"That Girl" is Recovering!

Heya --

In the interest of truth in journalism, I feel I must report that yesterday, Friday the 15th of October, was the worst, most homesick, miserable day in the history of Ever. For reals. Having spent most of today, Saturday, recovering from said Day of Awful, I am now ready to rejoin the land of the living.

Class was fine yesterday; more seminar and talks about communes/collectives/communities and various other c-words I'm not thrilled about (hehehe). Post-class, I had a ticket to Jonathan Burrows newest performance piece at Sadler's Wells, which I was exicted about, partially because a few other students on my course were also attending. I was exicted to go see a piece that we'd finally be able to talk about in the context of the work we're doing for class etc., and was also just really looking forward to hanging out with some of the folks with whom I'm on this adventure. Four of us fabulous women decided to head over together and stop off for some dinner and chat along the way. And that's when things went horribly wrong.

To condense my saga, I didn't get to go to dinner. Or the show. Fuck. This part of the disaster is the fault of Chase Bank, who I have nothing but vitriol for at present. For the third time, they shut my debit card off due to possible fradulent activity. Lo and behold, "someone tried to use your card in London, In-ga-land." Yeah. I know. It was me, you morons. I informed you of this a week before a left, and then reminded you two days after I arrived when you did this to me the first time, and then 3 DAMN DAYS ago when you did it again. After another hour on the phone with Chase (sucking up half of the international minutes on my phone for the month), in which time I was never once apologized to, I finally got my card to work again. The curtain on the show however had come up 10 minutes earlier. So, I donated $30 to Mr. Burrows and Sadler's Wells. Hope it was worth it. :/

Not in the best mood after this tussle, I packed it in and headed home for the night. I sat around and pouted for awhile, skyped with The Donald and cried my eyes out like a small whiny child, hung up on him and proceeded to cry myself to sleep. Not my finest moment. I was so inconsolably sad and homesick... and I really was inconsolable, though Donald tried his very, very best. Then, as if to punish myself for acting like said child, I woke up with a lowgrade headache and the feeling that a wisdom tooth is coming in. AND I STILL HAVE NO EDIBLE PEANUT BUTTER. So perhaps this right here is another of my un-finest hours.

I spent today being anti-social. I went to the I.C.A. to see the Chto Delat? exhibition currently on. The group is an arts collective based in Russia, engaged in work that explores issues of communism, democracy, reconstruction and community in a documentary sort of way. A large focus of their work is filmmaking, and I took in a showing of their work Songspiel Triptych, which included a talk-back with three of the members. Very interesting stuff. The works include original music, choirs and dance, and so I was quite engaged by the pieces. I was struck by the way that their work explores relationships between political leadership and the "people" for example while simultaneously exploring the function of art in the larger economy, an issue that I am currently exploring in relation to my own function as an art-maker.

While it certainly was great that the exhibit was enjoyable, I really also enjoyed the solitude of today. Clearly, I was around people, but I didn't particularly have to engage with anyone. After the hyper-miserable mood I put myself in yesterday, I needed some time to regroup, particularly before going back into the intense group structure of class on Monday morning. I came home to a quiet house, made myself a delicious homemade pot of mushroom soup, took a deep breath, and decided that I'm over my funk. I'm still missing stuff, but life can go on.

And go on it shall. I have a ticket to see Hamlet with Rory Kinnear tomorrow at the National Theatre, which I couldn't be more excited about. It's getting get press, and looks like an exciting interpretation. I'll share my findings afterwards, I'm sure. So that's that. Yesterday sucked, today was so-so and tomorrow will be awesome. And that's my story. Well that, and the wisdom tooth.

Love,
TGI