paint the white house black

i got paid from the temp agency. thank goodness. it’s not much money. short days and stuff. i lost at least $50 for being efficient. not like extra work, no no, as a movie extra, it’s like, wow, i went in for my last scene at 1pm, some lesbians were having drama (it seems like every scene i’m in, some lesbian is having drama about something and maybe there’s some art and they are eating something that sits between nouvelle cuisine and tapas), and i stood there, waiting for my cue, then i walked from point a to point b and maybe sat or stood again off camera. then i do that over and over while they do cuts and retakes. it takes maybe 45 minutes, maybe more, you lose track of time in there, in that weird fucking soundstage all done up like an expensive nouvelle cuisine meet tapas restaurant. lol. then, bam, well, it’s 2, time to go off set. hang out, wait for dinner, eat dinner, which they feed me, hang out, wait, wait, wait, do fuck all until 11:30pm when the last scene using extras is wrapped and everyone gets to leave. this is the life of an extra. if you were to consider the time i actually worked, i got paid something like $100+ an hour. this being said, and i kid you not, keeping yourself occupied and present while you sit around beside a soundstage for 12 hours is actually work. fuck, what a long day it is. a long day with pay though.

and i got paid. not from that. that’ll take three weeks so it’s meizer city until then. but i did get paid. and with my paycheck? i want an acoustic guitar. all my practicing means that i want, and deserve, an acoustic guitar. i love the knox of course, but it doesn’t sing. i want a guitar that sings. however, i can not afford an acoustic guitar, even a cheap one (ok, i could throw down $50 on a guitar right now, but it’d be a shitty guitar so why bother). i’ll probably hold out for one with a pick up. whatever.

with my paycheck? it has to last weeks. however,

1) i am out of moisturizer and rubbing jojoba oil on my face in lieu is annoying me.

2) a bag of black pony beads will save me wasting my time on set next week doing a sewing project i think looks stupid.

3) i am in need of a new mascarra. it’s been months.

4) i will check VV for anything cheap/good for work as well as more high waisted seventies mens pants and maybe a waistcoast.

5) i will buy a book or two. used. thrift if possible though an engrossing novel would help make next week easier.

***

since “the l word” skyrocketed my hits today… thanks whoever, it was nice to have 95 hits rather than my usual 50. and the day has just begun. let’s check. up to 100 since i started writing this. sa-weet. i will continue to write about being an extra i guess. why not? maybe someone will like something beyond my mentioned of TV shows and which characters i was on camera with. who cares. this blog is dead, that i write it is basically a joke to me at this point.

so… in short. uh. shane’s costumes are stellar. fuck man, i think that there is probably a certain demographic of (hot) young women with vaguely bisexual leanings who “go that way” for a while in their 20s because men can be kind of a headache and some chick who’s actually really pretty under it (a la shane or katie sketch) just puts together this androgynous look that said girl wishes more men would look like since it’s totally rock star. that girl gets to lay a ton of hot chicks who’d normally never sleep with a woman. i dont’ doubt that if there hadn’t been those fashion forward young american lads and a complete lack of just such an archetype i’d have screwed around with girls more when i was younger. the very things i love about the way vancouver guys look at this point (very male, very fuck fashion/viva style) it really didn’t do much for me when i was 20. it’s probably a fine thing. really, anything that keeps you off horomonal birth control and out of the abortion clinic (i have a lot of friends, many of them have experienced things like birth control and abortion clinics, it’s not really my bag though and can’t blame women who their lesbian until graduation phases and whatever).

i’m sure this is a gripping final season of this tv show. these chicks seem to be having some serious drama. since i’ve never seen this show and won’t even watch the episodes i’m in because i don’t do anything and am probably half out of focused into a blur of long hair and periwinkle, it seemed like some heated, inner and external conflicts driving this here lesbian drama set. fuck. so much drama. i always assumed that lesbians were less drama than straight women and gay men. i always assumed that liking the dick was intrinsic with being more drama. something about getting a rod planted into you, hits some button up wherever. then again, i’m from vancouver and my understanding of lesbians is somewhat within the regular expectation, less moneyed, more political, eastvan, i dunno… these chicks seem more expensive shoes and martinis. i’m sure that happens also. who knows.

fuck acting is a brutal job. i’ve heard people scoff at actor’s wages and have to admit, working days that average 12 hours and are known to go overtime really isn’t what you’d call a easy gig.

