Working Day #2: Chaos and Contradiction

Now I've gotten past the phase of being in love with this city.

So back tracking for a moment. Last night after dinner Juan and I went strolling around Madrid and I found a Muji store! Nice to know.
In the morning Juan, Hana and I refined the interrogation section of our piece, figured out how we can transition out of the Jordanian film, and recorded a new voice file. Of course this probably means absolutely nothing to anyone except for me and Hana and Juan.. I'll try to post a vid when we get something finalized... The idea was that we would work in our groups in the morning and come together in the afternoon.

For lunch Juan and I went just around the corner to this awesome, very Spanish like, restaurant full of Spanish business men who seemed to be there for hours eating and smoking and hours later still smoking on the sidewalk outside the place. Juan had this huge-ass steak that was practically raw. I had a steak too, it was quite nice. But expensive.

In the afternoon, rehearsal started off pretty great with hip-hop dance. We were all so friggin sweaty after dancing for an hour or whatever, esp under the halogen lights, but it was great fun to be up on our feet and playing. After that, each of the teams were given some time to try to incorporate other team members into their piece. We were able to sketch out our ideas, but there was also a lot of sitting around. By the end there was a lot of conflict about how people were using each other. Like, the b-boys were being used everywhere, the opera singing was being used irresponsibly, people were making unreasonable tech demands. Well this is not the complete picture, but there was definitely an artistic direction crisis at hand, where the idea of integration was not working as well as everyone had hoped, and that people were feeling like the integration was blowing their wad so to speak, or stealing their thunder, kind of. But for chrissake, it's like this is our second day working together, and we're not really in a place to start making editting decisions yet. A lot of MEN (white) talking a lot and stroking their egos... Thankfully I'm not a part of the director's group, although I kind of wish I were, but then again I'm sure I would have killed some people by now? Why can't we all just get along?

The evening was much better -- first of all Juan and I found THE nerd store where I bought my brother a birthday present (Darth Vadar t-shirt) and I was this -- Oasmu Tezuka in Spanish. Rock on.
At night we looked in our guide book and planned to go out to this restaurant -- we took the subway and walked to the address -- but it was closed! Friggin Monday! but then we walked around and found a sweet place outdoors. We had ham croquettes, salad wth mango and shrimp, steak and eggs and potatoes, and red peppers stuffed with goat cheese. Yes a great food day, and the asshole that I am, I didn't take any photos. Sorry! But here is Kevin and Juan -- who, by the way has been eating SO MUCH ice cream every night that we joke that i may not be able to drag him across stage the way I have to, if he keeps up this level of helado consumption.
By the time we finished dinner (past midnight) the kitchen was closed and they weren't serving dessert. So we took the subway 4 stops to go to this amazing ice cream and cocktail lounge we'd been walking by on our way to the theater every day.
The place was closing as we arrived but they let us buy ice creams to go. They were amazing. Here is Juan having his second ice cream of the day.
They also had this huge UFO-platter full of truffles. I'm usually not a sweets person, but this place was pretty cool. Plus they have wi-fi! DANGER.

That's all for now -- hoping for a better rehearsal day tomorrow. Although the frustration and tension is inevitable, I also hope that we work through discussion to a place where everyone is happy and working at their highest level of artistic integrity, without some tyrannical imposition.

Everyday I feel SO TIRED by the pm, but then feel awake and energetic around midnight. We've been here only a few days, but it already feels like weeks. So much happens in the day, and it's all broken up by siesta and such... Also I haven't been able to chat with Irwin all day today, it's driving me crazy.