, in-depth studies, but remarks, things I notice, short posts about one thought or conversation.
I'll wrap up this mostly useless post with a story: I met someone the other day who is doing some very beautiful dance/theater work in Siem Reap with three Cambodian girls (www.newcambodianartists.com). He was telling me about one day when the girls were doing an improvisation, and one surprised him with this kind of feral, tigress kind of thing, low and open and very, very daring especially for a Cambodian girl. They took a long time to get back to it the next day, but when she at last got there, he asked her how she felt in that moment.
She said this: "I felt very alone, and I felt like I could dance very well."
I thought it was one of the most beautiful and perfect things anyone has ever said about a performance.
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