Yesterday

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i must say, movie extra is a really ideal job for me right now!!! basically, i get paid to sit on my ass listening to my iPod doing questionable needlework. when i need a break, maybe i walk across a restaurant while lesbians with expensive clothing have drama amidst their clique on the boom mics.

next? disaster movie!

i have so many l word hours though. man oh man. sitting at that studio for hours, upon hours is something i have another 36 hours of? i can’t tell. it went over 13 today. i got a walk across the room before some lesbians had drama over martinis at the last minute, last shot, 13 hours in.

so. it’s 1am. i’ve showered and shit. i guess i can get to bed before it’s time to get up. man, no wonder actors are such notorious druggies.

well folks, i got my first extra job. i get to be a “hot person/restaurant crowd” in the background of the l word. i’ve never seen that show. it seems like a more soap opera sex in the city but all gay people so the degree to which the women are depressing, childless, coogs isn’t as smacking. i dunno. i doubt the people on the l word would watch the l word either. lol.

thank you chan marshall and feist for making my “little girl haircut” upscale and trendy enough. wait, grown women with bangs is pretty universally… whatever. time to sift through more clothing to find my most un art damaged clothing. maybe i can find a job where i get paid to dress like a post-punk artist who’s read too many foreign mags. yeah.

Artaud’s Theatre of Cruelty

Artaud believed that the Theatre should affect the audience as much as possible, therefore he used a mixture of strange and disturbing forms of lighting, sound and performance. In one production that he did about the plague he used sounds so realistic that some members of the audience were sick in the middle of the performance.

In his book The Theatre and Its Double, which was made up of a first and second manifesto, Artaud expressed his admiration for Eastern forms of theatre, particularly the Balinese. He admired Eastern theatre because of the codified, highly ritualized and precise physicality of Balinese dance performance, and advocated what he called a “Theatre of Cruelty“. By cruelty, he meant not exclusively sadism or causing pain, but just as often a violent, physical determination to shatter the false reality. He believed that text had been a tyrant over meaning, and advocated, instead, for a theatre made up of a unique language, halfway between thought and gesture. Artaud described the spiritual in physical terms, and believed that all theatre is physical expression in space.

The Theatre of Cruelty has been created in order to restore to the theatre a passionate and convulsive conception of life, and it is in this sense of violent rigour and extreme condensation of scenic elements that the cruelty on which it is based must be understood. This cruelty, which will be bloody when necessary but not systematically so, can thus be identified with a kind of severe moral purity which is not afraid to pay life the price it must be paid.

– Antonin Artaud, The Theatre of Cruelty, in The Theory of the Modern Stage (ed. Eric Bentley), Penguin, 1968, p.66

Evidently, Artaud’s various uses of the term cruelty must be examined to fully understand his ideas. Lee Jamieson has identified four ways in which Artaud used the term cruelty. Firstly, it is employed metaphorically to describe the essence of human existence. Artaud believed that theatre should reflect his nihilistic view of the universe, creating an uncanny connection between his own thinking and Nietzsche’s:

[Nietzsche’s] definition of cruelty informs Artaud’s own, declaring that all art embodies and intensifies the underlying brutalities of life to recreate the thrill of experience … Although Artaud did not formally cite Nietzsche, [their writing] contains a familiar persuasive authority, a similar exuberant phraseology, and motifs in extremis …

– Lee Jamieson, Antonin Artaud: From Theory to Practice, Greenwich Exchange, 2007, p.21-22

Artaud’s second use of the term (according to Jamieson), is as a form of discipline. Although Artaud wanted to “reject form and incite chaos” (Jamieson, p.22), he also promoted strict discipline and rigor in his performance techniques. A third use of the term was ‘cruelty as theatrical presentation’. The Theatre of Cruelty aimed to hurl the spectator into the centre of the action, forcing them to engage with the performance on an instinctive level. For Artaud, this was a cruel, yet necessary act upon the spectator designed to shock them out of their complacency:

Artaud sought to remove aesthetic distance, bringing the audience into direct contact with the dangers of life. By turning theatre into a place where the spectator is exposed rather than protected, Artaud was committing an act of cruelty upon them.

– Lee Jamieson, Antonin Artaud: From Theory to Practice, Greenwich Exchange, 2007, p.23

Artaud put the audience in the middle of the ’spectacle’ (his term for the play), so they would be ‘engulfed and physically affected by it’. He often referred to this layout as like a ‘vortex’ - a constantly shifting shape - ‘to be trapped and powerless’.

