Tickle Me Fear

poem in my inbox this morning, from my goddess-in-motion sister, YaliniDream

Untitled

Perhaps
if every raised hand was
a tender call
each roar from the sky
a pending storm
each flash of light in the dark
a firefly

And each body pressed against another
was to meant to comfort and warm…

If the world was absent of violence and war

Perhaps
we’d think of fear as a delicious thing
that tickles the breast bones from within.

Like the flutter that comes
before breath turns to song
Or the quickening beats of a
heart slowly falling in love.

Fear would be skin prickling
at the sound of truth confessed
the shivers from thunder
so enormous it cracks in your chest.

If each flash in the night was a firefly
Perhaps fear would simply be
the feeling
that sits
next to the divine.

Read YaliniDream's Prayer For Peace In Sri Lanka

It went fabulously

The script premiere of Bwagamoyo (The Father) in Uppsala last night.

Full house. Four bows. Rich passionate audience discussion afterwards.

I'm too brain-dead today to give a more detailed description. But I wanted to respond to all the lovely emails, cards, sms messages, calls, that said:

Break a leg.

We're thinking of you.

You can do it.

Go show them watcha got.

and more. You have no idea how vital they were. Especially at 3am yesterday morning, when I doubted every single word and movement I'd created.

Thank you everyone who came. Especially those of you who got on planes from London, and trains from Gothenburg (three hours!).

As well as being brain-dead today, I'm in what I call mollusc-mode. Soft, quivery, edge-of-tears euphoria that comes the day after pulling off a big effort. A chorus humming through my tired, relaxed muscles:

thank you thank you thank you

I am so blessed

thank you

26 hours, 31 drafts

and the maloya of Danyel Waro keeps me breathing. Brings back the joy of dancing on the banks of Midmar Dam in Kwazulu-Natal, at the Awesome Africa Music Festival 2007.

45 hours, 26 drafts

Countdown to the moment of truth on the stage of the Slotts Biografen.

I'm still re-working the script. Halfway through draft 27, as I keep seeing more to fix, add, tighten, clarify, elaborate, I stumble upon this bizarre comment, in an essay on Fanny and Alexander, Bergman's quadruple-Oscar-winner, set and shot in Uppsala:

True, there are many things that do not make sense in this film — both in the internal narrative and the external aspects of the tale — but this is not necessarily a bad thing.
-- Dan Schneider, Alternative Film Guide

I look at Draft 26 on my desk, heavily marked up with corrections, laden with notes to myself on post-its. I say to it with kindly condescension:

True, there are many things that do not make sense in you. But this is not necessarily a bad thing. It has been known to lead to four Oscars.

All my tension and tiredness melt, momentarily, into laughter.