if . . .

Interrogating the ghost flow witness the ancestors river run writing archive invented stories to mimic evolution dream document the apparations touch shadows wear movements see traces of transformations feel the play shining connection visitations perform :: note :: . . . first tentative step for a young collaboration . . .

'The worst cruelties of life are its killing injustices. Almost all promises are broken. The poor's acceptance of adversity is neither passive nor resigned. It's an acceptance which peers behind the adversity and discovers there something nameless. Not a promise, for (almost) all promises are broken; rather something like a bracket, a parenthesis in the otherwise remorseless flow of history. And the sum total of these parentheses is eternity. (Open Democracy |That have not been asked: ten dispatches about endurance in face of walls | John Berger "The worst cruelties of life are its killing injustices." John Berger on poverty, desire, storytelling, and the future's gift to the present.) :: note :: . . . a promise . . . a betrayal . . .

"Fragmentation, the mark of a coherence all the more substantial for being attained through the necessity of undoing itself - not by a dispersed system, nor through fragmentation as a system, but by staging in pieces (a shredding of) what has never existed (ideally or otherwise) as a whole and may not again in some future guise reconstitute itself. The spacing through a timing that can only be grasped - fallaciously - as the absence of time." (Maurice Blanchot, The Writing of the Disaster (University of Nebraska Press, 1986), Ann Smock, translator. However, the translation used here is mine (Victor Muñoz) and differs slightly from Smock's. | The Journal as Art: "Impossible Text" | Victor Muñoz ) (via wood s lot ) :: note :: . . . first read wood s lot everyday . . . no three times a day . . . 'fragmentation as a system' . . . dreampropulsion . . . intimations of meaning . . . vulnerability & finitude . . . futility & fragility . . .

:: note :: . . . icicles stream off the temple roof . . . today -18 + past days quite mild + previously lots of drifting snow = icicles . . . emotionally the same type of stream . . . cold today + days of hot + lots of buildup = flow . . . the translucent pointed beauty of frozen motion . . .

STA (The Saskatchewan Teachers' Association) Publicly-Funded Education Taking Stock and Moving Forward ". . . the one - if not the only - public structure we have which is capable of reaching out to all citizens in all parts of the country and making them feel part of the extended family of citizenship is the publicly-funded education system." - John Ralston Saul Keynote Address Publicly-Funded Education - The Foundation of Our Collective Society His Excellency John Ralston Saul "Over 100 years ago, the founders of our province made education their top priority. They believed that education should be equally accessible to all, regardless of gender, socio-economic class, colour, ethnic background, country of origin or culture. They believed each member of the community should financially support this educational system. They were opposed to the British model of education that used a system of private schools for the rich and inferior public who could not afford...

" Look outward to stay alive. " (Weblogs in Higher Education| A week in a row ) "Look around and mostly what one observes is self-promotion, self-justification and self-righteousness." (Groundhog Day| Changing the World ) :: note :: . . . the response to looking outward is key . . . playing with the response is even more essential . . .

"As Strindberg wrote: "Everything can happen, everything is possible and probable. Time and place do not exist; on an insignificant basis of reality the imagination spins, weaving new patterns; a mixture of memories, experiences, free associations, incongruities and improvisations. The characters split, double, multiply, evaporate, condense, disperse, assemble. But one consciousness rules over them all, that of the dreamer; for him there are no secrets, no illogicalities, no scruples, no laws."" (Guardian Unlimited | No limits ) :: note :: . . . one of my most delightful experiences was working on Dream Play years ago . . . no consciousness ruled it was a collective unconscious . . . each actor was invited to an anarchy of no . . .

"Ridley is prepared for the fact that some people will be shocked by Mercury Fur, but he is also keen to pose a question: "Why is it that it is fine for the classic plays to discuss - even show - these things, but people are outraged when contemporary playwrights do it? If you go to see King Lear, you see a man having his eyes pulled out; in Medea, a woman slaughters her own children. The recent revival of Iphigenia at the National was acclaimed for its relevance. But when you try to write about the world around us, people get upset. If I'd wrapped Mercury Fur up as a recently rediscovered Greek tragedy it would be seen as an interesting moral debate like Iphigenia, but because it is set on an east-London housing estate it is seen as being too dangerous to talk about. What does that say about the world we live in? What does it say about theatre today?"" (Guardian Unlimited | The devil inside ) :: note :: . . . theater is dominated by those involved in enterta...