Finally, Artaud used the term to describe his philosophical views, which will be outlined in the following section.

i moved from the bush to the (quaint) residential half of vancouver’s downtown east side.

when people talk about the “downtown east side” being a shocking place, they are usually talking about blocks of east hastings that are often not even on the east, a lot of what people refer to as east hastings is actually west hastings, like 001 west hastings or 100 west hastings or something, east hastings can refer to a bunch of methadone clinics, some bars that haven’t been aesthetically renovated in 20+ years (and usually left in original design when they are, largely hipster gentrified). the area spans n-s as well as e-w. more drugs are traded in lower blocks. you’re more likely to find someone openly smoking crack by openheimer than you are in a lot of places, from what i remember of living there. i’ve spent up to 45 minutes waiting for a bus at hastings and main, i must note. i’ve waited for a lot of busses at hastings and main. it is the most likely place for me to catch a bus. i can’t even imagine catching a bus in the city anywhere else. if i needed to get downtown i would walk to skytrain, for example. i would almost exclusively take the 22 mcdonald if i took the bus. i totally get that meeting people on the bus “happens”, i’ve done it myself. i don’t. i hate the bus.

it is generally faster to ride a bike than take a city bus. equal to their routes being completely inefficient, stops being painful in frequency and more often than not, a cable gong down… the 22 is a “suburban” bus in the city. they’re never old buses (i like old buses i guess, i haven’t really researched the topic).

i moved from the bush to the downtown east side.

i lived on a quaint, if not twee, neighborhood with a park and lots of trees and staunch gardening. i imagine that if you live in a space in strathcona that isn’t a 4 story walkup, and you don’t garden, and your house doesn’t have a garden, that you’d be a social pariah by that very virtue. it just seems kind of weird, the idea of a house in strathcona without a landscaped front yard. there were hanging baskets on my (darling) four story walkup from what i remember. potted plants and shit.

and you could see a part of a reputably bad neighborhood.

when i moved to the part of the DTES i’d call strathcona, from the part of the DTES you might call cracktown, it was quite a shock, grabbing a couple items and walking them up a couple times to get acquainted with how much space i had as i did a quick purge of most of my possessions afterwork and stayed up for 24 straight hours, getting rid of stuff, moving what stuff i had left and listening to led zeppelin 4 on repeat.

you could walk between them with relative ease. it’s a good place to do cheap groceries, at the west end of cracktown.

but strathcona is twee. lush plantlife everywhere, a picture perfect park in many ways, just twee everything. and i used to get up in the mornings and note that it was a bit more of a jaunt to school, all less than 10 blocks. i lived in cracktown because it made going back to school seem doable without sucking my will to live, starthcona was supposed to be the same but less like living above a butcher shop while vegetarian and “meat dumpster” being a summer experience i couldn’ t have gone a whole season with, where people smoke crack in your actual doorway on a regular basis. once i was smoking a cigarette on the window ledge, i heard some violence. stepping in as a hero without any level of authority while appearing as “other” in an alley of one of the bigger drug parks in the city, openhemier being quite possibly the seediest park in the city in ways (when i started suntanning at mclean park (consciously inconspicuous in a remote corner, at first just to avoid what i referred to as “the perky nanny” while i phased out from a long day in my first job in a year and a half that wasn’t a 2 week stint at in a telemarketing room, with some vitamin d.  anyway, since anyone who’d be nicknamed “the pesky nanny” would clearly make this somehow seem like a headache, going to the nearest park to your house and finding somewhere to use its facilities without being at all forceful to initiate social contact with stilted acquaintances. it turned into a bit of an inside joke after i found one of my soon to be neighbors blatantly staring at me while i was not paying attention and acting like a huge weird freak when i snapped back into that realm to get some water from the nearby fountain and figured i’d acknowledge a familiar face to weird huge freakdom.

so i moved to strathcona so that i could go to the closest park to my school that wasn’t openheimer and work on my tan and it be explicit that i was using this park because it was close. i don’t know why, having come into mclean park tourists since, i’d used mclean park a lot as a local before i ever entered it from elsewhere.

so i lived in this big crazy martis graf warehouse type loft space on a really twee street. it was pretty nuts. everyone in the house came into each other liking the sun city girls, for exmple. if stuffwhitepeopleliked.com were about my “white people” sun city girls records would be pretty central. i’ve been totally swayed by the sun city girls. they are north western folk music. that’s difficult to argue with but since their records are really not all that easy to get it’s really cliquey. once i got a crush on a guy i’d be 95% sure doesn’t own any sun city girls on vinyl, since that became central to the question (i actually went as far as to make mixed with a sampling of relative scope for a boyfriend who liked records but hadn’t gone that far. i kind of felt like he couldn’t date me unless he figured it out. i have no idea if he ever did. he’s really not my scene.

