We celebrated New Year, me and Ibu Doktor in bed with shivering flu at the witching hour.
Before here were fat, exquisite, Javanese dancers pretending to do western disco, shamans from Makassar, a sort of ghost dancer from Venezuela, contortionist Balinese dancers, Indonesia's foremost composer making bird noises, the guild of kris-makers (those wavy knives) with their 9-foot signature weapon in a scabbard that had to be carried by four men (surrounded by the cigarette packets of their sponsors); a traditional Javanese dancer (all fingers and hands) dancing the temple myth; her famous male equivalent singing O Sole Mio rather like I would and banging an orange sort of drum; a full gamelan orchestra broadcast round the temple by two banks of speakers, each bank had 10 speakers and each speaker was 5 foot square and also needed four men to carry it (and each bank had its own tent to fail to protect it from the inevitable monsoon); a mobile gong on four wheels being carried round the temple (not suited to wheels) by yet another group of four young men. And us.
There were a number of triumphs. Some of our number were featured in the local paper today and several were eagerly interviewed by journalists. For my piece, I emerged from a disused side entrance wearing my Moroccan nightgown (I has forgot the name; it's not gandora), applied earphones and swept the path for five minutes, absorbed in my own world. Then, on becoming aware of an overlooked, lizard-like creature, I put my headtorch on its head, untied my belt and wrapped it round the beast (it being a fertility temple, all the beast have prominent penises and this one became entangled in the belt) put a furled banana leaf on its back and then spent some time imitating it. I also padded its broken foot with a discarded basket.
I received a polite ripple of applause and no interview requests but I was very happy that I had done it rather than saying no and then spending two days imagining that I could have done something that would have brought the audience to its knees weeping with joy and incredulity.
My preliminary conclusion is that my recent history (book, performances, marriage) has been something to do with trying to start to shed the (unspoken) idea that I am incredibly special (but unnoticed) and trying to behave as if I am just ordinary and then respond in proportion (without shame or fury) when I find that I am indeed ordinary.
Before here were fat, exquisite, Javanese dancers pretending to do western disco, shamans from Makassar, a sort of ghost dancer from Venezuela, contortionist Balinese dancers, Indonesia's foremost composer making bird noises, the guild of kris-makers (those wavy knives) with their 9-foot signature weapon in a scabbard that had to be carried by four men (surrounded by the cigarette packets of their sponsors); a traditional Javanese dancer (all fingers and hands) dancing the temple myth; her famous male equivalent singing O Sole Mio rather like I would and banging an orange sort of drum; a full gamelan orchestra broadcast round the temple by two banks of speakers, each bank had 10 speakers and each speaker was 5 foot square and also needed four men to carry it (and each bank had its own tent to fail to protect it from the inevitable monsoon); a mobile gong on four wheels being carried round the temple (not suited to wheels) by yet another group of four young men. And us.
There were a number of triumphs. Some of our number were featured in the local paper today and several were eagerly interviewed by journalists. For my piece, I emerged from a disused side entrance wearing my Moroccan nightgown (I has forgot the name; it's not gandora), applied earphones and swept the path for five minutes, absorbed in my own world. Then, on becoming aware of an overlooked, lizard-like creature, I put my headtorch on its head, untied my belt and wrapped it round the beast (it being a fertility temple, all the beast have prominent penises and this one became entangled in the belt) put a furled banana leaf on its back and then spent some time imitating it. I also padded its broken foot with a discarded basket.
I received a polite ripple of applause and no interview requests but I was very happy that I had done it rather than saying no and then spending two days imagining that I could have done something that would have brought the audience to its knees weeping with joy and incredulity.
My preliminary conclusion is that my recent history (book, performances, marriage) has been something to do with trying to start to shed the (unspoken) idea that I am incredibly special (but unnoticed) and trying to behave as if I am just ordinary and then respond in proportion (without shame or fury) when I find that I am indeed ordinary.
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