OCG VII - Day 2

Day 2
Wake at 6:00, sitting at 7:00.

Breakfast at 8:00.  Lots of comments about the OCG rehearsal last night.  "No note choices."  "I felt safe."  "Drama."  "Dervish circle."

On lunch duty at 10:00.  Patricia's vegetable peelers are a revelation:  well-made tools are a blessing.  A realization that if I could work as smoothly as this peeler, life would be a lot easier.  There is some extra time during lunch prep, and Sandra asks us to please stick to useful talking and staying on the course, just in time for the bell at 12:30.  A good reminder.

Lunch at 1:00.  Not enough bowls.  I end up sitting at the head table, which is strangely not odd.  Robert treats his floral salad with the respect it deserves.

2:30 - Repertoire meeting.  My hands are working better than I expected.

4:00 - Tea.  Horn Up Your Ass makes an appearance for Patrick G.'s birthday.

Feels very strange that it's Tuesday.  A week from now, this is all gone forever.  Very clear that I'm in the warped time zone of a course.

5:00 - "Authentic rehearsal of the Orchestra" with Frank.  His classic exercise of filling the room and finding the maximum amount of space for one's self leads to some interesting extrapolations.  At one point, he directs us to follow and mimic a person in the room, and then directs us to switch to a new person.  As I switch and begin to mimic this new person, I notice something very odd:  there is still a clear residue of the first person in my actions.

6:00 - Moving things inside the main house for dinner.  Cold, windy, and wet.

6:30 - Tai Chi with Luciano.

7:00 - Dinner.  Lots of talking, and then deep Silence visits, roughly 12 minutes.  RF talks about the 7 Principles of working in a Guitar Circle, and asks for suggestions for work tonight.

8:20 - Personal practice, working with the base concept from the Mind Pickler last night.

9:30 - Personal meeting with Robert.  A little anxious, as I have not had one with him before.  A discussion on "chief feature"; an internal struggle with whether I should teach or not ("We can only give away what we have for ourselves"); touching on Beelzebub, the Dramatic Universe.  I'm always mystified when people call him anything other than kind and polite; he's simply one of the most pleasant persons I've ever met.  What's actually more surprising about the meeting is that there is no pretension in the discussion, no "You are wasting my time" feeling about it.  He is approaching me completely on the level that I am at, with the breadth of experience that he has.  We go a few minutes over schedule, and then he advises me to get moving so that we can make rehearsal on time.

10:00 - OCG rehearsal.  Procession whizzing, followed by full-on Orchestrizing.  Leaders constantly changing.  At one point early in the run, Elisa takes a walk outside with a section of the procession--I have no shoes or jacket on, but I swallow my pride and follow anyway.  No fear until I suspect she'll be walking behind the dorm, where I do not know the terrain.  By the time we come back, the Orchestra has begun to shift into new territory.

Ducking.  Running.  Crowding and everything in between.

Audiences have no idea what they're in for.

Victor checks in with Chris and I afterward.  He advises us to really work Askesis, Eye of the Needle, and Asturias; Where is the Nurse? has been cut.

Long day.  The middle is decidedly here.