No

What I recall most strongly when thinking about our first session, is the question of distance. My training (both formal and informal) in directing and dramaturgy has always been chiefly about distance. Not distance as in distancing myself from something or building a wall of some sort, but rather finding the right one. The communicative distance (too close or too far and the message is lost). The living distance (a fixed position can kill). A distance that creates a space – a habitat almost. In that first session, I could not find it, could not guess it, could not smell it, could not anticipate it, it was very much out of reach. Action and non-action both made no sense to me – I do not hesitate to admit, that I found this situation unbearable. The Czech neologism cochcárna (a play on the words “každej si dělá co chce” – everyone is doing what they want (in the Czech original the sentence itself has a pejorative connotation) – thus: co-chcárna), often used to describe a collective effort which turns out to be ineffective and inconsistent, came to mind repeatedly. I wondered why I was in so much pain. I briefly accused myself of being an elitist snob, who grew accustomed to the privilege of power assigned to a director and wrote my pain off as a symptom of hurt ego, due to loss of status. But I immediately had to deem myself not guilty, since getting rid of this mythical director status was something that I have worked towards in my practice since I can remember. Then I slowly realised that what I call distance is for me the primal condition for forming any kind of relationship. Without establishing, negotiating and understanding distance I remain alone, however the given situation may seem to speak against my feeling of isolation.

“What shall I do now? What shall I do?”
“I shall rush out as I am, and walk the street
“With my hair down, so…”

Due to being handicaped, mentally ill, trans-nonbinary and a survivor of sexual assault (I do not mean to elicit pity, just present conditions), I have a very weird relationship with my body. At times it does not feel like it belongs to me, it does not feel like it really exists, it does not feel complete, it does not feel wanted. I dearly try not to be someone who “dreams the dreams of a severed head” (a poetic phrase used by my favourite Professor to describe intellectuals, who view their body purely as a vehicle of transport for their intellect), I treasure that no one can read my future from my left hand, I still hope that someone will notice my body being marked by fate as it was to be a sign of my mystical powers and elect me to be the shaman of their village etc. etc. I thought I was over most of my (more and less petty) problems, until being in a room populated almost solely by dancers, provoked me nearly to tears.

I thought “yes, but…” (please recall the way Maria sings these two words) “… this is not obvious!” And this. And that. And fuck this. Fuck that. Fuck this thing in particular.

THIS = being a being in space – just like that (a person used to suffer and fight to earn things that are supposed to be “just-like-that’s” will oppose most “just-like-that’s” having – a habit that dies hard, but nevertheless just a habit)

Lady, three white leopards sat under a juniper-tree
In the cool of the day, having fed to satiety
On my legs my heart my liver and that which had been contained
In the hollow round of my skull. And God said
Shall these bones live? shall these
Bones live?

“There is nothing missing, when you are on stage.” Do we believe them when they say that? What do they mean when they say that?

(I already told this one, but I told it wrong, so once more for the cheap seats, because it is a comprehensive story:) Talking. I am very much into talking. I learned to talk early. I used to talk to myself a lot. While I played. Sometimes I didn’t even play, I just talked. When I had to leave the house and leave my family (to go to kindergarten and be with other tiny humans – a rather unsuccessful endeavour, but…) I had less time to talk to myself. When I had to leave the house and leave my family (to go to school and be with other middle-sized humans – a moderately unsuccessful endeavour, but…) I had less time to talk to myself. I started to write. When I had to leave even more (to go to university and be with other proper-sized humans – an overall inexplicable endeavour, but…) I had less time to write. I started doing theatre. (Here, also, the soprano shines like a slightly faulty light above the choir – I started to sing. I dared open my mouth properly only after a year of crying and swearing. Whatever it was this block, it was a secret of the mandible.) There will always be more leaving and hopefully, one day, I will talk to myself again. The timeline:

NO ME
ME IN THE VOICE
ME IN THE TEXT
ME IN THE BODY
ME IN SPACE
NO ME

(Is it ungrateful to call most of one’s artistic inclinations an accident that happened to a confused chatty child and keeps happening in very much the same manner… Is it tragic? Is it true? Is it fun? All options apply?)

“My nerves are bad tonight. Yes, bad. Stay with me.
“Speak to me. Why do you never speak. Speak…”

I don’t hate myself. I don’t have a death wish. I’m just slightly disappointed that we don’t have oracles anymore. I think I would be a great oracle. The voice of an oracle is both deeply rooted and highly elevated. Inside and out. Its voice lives in a very specific body, that has to be just so in a state that it just so, but it lives there to be spoken. It lives to leave. I live to leave. To move.

From the above we can tell as if reading from cards:
• she is always ambivalent
• she does not distinguish between art and life too much (or at all) – what she says about one, will likely be true for the other as well
• she likes to be in places as if she weren’t, and to be gone as if she were there
• her word is her bond (with implications mainly on the unpractical side)
• she finds it hard to shed her distrust for all material things
• she prizes most highly what cannot be seen
• she is always serious, especially when she isn’t (that is just a more complicated way of being serious, more complicated = more effort, more effort = more time, more time = more investment)
• she is incurably romantic, incurably sentimental and incurably analytical
• she believes that the deed is done once the word is spoken, so everything is final
• she believes that everything is rearranged once the word is spoken, so nothing is final

...yet there the nightingale
Filled all the desert with inviolable voice
And still she cried, and still the world pursues,
“Jug Jug” to dirty ears.

What to do? Only who knows. Questions, at least, still sound less hollow than answers.
If language works backwards, which way does the body work?
Can’t anything specific enough be considered a limit from a certain perspective?
Can we end with this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qECZ7EL1Wxs ?