Reading The Tea

You know, the song that goes nah nah na-na-na, naaah… Now you can find out, just by tapping the rhythm with your space bar.

Think about how bad you thought this movie would be. Now make it a little bit worse. There, you’ve got the Da Vinci Code. So why did I go see it, if I thought it would be bad? Because there’s a week spot in my heart for mystery-adventures. Especially if Audrey Tautou is in them. She was her usual charming self (Even while driving a speeding car backwards, now that’s a trick!). Tom Hanks oozed good-guy charm and confusion by turn - sometimes even at the same time. Ian McKellen played the rich eccentric as a cross between Richard III and Doc Ock. The writing was so bad, it was really all any of them could do. Amusing bit of fluff, but not worth the time.

On Saturday I came home from dance rehearsal to find flowers all over the house, and Dance Dance Revolution waiting for me. Dustin is the best ever! I am now in the throes of an all-out DDR addiction. For a musician and dancer, I’m surprisingly bad at it. But watch out! With practice, I’ll get better… I also have the beginnings of a modern dance piece based on it running around in my head.
Since the DDR machine is really a Play Station 2 w/ DDR pads, I’ve also been playing Katamari Damacy. I’m not a video game person (at all) but there’s something about this one… You are a small character with a cylinder head who needs to roll up a bunch of objects into a ball of static, so that you can create new stars. Who could resist that?

Or at least, the space station that I live on. Last night I dreamt that I lived on a fairly large space station, and aliens came and took over. They did it for the good of humanity — they said that they were sick of us making a mess of things. The only problem was that they didn’t understand what made people happy. They observed that people usually seemed happy at the beach, so they made us all march down in a long line. They confiscated all swimsuits, and handed them out at random, to avoid inequality and jealousy. There was a shady part and a sunny part of the sand. Everyone was required to be on the sunny part, but they had to stand so that there was enough room for everyone. We also weren’t allowed to have large gatherings beyond our family groups, to avoid disquiet. Jenny, Sarah (my sisters) and I got together to start planning an uprising. We figured that since we were small no one would notice. I woke up before we could really get it going.

good rid/dance performances and Triskelion Arts present:

Number Ten Dream

An evening-length performance extravaganza
of movement, theater, poetry and profanity,
navigating the chaos of the soul through its earthly orifices.
Concept by: good rid/dance performances
Choreography by: Hilary Maia Grubb
Text by: alysseum
Sound Design by: Malina Rauschenfels

Performed by:
alysseum, Abby Bender, Hilary Maia Grubb, Ruth Hoffman, Kenneth Lang, Lyz Merida, Malina Rauschenfels, Luke Wiley, and special guest artists

Friday, June 9 and
Saturday, June 10, 2006
8pm at Triskelion Arts

118 North 11th Street, 3rd floor,
between Berry and Wythe Streets
Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NYC
L train to Bedford or G train to Nassau

$12 General Admission
Reservations highly recommended: (718)857-1946

Come witness the grotesquerie of human experience!
www.triskelionarts.org
photo by: Maribel Arce

Ok, those of you who are older may now laugh that I find 25 momentous. No, go ahead, get it out of the way. Finished? Ok, good.

So, as I was saying… a quarter century… That used to seem so old. Really, truly, properly adult. I think that right up until this year, I’ve been waiting to feel like a grown-up. Now I think that I’m going to throw in the towel. A few weeks ago, while pulling out stray eyebrow hairs, I got a close-up of my eyes in the mirror. And there, at the quarter of the left eye, was an unmistakable, honest-to-goodness wrinkle. Yes, a crowsfoot. I have a job, a 5-year relationship, a (quasi) grown-up apartment, and a crowsfoot, but still don’t have that warm fuzzy feeling of all-knowing. And at 25 I have much less of an idea what I’m going to do with my next 5 years than I did at 20. At 20, I pretty much had everything all figured out. Of course, I’ve revised my plan umpteen million times since then, but each time I’ve been confident with my new and shiny life plan. Now… well, now that I’m about to be in my mid-twenties… I really don’t know. I still come up with plans. (Lots of ‘em.) But I can’t quite shake an awareness that life might digress from them. Maybe that’s what it means to be a grown-up? (Cue nauseatingly sweet realization music, swelling.)
Keep an eye out for upcoming reviews of anti-aging creams.

“Hey, nice to meet you.”
“Yeah, you too.”
“So, what do you do?”

Why do we always ask that? It seems like we define ourselves by what we do. And by “what we do” we mean our careers.

“I read. I take walks. I pet my cats.”

Those would all be really weird answers to that question. But why? How did we go about the friend-making ritual before adulthood?

All through college I defined myself by what I studied — “I’m a developmental psychologist. A musician. A dancer.” Then I moved here and got a “real” job. A job I never intended to have. I don’t hate it, but it doesn’t enter into who I think that I am. The problem with that is, I spend a great deal of my time doing it. And it acts as a lens through which people see me in that first “What do you do?” (”Who are you?”) moment. Are our jobs really who we are?

Go watch this. Make sure you turn the volume up.