Not having a good night sleep, I woke up today a little groggy, listening to WNYC with more commentary on last night’s debate.  I too am still wondering about a lot of things.  It seems like I wasn’t the only one that was appalled when McCain referred to Senator Obama as “that one.”  What was he really saying to the American people by acknowledging him in that way (or actually not acknowledging him) and was that a new economic plan he laid out when he talked about buying out the failing mortgages? How come Obama had to continually restate what he had already said after McCain would comment and mix it all up?  I also think that the end question should just be thrown out, because both candidates have an agenda for their last comment and the question is just turned and twisted to support the message they want to send out to the American people.  (I also thought Tom Brokaw was bit condescending with his New Hampshire Zen comment about the question, but now I just might be getting overly sensitive.)

My point is this, there is so much to take in from those debates and the amount of information we received is overwhelming.   What did we take in? What did we learn? Gain? What do we now know? (I know that I would never put so much red and blue together in flooring and wall covering and it makes me ill to know a team of people designed that with a clear idea of the message it was sending.)  

To get back on track, I bring this up because I remember in one of the first descriptions I got from Jill about what she was interested in exploring with this new work is how society today is bombarded with messages from so many different sources with incredible speed, force and volume.  It can make you numb, similarly to how I felt after the debates last night.  It is a personal thing for me, but I think a lot of information that is sent out is to lead to some kind of activity: buy this, do this, take this, travel here, eat this.  However, it makes me do nothing.  It’s as if there are so many options that I just can’t begin anything.  In the political realm it is a huge inner conflict for me, because I want to be actively doing something to change the current state of things, but I am inundated and most times I am stagnant. 

In rehearsal last week, Jill brought in the Longfellow’s poem, “Paul Revere’s Ride” and now we are using some of the text in the piece.  He seems to be the ultimate messenger in the truest sense.  He was a messenger for the Boston Committee of Public Safety and helped organize a Intelligence and Alarm system to keep watch on the British Military.  His midnight right on the 18^th of April in Seventy Five, is glorified that he alone rode and shouted “ The British are coming!”  Of course, there are tons of inaccuracies to this statement and also in the poem by Longfellow that was created 40 years after Revere’s death.  He did not act alone and he did not shout, “The British are coming!”  I was reading about this and found it humorous to note because at this point in history most people were actually still considered British to some degree.  Jill then asked Toby and I what we had thought about bringing in this text and using it in the piece.  How did we think it related to what we were doing?  One thing I thought about after that rehearsal and reading a bit more about Paul Revere is that Paul Revere’s midnight ride is well known as a Patriotic symbol.  In Zsa Zsa Land, we are playing a lot with symbols or movement motifs and manipulating/expanding them.  Whether that is a torture position, a folk dance or a public radio broadcast fundraising drive, there are sections in the piece that at first you may think the message is one thing and then it is subtlety or drastically changed to make you think about something else. 

I am still thinking about lots of things and hoping to act soon.  

Message Translation