Stage Lighting

A week ago my childhood friend Ravi said:  "It's time to start.  Stand here."

And so I settled into the music that wrapped me, I danced with ghosts in that space.  A review came out today in the Toronto Quarterly.

http://thetorontoquarterly.blogspot.com/2010/12/julie-kirkpatricks-camino-letters-in.html

I am amazed at what the performance appears to have looked like from the front row.  That is because I have no images, no visuals, no internal spatial sense to match to my experience of speaking those words from that stage.  That is not how my brain works - I can really only understand those sorts of things by their reflection.  Strange isn't it?  It means that I find it very hard to take direction or understand where I am to stand in relation to others....

Good thing Ravi was there.  He's known me since I was about 5.

Reading Out Loud

Listen to an interview with Mary Ito on CBC Fresh Air on the morning of the performance http://www.cbc.ca/freshair/2010/11/saturday-nov-27.html

And look at these gorgeous photos taken by Wayne Eardley. This what it looks like to read the letters out loud as a call and response with Ravi and Ernie, and Besharah, as if one might be a whale, as if one believed in frozen music...

At the end of the evening,  Ravi's father quoted Einstein to me:

"No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it. "

For those who have read the book, this would be the math solution I've been looking for.  Ravi's father is a math professor and knows of what he speaks.

It was an amazing night.

Getting Ready to Play with Ravi Again

THE CAMINO LETTERS in PERFORMANCE

Saturday, November 27^th, 2010, 7:30 p.m.

Trinity-St. Paul’s Centre, Toronto, Ontario

I drove to Toronto in the rain this morning to drink cappucino with Ravi and finish planning for Saturday. And so the countdown has begun...  

Today was only the third or fourth time I've seen Ravi since I got back from Spain with my letters.  Before that I hadn't seen him since we were teenagers, but I was thinking of him because of a huge butterfly I wrote about in Chapter 2.  Ravi and I also used to float toothpicks down the melting rivers in the street in the spring.  I remember that, and I remember that sometimes we whispered about magic - though not very often.

I hope Ravi's mom and dad are able to come on Saturday because both of mine are gone. Ravi's mom remembers my great big butterfly right down to the last detail - I remember that it was black and white, she remembers that it also had yellow on the inner part of its wings.  It was as huge and wondrous as I remember from when I was six - I know that because she told me so. Ravi's mom believes in magic too, I think, and she was my mom's friend.

Yesterday, I spent the afternoon with Lizzie and her band Besharah.  Lizzie and I travel around in a grown-up version of connect the dots - that's what Lizzie and I do.   And so I met Brandon and Carey and Saskia for the first time and, driving home, I realized that I will never be the same after being in their company with the music that they are wrapping around my letters.  I think Saskia and I would agree that it's about the fugual nature of things, but that is another story that you will need to hear in music rather than words.

None of this is part of my plan for my life.  I've never stood on a stage anywhere.  I didn't do theatre when I was young.  I can't sing to save my life.  If you had told me a year ago that this - all of this - would be the life I was living I would have said:  Never.  Not ever.  Not me.

I stand and talk all the time as a lawyer. But I face in one direction and I say planned and scripted words, crafted for a specific purpose and offered to the judge sitting ahead and up high.  What I'm doing with Ravi on Saturday is not that.  That's for sure. 

I can't wait to see what magic Ravi and I are going to make this time, with new friends, floating along once again on our little toothpick boats.