A musing

not as in funny. "how amusing!"

Like this picture below

but a musing on theatre - like this picture

I was thinking, as you do, about the differences between theatre and music. The way bands happen and the way independent theatre happens. I am recently (in the last year) part of a band. And we get together, write songs and have band practice. You build up a repertoire, a set list, a collection of minute ideas and feelings collected into time brackets, say roughly 3 - 4 mins and you call them songs. And you practice these songs, over and over and then you present them, with your band, at gigs. You discover new parts of the songs - maybe a new drum fill, maybe a better holding chord and they evolve over time - but you and your bunch of rag-tag band mates stick together - write the songs, practice them, present them and then rinse and repeat.

In independent theatre though - we tend to go from show to show to show. And you collaborate with so many artists (I guess if you form a company than that is an exception) The emphasis tends to be on creating the new, rather than presenting the old. In theatre - it seems that if you practice and repeat too much you tend to be 'flogging a dead horse' unlike music in which repetition gives pleasure. Maybe its the time frame thing. 4 mins rather than an hour. So it's just an interesting experience seeing two different worlds of rehearsal. I had a colleague say that they didn't like new versions of old shows - as in the artists revisiting the work and changing it, shifting, extending, condensing. And I thought isn't that strange. The difference between a song and a theatre work - one is much more likely to be open to evolution than the other.

I don't know what these thoughts are - but they are there. Just an interesting relationship between two different ways of creating art that is dependent on the live experience (obviously theatre more so).

And now back to my contextual review. I am going to attempt to define 1. form. 2. feeling. 3. Experience.

and then talk about cognitive function and memory and its relationship to feeling and reading art.

Sarah out.

A memory - if you will

Hello everyone - today I would love for you to make a contribution to this thread by commenting and sharing with me a single memory. It could be of anything. Your favourite memory, a moment you would rather forget, your first memory or just something small that has always stuck with you.

I will go first.

I remember being about 5 years old and my dad would have jams in the loungeroom in the late evening with his band. I remember the smell of one of the guys smoking. They used to record on an old cassette tape recorder that was black, square and had huge clunky buttons that you really had to push down, like the old walkmans. A similar feeling. This particular memory is of a winter's evening. It was cold so I was tucked up in bed, with my thick blanket, lying awake, knowing I'm meant to be sleeping but loving hearing the music of distorted bluesy guitar licks and ambient chatter oozing through the walls, muffled. I lay there for hours listening. I remember one of the guys was called tyrone but i could only ever remember him as toblerone. I often wondered as a kid why his parents had decided to name him after a chocolate bar.

So that is my memory. Yours may simply be a sentence. But I would love for you to gift me with one of yours.

Thanks.

xx

the bitter taste of defeat

Today I finally folded and bought a go card. The last straw was when I hopped on the bus this morning and asked for a daily and was refused. They no longer sell them. So I swallowed my pride. I looked a little something like this when he handed it to me.

I collect bus tickets on my loved ones birthdays. I am sad that this is an end of an era.

I felt like no matter how hard I resisted, I finally had to comply. Like Facebook with the new profile layout. Like itunes with their updates. Resistance is futile. But it is also fun while it lasts.

I talked to a young man sitting in the back of his van in a carpark the other morning. He was overlooking the ocean, watching the waves roll in to the beach with pen and paper in hand. I asked him if he was drawing. He said no - he was studying. Oh! What are you studying I asked. He said a finance and commerce double degree. I said Oh cool! And he said Not really. But I do draw. Here. He handed me a book, saying that he wrote his dreams in there and then drew pictures to accompany them. He had the most beautiful handwriting I had ever seen. I told him so. He said thank you. I looked through his drawings, flipped through a book that contained the chronicles of his dreams. He asked if i drew. I said not really anymore. But I study theatre and play music. He said he had a guitar and a violin in the front seat. He played both. I said to him I hope you don't mind me asking - but why are you not studying art. He looked at his notes in his hand - powerpoint slides of graphs and figures with his beautiful handwriting scrawled on the side. He said he didn't really know. He said his sisters asked him that a lot.

I couldn't get the picasso quote 'every child is an artist, the problem is how to remain an artist once [they] grow up' out of my brain. It elbowed at my conciousness and asked me to say it out loud. But i swallowed it. Smiled. And said. Well if it pays for you to do what you love than I guess it is worth it.

I never found out this mans name. I never will. But i will remember him.