Coffee and prejudice
Today we were discussing how to deal with all the input. We all deal with impressions differently both due to being different persons and also because of our different expressions. After having stayed with our family over night and spending another whole day with them, there are impressions enough to make a performance only based on them and their environment. Johannes said something which to me felt like a key to our process. Even though we might not copy and translate things from the reality literally, what we’re doing now is also creating a base for mutual impressions and experiences. Later we can more easily refere to things that go beyond for example musical terms. We all know the air of the room where we slept last night and can distinct the colour of the trees hanging down the canal next to our family’s house.
This morning I woke up and spent the first hour observing frogs from the little bridge right outside the house we slept. Later this afternoon I realised it’s midsummer in Sweden and I learnt from Tobias that in Norway they instead of singing about grown up frogs sing about the baby frogs on Midsummer. Translated to english these baby frogs are called “butt trolls”, “rumpetroll”, anyway it could have been cool to perform the traditional “frog-dance” among frogs… but here in the light-chain tivoli village it’s too dry for them. Instead we’ve decided to do other traditional things; Drink Vodka.
We went back to the Vegas village with a taxi. Coming here again felt like two different realities, where Vilkovo is real and this is constructed. Constructed happiness.
We went to the Lambada café which proved to be the worst café on earth. We asked them before going inside if they served coffee. The answer to that was yes; so we happily sat down under the blue plastic roof. As Katya went to order she was informed that, no only instant coffee was served and they didn’t have milk. No worries, we were enjoying the blue light neutralising our pink skin and could handle som nescafé. Process in Vilkovo brought us all more sunshine than in a long time… but being pink maybe goes hand in hand with our artistic process… Ok, protection might keep you from being burnt… but sooner or later you will get a sunburn anyway and… even if not all skin stays on your body… it will turn to a beautiful colour if you just work on it…
Waiting at Lambada in the end just brought us peach juice. The waitress returned informing us that they didn’t access boiled water. They also didn’t access the Lambada song. No Lambada song probably made this a once in a life time visit, though it’s just around the corner.
After Vilkovo and having a family it felt quite nice to come back to our cottage. In the day time it’s even quiet here. Right now the cottage became our studio and we’re hiding behind the walls with all our equipment.
The norweigian finally also admitted that he got a bit tired of fish, and this has been his cultural link so far. Seems like both ukrainians and norweigians love fish of any style; Cooked, fried, deep-fried, boiled, stewed, dried, minced, smoked, hammered, dead, alive, raw, polished, hand-made, burnt, dug down, forgotten, melted and no wait… rotten that’s only us I think. We agreed to serve our team members rotten fish when we’re back in Sweden. Since both me and Johannes come from the north of Sweden we’re actually obliged to serve “Surströmming” next summer and I think that will make up for all the dried fish I don’t have so many strong feelings for.
Yesterday Sasha’s character “Stick-man” moved to a fisherman’s straw cottage in the black sea. He was not there but his striped shirt was hanging to dry on a clothes line while the rest of us were having lunch in the only shade on the island.
The island felt sad and lonely and the sun was fierce. The ground only consisted of sea shells and if this had been at night it would have been the perfect place to have a scary experience. One of us also would have added to boost the fear; Johannes! As always he was walking around in his energy saving way, Katya said he’s looking as a student from a horror movie… Johannes inspired by this, later at night, asked me if I had checked his criminal record before asking him to join the project…
A small idea referring to our sectret CV:s was born. For extra income to the project, beside selling travel TV-programs we might undertake some very efficiant spionage. If handling this well, I think this can be the solution for Ukrainan and Russian funding. “Lambada-project” is probably still a good name for our actions. Or what does actually lambada mean… more than sexy hips?
Yeah… but regarding everything… PREJUDICE… It’s hard to be neutral about what you see. We were discussing the other night that it’s a thin line between inspiration and exploating. For instance if we would be very literal and use many things from the family that adopted us… would they feel comfortable? We just visited them for a couple of days, but maybe one could compare it to Åsne Seierstad’s experiences with friends that afterwards detest her works that are made with inspiration from their lives? In this way I’m happy that we’re not wanting to create realism, in the end it might just be Seriosha’s laughter that remain with our creation on stage, but the days we spent with them are part of our common palette.