Tuesday

Dear Mallory,

I let the rain keep me in tonight.

Last night, the rain was also falling in the garden off my room through those funny European windows that just slant open at the top, and woke me up three times. I was pleased and turned over comforted each time.

I could have gone to a show by a famous French choreographer tonight, but as I am planning on seeing shows Friday and Saturday, and the museum next door to the workshop tomorrow evening; and since the day was jam-packed with learning, all starting with my first hip hop class ever taught by a kind, staunch-looking Albanian who was the only one among us group of white males who didn’t look at least partially like a modern dance hippy, I felt ok about grocery shopping and laundry instead.

Today, Lloyd, the director, impatiently and consistently railed about trying to find neutrality then, separately, about showing him “uninhibited” and “totally free” and “quirky” and “like no one was there.” He was charging us, agitatedly, to show him some version of “authenticity”. When I finally realized he was talking about vulnerability and honesty, I thought, “he is taking the wrong approach.” I wrote about it a bit in my journal. It affirmed that I would like to go to clown school as that seems to be what he’s actually going after, and so many are going after, and I’m going after, and he just doesn’t know it. Legitimately, he also pulls off many acts of precision and design through his honest, if dancer-psyche-skewed, fist shaking that I’m not sure could be reached with a bunch of clowns.

Huge hugs and missing Manderlay, especially when Lloyd put on “Is That All There Is?” during one of the exercises today,

Tim