Tuesday, May 26, 2009

In the meantime

As you may or may not be aware, the purpose of Fleeing Muses was to create a song to beckon those long skirted ladies back to a place where I could hear them. I needed to seduce them, to make a leafy grotto where they might feel at home. A fireside where they could warm their toes and voices, sipping wine and teasing frogs and crickets with their song until their friends joined them. So that stories could begin to waft around me once more.

Well, for now at least, the libations have worked. Thanks to your generous participation in the endeavour, I might add. Your comments have been like compost, and I'm really grateful for that.

The channels are open it seems, and this time its a steady flow. Read all about the project I'm working on, its called Paydirt, and its a ... hmm, well for now I'm calling it a sort of immorality play about Joburg. Its a space to have fun. It opens in Grahamstown at the National Festival of the Arts in about a months time.

So please do pop over and share in the excitement.

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

The Other Side

You will forgive me.

I know you will.

I simply need some space.


The wedding, and all its attendant stories...it's just too fresh, too intimate, too close. For here, you know?


I had put so much on hold ("I'm too busy now, I'll do it after the wedding")
It stacked up against me, like the Odds.

And then I got the Odds. Tumbling down on top of me. (and everyone near me).

That to-do list grew teeth and a long, scaly tail. It lashed me.

Having so dutifully trained myself in the art of saying Yes, it seemed I had caught it like a swiney fever.

Tamara, will you supervise extra students?
YES!
Tamara, will you re-write this course for us?
I WILL!
By Friday?
YES!
(fool! you can't do that!) spake the sense voice. But sense-voice was in brackets. And smaller font.
Tamara, remember that proposal you promised us...
YES!
Can we have it this week?
YES!
Tamara, we start rehearsing our Grahamstown play this week, you know that don't you?
YES!

And - no-one warned me. That somehow, post-wedding, hubby and I would not so much wallow in blissful marital tranquillity as take the opportunity to Sort Through Our Issues. Once and for all. At high volume. Well, at least the passion is still there after 13 years of cohabitation. Of course, he had his reasons. (see above). Sense-voice outsourced itself to someone who cares. Sjoe, but a girl can hang on to her old issues if she tries, ne? And fight for them! Anyway, its over now, and peace has returned to the valley.

Baby steps, and I have managed to
a) clear the decks
b) remind myself of The Power of No (apologies to Mr Tolle)
c) forgive myself for not having sorted through over 1000 wedding photos
d) forgive myself for not having written up all the wedding anecdotes in champagne-witty prose
e) go to another friend's wedding in the Eastern Cape (a lekker skop it was too)
f) start the script for a certain extremely exciting project... a production called Paydirt. It's about being a Joburger. It premieres in Grahamstown at the National Festival of the Arts in a month. And we are blogging the whole thing here. Woooohooooooooo!!!

I'm back. Wedding stories must wait, I just can't put them here now, not yet. I need Distance. I need Assimilation. I know you understand. I just know it.

I am trying to learn something you see. I am trying to take things one at a time. I am trying to learn that the ability to multi-task is not equivalent to worthiness.

Oh look. Now I've gone and burned the supper.

Sunday, May 10, 2009

bad headweather

Unseasonally severe head weather has interrupted our broadcasts. Random electric storms, hail, occasional patches of heavy fog and isolated incidents of flooding have displaced thousands of scheduled activities.

We resume service when calm returns to the hood. the head.