it was a weird time. it started out with this very qwirky girl who went to art school. the degree of her qwirk was impressive and her couchsurfer is someone i still keep in touch with. i’m not really what you’d call a children’s entertainer. i’m more of a good idea for teenagers, maybe with a parental advisory sticker, maybe not. i don’t get that, it’s just an extended metaphor. the couch surfer really helped. hooray.

it was great. we were all girls and got along and had a big space and ate sashimi. she spent a lot of time watching movies in her room and i never got forced to join in despite being social with everyone around. it was fine. great. whatever. i practiced the piano a lot. it was a weird time. then she moved out and hella moved in. that was great. hella is very easy to take, even when she’s being so fucking annoying in theory that i might disown her the way in which she does it has enough consciousness. so that was fine. it’s easy to have someone around who isn’t going to force you to accommodate her with my speaking patterns.  i tend to favor people with whom i can either shoot my mouth of around with relative abandon or be kind of quiet. quiet is difficult since there are some people who it is not a good idea to be quiet with.

then i moved to the west end of toronto which is kind of quaint and close to galleries and bars people go to and restaurants and clothing stores and miles and miles of it, but a good hub/checkpoint for what i did. i could walk to most people’s houses with ease. going to parties was easy. it was the middle of a much more typical city. vancouver is striking in its unique qualities. these qualities are vast and constant. vancouver is stimulating for fundamentally sound reasons. people don’t need to psych themselves up to stay on it, you can cope with it or you can’t.

i didn’t move out of my parents house for the first time until i decided whether i was going to transfer or not for 3d year. i did my first two at a university, an actual university, where you can major in physics and never know who picasso is for all anyone cares. where you had to take academics in hard subjects since the philosophy was actually read as philosophy rather than cultural studies if you studied that and the rest of it. it was liberal arts focused, the liberal arts element seeming all that was really better than UBC, the bigger less “liberal arts college for a nation with no public/private in post secondaries”. i remember the first time an american asked me if i went to public or private school. there is no such thing as a private school unless you are interested in nail technology or stenography or medical administration or something diploma rather than degree oriented.

the school i went to was kind of hipper. it was designed by a modernist architect and built on top of a small mountain that was, and remains, largely undeveloped. the first president, when it opened, in the 60s, was a hippie of some sort. it kind of worked. the program was very female dominated and the professors all seemed to have done well for themselves and there was 24 hour access. since i couldn’t come up with a non cnoceptual practice that superseded my interest in conceptual art, the only thing that provoked any actual thought in me after 9th grade, when i learned how it worked in english school, how to talk administration into things, how to get good grades, and so much more. it seemed my bag. i like to do lots of stuffed. it’s all very me. that’s kind of how it works on my clock.

where was i. so i moved to toronto. then i moved back to the bush.

the bush is weird. it’s still very woodsy. very close to a river. you find fishes hanging from small river brush dead and 20lb and it’s not that you’ve stepped into a daliesque hellscape from the sequel to the book of mormon, you’re simply witnessing the after effects of some spawned salmon during a snow. usually, the bears and wild animals eat them.

you avoid the bush during bear season. it’s not that they’re going to fuck with you if you don’t start acting like it’s going to mug you are a crosswalk while the cop gets some streetmeat two feet away.

i was thinking about nature. how i was actually conceived during mating season for most animals, for example. then about what it means to get pregnant during different months of the year. do you want to be 8 months pregnant in August? maybe that’s a month you fuck less. i think that if your kid is going to die in you, you let it die and maybe let medicine save you. maybe. the idea of going to the doctor while pregnant seems kind of a bad idea though i gather having things like your mineral balances checked might be a good idea. i’m inclined to hate doctors. i’ve considered a lot the ability to get pregnant and give birth in a foreign country. i should research it. maybe doctors are a good idea. visiting a nutritionist? probably. keeping an eye on your fingernails? oh yeah. that’s still such a mystery to me. i tended to assume that i’d make a kid and just try really hard to see if i wasn’t an asshole and if i passed that it’d come out right and if not that maybe it was a bad idea and should be spared suffering for my poor decision. who sends a newborn soul to hell? maybe they compete for it. a ticket straight to heaven with no work. maybe it’s all at random. who knows. i don’t even know if i believe in heaven. reincarnation makes more sense given what the world is like, maybe just your remains in that plant in that seed, on that insect, to that plant, in that seed, on that insect… till it winds up wherever doing whatever, maybe imported to somewhere else and divided in to small parts and served to random individuals in a restaurant.

limited potential is never factoring options like murder and suicide into the most common decisions. the infinite can be exhausting if processed in the wrong brain parts.