This is a repost from our last session:
So we have been working for the last few days brainstorming, making meals, going for walks, and building a task list. We acknowledge the chaos of our approach, but have decided that it’s not a problem since we have scheduled sufficient time and accept that it is the nature of this first phase. This time together allows for tangential outpourings, that then return to the point of origin while we prepare for the next departure. We thought it a good idea to decide what we want to accomplish while the three of us are gathered and have come up with the following tasks for the week:
- To make a video that offers a flavor of the piece. A teaser. Which we will post here!
- To begin collecting scene ideas and compiling images, moments.
- To listen to the musical themes Karen has written so far and discuss our impressions.
- To continue to understand each of the planes and think about how we might move between them.
This morning we had breakfast then went for a walk. We were all feeling very playful. Mark brought up the idea of “the artist” as a character and we discussed the queen as artist. Then landed on the artist’s subject, and the queen’s subjects. We passed lots of joggers and joked about what it must be like to overhear our passionate discussion.
We got off the main path and went into the woods. There was vast wreckage of fallen trees, the result of winter weather. Snapped and cracked limbs in strange piles, leaning precariously, dangerously suspended. Not long on the path we came upon a deer skeleton. It was perfectly intact, revealed by the melted snow, rotted clean and resting peacefully. So strange to be fully immersed in discussions of death and decay and stumble upon a skeleton. The incredible beauty of bones in nature’s artful arrangement. The anatomical grace of the interlocking spine after connective tissue has vanished, the architecture of the pelvic girdle, the ribs like fallen sticks, leg bones that make a line to scattered toes. We took the skull, but were careful not to disturb the other parts of the form. Karen said she might come back for the toes and shared with us the story of Tuvan throat singers who had an instrument made out of sheep-knuckles. We headed home.
Back at the house there were two turkey vultures that often gather on our roof for its warmth and safety, leaping from roof to chimney to oak tree.
We spent the rest of the morning listening to Karen’s compositions. We decided to give each theme a name so we could identify them. The exercise of listening to them, discussing our impressions and titling them also helped us begin to see how and where they might underscore the action.
We are also discovering the process for this Vanitas piece. It is like a Dutch windmill: we gather at the mill, excavate ideas, lift them out of the mud, sift out what’s useful, hone them into material to craft into scenes.