Chagall and Ophelia's ashes

Today I brought to Starbucks over 100 rubber stamps, hand-carved erasers, and inks. Old alphabets from Australia, new ones from San Francisco, fish, bicycles, houses, octopus kites, bridal dresses, Haagen Dasz cartons, top-hatted skeletons, Mayan figures, angels.

Some of these pages now have over 25 hours in them. It's like rehearsal -- you go until it cracks.

"When you think you are close,
you are very far away.
When you think you are far away,
you are very very close."

- Eugenio Barba

Last week I had put two panels cut from another painting. It looked like pearl nacre, over flashes of red, yellow, green, and blue.

Today I outlined images in those paintings with a sharpie. They leapt out -- a giant flower, two small hooded figures, a bell. Facing it were a man, and a wide-sleeved, sash-legged mandarin woman. Absolutely loose, beautiful compositions. These paintings are the first CRACK in the book, the first thing so real it stops your breath.

They look like Chagall.

There is no difference between painting, making a book, and rehearsing. It is the same leap into the Void, the same seduction of the unconscious, the same fight for control, the same surrender and loss. You cannot, will not, are not. The cherubim will sing or wink, and only your fingers are moving. This is not your dance. Something else must dance through you or the work is a lie.

"Pater noster," sings Akropolis in their high empty voices, "Qui es in caelis, sanctificetur Nomen tuum."

That's why I need theatre. Because nothing else, finally, can release this pressure like light, song, bodies, gravel, ash.

I once saw a Hamlet climb into Ophelia's grave, grab her urn -- she'd been cremated -- and shake it at the heavens, shrieking. The lid flew open and her ashes fell over his face like unbleached flour.