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Sunday, October 26, 2014

Maps

NYNY Prompt: Maps.

This week’s prompt is for you to go some place that is sacred to you and to use the experience to guide you in your work. Look for signs and omens everywhere...

My first apartment in Vancouver was next to the beach. The apartment itself was small and very narrow, with windows that let in the afternoon sun and roasted us alive in the summer. The bathroom sink once fell off the wall and wasn't fixed for a full week, and there was a crazy woman obsessed with traffic cones who would scream at anyone who idled their car in the turnaround in front of the building. It was the sort of shithole that's perfect for your first place in the big city in your 20s. And again: it was by the beach. I could walk to the ocean at night and let the waves break over my toes. I could stand at the edge of midnight in the dead of winter anytime I felt like it.

The sea has a way of claiming you, once you've heard the waves.


The moon is waxing now - the night of the Scorpio new moon I did work to release some leftover bullshit in my head. After you've hollowed yourself out is a good time to visit the shoreline, I've found - you can feel the vastness of the ocean better. It's so much bigger than you, and it can swallow you whole and forget your bones.

You will drown. At some point, we all do. Not literally, but there will always be a time when you are swept away, pulled down, lost. And it doesn't matter. Not really.

It's been stormy this past week, with today being the first truly clear day in a while. The winds, however, stay strong - the remnants of Hurricane Ana. Consequently as I walked beneath a sliver of early evening moon, the waves were hurling themselves against the sand with real violence.

They will take everything away if you let them.


Tuesday, October 21, 2014

Dot dot dot.

Did some catching up with myself today, when I wasn't sleeping through the flu. I realised I'd all but abandoned the New Year, New You prompts. I went back through them and checked the original prompts on Deb's site, figuring out exactly where I am in the process.

Some things I've already done without being prompted and just failed to write up. Others I have not, and so I think what I will do those rather than repeat myself and waste time. So, the next prompt on my list is this one:

Go some place that is sacred to you and to use the experience to guide you in your work.

This may have to wait a few days for the weather to permit it.



But right now I'm just going to crawl back into bed with Frances.


Tuesday, October 7, 2014

October.

IT'S OVER.

FubarFoto documenting yours truly right before the bloodshed.

Well, AbraCadaver is, anyway. October is still just beginning, and thank all that is dark and spooky for that. The show was a huge success (I heard we had three walk-outs this year, which may be a new record) and the feedback I've gotten so far indicates people thought it was our most sophisticated production yet. I am truly blessed to work with so many talented and passionate people - it means we can keep scaring the living bejeezus out of people year after year.

The last act this year involved my darling little sister murdering me horribly on stage. My cousin was in attendance and she said that while the people around her reacted to our fighting with winces, she could only snort and think "sisters." Indeed, I think it would be hard to fight more convincingly with anyone BUT Voodoo - we've been play fighting for years, after all, and if we slip and actually hurt one another we won't be all that angry. And hurt ourselves we did - I cannot begin to tell you how many bruises I have, and my left knee is missing most of its skin. Worth it. However, these bumps combined with the physical exhaustion of both setting up and taking down the stage dec this year has left me pretty fucking sore.

This is not entirely a bad thing - it is a reminder that we live in the body. And some of us have not been looking after those bodies as well as we should.

October marks one of the traditional Witches Sabbats that I hold dear - Samhain. Halloween has always been my favourite holiday (and my favourite costume as a child was a bat, so we can see that goth is apparently a disease one contracts early on) and the spiritual side of this day is one that I have not been able to ignore with any great success even in my most secular phases.

Many people consider Samhain to be the Witches New Year. It's the final harvest, and as such acts as the death knell for the year.

Also a character on the old Ghostbusters cartoon.

I've come to approach the holiday as time to clear old old junk in order to set new patterns over the winter, and this year feels like a good one to really stop fucking around in. A lot of my plans over the past year started strong and fell flat, and that's a problem. I think I've learned ways to avoid the usual obstacles I create for myself, and now is a time when I truly have no excuses left to keep me from doing my shit.

And man, do I have shit to do.

Wednesday, October 1, 2014

AbraCadaver 2014: Deal With the Devil


So that was LAST year.

This year, the theme of the show is 'Deal With the Devil' and oh boy oh boy, am I ever excited about it. Obviously I won't divulge too much - the show is this Saturday, and for anybody who happens to be reading this you can get your tickets online at Brown Paper Tickets dot com.

This year my involvement has been primarily offstage, much as it was last year - I'm a co-producer of course, but I'm also a writer and it's there that I have the most fun. I wound up doing a lot of research into the history of witch trials for a piece, and I have to say... what the fuck, why are dudes so scared of people stealing their dicks? Like, come on guys. Grow up.

One of the things about writing for shows is that you get to hear some pretty unbiased stuff - you're not on stage, so people don't necessarily know your involvement. I think it was the second year of AbraCadaver that had what some people called 'the rape monologue' and what I referred to as "the demon possession monologue."

Now, certain topics are triggering for some people, and I'm not about to slam anybody for that. But what I have considered about that particular show is that in my piece rape was alluded to, while in another piece about a guy chaining up a zombie and fucking it it was considerably more explicit. The latter piece was preformed by a man, and mine by a woman. I feel this may have been a factor in one being more upsetting than the other. I don't apologise for my writing in general, and while I'm sad to have upset people I also feel that that's good. You SHOULD be upset by that shit.

At any rate, the horror continues this year. Because it is a horror show, not a Halloween show - a distinction Voodoo and I have been careful to make in the past few years. Halloween shows may have spooky skeletons, pumpkins, black cats. A horror show will try its hardest to disturb you. There will be blood... and maybe the Devil himself.