This always happens. High hopes of blogging overruled by how audacious it seems to spend any time on a computer or getting lost in the world wide web instead of narrow old streets, tiny cafes and ornate buildings. But alas, it's day 8 of the z |j Trafo residency and some things should be documented.
Here is the basic architecture of the Crack in Everything Set. Because we are spending so much time working everyday, things progress pretty fast in the creative process and by day four Juniper was filming the new phrases we've been working on with Zoe and I in the buck (no pictures here suckahs!). Projected back on to the white marley, we look like little frogs scittering about and zoe now refers to that section as the tadpole section. Aside from frogger, we've tried a dozen iterations of a few different ideas filmed in various stages of being costumed. Phrases that accumulate, phrases from Old Girl, and ideas that have no phrasing yet. The days have been long and exhausting, even though we are surrounded by nothing but inspiration and take breaks to walk over ancient bridges and soak in thermal baths.
The day after Independence Day (August 20), we went to the Gellert Baths and it was quite literally like bathing in a intricately tiled cathedral. The swimming pool looks like something out of greek mythology, a ceilingless hall with classical columns and huge potted palms and lots of cherub little cupids running around. There was definitely something in the water that took the pain away beside the heat.
Zoe and I both have had two massages from a masseuse that works out of the basement of a hair salon. Bence puts the radio on the smooth jazz station while he works and about the time I was trying to figure out the first language of the woman doing a smooth jazz cover of "holiday," he was digging into my trapezeus muscle, like no one ever has. This little upper back shell is something that my mom and I both have and I wonder what it would be like to lose it. Would I be more like an owl and less like a turtle/teddybear?
Anyway, after the massage, I walked down the street to a cafe zoe recommended and when there were no seats I asked the loud british guy if I could sit at his table. I realized quickly that writing with english being spoken around me was going to be much harder than the lilting hungarian background noise that I've become accustomed to when I'm outside of Trafo.
It then became apparent that this guy was an actor, an actor on TV and I couldn't help but be intrigued and want to figure out who he was. I tried very hard to block it out and keep writing, but his personality was taking up more space than existed in the tiny cafe and I succombed to the game of pretending to be doing something else while trying to figure out who he was. Nothing he was talking about rung a bell until he mentioned being the John Adams HBO series (yes, I'm enough of a history geek to have voluntarily rented this) and I could finally see his face framed by a wig. Rufus Sewell, is his name. And he's very photogenic. In person, his face is broad and blue eyes look a little crazy. Hunger and my internal moral compass that tells me to not pay more attention to famous people than to anyone else, made me stand up and walk out of the cafe to find some food and a few extra shirts to sweat through everyday.
Back at the Fiktiv Pub on Krudy, the cafe right outside our apartment building that sometimes serves salmon (!!), I just had a pork burger and am now trying to block out what appears to be an entire karaoke sing along to the Mama Mia soundtrack at the pizza place next store. More english.
Two nights ago after blistering heat for days, thunderheads gathered and let loose on budapest, like a high pressure shower on the city washing away the holiday's garbage, the smell of pee in the subway gutters but tonight its back to outdoor living, with no memory of their being anything that could keep people from dining on the street.
After 8 days of dance/video brainstorming, we'll move out of the theater and to a rehearsal studio across town, adding a daily subway commute to our already seemingly settled experience of having jobs and a place to live. I definitely feel like I instantaneously set up a different life here.
I love the individuality in style in Budapest. I love the sound of hungarians speaking hungarian and hungarians speaking english (hearing my hungarian friend Zolee's accent come back to haunt me every time a man says hello). I love buying fresh bread and cheese to eat everyday and zooming past all the buildings that are painted orange on my way to rehearsal (is it some sort of communist throwback. I wonder). That said, I think I have to peace out from the sound of "papa don't preach" being sung from some very cute hungarian ladies underneath me.
Oh! On the holiday, zoe, juniper, and I were invited by Judit to go to a party at a club with this description:
Tarantino film latest demonstration of the strange raffle prize Ashram became a national holiday (mustbeat) electronics, hiphop, soundtrack, bootiebass, electrobreaks, audio. The window view of the street fighting, but during the night, and convince them of the importance of peace, we will dance together in the early hours of Stephen King, DJ Amotz (ISR) by remixére.
sounds fun, I think.
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