14 December 2004: Cacophonies of Call and Response

On Thanksgiving Day, I flew from Oakland Airport to Dulles International Airport in Virginia to accompany Dragon Lady to her aunt’s funeral. Dragon Lady had flown out a few days earlier, so I got to travel alone, which is how I prefer to travel. Travelling alone gives me the opportunity to do stuff that most travelling companions won’t agree to, like arriving at the airport two hours early in order to have time to wander around and enjoy being in an airport.

I like airports for many of the same reasons that I like museums and gigantic indoor shopping malls. I sometimes have dreams that take place in enormous airports, or, more frequently, in futuristic orbital spaceports that have many of the features of modern airports.

Between the funeral and related activities, and socializing with Dragon Lady’s friends and family, Thanksgiving weekend was booked solid. Friday, however, was free. And Moly was spending Thankgiving at his dad’s house, which is in the same general area of Virginia that Dragon Lady and I were in. So I called up Moly, and he drove over with his dog Hagrid, whom he’s been eager for me to meet. Hagrid is the most magnificent specimen of doghood I’ve ever met. He’s allegedly a purebred mastiff, but I suspect that he’s part Totoro. He weighs 230 pounds, and is a thoroughly good-hearted and likeable fellow who exemplifies all of the highest canine virtues. Moly and I talked of many things. As with Ace and other Tabrizi whom I see all too infrequently these days, hours of conversation with him just scratched the surface enough to whet my appetite. (Yes, I do mix my metaphors intentionally. I find it funny, because I’m a horrible person.)

This past Thursday, just after I posted the previous entry, I got an unexpected call from Stagewalker, whom I hadn’t seen since the 4th of July. He was in Downtown Berkeley, which is where I live, and called to see if I was around and wanted to get together for a drink. I was and I did. We went out to Beckett’s and had beer and fine conversation. At some point the conversation drifted round to the impending New Year’s Eve, and I explained to him why I wasn’t going to be attending Aleph’s party this year (pretty much the same explanation given in my entries for April 10th and April 16th of this year, when I first came to the decision). Stagewalker understood my decision and the reasons for it so well that I’m going to be making it a higher priority to hang out with him.

When I posted those two entries in April, I quickly discovered that explaining my decision provided an acid test by which I could discern those people with whom it was still a good idea for me to cultivate and/or maintain friendships, from those who were among the crowd that God had been warning me about. All the Tabrizi dug where I was coming from, of course, and recognized it as a valuable breakthrough. I was just reminded of this on the day after Thanksgiving, when I related the decision and the story behind it to Moly, and got the same supportive reaction from him as I’d previously gotten from other Tabrizi.

But there really were people, back in April, who tried to counsel me as if the situation were a crisis that was developing, rather than the happy resolution of a long-standing crisis. I’d like to say that at least these people meant well, but the fact is that they didn’t. They meant to pressure me into forsaking my soul and rejecting a direct communication from God, just so that they didn’t have to deal with shifts and changes within their little social sphere. Feh. I remember people trying to do the same thing to Geminica when she was ending her marriage to Aleph, and I imagine Ace got a steaming helping of that same bullshit, too, when he ended his marriage. In fact, at least one of the people who tried to pull that shit on me in April was one of the very same people whom I’d witnessed trying to pull it on Geminica, way back when.

You’d think that by now I’d know better to be shocked and outraged to discover that people I’d thought of as friends would demand that I make catering to their fears a higher priority than being true to my soul. But no, if I were that capable of setting aside my optimism about people, God wouldn’t have had to pull all that stuff with the signs and omens to wake me up in the first place – especially not three-and-a-half years after the giant wake-up call She gave me in the aftermath of Burning Man 2000.

But I digress. The point was that I was delighted at Stagewalker’s comprehension of the tale (and also delighted by many other things in the conversation). It’s fortunate that my plans for the future involve increasing amounts of theatre-related work, since it means that I might actually be able to collaborate with Stagewalker on something in the future, which is probably the only way that two people as compulsively busy as me and him could end up hanging out with any regularity, unless we both end up in the same prison cell.

I don’t know yet what I’m doing on New Year’s Eve. Sometime in the next few days, I’ll be sending out an email to a handful of friends who 1.) live in the Bay Area; 2.) might not already be committed to going to Aleph’s party or some other event; and 3.) might enjoy the same sort of New Year’s party and/or ritual that would appeal to me. The purpose of this email will be to initiate a brainstorming session about what we’re going to do with our New Year’s Eve (whatever plans develop will probably be announced in this journal).

When I mentioned this to Stagewalker, he said that he’d be interested in being on the recipient list for that email. I was surprised, because I’d assumed he would be set on going to Aleph’s. He said that while there was a good chance that he’d end up going to Aleph’s, he certainly wanted to know about other possibilities. The party, he explained, hadn’t been the really meaningful part of New Year’s for the past few years – the meaningful part for him was the Bone Council.

I told him that I hadn’t been planning to put together a Bone Council this year, but that if anyone else put one together, I’d show up.

“I’ll host it,” he said.

Well then. There you go. I guess it was meant to happen, which really shouldn’t have come as a surprise to me.

Like I said, I hadn’t been planning on putting it together. But all that putting a Bone Council together really consists of is 1.) thinking of it; 2.) finding someone to host it; and 3.) spreading the word. Since Stagewalker has taken care of Steps 1 and 2 already, and since his appreciation for Bone Council has now reawakened my own, I’m now helping with Step 3 by making this announcement, which I’ll make now, which goes something like this:

Announcing the Fifth Annual December 31st
Bone Council Brunch!

Where: Stagewalker’s place, near Downtown Oakland. Email me if you need directions.

When: Friday, December 31st, noon to 3 or 4 pm (please arrive by 1:00 pm so we can start the Bone Council part on time and not have it interrupted).

What: a casual potluck brunch, followed by a Bone Council, which is a talking-stick circle ritual kind of thingy.

What to bring: yummy brunchy snacky things, and yummy brunchy snacky friends.

Who’s invited: you! You you you! And anyone you want to invite. Unless you’re one of those you-know-whats.

Six days until the December 20th Songs as Vehicles performance. It’s starting to coalesce promisingly. I’m delighted by this bit that Sherpa wrote up for the program:

What we are doing is a little hard to explain so, I’ll address what we are not doing. We are not improvising. The songs structures are set. However, these structures tend to bend and wander depending on the internal sources we are accessing in the moment. We are not randomly toning. All the sounds you will hear stem from each of the songs themselves; sometimes with lyrics, sometimes without. We have taken our cues from the jungle birds whose individual songs approach cacophonies of call and response, all the while maintaining their unique integrities. Alas, we are not fine-feathered winged creatures but two-footed humans who must learn how to concentrate and struggle through our limitations to achieve even fleeting moments of such aviary grace.

The last sentence, of course, will resonate not only with all paratheatrical ritualists, but with aikido students and anyone else engaged in that sort of work. And the whole thing could be a fine description of aikido practice, if you translate the auditory modality into the kinesthetic (viz., substituting “techniques” for “songs”).