speaking from the I eye #1

Traduction française à venir.

RESIDENCY : THE MUSICAL

Narrator goes into a musical residency. Their new friend Kathy, who they met at a bar a few weeks prior, has convinced them to join. Once there, the narrator realises it's a post-art school residency for art students career changing to musical performance.


[Singing] :

I always dreamed of being a musical star,
But my voice can’t carry me that far.

Met a girl named Kathy, late at the bar,
We bonded over singing, ordering from afar.

Now I’m heading to the residency,
Cameras staring, but they’re not filming me.

They’re just standing still, watching the scene,
Helping me get used to being seen.

People are strange, I can’t figure out,
When they’re acting or when they’re just about

To drop the mask, show who they are inside,
Is it real or just a part they hide?


[*clears throat*]


Notes on the residency :

Day two : “Singing while crafting” class : we all work on pottery while singing

Coco always seems distracted, I wonder what's on their mind. I wonder if they're sometimes so distracted that they forget about now, and I envy that possibility. Always following them, they have this shadow that they never seem to acknowledge. I've come to understand that everybody sees it, it's like the curtains, or the beverage, we pretend it's part of the furniture, when in fact it's alive. The curtains, the beverage. All inanimate objects here, all furniture, seems to function on its own. I bet they've taken each and every one of these students’ souls once they crossed the front gate, and put them inside the objects we revolve around everyday. I bet my soul is now in there, somewhere, hiding in a prop these two gay men are using in their contact dance masterclass, hiding in the harmonica this girl is now blowing as if she was trying to send all of us, the residency participants, the walls and the furniture into the air.

We've been pretending we don't see this animation of the inanimate, this inanimation of the animate, but it's what's been holding us all together. Here, time stops. I can't even tell if the light comes from the sun or neons. I feel empty, but I also feel alive, entire, through everyone's own emptiness. Or maybe the togetherness is only triggered by the tornado in Marla's eyes when she brings the harmonica to her mouth, a common fear that awakens to the contact of the cold steel on her lips.

I try not to think too much, Kathy always says that's what's keeping me from fifinding my good singing voice. I know it's just that I can't sing, but there's something so comfortable in the potential that my lack of talent resides in my lack of confidence, that I want to trust her. I can't sing because I'm too scared we're about to be flown away by the harmonica. Right. And what does that have to do with self-confidence?


Another day

Dolly puts her blond wig on, and I'm always reassured. She's been a real cornerstone to me since the beginning of this adventure, even though I haven't had a proper conversation with her yet. She's part of those people you know you can trust, like an old chandelier still standing, or a hundred year old wooden clock. When it comes to musicals, to singing, talking, expressing yourself in any form, I have this expression, this expression that I like to use, the “Melody of Passion”. Dolly takes the wig off, I feel my breath bucking, another Dolly puts the wig on, or is it, I mean, for sure the wig it is, but I mean, is it a new one?

I breathe out, and spread my spine in a perfectly angled downward facing dog. I can't focus on the figure but my body knows the drill, it has to bend to let me think. Later on today, I'm meeting the residency supervisor to pitch my masterclass (we all have to give one during the week). He kinds of scares me, he won't stop wearing these atrocious crop tops, and holds yoga-meetings only. That's why I'm yoga-brainstorming right now. I want to talk about the “Melody of Passion”, and I want to talk about the ghosts, and I want to talk about my idea – of a musical, but we don't sing in key, we just grunt, in key.

I'm not sure yet about the musical part, the proposition only exists in the mirage that the residency actually gives us the space to think, and is not only there to change us into proper actors/singers. I don't feel confident enough to have this meeting one-on-one, but the only people here I'd feel comfortable taking to the meeting would be Coco and Fabulina, but I can't find them. They always just disappear, after putting on a beautiful scene, or pulling some strings to turn any, more domestic-ish everyday situation into an Annie, Moulin Rouge or Cabaret hommage, and no one ever seems to notice! That's one other thing pissing me off, as a spectator of their shows, and a part taker in the more daily situations, I feel like I'm some sort of crazy conspiracy mum, but then once again this is a musical residency, we're making up stories and ways to tell them, how could you not doubt?

My only certainty right now is I need to eat this meeting up, with or without C and F, and my admiration for them. After all, maybe they were just the lights you meet along the way, the lights that help you build the trust you need for these milestone moments, the lights that connect the past and the future. The lights that you look for, for the rest of your life, in strangers’ eyes, dicks, bottles, carpets, sculptures — for the most annoying of us. Maybe they were just here to guide us, to lead us to where we were supposed to be. I try the pottery room, the dorms, the kitchen, the backyard where they usually sit talking nonsense for hours, but they're nowhere to be found. And none of the others seem to know where or when they went.

July the nineteenth

Looking back, that was Coco and Fabulina's last trick. The lyrical singing class on the Thursday morning, just before my yoga-brainstorming, in between lunch and my meeting with the residency supervisor, that class was the last time anyone ever saw them again. The whole residency, reality-musical thing turned more and more, as the days went by, into some Z-list thriller show, true crime series, or well produced ghost hunting YouTube series.

We couldn't find any trace of them, as if they never existed. The only print they had left behind was the note. For some, it was an actual note, resonating inside their heads. For others, it materialised as a simple post-it, they saw flying inside the building, or stuck to a wall in one of the workshop rooms. Needless to say, that post-it always carried little to no words, more often the drawing of a familiar unknown face, or a beautifully scratched musical note. My meeting never happened, I decided to quit the harsh world of musicals, where stars disappear before setting a first foot on stage. I was convinced of my idea, I wanted to spread my “Melody of Passion”, my grunts, behind, and in front of the curtains. But ahead of that, I needed fifirst to spread my wings, fly high, and find my voice. I find myself sometimes still thinking about Coco and Fabulina. As time went by, I started more and more to believe they never really existed. I couldn't help but wonder, had the power of collective illusion been so strong it could bring the investigation of their disappearance to such an official level? And why did anyone suddenly stop working on the case right at the end of the residency? Was this the usual way the residency ended? More than the lights, had C and F been some kind of mandatory tribute, paid by wannabe stars to access the realest extent of a good musical, its true meaning, where ghosts are brought back to life, where the furniture sings, and where the supporting roles were as disposable as the main ones?

In the end, the true lesson I learnt from that event was to never follow the advice of a drunk ex-art school student that likes to order in singing at random bars on a Tuesday night.


[Singing] :

I don’t need to sing to find my way,
Even when the lines are blurred, it’s okay.

Roles we play, and things we do,
Who’s the real me, who are you?

So I’ll keep dreaming, maybe I’ll find
A way to hear the music in my mind.

Whether they’re acting or just being free,
I’ll keep singing silently, just being me.