I have been a weepy mess, tearing up several times a day, ever since Captain Chesley B. “Sully” Sullenberger ditched a US Airways jet safely in the Hudson River last Thursday. The cinema-cheesy symbolism went straight to my core and I am convinced that the United States of America is an airplane and Barack Obama is the cool, calm Carey Grant/Sidney Poitier/Jimmy Stewart type genius pilot who is going to save us all. Or not. Everything makes me tear up. Boats. Airplanes. People asking me what kind of coat I have because they need to buy a warm one before they leave for Washington, DC for the Inauguration. Twitters from friends who are on their way to DC or already in DC. Martin Luther King Day. Fresh snow. Civil Rights Movement veterans on CNN. My husband telling me Obama chose a Nobel prize winning physicist as his energy secretary. Listening to “This American Life”. Miley Cyrus in a grown-up red dress. Malia and Sasha Obama taking pictures of Miley Cyrus. My 8-year-old rolling her eyes because I am tearing up because I am watching both my kid and Malia Obama mouth the words to the Disney tween songs they both know by heart. Reading the Inauguration Parade lineup that includes both the Crow Nation of Montana and the Brooklyn Music and Arts Program. I’m just sitting here with my seatbelt on looking out the window at the water putting all my faith and hope in the pilot as my life flashes before my eyes and I pray for a safe landing: Ourfatherwhoartinheavenhallowedbethynamethykingdomcomethywillbedone-onearthaseitisinheavengiveusthisdayourdailybreadandforgiveusourtrespasses-asweforgivethosewhotrespassagainstusandleadusnotintotemptation-anddeliverusfromevil-AMEN
Tag: Washington
Went to Clown Lab…
I am always conflicted; playing with my child vs housework. Writing vs performing. Exercising vs volunteering at My Kid’s school. Creativity vs getting a real job and on and on and on. So it wasn’t out of character for me when Jef started to talk about being in the theatrical space, I caught my mind wandering and had to bring it back into the room three times. The first time I realized I had gone off topic was when my mind came back into the room after I learned that Saturday’s workshop is 3-6 instead of 11-2 as I had thought. This lead to a working out of numerous scenarios for My Kid’s weekend schedule as I had made tentative plans with another mother to take the kids to see a movie on Saturday afternoon. The second time I lost concentration was when in the course of developing an improv I fell into a bit of a reverie about Bush falling through a trap-door at the swearing in ceremony and Obama coming down from the sky in an airline pilot’s uniform… The third time my mind wandered away from the studio work at hand, I thought about a handbag I used to own and wondered if I could use any found object to develop a relationship with up to and including grief and loss and weather that would be a good clown piece for me to work up. I’m tired and wide awake from several cups of coffee and several cups of green tea and my mind is still full of meaning of life, good work, and competency vs heroism thoughts that arise from the safe landing of a disabled plane in the Hudson River and timely rescue of all the passengers by local boat crews and the preparations for the upcoming Obama Presidential Inauguration. There’s a clown lab scheduled for Tuesday, but I will not go. I already know that my head and my heart will be in Washington, DC where I would rather be at this historic time. I moved from Montana for a post-graduate job in my congressman’s office on Capitol Hill and I auditioned for Ringling Bros and Barnum & Bailey Clown College in the center ring of the arena between shows while the Circus played Washington DC. I hope to spend Tuesday evening drinking champagne at home with my husband and watching the recap of the Inauguration Day on TV.
Michelle Obama
I suppose if my husband was running for president I would let professionals groom me. As it is I’m ready to go to the salon of the mom of a kid who goes to my school and let her have at it, even though her six-year-old looked like she cut her own bangs. (Her mom cuts hair for a job, what are the chances?…)
Watching the speech I kept trying to memorize phrases for later reference, but in the end, my favorite part came after the speech when Malia and Sasha came on stage and waved to the video feed of Obama and said “Hi Daddy!” into the microphone. Tall stately Michelle Obama bent down to talk to her daughters. (Physical Theatre–stronger than words)
At the YMCA swimming pool we were getting ready to leave and I said to the other mother, “I think we’re missing Michelle Obama’s speech”
“They work out a lot!” was her reply.
I was preoccupied with the visual. That’s what a successful professional woman looks like.
