January - APAP in New York - American Realness Festival, on to. . .
. . Some bottom in me fell out or maybe rose up and things had to shift for me and dance.
I switched to writing more personal journal style in this blog with an unfortunate name that I haven't changed: http://pntnopnt.blogspot.com/
Though my grandmother's transition out of her house and into dementia is propelling me forward in making some. . . "thing" about memory, I hesitate to go so personal narrative here. This new piece A Better Container is coming from my grandmother's mind and I want to protect her from my selfish wish to put it on a stage and have people look at it as art. The line is so fine that it is almost inevitable to cross, and arbitrary.
Memory. . . these are things I have read about memory in the last four days:
"In dementia, what is unknown encompasses not just the future (what will happen tomorrow) but what is the present (what is that thing? why am i feeling this way). . . "
"shifting sands"
"We have come to see our memories as things we have, collect, and build on to to create a unique sense of self. . . "
"Memory is a story, and storytelling is a process through which we know and grow ourselves and communities."
"I imagined that if each owner of each pair of shoes could be named, then they would be brought back to life. A cloning from intimate belongings, a mystical pangram."
"How can one man take on the memories of even one other man, let alone five or ten or a thousand or ten thousand? how can they be sanctified each?"
"Human memory is encoded in air currents and river sediment. Eskers of ash wait to be scooped up, lives reconstituted."
Tomorrow Night - Not rotated from The Real Shannon Stewart on Vimeo.