"Some giants just step more softly than others. And then, when nobody's looking, they slip quietly away." (Nick Marino | Jazz world loses a true funk artist ) :: note :: . . . listened to jimmy smith just recently only because a couple years back met an incredible keyboard player who through his imagination sent me to the sources . . . what beautiful words . . . what beautiful music . . .

:: note :: . . . year of the Rooster . . .

"It was then that I remembered being a child: the sheer joy of being raw and the games we played to make ourselves raw again and again. I was uncooked, unprepared, imperfect, exposed and vulnerable. In retrospect, I would describe that as always existing in a state of potential. Instead of feeling scared, I felt free. Instead of feeling pain, I felt alive. I loved being rubbed raw. And despite being told that was more than a little twisted, I continue to seek out things that make me feel raw. And now I want to explore what social rawness is - and how it differs from social friction..." (purse lip square jaw | Anne Galloway | Rubbed raw ) :: note :: . . . describes perfectly the art of the beginner . . . a state i invite my students to enter when playing . . . working on scenes it is the space between the players that becomes raw . . . the more deliberate the friction the greater the activation of potential . . . the joy of being raw is the acting source . . . often in the ...

"9. Clouds: forms-contents, becoming, floating worlds, vastness and evanescence, moving permanence. And, before all - and at the very end - a certain relationship with the sky." ( The Decalogue ) :: note :: . . . devising the decalogue . . . snake in the clouds . . .

"Businesses must orchestrate memorable events for their customers, they argue, and that memory itself becomes the product - the "experience". More advanced experience businesses can begin charging for the value of the "transformation" that an experience offers, e.g. as education offerings might do if they were able to participate in the value that is created by the educated individual. This, they argue, is a natural progression in the value added by the business over and above its inputs." (wordiQ.com | Definition of The Experience Economy ) (via WebSeitz/wikilog ) :: note :: . . . experience economy day . . .

" Emphasizing the intrusiveness of our electronic age, the outside world is not fenced out of this show, but deliberately allowed to interrupt it. The show will begin with a statement by the stage manager that tells the audience and the actors to leave their cell phones on. The play will actually stop if anybody's cellphone rings." (lamama.org | Yokastas Redux ) :: note :: . . . we've come a long way . . . "Dionysus in 69" to "Yokastas Redux" . . . full body to full electronic contact . . . myth to myth . . . ashes to ashes . . .

"A member of The Regina Five, Kenneth Lochhead is celebrated nationally for his colour-field stem paintings of the early 1960s. Yet little is known of his beginnings as a student in Philadelphia and Europe, an art school and gallery administrator, landscape and mural painter in Regina during the 1950s, or his subsequent abstract and representational work in Winnipeg, Toronto, and Ottawa." ( MacKenzie Art Gallery | Kenneth Lochhead Garden of Light 1948-2002 January 29, 2005 to May 23, 2005 Organized by the MacKenzie Art Gallery Curated by Ted Fraser) ( Fusion )              ( Dark Green Centre )      ( Heat Rise ) The Regina Five "Ken Lochhead arrived in Regina in 1950 as a 24-year-old to direct the School of Art at the University of Saskatchewan, Regina College and begin development of the Norman MacKenzie Art Gallery. Lochhead also revitalized the Emma Lake Artists' Workshops. He was described as a...

"Men without memories will be created; men in a continual violent ecstasy, forever starting at ground zero; a "critical ignorance" will come into being with extensive roots in the long prehistory of savage man, the magus of the caves." ( Guiseppe Pinot-Gallizio|Manifesto of Industrial Painting: For a unitary applied art ) :: note :: . . . something very attractive about the situationists . . . a lover of the outrageous aphorism & manifesto . . .

"A study of a Minneapolis program showed that arts integration has substantial effects for all students, but appears to have its greatest impact on disadvantaged learners. Gains go well beyond the basics and test scores. Students become better thinkers, develop higher-order skills, and deepen their inclination to learn." (washingtonpost.com | The Art of Education Success ) :: note :: . . . who is listening . . . no one within earshot . . .

"'We went into this study believing we would find a core model, with a small group of people who are sexually active,' Moody said. 'We were surprised to find a very different kind of network.'" ( RESEARCHERS MAP THE SEXUAL NETWORK OF AN ENTIRE HIGH SCHOOL ) :: note :: . . . this map haunts . . . what type of map exists at the school where i teach of over one thousand high school students . . .