Once upon a time I wanted to be a successful woman like that. I saw some of them when I interned at the DNC as a college student and returned after graduation to work for my congressman. I thought maybe I should go to law school. But, most women I met did not look like Michelle Obama. Most women did not carry themselves that tall. They wore suits to work, but their jobs were in reality sucky clerical jobs, or they had the titles but the job they got through connections (It was Washington, DC) was an uncomfortable fit. I never found a role model like Michelle Obama was said to be in the pre-speech DNC film. It would have been nice. I wore suits and carried high heel pumps in my shoulder strapbriefcase while I commuted in running shoes with white socks over my nylons. But, once I got do work, I didn’t know why I was there outside of a vague aspiration to do good work and be the kind of person who wore Anne Taylor suits to work every day.
Michelle Obama has a lot more going on.
My body doesn’t work like it used to
I went running in the morning, just around the park, just for half an hour. But, by evening my hip hurt and after googling I think it is bursitis. That’s not who I think I am. That’s not how I move in the world.
I was multi-tasking, can’t get out of the apartment alone for very long, need some physical exercise (I want to juggle my fat around and really annoy it until it decides to leave me forever) and some time to think about the piece, and was thinking of it as a physical warm-up for a creative day.
When I found out I had been accepted in to Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Clown College, not yet 20 years ago, I began almost immediately to run several miles a day in the swampy Washington, D. C. heat with a significant number of push ups and sit ups every day. Clown College was like boot camp, a large percentage of the students were just out of high school and most were male. I had flexibility and stamina but I lacked upper body strength (my entire experience of flying trapeze was taking one swing out over the mat and sliding off onto the mats below). I was not one of the students singled out special trapeze work. I was pretty thrilled to be one of the small flexible women who were pulled out to be taught some two person basket hanging move (the name of which I can’t remember even though I desperately want to write it to prove will know I’m not lying and actually did once know circus people) for an idea the director had for clowns falling out of a flying kite.
I am working now as a stage clown, different from that kind of circus clown in that the gymnastics are emotional not physical. In Europe clown is an older person’s game. I wish I had seen Deborah Kauffman’s clown piece “Veni Vidi Vici” this past weekend, as I had planned. She’s a local female clown role model. But, The Husband’s sudden business trip required me, as The Mom, to make my priority family time and not ditch them to go into Manhattan for some obscure theatre that only I wanted to see.
Googling Randomly
I should be doing a million things (like cleaning–yuck and writing grant proposals–yuck), but instead I am hiding from the heat in our air-conditioned bedroom next to our sleeping daughter googling randomly. It started with an on-line search for Brownie Girl Scout Try-It badges (because I have to get the requests into her leader today.) I thought I could find badges she could get for the work she did in preparation for her First Communion or as a member of her school’s FirstLEGO Robotics team (there must be a badge, we saw Girl Scout First LEGO League teams at the Javits Center in April)
Then I googled Cirque du Solelil’s KOOZA because I was still thinking about this weekend. I had hoped to see the production which was playing in Philadelphia yesterday when we were there and there were matinee tickets available. I knew this because had the concierge check for me. (KOOZA was concieved and directed by David Shiner whose workshop I was taking last fall when the seeds for the piece I did last week were planted) But, My Kid didn’t want to go see the Cirque du Soleil (Her concept of the show was probably damaged by the Simpson’s unflattering “Cirque du Puree”). She was there to swim in the hotel pool and we had already dragged her to one theatrical experience not of her choosing. The Husband wasn’t backing me up, and I wasn’t selling it well. We live on the East Coast, KOOZA will be in the region for months, it was not our only chance to see the production. Other than seeing Bill Irwin’s show we were just there for a relaxing weekend get away. My Kid has been sick, The Husband was tired and the weather was HOT. So even though we could see the trademark tent from the hotel–nobody but me thought it was a great idea to go there. Sigh.
David Shiner worked with Bill Irwin in “Fool Moon” which The Husband and I saw together in Seattle. I googled Bill Irwin because he’s, well, he’s Bill Irwin and I saw his show this weekend. I enjoyed the fact that his home page hasn’t been updated recently enough to include the current production even though it’s nearing the end of its run. Bill Irwin led to the name Bruce Hurlbut, who played the piano for “Scapin” on Broadway and also for the melodrama “The Drunkard” at the University of Montana when I, as a short thin high school student, played the child in the show. His name led to the website of a new theatre in Washington full of our old Annex friends including Andrea Allen and Allison Narver and Jack Bentz who we had hoped could marry us but who wasn’t quite finished with seminary when we looked into it at the time. I think he hooked us up with the priest from Seattle U who did marry us.
Gosh I feel so connected.